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To: GovernmentShrinker

Don't get too excited there. The "required" portion dealt with peer pressure put on the kid, not a forced school mandate.

But believe everything you read...


21 posted on 09/08/2006 7:57:44 PM PDT by Carling (It's Danny, Sir)
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To: Carling

Where do you find that information? It isn't mentioned in the article; not even the part where the court's own words explain the grounds for the decision.
A more detailed article http://www.gazettetimes.com/articles/2006/09/09/news/oregon/1ore09scoutrecruitsuit.txt mentions a footnote in the court's ruling saying it didn’t see how state law “prohibits an organization, even a hate group, from making a neutral presentation to students, or how such a presentation, even by a hate group, necessarily would subject a person to differential treatment or discrimination." The court -- whose decision is what we're discussing here -- is making the same point I made, only claiming that it's just fine under state law (which it may be, but as long as the school is using federal funds, it's also subject to state law). I haven't seen the text of the state law referred to, but I can just imagine what the court's ruling would REALLY be if a school invited the American Nazi Party or KKK or a militant black separatist group to hold a recruiting session on school property during lunchtime. The fact that the Boy Scout recruiting pitch told all boys they could join is also problematic, since it is false -- boys who responded by trying to join, while professing honestly not to believe in any God, would be rejected.

I happen to think the Boy Scouts is a great organization, and that their requirement to believe in God is sufficiently broad to include a majority of American boys, representing some very divergent belief systems. But there's no reason they can't hold recruiting sessions after school hours, when the law is clear that the school facilities must be open to rental/use on an equal basis by any private or public group whose activities aren't illegal, even narrow sectarian groups.

But at any rate, the line between required and pressured is often pretty thin in reality. I expect there was technically a way to opt out of that idiotic California school's "pretend to be a Muslim" program -- trouble is 1) parents weren't notified in advance, and 2) there was really nowhere for a non-participating kid to go while the rest of the class did this crap. Again, the school would probably have claimed that a child could have gone and sat in the principal's office for a few hours, if the parents demanded the child not participate, but that's not very realistic, nor would most of the people who see no problem with this Boy Scout recruiting event be satisfied with that method of opting their own child out of a portion of the regular school day schedule. A technically available, but extremely awkward "way out", wouldn't make the "pretend to be a Muslim" program acceptable for a public school.


31 posted on 09/09/2006 7:01:45 AM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
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