ACLU Abusing Poor Christians Again

[Wicked Pilot]

Bible verse reinstated in Stevenson yearbook

The horror, the horror, what are these far left liberals doing to our nation?

[Gandalf]

Jeepers, can't these guys just shut their holes and accept they're not allowed to do this?

Sometimes I really want to feed these guys to the lions.

[Durandal]

What she did was perfectly legal. It's her profile in the yearbook, which is supposed to include details about her life. If a significant portion of her life is her religious beliefs, then she can include them because it's her freedom of religious expression.

[darthdavid]

It smacks of fundie but your allowed to say what you want to in those quotes and they had no rights to censor her. *watches the fundies convienantly ignore this the next time they bash the aclu as anti christian*

[Wicked Pilot]

Jeepers, can't these guys just shut their holes and accept they're not allowed to do this?

Um, I'm not sure what the laws are like in Australia, but in the US we have this thing called the Free Exercise clause, which prohibits schools from censoring things like this. That is why the ACLU took up the case.

[Gandalf]

Jeepers, can't these guys just shut their holes and accept they're not allowed to do this?

Um, I'm not sure what the laws are like in Australia, but in the US we have this thing called the Free Exercise clause, which prohibits schools from censoring things like this. That is why the ACLU took up the case.

I get that, we have a similar rule.

It just annoys me when people use stuff like this as a platform for voicing their religious/political views.

Besides, I doubt a quote from the Koran would go down as well.

[Durandal]

I guess you didn't read my post, so I'll say it again in simpler words.

The profile is a place for her to list important details of her life. If an important detail of her life is religion, then she has every right to list it there. She's not proselytizing, so what's the problem?

[Alyeska]

The School District should have been forced to replace every copy of the book with the corrected version, not a bloody sticker.

[Gandalf]

I guess you didn't read my post, so I'll say it again in simpler words.

The profile is a place for her to list important details of her life. If an important detail of her life is religion, then she has every right to list it there. She's not proselytizing, so what's the problem?

Sorry, I misinterpreted the article.

Comments withdrawn.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Excellent. Freedom of Religion is defended. I don't like fundies trashing my rights, but I also don't like overzealous idiots trashing theirs. I'll defend to the death everyone's right to say what they want.

[sketerpot]

Excellent. Freedom of Religion is defended. I don't like fundies trashing my rights, but I also don't like overzealous idiots trashing theirs. I'll defend to the death everyone's right to say what they want.

Are you talking about your death here? Because that would be way out of proportion in a case like this, in my view. Do you really mean it, or are you just spouting staunch-sounding hyperbole?

[Gandalf]

I guess you didn't read my post, so I'll say it again in simpler words.

The profile is a place for her to list important details of her life. If an important detail of her life is religion, then she has every right to list it there. She's not proselytizing, so what's the problem?

Sorry, I misinterpreted the article.

Comments withdrawn.

As an addition. I'd like to apologise for my comments. They were the product of a lapse in judgement and a bad mood. (For cause, see venting.)

Sorry if I offended anyone.

[Pablo Sanchez]

The School District should have been forced to replace every copy of the book with the corrected version, not a bloody sticker.

Buying the books is damn expensive and they wouldn't have the money to do it twice. The standard practice in errors and things like this is for the publisher to send corrective stickers (which are actually very effective, to the point that you don't even notice them unless you're looking for them--they aren't little kid stickers).

[Sea Skimmer]

Buying the books is damn expensive and they wouldn't have the money to do it twice. The standard practice in errors and things like this is for the publisher to send corrective stickers (which are actually very effective, to the point that you don't even notice them unless you're looking for them--they aren't little kid stickers).

It's a yearbook, I've never heard of a school where the students didn't pay for them. So the school won't be paying for them twice. It would also seem that from what the article lists, the only copy which will acutally be corrected is the one on file with the school; those in students hands remain as is.

[Alyeska]

The School District should have been forced to replace every copy of the book with the corrected version, not a bloody sticker.

Buying the books is damn expensive and they wouldn't have the money to do it twice. The standard practice in errors and things like this is for the publisher to send corrective stickers (which are actually very effective, to the point that you don't even notice them unless you're looking for them--they aren't little kid stickers).

So rather then own up to their mistake and fix every yearbook to be as it should, they take the cheap way out and only fix a handful of the yearbooks.

[Pablo Sanchez]

So rather then own up to their mistake and fix every yearbook to be as it should, they take the cheap way out and only fix a handful of the yearbooks.

Read the article again. The yearbooks were printed two years ago, making new copies for everyone would necessity a fairly large mailing campaign to catch all the graduates, and it's possible that the original prints of the book have been discarded. Only a handful of students would care about the ruling anyway.

Sea Skimmer:
The money the recipients pay for the yearbooks doesn't always cover the entire cost of printing them. In many schools the yearbook staff has to do bake sales, host dances, and the like all year in order to raise money. This is especially true in smaller schools.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Damnit, this thread reminds me of this years yearbook.

Sure, there were Bible quotes for some of the seniors. I got no problem with that.

However, I do have a problem with quotes like these, and that it was allowed at all makes me angry at the hypocrisy of the school board. I am going to complain. Here's the quote, paraphrased slightly. All the adjectives are correct.:

"Chrisitanity is the only thing that makes life tolerable, or even valuable."

[Howedar]

That was a seriously chickenshit move by the school, and I'm glad the ACLU was able to help this person out. I'd like to think that those stickers are also being sent to the graduates who bought yearbooks, though that's kinda unlikely.

[Darth Wong]

There was no legal need to delete that comment, as the space for student comments does not imply government endorsement or favouritism for her religion. However, one must wonder just how far free exercise goes in this case. Suppose a Sikh says "Christianity makes me want to vomit; one thing I won't miss about this place is all the fundies trying to convert me" in his "personal expression" space? Would some kind of rule be trotted out to make sure that doesn't go in? Removing political or inflammatory statements or some other such clause?

It's not as if the editors of a school yearbook do not have the right to restrict content. There are undoubtedly rules, so why is it a violation of her First Amendment rights to be disallowed from using that spot for religious stuff, when it's almost certain that something like what I wrote above would not be allowed?

[Illuminatus Primus]

I suppose this is where other nations like Canada and Germany are ahead of the U.S. in exempting hate speech from the rights of expression.

Under that kind of a system, you could express religion all you want, but if you say something religiously-motivated or quote religious texts containing passages condoning hate and bigotry, it wouldn't be allowed.

[Howedar]

Because the deleted comment is more inspirational than anything, while your hypothetical example is more inflammatory.

[Darth Wong]

Because the deleted comment is more inspirational than anything, while your hypothetical example is more inflammatory.

I was not aware that "freedom of religion" was limited by subjective valuations such as "inspirational" vs "inflammatory".

Can we agree, then, that freedom of expression is an absolute bullshit red herring in this case, and that there was no reason for the courts to force the schools to change their textbooks since the decision about what goes in and what goes out is pretty much subjective and not at all related to the First Amendment in any way?

[Howedar]

Because the deleted comment is more inspirational than anything, while your hypothetical example is more inflammatory.

I was not aware that "freedom of religion" was limited by subjective valuations such as "inspirational" vs "inflammatory".

You wanted a reason. Don't get pissy when you don't like it.

Can we agree, then, that freedom of expression is an absolute bullshit red herring in this case, and that there was no reason for the courts to force the schools to change their textbooks since the decision about what goes in and what goes out is pretty much subjective and not at all related to the First Amendment in any way?

I would expect that the school would need to present a case for why the entry was/should be removed, and that speech could only be censored if a need for censorship were demonstrated.

[Darth Wong]

You wanted a reason. Don't get pissy when you don't like it.

A reason which had something to do with this First Amendment nonsense that people have been trotting out. You didn't give one, so I moved on to:

Can we agree, then, that freedom of expression is an absolute bullshit red herring in this case, and that there was no reason for the courts to force the schools to change their textbooks since the decision about what goes in and what goes out is pretty much subjective and not at all related to the First Amendment in any way?

I would expect that the school would need to present a case for why the entry was/should be removed, and that speech could only be censored if a need for censorship were demonstrated.

Why would the school need to justify its actions in a court of law? Are you or are you not conceding that this is not a First Amendment situation? If it is, then the "inflammatory" statement I posted earlier should be allowed. If it is not, then the school doesn't have to justify shit, and the court overstepped its bounds.

[RedImperator]

Freedom of expression is not absolute and no legal scholar has ever seriously argued that it is. Nor are the boundaries of free expression the same in every case. A school could make the argument that it has an interest in restricting blatantly inflammatory content from a yearbook in the interest of keeping the peace in the school and because it's unreasonable to expect students to pay for a book in which another student insults them, even though such remarks would be Constitutionally protected if the student made them outside of school (schools, incidentally, have the right to restrict speech that the government does not in the interest of protecting the educational environment--which is why you can get suspended for calling a teacher an asshole or another student a racial slut). As you said, Mike, the decision is subjective to a certain degree--that's inevitable in free expression cases--but the courts have the right to overturn individual and institutional subjective judgements in favor of their own in such cases.

That is, presuming they have jurisdiction, which is what puzzles me about this case. The school, as the institution responsible for publishing the yearbook, seems to me to have the right to restrict anything they damn well please. They certainly have that right in regards to school-funded student newspapers. I'm not familiar with the case, but I assume the judges decided that since public money was being spent on the books, the Constitution applies within reasonable limits, and they didn't consider restricting benign religious sentiments reasonable.