Great controversy arose after republican candidate Rick Perry posted his new ad campaign entitled “Strong” via YouTube on December 6th . He starts off the thirty-second ad saying:
“You don’t need to be in the
pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can
serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or
pray in school.”
Later Perry adds that he will end “Obama’s war on religion” as well as the “liberal attacks on our religious heritage.”
Ms.Leardi is an AP U.S. II History teacher at Franklin High and also serves as the advisor for The Young Democrats club.
“I find it amazing that he’s a governor of an actual state” commented Leardi “Public education institutions are funded by the government which is funded by the
people, and the people are not all Christians.”
Leardi goes on to explain how “favoring one religion over another” like Perry did in the video is “unconstitutional.”
She finds that since the public are not paying for religious studies in school there is no reason to promote it.
“That’s what private schools are for.”
Legally Leardi is right.
Since the Supreme court ruling of the Engel vs. Vitale case on June 25th, 1962 (the case in which prohibited open school prayer) it has been a topic of debate as to whether or not celebration of religious holidays in school is considered breaking the law.
The Texas Justice Foundation believed the ruling to be tragic declaring June 25th a day of mourning on the case’s 40th anniversary in 2002.
As the governor of Texas, Perry’s bias may be for his home land rather than simply being that he is “not ashamed to be a Christian”.
Senior, Alexandra Delacruz considers herself a Christian.
Though she may not agree with Perry’s analogy of gays in the military to prayer in school or go to the extreme of calling Obama a threat to religion, she does disagree with the Supreme Court ruling to ban open prayer in school.
“I don’t think if a kid wants to bring a bible to school, or bring it themselves, they should be told ‘no, you can’t do that’.
Why should it matter?” Delacruz said.
Molly Bond is a sophomore at Franklin High whose strong belief that promoting Christmas
at school should be allowed motivated her to write her own opinion
piece regarding the matter.
Rick Perry may be an ignorant man who made an ignorant statement but he did manage to
bring light to something that has been pushed aside for a while as the public’s attention of the subject has grown in recent years.
Are public school’s going too far with the idea of political correctness or does it
provide a safer environment for the youth attending public school?