Pamphlets at School

[Newsom Michael]

Marc Scarberry's point is more than merely prudential or morally right.
The country is suffering from an epidemic of bullying and real lives are
hurt or damaged as a consequence.  This case may be nothing more than
one more instance of a disturbing cultural and social trend.  

 

I can't believe that the Constitution gets in the way of curbing
bullies.  And if bullying lies at the heart of this case, then surely
there must be a remedy.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: JMHACLJ at aol.com [mailto:JMHACLJ at aol.com] 
Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 1:46 PM
To: religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu
Subject: Re: Pamphlets at School

 

Marc Scarberry's civility point has an appeal to it.  But as the
proposed cancellation of all clubs in Salt Lake City schools, in order
to avoid having to allow GLBT clubs, proved, threatening to shut
everyone down is easier than actually doing so.   A civility rule that
requires students to refrain from creating in affected classes a sense
of "otherness," or excludedness, would have to be drawn fairly broadly
to do the job without appearing to select religious considerations as
the basis of the regulation.  But drawn on the larger scale, how many
schools will succeed in a program of that sort which requires that all
teams be selected with one choice in order to avoid making some students
feel less desirable, that requires the band to include the tone deaf
lovers of music making with the skilled, etc.?  The truth is that
students, like other human beings congregate in groups that include
some, exclude others, and do so, sometimes quite deliberately and other
times, quite incidentally.  And because that kind of "discrimination" is
so commonplace and accepted, it is difficult to imagine how a program
that must reach that level to survive constitutional challenge will
withstand commonsensical ones.

 

Jim "Cutting off Our Noses to Spite Your Faces" Henderson

Senior Counsel

ACLJ

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