The recent example of overt hostility, even bigotry, toward students who are Christian occurred in Creekside Elementary School in Sammamish, Washington, about twenty miles east of Seattle. This controversy, it’s worth noting, is playing out not far from where controversy led to the Supreme Court’s ground-breaking judgment in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. (After the Justices reasoned that board officials violated the football coach’s First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and speech in refusing to renew his contract because he prayed on the field after games, the school district had to pay him a $1.7 million damages award.
The principal in Creekside Elementary School, acting solely on her own discretion to evaluate requests for new organizations, refused to allow two students, L.A.W. and J.W. to organize an interfaith prayer club. Eleven-year-old L.A.W. wished to create the club because of an “especially difficult experience as a religious student in fifth grade.” Because of her experience, L.A.W. decided to start an interfaith prayer club so that students like her could have a place after school where they feel safe and welcome, and where they can bring students together to serve their community.” Both L.A.W. and J.W. had plans for club activities, including prayer and community service.
The principal denied the students’ request, even though the club’s goals clearly aligned with the board’s mission and work statement. However, the principal allowed a “Pride” Club to form in the elementary school, which teachers promoted, a week before meeting with L.A.W.
Moreover, during two meetings with L.A.W. and her mother, the principal cited budgetary concerns for denying the students’ request even though nothing in board records reflects any cost associated with the Pride club or, by extension, this proposed Christian club.
The principal’s hypocrisy is all the more evident in light of the mission and work statement on the district’s website promoting diversity:
We are dedicated to identifying and removing bias and systemic and institutional barriers that create marginalizing and disproportionality in student achievement and their well being….We are committed to creating equitable outcomes where all students thrive. We work to create welcoming and inclusive learning environments, where students, staff, and parents know that they matter and that they belong.
Further, L.A.W. told the principal (to no avail) that the club would be student-led and that if it needed a sponsor, staff members and other adults were willing to volunteer. Additionally, L.A.W. offered to host a fundraiser with friends for the club if necessary to cover any costs. In light of the students’ plans and the board’s diversity statements, remarkbly, the principal excluded the Christian students so arbitrarily.
After the principal denied L.A.W. and J.W.’s request to form the club, the two (through their mothers) contacted First Liberty Institute, “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.” First Liberty sent a letter to the board and principal on April 9, 2024, explaining how they violated the students’ rights to religious freedom and speech by allowing non-religious clubs to meet, because in doing so they engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
First Liberty’s letter asked board officials to respond no later than April 22, 2024, stating that the students can start a prayer club no later than April 29, 2024. The letter concluded that if First Liberty did not receive these assurances, it “will proceed as our clients direct, likely pursuing all available legal remedies,” meaning litigation. Board officials acknowledged that they received First Liberty’s letter, promising to follow up after April 15.
Regardless of the principal’s and board members’ personal beliefs, given their duty to avoid viewpoint discrimination by not disfavoring religion it is almost inconceivable they acted with such total disregard to L.A.W.’s and J.W.’s rights to the free exercise of religion and speech in rejecting their request, while allowing other clubs to form. The callousness of the principal’s behavior is especially egregious because L.A.W.’s stated goals, to help her peers, regardless of their religious beliefs, to feel included in a powerful, positive and non-dividing way to help others in their community are entirely consistent with those of the board’s and its constitutional duty not to treat religion less favorably than other viewpoints.
Quoting the Supreme Court’s judgment in Kennedy, among other cases, First Liberty emphasized that “[u]nder the First Amendment’s protection of free exercise of religion and free speech, the government may not ‘single out’ religious groups ‘for special disfavor’ compared to similar secular groups.” In light of Kennedy and other recent litigation protecting religious freedom, it is incumbent that officials in Creekside Elementary School to wake up by meeting their constitutional duty to allow the proposed interfaith religion club to form.
Should officials in Creekside Elementary School fail to honor the students’ rights, they will probably face potentially costly litigation, very likely diverting needed resources to a fight they cannot win. More importantly, the board would display its antipathy toward Christian students, let alone their families, and others in their community as they espouse lofty, but apparently hypocritical, ideal promoting the commendable goal of diversity. Hopefully, the board and principal will come to their senses in recognizing that just as respect must go both ways, so, too, as educators, rather than mouth empty platitudes, they must model positive behavior by respecting the views of others with whom they may disagree by practicing what they preach in being open to diversity in its many forms, including, most notably, America’s first liberty, the free exercise of religion.
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Washington State. The cesspool right next to the bigger one in California. When I read how these secular institutions see the followers of Jesus as potential bad guys, and the pushers of filth to be the ones to support, I wonder how ANY Catholic can in good conscience vote democrat. EVER. Whats been happening in schools, suppressing even voluntary expressions of religious belief has been the starting ground for the removal of christian belief. Forced church closures during covid, even after covid was well in hand, should have been seen as the next warning shot.They are already destroying our culture via mass illegal immigration. Freedom of speech now seems accorded to only ONE political point of view. What civil right will we see fall next? Will govt agents remove your children from you, if you fail to support trans surgeries for children? Will they bar Catholics from certain jobs?? Only time will tell. In the meanwhile, anyone with a working brain better start to vote Republican.
I hope this school allows the interfaith group to meet. As a gay man who believes in religious freedom, I abhor discrimination. If only gay student groups had not been met with so much animosity, so many roadblocks before this country came to its senses.
Better yet, homeschool your kids and keep them the hell away from government educating your children.
No, Dan, you are not “gay,” and there are no “gay” students either. None of us are defined by our feelings or temptations (which some insist on calling “orientations”). We are only defined by what we do, by how we freely choose to live our live. And homosexual activity is always and everywhere immoral. Our nation has not “come to its senses” on this issue, but fallen to its disordered loins.
Thank you, Timothy
Why would a school need a group for gay kids? Only to promote it and try to get other kids to fall prey to abuse.
Always Our Children, my friend
Erroneous thinking can never have positive outcomes despite Always Our Children.
Deacon, what parts of Always Our Children do you like?
Always God’s children, and how we love them is critical to their eternal joy. Consider that the devil knew where to start in public schools by first ousting prayer.
Our loved ones who experience same sex attraction (or actually any temptation to sex outside Holy Matrimony) do not benefit from “clubs” that merely reinforce wayward life. However, a genuinely truthful Christian Club could focus on the individual and show how to succeed, spiritually and otherwise, while dissuading sexual behavior that is harmful.
Curiously-timed, formation of the elementary school Pride Club east of Seattle follows on the heels of the new Washington State law SB 5462, passed by the legislature a few weeks earlier. https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5462&Initiative=false&Year=2023
Required of all public-school boards is a broad curriculum policy guiding classroom instruction regarding underrepresented groups, and which equates LGBTQ with non-behavioral/morally neutral categories of persons, e.g., race, income, disability, etc. Effective date is June 6, 2024.
Dr. Russo, parents, and others in the remaining 49 states, be forewarned; it won’t stop here…
Even before the United States issued its 1973 Roe v Wade fatwa, the bellwether Washington State was already the first society in the history of the world (!) to approve abortion by popular vote (1970). Also, the first by legislative action and a failed initiative to approve the oxymoron of gay “marriage” (2012). The state is probably second only to Oregon in approving physician-assisted suicide (2008). And, second to Colorado to legalize marijuana. And, the first to legalize the composting of human remains (2020). And, identified by a national survey earlier this year as the least religious state in the (former?) Union.
I recall that as a child, leaning back in our classroom chairs was a serious no-no; now leaning forward and coupled is mandated for classroom exposure.
Thanks, Peter, if I may (it was my late brother’s name).
I fear you are right about this kind of thing not stopping . . . unless believers stand up for their rights.
God bless.
Charlie
There is literally no such thing as “religious bigotry” please stop trying to make yourselves victims in all walks of life. All you are doing is making yourselves out to be the crybaby snowflakes everyone already thinks you are. Victim culture needs to die immediately .
Two options: 1. homeschool you kids and vote down all government-run school budgets.
2. Vouchers for all parents to educate THEIR children as they see fit.
Amen, Deacon Edward.
(All respect to Ann Landers or Dear Abby)
You have a point, but if you keep your hat on – maybe no one will notice.
Terrance McManus, apparently has a head full of rocks. What a crybaby snowflake. 🙄
So now she’s like an x-ray, seeing through the bones of your skull!
Hats off to Wodehouse and your knowing him.
It’s very strange that you fail to see bigotry when it is right in front of you. I bet in 1860 you were running around saying “Slavery? What slavery? There is no such thing!”
There is enough prejudice and ignorance to go around the world three times. Make no mistake, Micha. We all catch hell at some point.
Your comment actually proves the article’s point, ironically.
Would you have said that same thing to Europe’s Jews in 1939?
There is real and substantive anti-Christian discrimination going on not only in these United States, but around the world. It is consciously and meticulously planned and both well organized and well funded. As has been often stated, all that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to give up and stop doing the good they believe in.
In these times, there is no longer any fence-sitting. All must make a personal choice for good or evil. As Sacred Scripture clearly states, “What before you is set fire and water. To whichever you stretch forth your hand, it will be given you.”
We each will be given the opportunity to choose wisely, or choose poorly.
There is literally no anti-Christian discrimination happening anywhere in the world. Please stop trying to play the victim card. There is no such thing as “bigotry” least of all “religious bigotry” and by making up a special victim status for yourself you hurt your own cause.
Trying to compare yourself to the Jews in Nazi Germany is pretty insulting to the Jews who died in the Holocaust. You know that. But you made the comparison anyway to try to score more victim points. SICK.
“There is literally no anti-Christian discrimination happening anywhere in the world.”
This bold and belittling belief in one’s omniscience…what’s the literal origin for an idea like that?!?
I believe in freedom of speech and religion but do elementary schools need after school clubs in the first place? Really, children are away from home for hours and hours. If they ride the school bus you can add another hour or two.
Families need more time together. Less extra curricular activities. Less hurry and stress.
Better, have a weekly religious education program during school hours. That’s still practiced in some public schools. They just have a building slightly off campus and elementary age children learn about the Bible there.
Good point. Maybe we should abandon ALL of them, because the schools use such clubs to pervert little kids minds with corrosive things, for the most part.
Given that this is Seattle, that this is Washington – is anyone really surprised at this?
Not at all. Just a bunch of bigoted progressives doing what they do.
Some years hence, some young people were walking along the shore of an island in what used to be the Pacific Northwest.
One of them said, “legend has it that there was a city near here, but its citizens mocked God in their words and in their deeds.” Another said, “God will not be mocked.” The first pondered, “I wonder what its name was?” The other replied, “It is better left forgotten.”