Last June, after a contentious battle that ended in a Ten Commandments banner being taken down, the school board in Giles County, Virginia voted 3-2 to rehang the display, surrounding it with other historical documents.

The old Ten Commandments display in a Giles County school

Is that still government endorsement of religion?

That battle is playing out in the courts right now.

During oral arguments this week, Judge Michael Urbanski offered up a possible compromise as the case goes into mediation:

“If indeed this issue is not about God, why wouldn’t it make sense for Giles County to say, ‘Let’s go back and just post the bottom six?’” Urbanski asked during a motions hearing in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.

“But if it’s really about God, then they wouldn’t be willing to do that.”

Interesting theory. Here are the Commandments that would get cut if both sides accepted the deal:

• I am the Lord thy God, Thou shalt not have strange gods before me
• Thou shalt not make for thyself any graven image
• Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
• Remember to keep holy the sabbath day

And there are the ones that would remain:

• Honor your father and your mother
• Thou shalt not kill
• Thou shalt not commit adultery
• Thou shalt not steal
• Thou shalt not bear false witness
• Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s wife

Stephen Hirtle from the Steel City Skeptics doesn’t think this revised version would be any better:

As rules for the students to live by, this list is very odd. How about “Study hard” or “Do not cheat on exams”. More to the point, the Ten Commandments are there not because of what they say, but because of what they imply. They are an arbitrary list of rules that are important to the religious, as they establish the precedent that certain rules transcend humans and come directly from a god. To accept the Commandments is to accept your god as the ultimate decider. The judge even mocked the school board in their disingenuous comments:

He’s right. The revised version isn’t any better than the original. You might as well cut the bits about coveting a neighbor’s wife and committing adultery since it doesn’t directly apply to them. Good luck telling high school students to obey their parents. And it’s more than a bit dispiriting that anyone would have to tell high school students not to kill each other.

If mediation doesn’t work out, the same judge will have to decide the case. From his comments so far, it sounds like he understands this is all about sticking god into the public schools — not showcasing a display of historical documents for students — and he will likely vote it down. Let’s hope that’s the case anyway.

If the school board loses the case, they run the risk of having to pay over $100,000 in court costs to the ACLU.

…

Incidentally, an anonymous student from Giles County’s Narrows High School is the plaintiff:

In court documents, the Associated Press reported, the student spoke of feeling compelled to “hide participation in this lawsuit from my closest friends and the person I am dating.”

“Filing this lawsuit has not been easy, and I would not have done it if I were not genuinely disturbed by the Ten Commandments in the school,” the student said in the court statement…

There have been a couple of updates on Forest Heights Community School senior William Swinimer, the Nova Scotia student who wore a shirt reading “Life is Wasted without Jesus” and got in trouble for it.

William Swinimer (Ryan Taplin - National Post)

He returned to school today after his five-day suspension — wearing the same shirt — but his father quickly pulled him out:

The Swinimers clearly prioritize getting an education (Mike Dembeck - The Canadian Press)

John Swinimer said he wants Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin, Lunenburg County, to only teach the basic courses, leaving religion out of it.

“He will not attend this school unless they are having reading, writing and arithmetic — good old-fashioned academics,” he said, waving a New Testament bible. “When they’re having forums, when they’re having other extra-curricular activity, he will not attend that school.”

Actually, the school was doing just fine academically… they only got derailed into this controversy after shirt-wearing William began pushing his religion on everyone in sight. (More on that in a moment.)

Or, you know, maybe the father just hates Chess Club.

John Swinimer is referring to the fact that the school held voluntary — Wait, voluntary?! Yes, voluntary! — discussions about how to express one’s beliefs in a respectful way. The discussions involved “facilitators from the education and justice departments, human rights commission, school board and the school.”

As a teacher of a subject John Swinimer considers “good old-fashion academics,” I guarantee you the students at that school would have learned more by attending that conversation about expressing yourself respectfully than any one day spent in another class.

But why teach your child something useful when you can use him as a political pawn? Taking him out of school just reinforces the idea that many Christians are unable to discuss faith in a calm, rational way. It’s their way or nothing.

More stories are coming out about the shirt-wearing son’s behavior:

Students said William Swinimer has been preaching and making them feel uncomfortable, and the shirt was the last straw so they complained.

“He’s told kids they’ll burn in hell if they don’t confess themselves to Jesus,” student Riley Gibb-Smith said.

Katelyn Hiltz, student council vice-president, agreed the controversy didn’t begin with the T-shirt.

“It started with him preaching his religion to kids and then telling them to go to hell. A lot of kids don’t want to deal with this anymore,” she said.

More and more, it looks like this controversy was never about infringing on anyone’s religious freedom. The school did what any school should do — they allowed William the chance to express his religious views until they felt it crossed the line into becoming a distraction from good old-fashioned academics. Then they put a stop to it.

The other day, I was a little more sympathetic toward him. Now, he just strikes me as a little jerk. And I can tell where he gets it from.

Also, seriously, William… wash that shirt. It’s gotta be nasty by now.

In Nova Scotia, Canada, Forest Heights Community School senior William Swinimer has been in hot water for a shirt he wore to school. The Vice Principal at the school told him it was offensive and he had to remove it because it was “hate talk.”

Then, in true rebel fashion, Swinimer not only left it on, he wore it during his in-school suspensions… and his five days of out-of-school suspension.

This is the shirt that had the administration all riled up:

William Swinimer (Ryan Taplin - National Post)

Swinimer is surprised his “Life is Wasted without Jesus” shirt has been at the center of so much controversy:

“I believe this is worth standing up for — it’s not just standing up for religious rights, it’s standing up for my rights as a Canadian citizen; for freedom of speech, freedom of religion. I don’t think this is right.”

I’m all for students having freedom to express their beliefs. But that doesn’t mean I approve of this shirt. There’s a pretty clear reason why:

It insults people who don’t believe in Jesus. It says very directly that they’re wasting their lives and that they’re worthless. It’s a form of bullying. (It’s also completely false — How many brilliant people have made contributions to our world without believing in Christian nonsense? It’s a shirt anyone can refute with about 2 seconds of thought.)

If Swinimer wore a shirt that said, “Life is great with Jesus,” I don’t think I would care much at all. That’s a personal message with positive tones (at least in theory). It’s no different than students expressing themselves by wearing a cross. Or atheists saying we can be good without god. It doesn’t say anything negative about people who don’t agree with your beliefs.

School officials should have the right to stop students the moment they bring themselves up by putting others down. It’s just not the climate you want to foster in a high school. It also opens the door to an unwanted religious debate (in the guise of “freedom”) that doesn’t seem very conducive to learning.

(By the same reasoning, I would oppose an atheist student wearing a shirt that says, “Life is wasted with Jesus.”)

Side note only because it seems relevant: I teach at a high school that was sued on behalf of students eager to wear shirts reading, “Be Happy, Not Gay” on the Day of Silence a few years ago. An Appeals court ruled in the students’ favor and the ACLU supported them, too. I think the school was right to ask the students to change their clothes back then. And perhaps I’m contradicting myself here, but I don’t think a shirt reading, “Be Happy, Be Straight,” even with the “positive language,” would have been any more acceptable…

Should Swinimer have been suspended for his shirt? I would need more information to answer that. Was he trying to provoke people? Why choose that shirt to wear and not one with a more positive message? Those things should be taken into account.

For what it’s worth, the Centre For Inquiry in Canada put out a statement in support of Swinimer:

“While CFI sponsored the Atheist Bus Campaign, we are a strong champion of freedom of speech and freedom of religion,” said National Communications Director Justin Trottier. “This shirt causes no harm and is a perfectly acceptable contribution to the marketplace of ideas.”

CFI condemns religious indoctrination at taxpayer expense via publicly funded religious schools or teacher-led prayers, but believes every student has a constitutional right to self-expression.

“We have consistently defended free speech rights for groups regardless of our agreement on message, including Muslim and Christian ads in public space and censored pro-life debates on campus,” said Trottier.

Instead of suspension or censorship, CFI would prefer the pro-Jesus T-shirt be used as an opportunity for dialogue and reasoned debate on religion and ethics.

Some commenters on other websites as well as emails sent to me point out that Swinimer wore this shirt in an effort to get suspended — it’s not just something that “happened” to him. I can’t confirm that, but if it’s true, that would push me toward agreeing with the suspensions.

(Thanks to everyone for the links)

Tennessee Technological University (TTU) requires all non-students who wish to speak (or preach) on campus to follow detailed regulations which require, among other things, a two-week advanced notice.

The U.S. 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals recently held (PDF) that a non-student evangelist — John McGlone — may challenge TTU’s campus speech regulations, and this is a big deal.

A campus preacher

So what’s going on here? First, realize that to bring suit in federal court, you have to have “standing.” The court determines whether you have standing by asking: 1) Have you suffered an actual injury; 2) Is the injury traceable to the conduct of the person or organization you’re suing; and 3) Would the injury likely be helped by a decision in your favor.

The (lower) district court held in part that because McGlone never applied for a permit (and was, in turn, never denied a permit), and was never arrested or prosecuted for his speech, he suffered no actual injury and therefore did not have standing to sue.

The 6^th Circuit disagreed. According to the judges there, McGlone had a constitutional right to free speech, and that right was violated by TTU’s policies.

Under the facts of the case, this seems right to me.

McGlone requested a waiver of the 14-day notice period, that waiver was denied, and he was threatened with arrest if he decided to speak anyway.

But TTU’s campus is private property, so why can’t they allow or disallow people to speak on their campus as they see fit? After all, if someone wanted to proselytize in my backyard, I could get them booted for trespassing, right?

Right. But when deciding whether an individual can exercise his or her speech rights, courts differentiate between traditional public forums, designated public forums, and nonpublic forums. Traditional public fora, such as streets, sidewalks, and parks are places which (by long tradition or by government fiat) “have been devoted to assembly and debate.” Designated public fora are nontraditional places that the government has opened for public discourse. And nonpublic fora are, for example, my backyard.

While the trial court did not reach the issue, the 6^th Circuit held that TTU’s perimeter sidewalks are traditional public fora, and the University’s interior grounds are designated public fora, which means that TTU cannot abridge a person’s right to free speech except under very limited circumstances.

Even though campus proselytizers are awfully annoying, I think this decision is right (in addition to being legally correct). By requiring people to register two weeks in advance to speak, the University was severely limiting peoples’ ability to speak when they wanted. Campus grounds are — and should be, I think — one of the places where people go to share ideas, whether they attend the school or not. Even though I disagree with McGlone’s message, limitations on this type of speech should be… well… limited.

What do you think?