[RoseofTexas]

It's time to bombard this school with E-mails!! Can anyone here supply an email address to this STUPID communist school??

[Cagey]

But, it's just fine for the school to.......

QUESTION 79: My school hands out condoms. If kids are going to have sex, isn't it important for them to practice safe sex?

Handing out condoms in school—especially without any counseling and without parents' consent—gives students no inducement to do any serious thinking about sexual activity and its risks.

Much sex education today is aimed at making sexual activity a common experience devoid of deep meaning. Sex educators are worried that teens tend to treat sex as passionate, romantic, meaningful—that they get swept away by their feelings. These educators believe that teens are more likely to use birth control and condoms if sex is treated clinically, stripping it of its meaning.

Sex without significance. No commitment, no emotional involvement, simple animal pleasure.

[M-cubed]

''We will do whatever the handbook says.''...Yup!...No brainer!...suspend them!....Now the lawsuit will be about the policy....not your responsibility as an Administrator..

[Tax Government]

It's a free spech issue, pure and simple. The school has no business preventing students from distributing literature of any kind.

[ardara]

It is great to see that the students have been offered counsel.The secularist ACLU no longer has a monopoly in the area of religious freedom in the schools. I predict that the ACLU will suffer significant defeats in the area of students' religious freedom in 2003.

[Hebrews 11:6]

''We do not allow students to distribute non-school curriculum or activity-related literature of any kind directly to other students on school grounds,'' Superintendent Thomas McDowell wrote....''We do not single out students based upon the content of their message, in this or any other instance...''

The school is entirely within its rights, under settled US Supreme Court constitutional law, to make and enforce this policy; very good and defensible reasons could prompt such a policy. If this was already established as policy, rather than being made-up in response to this incident, then the kids were out-of-line.

Christians are called by Romans 13 to obey civil authorities except where the laws contradict God's laws; as Jesus said, give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. This tension between evangelism and obedience to law, both of which God commands, is easily resolved: hand out the candy canes out on the sidewalk. Don't be a scofflaw and thereby bring Jesus into disrepute.

[NetValue]

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech...."

Seems clear enough. Why does government make us fight them for guaranteed rights which it is supposed to uphold for all citizens?

[mlmr]

This is an after school club. They were within the rules.

[B Knotts]

I'm fairly certain that after a reasonable investigation, the school will be found to have allowed other students to distribute literature on other topics.

[Kuksool]

"Sharon Sitler, 17,......described previous years when her classmates took the candy canes, ripped off the paper messages, and tossed them to the floor."

Isn't this a hate crime?

[Gritty]

It's too bad these kids didn't do this in a Russian school. The school would have been happy to oblige!

[pabianice]

That's funny... not a word from that Protector of Free Speech, the ACLU...

[Fintan]

But school administrators have said the issue is not religion. They said they are adhering to a policy that bars students from passing out non-school-related literature on campus.

Gee, whyizzit I have the funny feeling that if these kids were handing out condoms with candy canes, or pro-gay brochures with candy canes, or anti-war propoganda with candy canes, or "Islam: The Religfion of Peace" pamphlets with candy canes, we wouldn't even be reading about Westfield High School students ?

[Old Professer]

We're going to have to settle this God issue once and for all; either no God or all Gods, can't be any other way.

These students knew they were breaking the rules, their supporters disagree with the rules while their critics disagree with their belief, what then to do?

Mandatory schooling is the root issue, as long as it is the "Law of the Land," there will be those who seek to subvert the process on both sides of the debate.

How does it benefit society to waste resources on the unwilling and the incapable?

[E.G.C.]

Here are my thoughts on the subject.

This is why you're seeing more and more people choosing to home school their kids. These are obviously kids who believe in the Bible and are simply trying to excercise their first amendment rights. They are NOT agents of the state, they are regular kids and to treat them as though they're agents of the state in this way is rather stupid, idiotic and foolish.

And I'll tell you something else. No amount of goverment force or intmidation is going to make these kids give up on any of their ideas just to get along with those who think differently. This is what they're trying to do in California. They're forcing homeschooled kids to enter the public school system whether they want to or not. What's going to end up happening is a lot of these kids are going to choose not to accept the authority of those in charge with the mindset of an athiest and they're going to end up spending the majority of their young lives either on suspension or in dentention. No christian or conservative kid is going to let some ahtiest educrat tell him or her what to do. This is a recipe for our nation becoming a third world country which apparently, some bozos amongest us seem to want.

So the question is do we want to end up with a generation of kids with no knowledge of anything whatsoever because they had to spend a large part of their time fighting atheist educrats and as a result are out of school incompentent and dumb and their only experience is standing up for their conservative and christians and as a result showing disrepect for authority in the process? Is this what we really want?
Regards.

[LibKill]

Several Westfield High School students who handed out candy canes with religious note to their classmates the week before Christmas are bracing for possible suspension from school after they return from winter break tomorrow.

This ain't right.

When I was a kid you had to get caught with dope or a gun to get suspended. Where are the principal's brain cells?

[redheadtoo]

They should get other kids to hand out candy with some innocuous message such as, "Don't forget to brush your teeth," printed on it. Then see if the school disciplines them. My guess is that, as long as there is no Christian message, then distributing candy with a message would not be a problem.

[MarMema]

case in point.

[dfwgator]

Religion is for churches, not public schools.

[rwfromkansas]

Holy smokes.....it doesn't matter that this is a religious message. This is a CLEAR violation of the student's rights. They could have passed out literature praising Satan for all I care; they still should have been allowed to do so. The school does NOT have the right to stop students from expressing beliefs to other students or pass out things voluntarily.......UNLESS THEY IS AN EXCESS DISRUPTION IN THE SCHOOL DAY. This is clear fact and the school could not be more OBVIOUSLY in the wrong.