Bonds need Jesus

Law, National Politics, Religion 416Comments (3)http://mickc.whizardries.com/archives/2004/12/17/bonds-need-jesus/Bonds+need+Jesus2004-12-17+17%3A02%3A53MickC

The Mustang, Oklahoma school district just lost a bond election. The school district had asked for bonds totaling around $10.4 million (plus another $500,000 in bonds for transportation) and things were looking good for passage. Then it happened.

“It” was a decision by the school’s superintendant to remove a nativity scene from the school play while leaving in Hanukkah and Kwanza portions (and allowing the kids to sing “Silent Night”). The school’s superintendant said that he had received two different opinions by legal counsel that leaving it in the nativity scene would likely violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

That decision likely made the difference. Bond proposals require a “super-majority” of 60% to pass. So you can only imagine the shock when the proposals only garnered 54% of the vote, thus failing. According to KFOX-TV, “Superintendent Karl Springer acknowledged that some voters might have retaliated against the school district for his decision to pull the Nativity scene from a school play last week…”

This comports with the Dallas Morning News story (free registration required), cleverly titled “Voters say no Jesus, no bonds” in the print edition:

It was a simple but pointed Christmas message that voters delivered this week to school officials here.

Shelly Marino claims other symbols — including those of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa — were allowed to remain in the school’s production.

If the fifth-graders couldn’t have Baby Jesus in their school play, then the school district couldn’t have an $11 million school bond package.

Dismayed that a Nativity, or depiction of Christ’s birth in a manger, was ordered cut by the superintendent, some voters in this growing, southwest Oklahoma City suburb retaliated by helping block passage of the bonds. Those bonds included money for a new elementary school that would ease crowding.

It was the first time in at least a decade that voters didn’t rubber stamp the district’s bond proposals – and yet another sign that America’s so-called values voters are flexing electoral muscle against what they view as an excess of political correctness.

[...]

Disappointed students told their parents. Parents called one another. Ministers contacted school district officials. Protests were plotted.

“We were immediately outraged,” Mrs. Marino said. “How can this be? We live in the buckle of the Bible belt. This is Mustang, for goodness sake.”

What particularly infuriated Mrs. Marino and others was that other religious and cultural symbols – including those of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa – were allowed to remain in the production, as well as a Christmas tree and a Santa Claus.

“We feel like we’ve been discriminated against,” said Jim McNabb, longtime pastor of The Bridge, an Assembly of God church here.

“No one cared that these other [religious] elements were there. It’s just the fact that one was pulled.”

There are problems all around here. The Constitution prohibits the “establishment” of religion. The problem they were trying to avoid was the common European practice of naming one religous group as the “state religion” which would then be the beneficiary of state tax dollars and the prohibition of other religious groups. They were not trying to take out all references to religion in public life when they wrote that clause. So part of the blame lies in trying to make the Constitution demand something that it was never meant to demand.

Another part lies with the parents who made this into a protest vote. Certainly they have to right to vote against the proposals for whatever reason they want, or none at all, but in the words of one of the parents: “I just don’t feel like this accomplished anything, except that ‘we’ll show the school system.’”

And who is suffering as a result of this protest vote? It’s not the parents. It’s the kids. And that’s sad.

MickC @ December 17, 2004