Posted on 06/22/2006 3:46:06 PM PDT by NYer
LAS VEGAS, June 22, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The name of Christ is so offensive to modern secular ears that Clark County School District officials, who knew it was coming, cut off the microphone during a valedictorian address before they or anyone else could hear it.
Brittany McComb is a Christian and a top student graduating from Foothill High. She knew that her valedictorian address would probably be cut short, but was determined to go ahead and mention the one name that is for her above every other name.
"I went through four years of school at Foothill and they taught me logic and they taught me freedom of speech," McComb stated. "God's the biggest part of my life. Just like other valedictorians thank their parents, I wanted to thank my lord and saviour."
The 400 plus graduates and guests gathered at a Las Vegas casino for the ceremony booed and jeered after McComb’s speech was cut short.
McComb was required to vet her speech before the graduation ceremony with Foothill administrators. This, says the school, is standard practice before speeches are read. The school officials then removed all Biblical references and the single mention of the name of Jesus Christ.
McComb, who graduated with a 4.7 grade point average, was warned that if she deviated from the approved text, she could be cut off; but she saw it as a matter of freedom of speech.
“People aren't stupid and they know we have freedom of speech and the district wasn't advocating my ideas,” McComb said. “Those are my opinions.”
“It's what I believe.”
The school district’s legal counsel, Bill Hoffman, said that McComb's words counted as preaching. He told media, “We review the speeches and tell them they may not proselytize.”
McComb said she was not surprised by the censorship. “Even in the Bible it says that the name of Jesus will be hated.”
“But the thing is, it is freedom of speech, so I was upset,” McComb said on the “Jay Sekulow Live!” radio program on June 20. “I was really leery about having to defy authority.... It took me a while, but I answer to a higher authority and it's my freedom of speech, and I had to come to terms with that.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, becoming notorious for its secularist zealotry in cases of public expression of religious belief, praised the school’s decision saying, “It's important for people to understand that a student was given a school-sponsored forum by a school, and therefore, in essence, it was a school-sponsored speech.”
Not so, says a Constitutional lawyer and freedom of speech activist. Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the Florida-based pro-family legal organization Liberty Counsel, said McComb should take the school district to court.
“I think this is one of the most outrageous examples of censorship at graduation that I've seen,” Staver said to Agape Press. “For school officials to literally be standing by the switch at the mixing board and cut the microphone on a student, simply because that student mentions God or Jesus, is just unbelievable.”
A writer in the Conservative Voice, Ben Shapiro, responded, “Let's assume the school district, by allowing McComb's speech, would have been promoting her message. Here's the question: So what?”
“There is no right to be free from public expression of religion,” Ben Shapiro wrote, “but there is a Constitutionally protected right to free exercise of religion … it is none of the school district's business whether she chooses to invoke God, Jesus or Zeus (though history indicates that the ACLU would fight for her right to invoke Zeus).”
The Constitution of the US, says Shapiro, prohibits the establishment of a state religion such as the Anglican Church in Britain, but was never intended to suppress the right to freedom of religious expression.
See MSNBC's interview with Brittany McComb:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13461308/
So if you change your mind, you "lie"?
How does that work?
I can laugh at myself AND I can respond to a gratuitous unprovoked slap in the face. Both good conservative abilities. Are you conservative enough to admit you made an asinine post?
If I had a wireless keyboard and mouse, I could be an even bigger "lier."
Don't forget the big couch.
It doesn't matter what she agreed to, the policy of the school is unconstitutional Stalinism. Those supporting state censorship of speech guaranteed in writing by "the people" some 214 years are whacked.
Are you conservative enough to admit that's an asinine post?
Nope - a measured response to an unprovoked insult.
Geez Louise, you're still worked up about that??? Seems like I should be the one since you told me to f-off. No, I did not make an asinine post. I made an ass-i-nine post. It was a DUMB one-liner as I said before, over a typo. I even admitted making several of those myself. I'm sorry about disturbing your foofoos. I can laugh at myself and I poke fun and insult myself any chance I can get. Now Myself, he gets mad sometimes at ME, so I has to tamper off. But Me gets mad at myself too so I have to moderate between the two. It's hard getting between ME and Myself becaus I often have a lot to do. Thus, I have to be good to Me and Myself as to not overextend myself or me.
But then, the consternation of the individual abilities of the moranus of the possiblities gets excremated in the throess of the improbable timings. One can imagine the possiblities if they reclaim to the particularities of the extremities, but with proclivities of the nuances, one gets included into the outer reaches of depravity.
Actually, this is good news on several counts.
By censoring this young lady in public, the censors provided far more publicity for the speech in question than it would have ever received otherwise. Kind of like how banning a book is often a good way to get it on the bestseller list.
I also wonder how many parents in the Las Vegas area finally decided that it was a good time to give homeschooling or private schools a try after having read this story.
Finally, these type of stories are also a good way to flush out the zealots in the opposition. Interesting how they go back to the legalistic mantra of how a rule was violated. In this case, the young lady...horror of horrors...didn't abide by her "agreement" to stick to the edited text.
Are you conservative enough to admit that's an asinine post?
Wow, I never knew F-U wasn't an insult. Geez, my mom and dad taught me that it was. Oh Crap!
There needs to be more good examples like her out there in the real world and in the schools.
Calling me a troll is also an unprovoked, unwarranted insult.
F-U
"Calling me a troll is also an unprovoked, unwarranted insult."
Well Mr. Foo-foo, I never called you a "troll." I had no idea who you were. I just simply did a DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, DUMB (did I mention dumb?) one-liner and you told me to f-off.
Let's be nice to Mr. Foofoo. Saying the same thing back doesn't make one look any better (unless we're Cheney I guess:).
Do you have any comment about the content of my original post?
I wasn't trying to be rude. I thought he'd take it as a compliment, since he uses it that way himself. Different rules for different people? Hmm...
"Another post on one of the MANY threads about this topic said that in an interview on the Today Show the girl indicated that she did agree to give the edited speech but then "changed her mind" (Read: decided to lie) and give the original speech."
Yeah, I guess she wasn't a "good german." It would seem that some of my fellow posters have real a problem with that.
Y'know, she probably doesn't spy on her parents much, either.
I wasn't trying to be rude. I thought he'd take it as a compliment, since he uses it that way himself. Different rules for different people? Hmm...
True. I took it as a compliment too since I my one-liners usually elicit collective groans.
"What? You got some kind of beef with Switzerland?"
yep. Swiss aided the nazis. Swiss snagged lots of funds from those killed or displaced and would not distribute to heirs. Swiss built business on others' pain and suffering. May have aided "us" more , maybe not, not the point. I have a lot of respect for their abilities, and accomplishments, but not thier morals.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.