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Post by DeepseekerADS on Jan 7, 2014 17:13:25 GMT -5
www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/01/07/teacher-tells-6-year-old-jesus-is-not-allowed-in-school/?intcmp=latestnewsA California elementary school is facing a possible lawsuit after a teacher allegedly confiscated a six-year-old child’s Christmas candy canes and told him “Jesus is not allowed in school.” Last December, Isaiah Martinez brought his first grade classmates at Merced Elementary School candy canes. Attached to each treat was a message explaining the religious legend surround the candies. The legend references a candy maker who created the candy cane to symbolize the life of Christ. When the six-year-old boy arrived at school, his teacher noticed the religious message and immediately confiscated the gifts, according to Robert Tyler, the general counsel for Advocates for Faith & Freedom. It takes a special kind of evil to confiscate a six-year-old child’s Christmas gifts. The teacher, identified by the AFF as Valerie Lu, then consulted with the supervising principal who instructed her to prevent Isaiah from distributing the candy canes. “Ms. Lu then spoke to Isaiah and told him that ‘Jesus is not allowed at school,’” Tyler wrote in a letter to the West Covina Unified School District. “In fear that he was in some sort of trouble, Isaiah then watched as Ms. Lu proceeded to rip the candy cane legend off of each candy cane and then throw the Christian messages back in to the box.” Tyler said the little boy watched as his teacher threw the box and the messages into the trash. “She then told Isaiah that he could distribute the candy canes now that the Christian messages were eliminated,” Tyler wrote, noting that the teacher was following the “explicit instructions” of her supervisor, Gordon Pfitzer. Isaiah was later allowed to distribute candy canes with a Christian message but he was forced to do so off-campus, outside the schoolhouse gate at the conclusion of the school day, according to his attorney “Meanwhile, other students in Isaiah’s class handed out Christmas gifts to their fellow classmates,” Tyler wrote. “Some of these gifts expressed secular messages concerning Christmas and were packaged with images of Santa Claus, penguins with Santa hats, Christmas trees and other secular messages.” The Advocates for Faith & Freedom sent a letter to the district demanding they apologize to Isaiah and adopt a new policy “to prohibit school officials from bullying and intimidating Christian students and religiously affiliated students.” Tyler said it has been well established by the U.S. Supreme Court that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Citing the court case Morse v. Frederick, he warned that “any policy that suppresses a student’s free speech, in this case the censorship of the candy cane legend violated Isaiah’s constitutional rights unless the school district reasonably concluded that there would be material and substantial disruption of the school’s work or discipline because of the candy cane message.” Perhaps the teacher and principal feared the sounds of students slurping their candy canes might disrupt the school’s learning environment. Superintendent Debra Kaplan released a statement to Los Angeles-area news outlets defending the teacher’s actions. “At the present time, we do not have any reason to believe that the teacher or any other district employee had any intention other than to maintain an appropriate degree of religious neutrality in the classroom and to communicate this to the child in an age-appropriate manner,” Kaplan stated. It takes a special kind of evil to confiscate a six-year-old child’s Christmas gifts. In this age of tolerance and diversity, public school educators seem to be under the impression that they can bully and intimidate Christian boys and girls. They are sorely mistaken and I’m glad the Advocates for Faith and Freedom has exposed the West Covina Unified School District’s repugnant treatment of Isaiah Martinez. It’s a good thing he didn’t give the kids Hershey’s Kisses. The teacher would’ve probably hauled him to the office on sexual harassment charges.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2014 8:36:48 GMT -5
This is the kind of stuff that just makes me crazy mad at the one size fits all rules for public schools and the almost hateful way they treat the children .This could have been handled in a much kinder way like a phone call to the parents for one with an explanation before taking away the child's gifts he wanted to give like Grinches.
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Post by BC1969 on Jan 9, 2014 8:49:35 GMT -5
I to seen that article yesterday and it made me rather sad, nothing is sacred anymore, not even the children
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Post by theringfinder on Jan 9, 2014 17:13:36 GMT -5
Can any of you guess where all this comes from? One word would say it all........wonder if you know???
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Post by BC1969 on Jan 9, 2014 17:26:34 GMT -5
Can any of you guess where all this comes from? One word would say it all........wonder if you know??? Satan ?
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Post by theringfinder on Jan 9, 2014 20:07:42 GMT -5
Well, Yes, that's true - But I guess I should have stated it a little more clearly. What group in the USA is responsible for full-out assault on God & Christ? Try again.
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Post by xlter on Jan 11, 2014 2:04:44 GMT -5
American Civil Liberties Union .
I think they have really forgotten thier mandate .
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Post by theringfinder on Jan 11, 2014 18:44:13 GMT -5
Yeah, that's one faction. Also the Homosexual lobby. They use the word of God as Hate speech. If you are against sexual perversion, you are a hater. So, God is a hater and a bully. That's where all this started in the schools and work place. Homosexual rights = God is a bully and hater, therefore, get rid of God.
Then you have a whole bunch of Christians / believers that are being deceived by this very group also. I am very afraid for our future. This stuff is moving so fast now. Once God / Jesus is forbidden and kicked out - Chaos is certain.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 11, 2014 18:57:01 GMT -5
Apparently It's okay to try and make kids feel like loving God is wrong though and try and erase Him but yet it's perfectly okay to push the homosexual agenda on kids and when parents buck up we're immediately labeled as haters.The double standards just make no sense.I don't hate homosexuals and feel like I can condemn them I think tolerance is not the same thing as allowing the school system to force our kids to accept and hear about lifestyle choices we don't agree with.
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Post by xlter on Jan 11, 2014 21:58:47 GMT -5
As far as any arguments I've heard on the subject , it has to do with separation of Church & State . Where there seems to be disagreement is , dicussing a religion or an individual practicing thier religion and the State forcing a specific religion . School board members are cowards and afraid of being sued . What really surprises me is , these are our educaters that don't know the real meaning of our rights . No wonder the students are getting so screwed up .
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Post by xlter on Jan 11, 2014 22:17:46 GMT -5
A bit long , but a great article . Very informative .
The True Meaning of Separation of Church and State
Our nation was predicated on unalienable rights with governance through family, church and community, each rightfully sovereign within its sphere. Human dignity, legal equality and personal freedom reflect biblical values imparted on Western Civilization, which retains these values in secular form while expunging their Author from public discourse.
Americans are frequently reminded of what the revisionists deem our greatest achievement: “Separation of Church and State.” Crosses are ripped down in parks. Prayer has been banished from schools and the ACLU rampages to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Moreover, “Separation of Church and State” is nowhere found in the Constitution or any other founding legislation. Our forefathers would never countenance the restrictions on religion exacted today.
The phrase “separation of church and state” was initially coined by Baptists striving for religious toleration in Virginia, whose official state religion was then Anglican (Episcopalian). Baptists thought government limitations against religion illegitimate. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson championed their cause.
The preamble in Act Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia (1786), affirms that “the Author of our Religion gave us our ‘free will.’” And that He “chose not to propagate it by coercions.” This legislation certainly did not diminish religious influence on government for it also provided stiff penalties for conducting business on the Sabbath.
Nor did the Constitution inhibit public displays of faith. At ratification, a majority of the thirteen several and sovereign states maintained official religions. The early Republic welcomed public worship. Church services were held in the U.S. Capitol and Treasury buildings every Sunday. The imagery in many federal buildings remains unmistakably biblical.
The day after the First Amendment’s passage, Congress proclaimed a national day of prayer and thanksgiving. The inaugural Congress was largely comprised by those who drafted the Constitution. It reflects incredible arrogance to reconfigure the Bill of Rights into prohibiting religious displays on public grounds. Hanging the Ten Commandments on the wall of a county courthouse no more mandates religion than judges displaying the banner of their favorite sports team somehow equates to Congress establishing that team as preeminent.
Our forefathers never sought to evict the church from society. They recognized that the several states did not share uniform values. We lived and worshipped differently. The framers were a diverse bunch with wildly divergent opinions on many issues, but eliminating the very foundations of America’s heritage would have horrified them. On few issues was there more unanimity.
Where the French Revolution and its official policy of “De-Christianization” quickly devolved into bloodshed and oppression, here freedom flourished. Our independence was seen as the culmination of a march toward liberty, not a rejection of America’s historical cultural moorings. Our forbears embraced tradition and left local autonomy largely intact.
Schools, courts and the public square were often overtly Christian and had been since their colonial beginnings. Few Americans would have tolerated a coercive central government infringing on their rights to post religious symbols on local schools, courts or anywhere else.
Americans built society from the ground up. Many had fled oppression. The colonies instituted local self-government indigenously to confirm the rights resident in their persons and property. Few would have willingly been dispossessed by Washington of the very freedoms which they had just secured from London.
Here men could and did rise as their efforts merited. Commoners were unshackled from feudal paralysis and freed to find God individually. Both the economy and church thrived. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that Americans intertwined individual liberty with vibrant faith. “It is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.”
Even non-Christian founders thought religion essential. None would have wished to upend the very basis for education, law or culture. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 states: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” Americans understood freedom without morality quickly devolves into debauchery. Whether from sincere faith, or, prudence instilling an honest, law-abiding, responsible and hardworking populace, all esteemed biblical morality as the bedrock of self government. George Washington believed, “Religion and morality are indispensible supports” for “it is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”
The phrase “separation between church and state” was reintroduced by former Klansman Hugo Black, historically one of our most liberal Supreme Court judges. In the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education, Justice Black invoked Thomas Jefferson stating, “The First Amendment has erected ‘a wall of separation between church and state.’ . . . that wall must be kept high and impregnable.”
Thomas Jefferson thought differently. The Danbury Baptists wrote to him congratulating his election and objecting to the First Amendment. They thought it implied government dispensed what was not government’s to give. Jefferson agreed.
His reply clearly applied “Separation of Church and State” to the establishment and not to the free exercise of religion. As he expressed, what communities did and how they worshipped were not federal affairs. Jefferson later said the central government was “interdicted from intermeddling with religious institutions.” Such were state matters.
Freedom of religion was partly moral – protecting our most cherished liberty – and partly pragmatic. Religious animosity tears society asunder, particularly when church is affixed to government. With freedom of conscience assured, conflict becomes less likely. The First Amendment was an insightful compromise between church and state, federal and local authorities. The framers desired to avoid the controversies which engulfed Europe.
As James Madison warned in Federalist 10, “The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; . . . A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, . . . ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power . . . divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good.”
Thus the Constitution decreed that Washington had no occasion or authority to interject itself into matters as obviously local as doctrines of faith. Congress was not empowered to establish a church because the framers feared that concentrated power, whether favored religions, standing armies, banking monopolies, or an overarching federal government, invited tyranny.
Church and state were distinct in that the Federal Government could not elevate one denomination over others. Nor could government and its flawed inhabitants usurp divine authority by harnessing politics to the church. Faith is no civil contract, but a personal matter not to be profaned by politics.
State controlled churches frequently exploited this latent power for evil. The Spanish Inquisition didn’t originate in the Vatican, but the Castilian court. It was not of the church, but the king. By Philip II, Spain had the makings of the first police state infused with the ill-gotten moral authority of a tyrannical clergy.
Much of our Bill of Rights was meant to prevent dictatorships such as Cromwell’s, which married church and state in such manner as to mar many of the freedoms our forefathers sought to enshrine.
The framers witnessed the incessant wars of the mother continent and understood official churches and centralized power fomented abuses. Having two or three competing factions spurred struggles between the parties to secure power, but divesting authority to innumerable smaller jurisdictions without the prospect of any gaining control promoted peaceful freedom.
Episcopalians in Virginia would live amicably next to Catholics in Maryland, Quakers in Pennsylvania or Baptists in their midst. None saw cause for contention because there was no threat that others would gain dominion over them or any prospect that they might gain such dominion themselves. Rivalry was unnecessary because “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Establishment has been redefined. Limitations on government have been altered into restrictions on religious expression, which clearly violates the amendment’s next clause: “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” and third clause “abridging the freedom of speech.” Meanwhile, Washington publicly imposes politically correct secular religions like worshiping diversity or the environment.
Are our rights inalienable or contrivances from courts? Is government still limited or its power undefined? Is the state answerable to the people or are we but subjects? Do our rights descend from God or derive from man?
America must decide.
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Post by theringfinder on Jan 11, 2014 23:59:00 GMT -5
Again, common sense - Our fore-fathers left England because the state was forcing people to practice their religion "The States Way". Seperation of Church & state means one thing and one thing only. The State can not tell you what or how to practice your own religion.
It had nothing to do with keeping God out of everything public - Another lie by the left.
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