No speech by top student after being told to strike out religion
Posted on July 1, 2007
We read:
“Bayonne High School valedictorian Jeremy Jerschina had wanted to give a heartfelt speech at his graduation ceremony on Wednesday.
A religious young man bound for the Christian school Calvin College in Michigan this fall, 18-year-old Jerschina said that to speak from the heart as he addressed his graduating class, he had to speak to God as well.
But Principal Richard Baccarella and the Bayonne Board of Education would not let him speak if he included a prayer - so he didn’t speak at all.
So one young man expressing his faith in God is the establishment of a religion?
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
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3 Responses to “No speech by top student after being told to strike out religion”
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Nope. As valedictorian, he earned the right to speak. Preventing him from doing so because he wanted to include a prayer is clearly content-based descrimination.
He should have fought for his rights, or at least used the platform to decry the censorship.
One thing the ACLU does not understand. Praying is speaking and thus a protected right not to be abridged.
The ACLU wasn’t involved in this one. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State commented for the article, but it doesn’t sound like they actually got involved either.