by the Way . . .

The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal concerning a school's refusal to post a kindergartener's poster because it included a picture of Jesus. The assignment was to design a poster on environment. Jesus didn't have much to say about the environment (we will check with our consultant) but he was presumably in favor of it. Anyway, that wasn't the problem. The concern was about the establishment clause of the Constitution, which prohibits government, in this case the kindergarten, from establishing any religions. The artist's parents sued the school district on the grounds that the refusal to post violated his free speech rights, and discriminated against religion. Of course we can't have kindergartens interfering with the speech of 5 year-olds, any more than we can have them establishing religions. Sure, years ago when you were in school they interfered with speech all the time, but that was before there were so many lawyers.

The refusal to post occurred over 7 years ago, so the case has been very expensive for the school district. This is all unnecessary, and the purpose of this blog is to show how a more intelligent strategy can avoid that legal expense. Pay attention, even if you aren't a school district. If you receive any government funds, even Medicare Part D, and like to put mangers in your yard at Christmas, this could save you a lot of grief.

We are talking about two prongs here, and the first prong is of course the plastic reindeer defense. This was explained in our posts of December 9 and 21. Suffice here to note that you can't "push" one religious view over another. Here the school failed to take the most elemental precaution of including posters with other religious pictures (we can assume there were plenty with "no religion"). Surely a few hints to these preschoolers would have produced some Buddha ones, and Kwanzaa would really be easy: (Hey Johnnie, wouldn't some funny marks look great on that tree?"). An actual plastic reindeer might take a little too much coaching, but surely they could manage Smokey the Bear. Close enough for government work. A few fundamentals and the school could leave all the posters up and have a good legal defense.

But "ha", you say, that doesn't save paying the lawyers. Here we come to the second prong. What you do is first put the Jesus poster up. Then when you are sued under the establishment clause, you take the poster down, causing you to be sued under the right to free speech. After that you can post or not post, considering the merit of the poster, as you have both sides covered by public spirited people with lots of money to pay lawyers. You interplead the parties, claiming you are just a stakeholder and don't know which claim is right. Ergo, you sit on the sidelines from then on. It is probably better to leave yourself in the "non-posted" position, as if you are in the "posted", you won't dare take it down 7 or 8 years later or the case might be moot.

Back to you Medicare recipients. When you put up the manger scene, include your reindeer accoutrements, but when you get sued, take it down and get some outfit like the Liberty Counsel to defend your right to free speech. As they say on their web site, they are committed to "restoring the culture one case at a time". They represent the kindergartener's parents in the suit. You can even order cool t-shirts (illustrated above) and books on their site. And in kindergarten size!

This just in from Dr. Davison, the blog's religion consultant. Our assumption above was correct: "Regarding Jesus and the environment, we know he is the Lord of creation, as John said about the Word made flesh, "and without Him not one thing was made, that was made." Jn 1:3!!! Also, in Genesis, man was given the responsibility and authority to "tend the land (the creation)." (Still in effect for Christians). So I believe that Jesus is the ultimate environmentalist!"