A California school district has canceled a fundraising program featuring memorial bricks, scuttling proceeds of $45,000, after two women submitted Bible verses in their tributes.We have all sorts of these bricks all over the school at which I teach, and while I haven't paid enough attention to notice, it would not at all surprise me to find some with religious references. Is that really such a horrible thing, that someone might see "John 3:16" or something on a brick at a school?
The two women, Lou Ann Hart and Sheryl Caronna, had filed a court complaint in January against the Desert Sands Unified School District after the district blocked them from placing the Bible verses on bricks to be installed in walkways at Palm Desert High School in Palm Desert, Calif., about 10 miles east of Palm Springs. The women sought an injunction against the district to compel it to allow the scripture bricks.
Instead, school district officials have decided to rescind the fundraiser and refund money of every community group or individual who purchased a memorial brick, according to a court filing last week with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California...
Hundreds of other messages had been accepted for the bricks, Cortman's organization said, including inspirational and religious themes, such as a quote from Mahatma Gandhi and a Bible quotation -- "Yes, it is possible" -- written in Spanish.
Hart, of Palm Desert, and Caronna, of Rancho Mirage, were informed after submitting their bricks that they would not be included because the religious content risked an unconstitutional establishment of religion, Alliance Defense Fund officials said.
I say this with all seriousness: some people are truly hateful.
3 comments:
I wonder if these people would object to "Love Your Mother" with an earth symbol on one of the bricks..rhetorical question, I know.
My school did a "senior wall" where the seniors could paint a brick and they would be put up for posterity. Two kids went in kahootz and produced an icthus (Christian Fish) out of two bricks and when they were laid out in formation, they were arranged to be side by side, thus completing the picture. When they were actually installed, somehow they were put in place diagonally from each other instead of side by side, thus eliminating the fish. Someone told me it was the mason that changed them fearing he would have been accused of putting up a Christian symbol.
You are right - dumb reason to cancel an entire successful fundraiser.
I have to wonder what liberals fear the most about religion-the morals or the expectations?
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