Few bureaucrats can subvert a well-intentioned principal like the separation of church and state with the hypocritical bombast of school administrators. But when they actually succeed in making religious fanatics seem rationale, well now that’s an achievement worthy of an OFF/beat Idiot of the Year nomination.

Donna Brewer, of Willow Hill, Pennsylvania, is suing Abington School District, claiming that her 10-year-old son’s “rights to religion and free speech were violated” because he was not allowed to wear a Jesus costume during his school’s Halloween parade. The federal suit was filed on her son’s behalf by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group that believes in spreading the Gospel through “traditional family values.” It further claims that since costumes were mandatory and many students chose to dress as “witches and ghouls” (i.e., pagan costumes), Willow Hill Elementary violated the fourth-grader’s equal protection rights.

Abington officials contend that there was no discrimination since Brewer and her son agreed to remove the faux crown of thorns and “walk in the parade as a contemporary of Jesus” (whatever that means). Brewer has denied this compromise, but, either way, it seems like a pretty arbitrary defense. After all, doesn’t a contemporary Jesus, as hip as he may be, integrate Church and State just as much as the old school version? Moreover, would Abington School District be cool with him dressing as a modern-day Muhammad?

While schools do have a right to prohibit “hateful or violent” attire, it certainly seems discriminatory to assume Christian costumes are more dangerous than pagan garb (Witch Trials aside). If, however, administrators feel they must follow the letter of the law to such an asinine extreme, then the only fair thing to do is ban all Halloween celebrations. Instead, perhaps they can come up with some sort of secular autumnal holiday of candy consumption that proceeds Thanksgiving and replaces any semblance of religion with pure-blooded American gorging (NSFW). At least that way the only people getting offended would be health-care providers.

Source

• Steiner, Emil. Do Pennsylvania Schools Prefer Pagans to Christians?. (2007, February 28). Washington Post, DC. February 28, 2007.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Civil Rights, Legal Issues, Schools & Education, Opinion, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.