Source: Baxter Dmitry
A New York school district has rejected a student’s request to start a Christian club, even though it has approved 20 other clubs including an LGBT-centered “Pride Club.”
Wappingers Central School District violated federal law when it rejected the request to start the “OMG! Christian Club” at Roy C. Ketcham High School in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., according to the First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit legal group, which is representing the Christian student.
According to The Christian Post, First Liberty sent a letter to the school District on Dec. 11 demanding that it OK freshman Daniela Barca’s application to form the club, whose stated aim is to offer “faith-based support” during biweekly student-initiated gatherings at which students can discuss “living for God in a godless society.”
First Liberty Institute has accused school officials of being unresponsive and dragging their feet in response to Barca’s request.
Barca’s request was eventually turned down on grounds that a Christian club was too “exclusive” and that a public school should not support a religious club.
“[T]he discrimination toward Daniela’s religious speech has prevented OMG from pursuing their community-wide goals of ‘food drives, clothing drives, Operation Christmas Child’ and other charitable endeavors,” reads the letter from First Liberty Institute counsel Keisha Russell.
“Ketcham school officials blatantly ignored the plain text of the Equal Access Act of 1984 by rejecting Daniela’s Christian club because of its religious speech. The act has been unequivocal on this point for 35 years.”
ChristianAction report: The EAA states that it is unlawful for public secondary schools that receive federal assistance and have limited open forums to “deny equal access or fair opportunity” to students who wish to conduct a meeting within the open forum on the basis of “religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meetings.”
According to Russell’s letter, Barca approached the school’s assistant principal on Sept. 5 and was told that the application turned in by her teacher sponsor had been lost. The teacher who agreed to sponsor the club told Barca on Sept. 10 that the form had been found.
The letter states that Barca had three meetings with Principal David Seipp, and was finally informed that the club could not be formed on grounds that the school could not promote it.
Barca’s father, William Barca, appealed to Assistant Superintendent for Compliance and Information Systems Daren Lolkema, telling him in an email that his daughter wanted to start a club for Christians to support each other in their beliefs. Lolkema informed William Barca that the school district could not support a religious club that is not “completely unbiased to any and all religions.”
Ketcham High School recognizes over 20 student clubs, including the LGBT rights student group called Pride Club.
Bet you all would go psycho meltdown if a Muslim group tried this in a public school. But it is ok for Christians to violate the separation of church and state and force their religious bullshit beliefs in our public schools huh?
If Christian kids want to start a group? Then have them start it in their churches and keep their groups the hell out of our public schools.
Thomas Jefferson starts out with his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, where, the actual law of the statute says as follows:
II. Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods…
James Madison stated, when he introduced the Bill of Rights to Congress:
“The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscious in any manner, or on any pretext, be infringed.”
John Adams made it even more clear in his Treaty of Tripoli, article 11:
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
George Washington repeated John Adams words and added to them:
“The government of the United States, is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy.”
And one more from Thomas Jefferson:
“Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.”
“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, Connecticut
Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
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