| Too Close To Home PING!!! What do you know about this one Bullets??? |
Posted on 12/17/2004 6:53:58 AM PST by missyme
A public school district in Texas has informed its students and parents of a ban on candy canes with religious messages, pencils with the name of Jesus inscribed on them, and -- of all things -- red- and green-colored decorations at holiday parties. That action has resulted in a pair of surprise gifts under the district's tree: a federal lawsuit filed by parents and students -- and an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
According to a press statement from the Plano, Texas-based Liberty Legal Institute, an "unconstitutional censorship policy" is being enforced by the Plano Independent School District. The legal group says its lawsuit addresses a "large amount of evidence that demonstrates the pervasive religious hostility" in the school district.
Among the examples noted by LLI are: a third-grader was prohibited from handing out "goody bags" that included candy canes with a religious message; a young girl was prevented by school officials from distributing pencils with "Jesus" written on them; and another student was told she could not invite friends to an Easter event at her church.
The "icing on the cake," so to speak, is a letter that was sent home requesting that parents not send their children to school with anything red or green during the holiday season -- and mandating that all cups, plates, napkins, and icing must be white.
"These government officials have lost all common sense," says Liberty Legal's Kelly Shackelford. "Our schools are not zones of religious censorship." A federal lawsuit filed by LLI on Wednesday (December 15) on behalf of four families charges the school district has engaged in "unconstitutional and illegal actions." Shackelford insists the lawsuit was a last resort.
"We did everything we could to talk the district into doing the right thing and put an end to these violations and discriminations," he says, "but unfortunately they refused to back down." The plaintiffs and LLI attorneys announced the lawsuit at a press conference on Wednesday -- but that was not the end of the bad news for the school district. On Thursday morning, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was opening an investigation in the Plano ISD.
In a letter to Liberty Legal, the DOJ says it is conducting a "preliminary inquiry" into the charges brought by the lawsuit. The letter stresses that no determination has been made regarding the allegations, and explains the department is authorized to intervene in legal actions against public school districts that allege a "denial of equal protection of the laws on the basis of religion."
"It is great to have a Justice Department that cares about religious freedom," says Hiram Sasser, LLI's director of litigation.
In an interview with Associated Press, Shackelford says Plano school officials have violated the constitutional rights of students and their parents. "It's dumb enough to have these little silly games to pretend like it's really a 'winter party' [and that] it's not Christmas. But they stepped way over the line here," he says. "I mean, they're telling kids you can't bring a candy cane with a story about Jesus. They're telling parents you can't pass out a Christmas message to other parents."
The attorney says he does not expect school officials to support or endorse religion. "These school officials can engage in their silly pretense that there is no Christmas if they want to," he states, "but they can't ban students and parents from celebrating the holidays and expressing themselves in accordance with their beliefs."
According to AP, school district attorney Richard Abernathy denies the claims in the lawsuit, and says school officials recently decided to allow the distribution of all materials -- religious or otherwise -- at holiday parties. LLI attorneys were surprised by that statement, saying neither students nor parents were informed of such a change. But "if that is true, that is great," says Shackelford.
Another "glad to be homeschooling" ping
Maybe they could also get some local black folks to join in and complain of racism. Get Jesse and Al down there on the bullhorns...
Well good ole God is sending us a white christmas from what I read on weather.com *LOL*
I think we should ban the music of 'White Christmas' - sounds racist...
Lets see how far we(school) can push this before they(parents) get mad!
I'm surprised they've not even made that the issue.
Is Plano in a blue county in Texas?
Speechless bump
Looks like christians are fed up and are not going to take it anymore. It is about time!
Payback is gonna be ugly then.
| Too Close To Home PING!!! What do you know about this one Bullets??? |
no - Plano is a suburb of Dallas........once a quaint small community ~ now a sprawling, yuppie cesspool, IMHO
Holy crap. My one question in all of this PC bull crap is...who exactly are these idiots trying to protect from being offended? The Muslim student population cannot be that large. Or is it just all anti-Christians? Time to lock and load.
Nope! Red County......
Just proves morons live everywhere!
It's okay to say Merry Christmas
I don't remember all this Christmas Hate going on last year..It appears someone is trying to do a big payback for the presidential election....
Maybe Michael Moore is behind all this????
Of course it is! People are angry and depressed about the election. Jesusland? Didn't Moore start that crap?
Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) - http://www.alliancedefensefund.org
Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) - http://www.thomasmore.org
American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) - http://www.aclj.org
The Rutherford Institute - http://www.rutherford.org/
Stop the ACLU Coalition - http://www.stoptheaclu.org
Here are a few examples of how two of those organizations are fighting back:
ADF Contacts Over 3,600 School Districts Over Attempts To Censor Christmas
ADF: 700 lawyers ready to fight ACLU lawsuits
ADF: Pentagons' Warning About Boyscouts Is Absurd
Thomas More Law Center: Town of Palm Beach Pays $50,000 In Attorney Fees Apologizes To Women In Nativity Lawsuit
Additional information:
The ACLU must be destroyed: Joseph Farah supports Boy Scouts, urges Americans to fight back
Citizens mobilized to stop ACLU (seeks to consign group to 'ash heap of history')
ACLU fulfilling communist agenda
Revealing FACTS on the ACLU from its own writings
See how YOUR Senator or Representative ranks with the ACLU
Let me know if you would like to join my ACLU ping list
Anti-Christmas Ping! Fight the ACLU and all liberal organizations trying to kill Christmas!
Muslims? I've yet to meet a Muslim who has any problem with Christmas. Ditto Buddhists.
However, I have over the years read or heard from a number of Jews, atheists, and neo-pagans/Wiccans who are offended by Christmas.
However, a huge proportion of school administrators and teachers are blue to the core; castoffs and/or mirror images of our universities.
That's why people are mad at them - a bunch of lefties trying to force their opinions on us normal folks.
tSG
Of course! must of lost my mind for a sec..The Liberal Democrats showing there scorned faces with the Christmas Season..
JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON..
Anyways when the he-ll did the USA celebrate some Winter Solstice Holiday???? ugh NEVER>>>
I've already sent emails of protest to all the hierarchy.
"I don't remember all this Christmas Hate going on last year..."
The multimillion$ MoveOn.org etc. investment of Soros and his fiends wasn't just about the election--they've created a whole platform of tools to help systematically tear this country apart and gathered the groups to get marching orders from one place. You can be the ACLU, NEA, NAACP, American Communist Party, the Clintons etc. are all collaborating on what to do with that database of names....with their millions to launch and operate it, we have no time to waste in counteracting and exposing their subversive efforts everywhere...the creeping crud of Communism applies constant pressure and expands anywhere we are not diligent. The good news is, we have TRUTH and PRAYER on our side--and our beloved country's pendulum is indeed swinging back to the Right.
As this is Christmastime, it seems appropriate to mention that a portion of Handel's 'Messiah' comes directly from Psalm 2:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalms%202;&version=9;
I can no longer distinguish between truth and satire on this site.
A deal should be made, they can ban whatever they want, as long as we are allowed to also, namely our children and our tax dollars from entering into their property
Said decision to become effective the day following the last day of school, most likely.
It's past time for Christians to fight back. Satan has had his way in this country's public arena for almost forty years, using a miniscule number of loudmouths as his mouthpiece, while tens of millions of Christians sat back and said nothing. It's time for that to change.
MM
An atheistic nation will fall.
"A deal should be made"
Heck no, no deal. Public monies are used to establish public institutions -- those public entities are owned by We the People. If we allow bureaucrats to think and act as though once taxed from us we have no rights over that government property--that's what they want. We ARE the government--so long as we insist and demand it. Blink, just look away for a moment--and the creeping crud tries to grab power and cries bloody murder (or 'election fraud') when the unwashed citizens storm the Ivory Towers, throw them out and change the locks.
The elite of the teachers and their rank and file union members are in bed with the Gay Agenda driven ACLU.
It is time to expose this bs whenever it happens and get locals angry and national exposure of these NEA Fascists as they try to make being Christians an evil thing.
My guess is that we are getting a bureacratization of "diversity sensitivity", and that there is a process going on here which consists of aggregating all complaints made anywhere in the US by any member of a group that the bureacuracy perceives as "minority" against anything that has been traditionally considered "mainstream" culture, and pro-actively banning it, BEFORE anyone raises that complaint.
The typical reaction of school administrations to any confrontation or criticism is to to grease the squeaky wheel at the expense of those who sit there silently.
And I don't worship the sun or the moon either. We must change the names of the days of the week from SUNday, MOONday and those other guys like Thor's day, Saturn Day,... Until we come up with something acceptable, it will be Firstday, Seconday, .....
As for Christmas, Christians should take the secularism out of Christmas by moving the gift giving and other 'commercialistic activities to New Years Day. Christians should reserve Christmas for religious celebration such as church services, parades and plays about Jesus Christ, and by the gift of "service" to others. Secularist would then find themselves celebrating on a religious holiday, while Christians confused retailers by delaying their shopping until the after Chrstmas sales.
This is how to respond to Christ-iphobia. Christ-iphobia? Yes. Those who don't lovingly embrace the homosexual agenda are called 'homo-phobes.' Doesn't it make sense that those who oppose Christianinty are Christ-iphobes?
"Heck no, no deal. Public monies are used to establish public institutions"
They can ban whatever they want, as long as we can ban our tax dollars from them, and our children, I am fine with that deal.
*vents*
When will these freakin' _morons_ realize CHRISTmas is a religious holiday?
What's next? We cant play the Star Spangled Banner on the 4th of July? No thanks given on Thanksgiving? When will Easter be targeted?
Everything has a time and place -- Christmas is the time to celebrate our Lord and Saviour. Don't believe in him? DONT CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS or you are only embracing what you disagree with and you are hypocrite.
Maybe we should rename christmas GreedySelfish-Mas because all the non-believers only care about the gifts. Then change the date, and they can leave us alone on _OUR_ day.
All this makes me wish I was still in school... I would have so much fun handing out Jesus pencils and bibles. I'd ink the names of Our Lord in clearly visible places (big red letters on my forehead should set them off, right?) and pass out flyers reminding people CHRISTmas is the celebration of our Lord and Savior.
If I ever recieve the blessing of my own children, they will NEVER set foot in a public school. I'd impale myself on a rusty stake before allowing that to happen.
The citizens are mostly republicans, but there are a lot of Moslems (one of the polling places is in a Mosque), Hindus, Chinese (there is a pre-K and K program just for Chinese speaking kids) and a mixture of citizen and non-citizen Mexicans. (The Mexicans are squeezing out the Blacks.)
There are also a fair number of Swedes, some Russians, and a mixture of others.
In my other post I forgot to add that in the most recent election, the Dems didn't even bother to run anyone for Congress. The choice was Repub or Libertarian (there may have been an independent as well).
Is this the opportunity for the frustrated liberals with PEST to slap back.
Of course it is >sarcasm>
it's ok to be racist against whites. white people are evil perpetrators against all that is not white.
Yep.
The judge granted the TRO and the party's on, the way it should be.
HERE is a Christmas Greeting suitable for the Plano ISD!!
ha ha ! .....
In a related development, the school district announced that it was expelling ten students who were discovered to have red hair and green eyes . . .
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