Posted on 05/23/2018 7:18:29 PM PDT by marshmallow
SCIOTA, IL (CBS Local) – An Illinois high school valedictorian has hired a lawyer after claiming that school officials demanded he remove all religious references from his graduation speech.
Sam Blackledge was set to deliver the speech at West Prairie High School on May 19. According to the 18-year-old, school administrators informed him that he needed to take out anything that mentioned God and Jesus minutes before Blackledge was scheduled to go on stage.
“It was terrible. I felt like I wanted to cry,” the valedictorian said, via The Kansas City Star. “Christ is the only reason I was a valedictorian. He’s the reason I got that 4.0. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be up there. I was giving him the credit for that.”
Attorney Jeremy Dys of the non-profit legal group First Liberty Institute told reporters that the school didn’t even want Blackledge to speak, but eventually allowed the senior to give a “very generic” address.
The student’s attorney is accusing West Prairie High School of violating the boy’s rights regarding freedom of speech and religion. “They actually violated the Constitution. They’d do well to remember, as ‘Tinker v. Des Moines,’ the case in 1969, reminds us, that students do not shed their constitutional rights when they walk through the schoolhouse gates,” Dys told KFVS.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicago.cbslocal.com ...
Once he’s speaking, what are they going to do?
The First Amendment must not apply to you when you’re the Valedictorian. No wonder students are shooting one another.
Just what I’m thinking. Are they going to rush the stage or perhaps pull the plug on his microphone? Arrest him? Not give him his diploma? Fu*k them. I’m just sayin’.
If he wanted to give thanks to Obama, Martin Luther King, Hillary Clinton, etc such speech would not be censored.
Him praising the influence of Christ in his life, is hardly any endorsement of religion by the school. I know the liberals disagree, but facts are stubborn things.
One of our interns said that on her neighbor’s kid’s HS graduation which just happened last Sunday, the valedictorian went on an anti-Trump speech and she was BOO’D LOUDLY off the stage.
It got so bad even the parents hurled insults at the kid. Welcome to the jungle brat..
The valedictorian, this girl with a head filled with mush, used her speech to vilify white Americans and how evil those Christians were who exploited the Indians.
It was the first time I ever heard booing from the audience at a graduation.
I’ll probably find that girl in a homeless camp somewhere lol
A 4.0 student should have been smart enough to disobey. These wastrels want to silence Christians, and I am sick of people of Faith acting like obedient lambs.
Ridiculous. On the other hand I don’t want to listen to some garbage about how Satan helped some whack-job get good grades either, even as a joke. At present, the civil authorities somehow don’t have the common sense to allow one and not the other.
Freegards
The kids should say what they want to say. If the crowds don’t like it they have the right to boo. The school should pre read or have a veto over what is said.
“I owe it all to The Man upstairs. You know who I’m talking about!”
Sue their asses into the ground.
Just tell the truth. You are graduating!
Sue. Early. Often.
[[The student’s attorney is accusing West Prairie High School of violating the boy’s rights regarding freedom of speech and religion.]]
Sue em good counselor- sue em on behalf of all conservatives i nthis country- make this school realize what a terrible thing they’ve done by violating this kid’s constitutional rights-
I like the oen a few years ago who deliberately sneezed in the middle of teh speech, causing the class to say, “God bless you.”
It has been done
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