Posted on 10/01/2012 8:07:10 AM PDT by justlittleoleme
Cheerleaders at Kountze High School in southeast Texas were banned last week from displaying banners with inspirational Bible passages on them at football games, Fox News reported. But now a judge has granted a temporary restraining order that will let them to display the signs until a hearing on the matter takes place Oct. 4.
In September, the Kountze Independent School District told the cheerleaders to stop using the religious banners, which the Kountz High football team runs through at games, after the Freedom From Religion Foundation accused the students of violating the Constitution, the Houston Chronicle reported.
**SNIP**
“The Supreme Court said more than 40 years ago and many courts have repeated it ever since, that students and teachers do not shed their constitutional rights to free speech when they walk through the schoolhouse gates,” Mike Johnson, a senior counsel at the Liberty Institute, told Fox News.
(Excerpt) Read more at globalpost.com ...
Now if it was an Islamic slogan like “Kill All The Infidels” it’d be okay without question.
Kountze, TX is quite a place! My parents lived out there at one time. Lots of rednecks, but salt of the earth people are living there.
It’s pretty much a swamp land—lots of rain, and the ground seldom gets completely dry. There are some rice farmers around there.
From the article, it looks like the people are conservative, down to earth types.............
Careful what you say about rednecks on FR, I made a similar statement last week and got shall we say, some negative feedback for my comments. LOL
Hey—I’m the biggest redneck of all! I was raised in Beaumont, TX—I come from a long line of rednecks, and tried to raise my kids to be the same—LOL!
“the religious banners, which the Kountz High football team runs through at games”
Religion. It’s weird.
Mix it up with Texas backcountry rednecks, football, and cheerleaders, the weirdness increases.
Went to the link, and the link that linked from there. and nobody quoted just what these verses were. Anybody know?
If your front porch collapses and kills more than four dogs, you might be a redneck.
“Went to the link, and the link that linked from there. and nobody quoted just what these verses were. Anybody know?”
John 3:16 was one. Heavy on the New Testament stuff. The players run through the banner as they run out onto the field to play the game.
I ran through the equivalent banners every year from 7th grade to senior in HS.
I can’t say they made an impression on me, other than to think they were trite and a bit tacky.
I’ve never thought the Word of God was something to tear down by having guys run through it.
There is nothing in the First Amendment that states “freedom from religion,” though a philosophical case could be made that supports it (note: I’M NOT SUPPORTING THEM OR THEIR CAUSE).
Didn’t MA have a state religion for a time after the Founding?
But think of it this way: what would a Christian culture look like? It would be Christian from top to bottom, from Chartres to refrigerator-magnet kitsch, from the Pieta to Elvis-and-Jesus-on-black-velvet, with Bach, Jesus Christ Superstar and Kumbaya. Michelangelo, Hagia Sophia, li'l fluffy bare-bottom cherubs and hot cross buns.
If you're going to have tacky juveniles who are Christians, you're going to have tacky juvenile Christians running and whooping through big paper banners.
It's all good. Maybe not "good art," but it is what it is.
War, religion, and team sports are closely related going back many thousands of years. Team sports like football are really practice tribal warfare, both for the soldiers on the field and the civilians cheering them on. Religion provides a real world competitive advantage in war, sports, school, business, and life in general. What's weird and against nature is wanting to artificially disconnect them. This desire is usually motivated by the destructive force of envy, which doesn't seek to gain a perceived competitive advantage for themselves, but to deny it to others.
I’m inclined to agree with you as well.
But I still says it’s tacky, and if I was the coach, I’d say “no” — not because of the ACLU/lawyer pansies, but the other extreme -— I don’t think this is effective way to spread the Gospel in that it is tacky and trite.
Not really related, but I do rememeber a Jewish guy (linebacker, went to Stanford) on our HS team -— he always ran around the banners, but didn’t bitch about them.
He would stoically stand when everyone else kneeled when the coach did a pre-game prayer -— said Jews didn’t kneel before God, just bent their knees.
Not sure why I just remembered that.
We had a Jehovah’s Witness that skipped everything, I think.
“Religion. It’s weird.”
No, HS cheerleaders are weird.
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