Plano Independent School District wants to ban First Amendment rights of elementary students who want to reference Jesus or God

An article from World Net Daily is reporting that, "A hearing is scheduled Monday before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans that could determine if students in elementary schools have the protections of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The case arose in the Plano Independent School District in Texas where Thomas Elementary School Principal Lynn Swanson and Rasor Elementary School Principal Jackie Bomchill were sued for restricting student speech when it referenced 'God' or 'Jesus.'

According to the Liberty Institute, in the first incident, officials banned 8-year-old Jonathan Morgan from handing out candy canes with Jesus' name on them to classmates at a school party.

'Then they confiscated a little girl's pencils after school because they mentioned 'God,'' the Institute reported.

But that's not all, the group said.

'They even banned an entire classroom from writing 'Merry Christmas' on cards to our troops serving in Iraq.'

The dispute went to district court then to a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit where school officials' efforts to have the complaint rejected because of their 'immunity' failed.

Now the appeals court has agreed to an en banc hearing in which 17 judges will listen to arguments and decide the dispute.

The school officials are arguing 'that the First Amendment does not apply to elementary school students,' explains the appeal brief submitted by Liberty Institute."

Well then, Plano Independent School District officials are wrong.  The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled, in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, that, "Under our Constitution, free speech is not a right that is given only to be so circumscribed that it exists in principle but not in fact...The Constitution says that Congress (and the States) may not abridge the right to free speech.  This provision means what it says.  We properly read it to permit reasonable regulation of speech-connected activities in carefully restricted circumstances.  But we do not confine the permissible exercise of First Amendment rights to a telephone booth or the four corners of a pamphlet, or to supervised and ordained discussion in a school classroom."

What the Supreme Court said in Tinker is that free speech rights of students can only be "carefully restricted" or "reasonably regulated" by school administrators.  And only if these school administrators can show that such free speech rights would cause a substantial disruption of the school's educational mission. Is there anyone out there - who is sane - who can argue that a pencil which mentions God or a candy cane with Jesus' name on it constitutes a substantial disruption of a school's educational mission?

It is my firm belief that the Plano Independent School District officials in question could benefit greatly from a mental-health checkup.  Not to mention a brief primer in constitutional law.

Massachusetts officials, anxious to advance the radical homosexual agenda, reject their obligation to seek the truth

Dignitatis Humanae, No. 2 of the Second Vatican Council teaches us that, "It is in accordance with their dignity as persons-that is, beings endowed with reason and free will and therefore privileged to bear personal responsibility-that all men should be at once impelled by nature and also bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth, once it is known, and to order their whole lives in accord with the demands of truth.."

But some are not interested in this moral obligation to seek the truth, and especially religious truth, and to adhere to it once it is known.  Such people do not want to hear.  They refuse to open their eyes.  They refuse to be converted.  To such people Our Lord issues a stern rebuke: "He who is of God hears the words of God.  The reason why you do not hear is that you are not of God." (John 8:47).

For such people, the first demand of conscience, which is that the truth be honestly sought, is not essential.  For they have a different concept of conscience.  One which Pope Benedict XVI has rejected.  Our Holy Father explains that liberalism's idea of conscience, "...does not mean man's openness to the ground of his being, the power of perception for what is highest and most essential.  Rather, it appears as subjectivity's protective shell, into which man can escape and there hide from reality."  Such a notion of conscience, ".does not open the way to the redemptive road to truth - which either does not exist or, if it does, is too demanding.  It is the faculty that dispenses with truth.  It thereby becomes the justification for subjectivity, which would not like to have itself called into question.  Similarly, it becomes the justification for social conformity...The obligation to seek the truth terminates, as do any doubts about the general inclination of society and what it has become accustomed to.  Being convinced of oneself, as well as conforming to others, is sufficient.  Man is reduced to his superficial conviction.." (Keynote Address of the Tenth Bishops' Workshop of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, on "Catholic Conscience: Foundation and Formation," February 1991).

The liberal notion of conscience becomes the justification for subjectivity and becomes the faculty that dispenses with truth.  This erroneous notion of conscience was in evidence in Massachusetts as one official called for those who oppose the homosexual agenda to be banned and another dismissed their concerns as "irrelevant and ignorant."  See here.

It was Noam Chomsky who wrote, "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."  Apparently Massachusetts officials such as Jennie Caissie really do not believe in freedom of expression.  Further evidence of the truth that while the Church proposes, the world imposes.