Thousands of Americans annually endure high school commencement speeches filled with cliches, tired moralistic bromides, and self-important adolescent blather. [Note to gentle readers: you may spare yourself the bother of posting the comment, "just like this blog."]
But annually, at least one high school decides that Christian religious speech cannot be tolerated in place of this oratorical pablum. Americans can endure sentiments too hokey for a Hallmark card. But they can't endure a statement of belief in Jesus.
This year, the case is at Foothill High School of Clark County, Nevada, near that bastion of American exceptionalism, Las Vegas. School officials redacted most religious references out of valedictorian Brittany McComb's speech, but she delivered them anyway. And in response, officials shut off her microphone during the speech.
Per the Las Vegas Review-Journal, school officials had consulted with an ACLU lawyer to distinguish between tolerable religious expression and proselytizing in their redaction of the speech. And they actually claim that the difference is obvious, even though, as anyone familiar with evangelical Christianity knows, any evangelical Christian self-expression has the conversion of others as one of its prime objectives (hence the term "evangelical"). Such careful and accurate philosophical distinctions are apparently all in a days work for America's highly trained, widely experienced and well-versed high school educators.
What's most egregious about this whole affair is that the Clark County School Board had adopted a clear policy that recognized student speeches at school-sponsored events as falling outside what would be recognized as a school-sponsored statement, thus allowing for free religious expression. The policy allowed further that school officials could offer a disclaimer before or after the speech to make that point clear. But officials decided instead simply to suppress McComb's statement.
We SWNIDishly refer to the school officials' action as "stupid" rather than "dangerous" or "unconstitutional" or "heathen" or some other more inflammatory term. Note well that it makes us mad. But we will deliberately suppress our natural anger and replace it with some condescending tongue-clucking. For the ACLU and every secularist involved in this sad affair, this was a tactically and strategically dumb move.
Had McComb given her speech as she wanted, it would have been heartening to those who share her faith, offensive to some who make a point of being offended by all things Christian, probably inconsequential to most (the majority who ignore the Christian message whenever it is presented), and perhaps provocative to a few who weren't Christian but wanted to listen.
But as it is, the experience was infuriating for the first group, still offensive for the second, incapable of being ignored by the third, and even more provocative for the fourth. The ACLU and their NEA lackeys in Clark County look petty and totalitarian, while McComb, her Christian friends and Biola University, where she will attend, have a platform that will last for months.
And the ACLU is too entrenched in its habits to recognize otherwise.
Not that this should surprise us. Readers of some ancient literature are familiar with this kind of outcome. We refer to such ancient literature as Matthew 13 Acts 7-12.
This is one of the ways that Christians have the advantage over their opponents in the ACLU and such. We start by knowing all the true stories. They try to avoid them.
So with this observation, we conclude with yet another condescending cluck of the tongue. Tsk-tsk, ACLU! We pity you fools.
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