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/
I didn't say F-U. I asked you if you could spell it. Too bad you, with that sense of humor you're so proud of, missed that.
It was just the same as saying it and you full well meant it. Otherwise you wouldn't have said it and would have come back with another one-liner like most of the people with a sense of humor do OR would have chosen to ignore it OR would have posted a "GROWN" or "LOL" like every other person I've done a DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, (did I mention DUMB?) one liner too. I don't think I'm really very funny and stated that, but I don't think so highly of myself or take myself so seriously. Oh my...
LOL.........
See, I make those mistakes too. I just misspelled GROAN. You dumb Moog, can't you even spell? Geez, get a clue!
I'll give my own translation of the Hebrew prayer to timsbella, one that she's heard me use in other forums! :)
Timsbella, God bless you real good for what you wrote!
Oh yeah! Like you're the smartest person out there! Do you know how to spell Idiot?
Oh yeah, well do you know how to spell ignoramus?
Ok me and myself! Do I have to stop you guys from arguing again?
If she spoke on secular humanism or the wonders of abortion or Mohamhead she could have spoken all night. Freedom of speech only applies to the left's religions.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
Me: I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over myself.
Myself: I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me.
Mark 8:38 Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.
Telling a lie or changing her mind? What if she fell under the conviction of the Holy Spirit?
That DOES happen a lot to people when giving religious talks, that's for sure. I'm sure it can happen when giving this kind of talk too.
I bear a tattoo of Christ' head on my left forearm and a tattoo of the Chi Rho flanked on one side by an "A" (Alpha) and "Omega" symbol on the other side on my right forearm.
I absolutely love when people ask what the Chi Rho is. When I tell them, their reactions run from approval to nonchalance, to outright disgust. Either way, the reactions make me smile. I'll bear these marks for my Lord and my God.
Would you three cut it out already? Enough arguing! Yes, I'm talking to you, yourself, and you.
Hey, that's only 2 1/2 people. Still, I'm stinkin' embarrassed to mispull oll thu werds. It do'nt happin to offen, yew no.
I love that Shoeless Joe Jackson story though. Some heckler was saying, "Joe, can you spell ignoramus?" (referring to his illiteracy). Joe hit a screaming liner that just about clocked the guy and said, "Hey fatso? Can you spell triple?" I love old baseball stories. I grew up reading about old baseball heroes.
Glad to see you two boys getting along again. Now behave yourselves! :P
Me and Myself are still not getting along and I am too busy to do something about it.
Proudly speak the name of Jesus and turn to the assembled bureaucrats and say: "How do you like me now!"
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