First grader forced to remove 'God' from poem

[jimnyc]

The insanity continues.

Community Jerk Causes First Grader to Remove ‘God’ From Poem Honoring Grandfathers’ Military Service

A first grader who attends West Marion Elementary School in the McDowell County Schools in Marion, NC wrote a poem about both of her grandfather’s military service in the Vietnam War. The poem was selected as part of a Veteran’s Day Ceremony display. One of the lines in her poem read:

“He prayed to God for peace, he prayed to God for strength.”

Someone in the community had to be a jerk and complained that they didn’t like the poem because it mentioned God. The school reacted to the jerk’s complaint, and forced the little girl to remove the line from her poem before it was allowed to be used in the Veteran’s Day ceremony.

The school’s response hasn’t set well with the girl’s family or a number of others in the community who fear that the school will use its censorship in other unconstitutional ways. They sought help from Alliance Defending Freedom, who in turn sent a letter to the school on behalf of a number of residents of the county.

Matt Sharp, legal counsel handling the case wrote to the school saying:

“America’s public schools should encourage, not restrict, the constitutionally protected freedom of students to express their faith. Students should not be censored when speaking about their faith or honoring those who valiantly served to protect our freedoms. The poem described the historical actions of her grandfather, and the Constitution protects such student expression at school.”

“School officials may not suppress or exclude the personal speech of students simply because the speech is religious or contains a religious perspective.”

“The censorship of this young student’s poem about her grandfathers is repugnant to the First Amendment rights of all students and sends an impermissible message of hostility towards religion. The First Amendment protects the right of students to discuss their faith–especially when they are discussing a historical event like this student in her poem honoring her grandfathers.”

http://godfatherpolitics.com/8403/co...itary-service/

[Kathianne]

This type of story pisses me off to no end. I don't know if it's the teacher or the school or the district. That child has every right to write what he did. The school has the right to hang it, just like any others.

I'm lucky to work in districts that get the difference between students expressing their beliefs and school teachers that push their own belief systems or districts that instigate programs or traditions that would favor some religion or 'any religion,' when charged with serving 'all students' including non-believers.

If you live in a district where these issues are relevant, check out this site and send copies to your principals:

http://www.centerforpubliceducation....c-Schools.html

I have better resources, but they are packed up. If I can find some online, I'll add them.

[Robert A Whit]

Obama says God Bless America. Why can't a child explain what a relative said such as the case Jim told of? Seems some authority at the school is offended by the word "GOD"

[Thunderknuckles]

Clear case of Free Speech infringement. The schools should be chastised for it's utterly spineless actions.
All local municipalities should hire a little old lady whose sole purpose is to approach these overly sensitive a-holes, slap them across the face, and remind them of the days when adults actually acted like adults.

[jimnyc]

This type of story pisses me off to no end. I don't know if it's the teacher or the school or the district. That child has every right to write what he did. The school has the right to hang it, just like any others.

I was thinking the same. Outside of the parents, and the teacher, how would someone outside of them even know about the wording? But it's growing tiresome seeing more and more people being told that their beliefs need to be kept to themselves and not out in the open where it may offend someone. The right of someone to include such things in a project should trump another persons right not to be offended. Same as when valedictorians and such are chosen, then told what they can and cannot say at graduation. No one is going to be harmed by such inclusions. Sitting in an audience while a mere mention of God is made is not going to leave a child psychologically harmed. Kids should be taught to respect others, and respect the religion of others - not taught to take issue with others and their different beliefs and being taught that it's appropriate to stomp on what another can say.

[Kathianne]

I was thinking the same. Outside of the parents, and the teacher, how would someone outside of them even know about the wording? But it's growing tiresome seeing more and more people being told that their beliefs need to be kept to themselves and not out in the open where it may offend someone. The right of someone to include such things in a project should trump another persons right not to be offended. Same as when valedictorians and such are chosen, then told what they can and cannot say at graduation. No one is going to be harmed by such inclusions. Sitting in an audience while a mere mention of God is made is not going to leave a child psychologically harmed. Kids should be taught to respect others, and respect the religion of others - not taught to take issue with others and their different beliefs and being taught that it's appropriate to stomp on what another can say.

The valedictorian speeches, as well as any other 'school sponsored' events, fall into the zone of 'No.' Those are assumed to be controlled and approved by the school. School law regarding 'civil liberties' are a field onto themselves. One may wear a t-shirt in one school, in another it might create a problem. Schools have the right to make up dress codes, including those with 'we can change this as circumstances warrant, without notice.'

Students may write about God, Allah, or the Spaghetti Monster all that they like, though if not on topic, will get a low grade.

They may include religious items in a project, again when relevant.

They can wear crucifixes, crosses, star of david, pentagons, Islamic symbols to their hearts desire.

Schools can and do teach comparative religions in one form or another, both in MS and HS. Will fall under 'Global studies' or 'Ancient History.' Yeah, I know.

[Robert A Whit]

I think Bernie Ward still lives in prison.

Bernie Ward made his living in the SF Bay Area on the radio. He is well educated. I started listing to his "GOD TALK" radio program and over time on KGO radio, he was awarded a talk show where he discussed politics.

A left wing Rush Limbaugh if you will.

Bernie even showed up on national TV shows from time to time.

Bernie had plenty to say on religions. He claimed he had been involved in many of them to get to the bottom of them. I think he also studied this in college.

I liked GOD TALK because he could teach a person a lot about many ways of worship. He was a fountain of knowledge.

But the man was hard core left wing.

To him, we live to serve the Government rather than the government being a construct to serve the public,

OK, I got to thinking of this due to what Kath said about comparitive religion.

Bernie happened to love child porn. And he is in jail since he was busted for having a lot of it and dealing in child porn.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Bernie Ward
Birth name	Bernard Vincent Ward
Born	(1951-04-05) April 5, 1951 (age 61) San Francisco, California, USA, North America
Style	Talk show
Country	United States

Bernie Ward (born Bernard Vincent Ward on April 5, 1951) is a former American radio personality. Formerly a radio talk show host with KGO 810 AM in San Francisco, California,^[1] Ward is now serving a seven-year prison sentence for the online distribution of child pornography. Ward, once billed by KGO as "The Lion of the Left" and "unabashedly liberal,"^[2] was the host of the daily news talk program, The Bernie Ward Show, and the three-hour program, GodTalk, on Sunday mornings.^[3] In December 2007, Ward was dismissed from KGO following his federal grand jury child-pornography indictment.^[4][5] Subsequently, in a plea bargain with federal prosecutors, Ward admitted to a single felony charge of distributing child pornography and signed an admission of distributing between 15 and 150 images via email.^[6]

Contents [hide] 1 Biography 1.1 Radio talk show host 1.2 Child pornography conviction 2 Personal beliefs 2.1 Religion 2.2 Iraq war 2.3 Causes 3 Recognition 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Biography

Bernie Ward was born in San Francisco, California, USA^[4] where he attended Holy Name Grammar School, St. Ignatius High School, and the University of San Francisco. He then studied for three years at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, obtaining a Theology degree in 1977.^[4] He was ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood with the Society of the Precious Blood the same year,^[3][7] but left the priesthood after two years.
Ward later taught theology at Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa, California and its sister school, Ursuline High School. It was at Ursuline in 1978 that allegations of Ward's sexual misconduct first began to surface.^[8] Ward also taught at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, California.^[4] In 1981, he relocated to Washington, DC where he taught at the Georgetown Preparatory School, a private Jesuit Roman Catholic high school, while his wife attended medical school. Ward later worked for then-Representative Barbara Boxer from 1982 to 1985.
[edit] Radio talk show host

Ward's employment at KGO (AM) began in 1985 where he served as a fill-in talk show host, a general assignment reporter, and later as a political talk show host starting in 1992.^[4] As a reporter, where Jerry Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle noted on October 25, 1995, that it had become a ritual for the mayor at that time, Art Agnos, to denounce him for lies at the beginning of every news conference. Ward also went on to host "God Talk," a show on the topic of religion and its related topics.^[3][7]
Briefly in 1996, Ward's talk show was nationally syndicated until his ratings declined.^[9] His show's ratings began to improve in 1997 in Ward's core demographic group (women ages 25 to 54) as a result of his more lenient views on topics such as child-rearing and ethics. On October 5, 1997, a rumor that KGO was discontinuing Bernie Ward's contract effective at the end of the month was published by the San Francisco Chronicle.^[10] In protest, supporters of his show flooded the KGO studios with canned food donations, continuing a seven-year Thanksgiving fundraising drive started by Ward that had netted more than $1 million in donations shared by the St. Anthony Foundation and two other area charities.^[9] The protest culminated in a noon time rally staged in front of the KGO studios.^[11] KGO management reversed their decision and renewed Ward's contract.^[12]
On December 31, 2007, Bernie Ward was fired from KGO because of his indictment on child pornography charges.^[3]
[edit] Child pornography conviction

On September 20, 2007,^[13] Ward was indicted by a grand jury on two federal counts of Attempting to Distribute and one count of Receiving child pornography via the internet from December 2004 to January 2005.^[13] The police investigation of Ward originated with a complaint from a Stanislaus County homemaker who was posing online as a dominatrix under the screenname "Sexfairy2005" and who had engaged in online chats with Ward.^[14][15] According to the police report, Ward sent pornographic images of children to the chat partner, which caused her to contact police. The police began collecting evidence with her help and continued chat sessions with Ward. In the chat logs (found here [1]), Ward also described sexual activity with his own children.^[16] Ward and his children both later told investigators that none of the activities described in the chats ever actually occurred.
In a statement, Ward's attorney did not dispute engaging in the chats or transmitting the photos but instead claimed Ward was role-playing with the dominatrix in part for research on a book about hypocrisy in America.^[3][4][15] Federal investigators could find no evidence that Ward was working on such a book. Ward's attorney claimed that federal authorities found no illegal images on his computer, which they seized in early 2005.^[4][17] However, after police obtained a search warrant for Ward's online account, they found about 100 images of child pornography in his AOL email account on AOL's servers which had been opened and forwarded, with sexual activity involving children.
On May 8, 2008, Ward announced an agreement to plead guilty to one count of Distribution of Child Pornography in exchange for the dropping of two additional counts of Possession and Distribution. In his plea agreement, Ward admits that he transmitted child pornography "between 15 and 150 times." Under federal statute, Ward could have been sentenced to between five and 20 years in prison.^[18][19] The Department of Justice requested he be sentenced to nine years in prison.^[20]
On August 28, 2008, Judge Vaughn Walker sentenced Ward to seven years and three months in Federal prison. Judge Walker agreed to Ward's request that he be allowed to serve his time in the Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc, to which the U.S. Attorney raised no objection. Judge Walker commented that Ward's alleged sexual misconduct while serving as a priest may go to character, but that the events happened too long ago to be relevant to his sentencing decision. He also said that he was not convinced sending Ward to prison is the best way to deal with an individual with such problems and that "very little good has come out of all this." Ward told Judge Walker that he took full responsibility for his actions and said, "I regret my actions, the harm they caused my family, my friends, and this community."
With good behavior Ward's sentence of 87 months will be reduced by 15 percent, making him eligible for Supervised Release on December 21, 2014; there is no parole in the Federal system. When Ward is released, California's Megan's Law will require him to register as a sex offender with local law enforcement for life.^[21][22]
Ward is now serving his sentence at the Lompoc Low Security Federal Correctional Facility (FCI) as inmate # 90569-111.^[23]


[edit] Personal beliefs

[edit] Religion

On March 16, 1996, Ward discussed the confrontational tactics of the group ACT-UP at a mosque, describing the group as a "collection of non-partisan individuals committed to direct action to end AIDS."^[24] He stated that "homosexuals had a good cause to make (against the Catholic Church)," and claimed that the church encouraged homophobia and homophobic actions. The church denied this, stating that they did not encourage homophobia or resistance against homosexuals, but merely taught that homosexual sex, because it is outside a marriage between a man and a woman, was immoral.
On December 9, 1996, Ward stated that Christianity was "morally superior" to Judaism because it was based on unconditional forgiveness. He offered apologies on his radio show on December 17 and again on the following day, the first being dismissed by the Jewish Community Relations Council and the second being accepted. Ward insisted that he did not have a problem with any individual religion, only with fundamentalists.^[25] He later compared fundamentalist Orthodox Judaism with Nazism on September 12, 2001 but offered an apology the following day.^[25]
[edit] Iraq war

On September 30, 2002, Ward appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzer and discussed possible military action against Iraq. He commented about Saddam Hussein: "Hussein has not shown any threat to anyone" and that the "Kurds were prospering very well in the north even as al Qaeda has used some of their connections with the Kurds."^[26]
[edit] Causes

Among the causes and groups Ward supported were the Center for American Progress, Common Dreams, the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, and Democracy Now.
He also led a pledge drive for Thanksgiving Charities every year, which supported four charities in the San Francisco Bay Area:^[7] Sacred Heart Community Services in San Jose, St. Anthony's Foundation in San Francisco, St. Vincent De Paul dining room in Oakland, and Fresh Start in Walnut Creek. The charity drive began in the late 1980s and raised over $4 million in the following decades. Ward was also an active participant in the KGO leukemia cure-a-thon, which has raised over $13 million for research into leukemia and lymphoma causes.
[edit] Recognition

Ward received the Scripps Howard Award for Excellence in Journalism for his investigative journalism in a 10-part series, Heaven Help Us, which explored allegations of financial and sexual misconduct of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.^[7] He has also won numerous national awards, such as an Associated Press award for coverage of the Los Angeles riots of 1992.^[4]

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

The insanity continues.

Community Jerk Causes First Grader to Remove ‘God’ From Poem Honoring Grandfathers’ Military Service



http://godfatherpolitics.com/8403/co...itary-service/

This sick and dastardly act is exactly what they are after. -Censorship that stems from the tyranny of the minority!
Its the socialist/leftist/ atheist /dem dream come true and its been steadily growing for decades. The father of that little girl should have stomped that idiot that complained and gave that weasel something to really complain about. I know damn well thats exactly what I would have done and then used the pubilicity to highlight whats being done to this nation and our rights! -Tyr

[Missileman]

A terrible decision!

[Kathianne]

A terrible decision!

You'd agree with me, the school was way wrong?

[Larrymc]

The insanity continues.

Community Jerk Causes First Grader to Remove ‘God’ From Poem Honoring Grandfathers’ Military Service



http://godfatherpolitics.com/8403/co...itary-service/

I suppose this idiot threaten a law suite, what we need, is a standard of making people pay both sides expenses when there law suite is found to be unfounded, so schools don't cave because its cheaper to give them what they wont, we had a case locally with cheerleaders posting Scriptures on run through signs at ball games, same thing one person made a complaint, but i think local attorneys volunteered there services, and they won,

[Kathianne]

I suppose this idiot threaten a law suite, what we need, is a standard of making people pay both sides expenses when there law suite is found to be unfounded, so schools don't cave because its cheaper to give them what they wont, we had a case locally with cheerleaders posting Scriptures on run through signs at ball games, same thing one person made a complaint, but i think local attorneys volunteered there services, and they won,

Did you read the OP? While unclear who's to blame, it seems clear enough that the teacher, principal, or district are at the epicenter. No threats of lawsuits that I saw.

[Larrymc]

The insanity continues.

Community Jerk Causes First Grader to Remove ‘God’ From Poem Honoring Grandfathers’ Military Service



http://godfatherpolitics.com/8403/co...itary-service/

i suppose this idiot threatens a law suite, what kind of scum, attacks a 2nd graders project to make a point, its upsetting when schools don't defend these cases but i guess its cheaper to to give in, we had a case locally with cheerleaders posting Bible verses on run through signs at ball games, i think local attorneys volunteered there services and they won, we need a law making people pay both sides when the case is found to be unfounded, so schools can stand for the students

[Larrymc]

Did you read the OP? While unclear who's to blame, it seems clear enough that the teacher, principal, or district are at the epicenter. No threats of lawsuits that I saw.

that's true generally when a school gives in to that kind of thing there's a threat, if not that should be someones job.

[Kathianne]

that's true generally when a school gives in to that kind of thing there's a threat, if not that should be someones job.

I don't know what to say. Here you are, participating on a 'policy' board, yet you fail to read multiple posts that pertain to what you claim to be interested in. I don't get it.