Monday, April 15, 2013


Defending Middle School Student’s Right to Openly Wear a Rosary

Rosaries are worn as bling by some African gang bangers so the school was not totally out of order.  Keeping gang activity out of schools is highly desirable

We recently assisted a middle school student in Texas, and his mother, who requested our help to ensure that the student is able to keep openly wearing his rosary while he is at school.

The student has worn a rosary to school to symbolize and express his Christian faith, which has grown especially important to him during his continuing fight against cancer that has appeared in his throat and lungs. On multiple occasions, however, teachers and administrators told him to remove or hide his rosary. He believed that hiding or removing his rosary would indicate that he is ashamed of his faith.

His mother discussed the matter with various school administrators and staff and they stated that requiring her son to remove or hide his rosary was supported by District policy. They also advised that her son might face disciplinary action if he continued to openly wear his rosary.

We sent the school district a letter explaining that the school’s actions violated the student’s freedom of speech.

The school district’s attorney reviewed the matter and advised that the student would be permitted to openly wear his rosary without further incident.

The ACLJ will continue to defend the free speech rights of students wearing rosaries, cross necklaces, religious clothing, and similar expressive attire around the country.

Source


12 comments:

A. Levy said...

If the PC'ized govt. agents who run this indoctrination camp can't tell the difference between a religious student and a gang banger, then the religious student would obviously be better off going somewhere else, since it's clear the school would rather protect the "rights" of the gang bangers.

Anonymous said...

So it must be okay to wear a swastika if one believes in Nazism as one should have the right by the same logic. (The Catholic Church murdered, or caused to be murdered, almost as many people as the Nazis, even if over a slightly longer period, notwithstanding that many Nazis were also Catholics, as was AH himself).

Anonymous said...

Yes 3:07 It's called freedom of speech. The same rights are extended to all Americans. You don't have to listen.

Anonymous said...

No 3:07, Hitler was not a Catholic. Nor were his cadre of close associates. If anything they were the original New Age pagans.

The openly atheist communist/socialists, so beloved by the useful idiots on the left, leave Hitler in the dust when it comes to mass extermination. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the various North Korean Kims all on your greatest hits list I'm sure. Bringing leftist killing sprees up to the present, is there any question that you regard abortion as your sacrament.

Anonymous said...

Obviously, the atheist 3:07 equates a religion with a political movement. How typical of people who have no rational or logical argument.

Anonymous said...

If some people would think before they got on their backs, there would be fewer abortions.

Use the Name, Luke said...

I wonder what would happen if gang-bangers started using ties or oxford shirts to indicate their gang affiliation. Would school administrations outlaw those?

Harrison Bergeron said...

Has anybody ever thought to ask the Church about this practice of "wearing" rosaries? I think you'll find that using a rosary as an adornment is a sacrilege and is absolutely not a symbol of faith. If other gang symbols are banned, the wearing of rosaries must be banned also.

Anonymous said...

Harrison, you are completely wrong. Wearing Rosaries is quite common in South America where most of the worlds Catholics live. They are not worn as "adornments", but as a symbol of their strong faith.

Anonymous said...

Wow, there are some dumb posters here! 3:07 was discussing the wearing of symbols of conviction, whether related to religion or politics (which are often inter-related, especially historically).
Btw. Hitler (along with almost all Nazis) were raised as Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant, and if you ever read what Catholics and in particular what Luther said about Jews, there is little wonder there was a Holocaust, or all the earlier pogroms!
As for Stalin - he even trained as a Christian priest and clearly got some ideas about totalitarianism from the head of the Russian Orthodox Church - the Czar!

Anonymous said...

Do you thinK Stalin and Hitler only killed Jews? I suppose Mao trained to be a priest as well. A flirtation with Christianity doesn't turn one into a genocidal maniac. If you want to talk about Islam, you'd have a point.

Anonymous said...

If it was a girl wearing a burqa or a person wearing a star and crescent, this would have been a non-issue.