Month: October 2004

Because, obviously, if other kids saw that gangsta pose, who knows what sort of terrible violence might break out at the school.

The school board has voted to ban a photo of a student from the senior section of his high school yearbook because he is posed with a shotgun.

But Tuesday’s unanimous vote also backed a compromise: Blake Douglass can have the photo published in a “community sports” section, and a new photo ? without the gun but featuring other elements of skeet and trap shooting ? can appear in the seniors’ section of the Londonderry [New Hampshire] High School yearbook.

The compromise wasn’t good enough for Douglass, who wanted his senior photo in traditional sportsman’s pose, wearing an oxford shirt, navy vest and holding the shotgun over his shoulder.

“I don’t see anything wrong with the picture,” Douglass, 17 said at the hearing. “I just want my senior picture in the yearbook.”

I’m not a gun enthusiast, but the following things kinda bug me about this.

1. Presumably skeet/trap shooting is a legal activity in the area in question. In other words, no crime is being committed in the photo.
2. There appear to be no restrictions, aside from legal ones, on what can be shown in a student photo. The school board’s policies state, “We encourage the use of school sponsored publications to express students’ points of view. They shall be free from all policy restrictions outside the normal rules for responsible journalism.” It’s not clear how showing a kid in hunting garb with a open-breech shotgun is “irresponsible.” That some folk think it is “inappropriate” doesn’t seem to be a worthwhile restriction.

3. The photo itself is not so inherently horrific (or “inappropriate”) that they school board wasn’t willing to let it appear elsewhere in the yearbook.

I mean, what is the school board trying to protect folks from here? What’s the compelling interest?

According to this story, the teacher and yearbook advisor suggested that the picture was inappropriate due to the school’s zero-tolerance policy on violence, drugs and alcohol.” Since none of those aspects is present in the photo (is trap shooting inherently and overtly violent?), that seems a bit lame. The principal, too, weighed in, saying, “I just felt that the picture with the skeet shooting rifle was something that should not be in a yearbook, and it would be something that would create controversy.” Ah, well if that’s how you feel, that makes it all right. A shame it created controversy anyway.

The superintendent has also commented. “Taking into consideration all the things that have happened with school violence, it’s not appropriate even though skeet shooting is a fine hobby.” And, doubtless because of all the tragic auto accidents that have taken the lives of so many teens, no kids will be allowed to pose with their cars, even though driving them is, of course, another “fine hobby.”

And, again, that the school board was willing to let the photo run elsewhere in the yearbook, and to let the kid pose in the regalia of his “fine hobby” sans gun, indicates to me that they see the flaw in the argument and are looking for a butt-covering face-saving way out.

If nothing else, another reason why high schools should return to the standard mug shot type of senior photo. It would certainly avoid “controversy.”

The Supreme Court has agreed to take on a couple of “state display of the Ten Commandments” cases. Well, that’ll guarantee some discussion topics in the blogosphere once the election is over.

Officials in two Kentucky counties — McCreary and Pulaski — hung framed copies of the Ten Commandments in their courthouses and added other documents, such as the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, after the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the display was by. The ACLU sued and won. County officials are appealing the decision.

David A. Friedman, general counsel for the Kentucky ACLU, said people of different faiths follow different versions of the document. “Especially in a courthouse, people should not be made to feel like outsiders in their own community because they may not share the prevailing religious view,” he said.

In the Texas case, a homeless man, Thomas Van Orden, lost his lawsuit to have a 6-foot granite monument removed from the state Capitol grounds. The Fraternal Order of Eagles donated the exhibit to the state in 1961, and it was installed about 75 feet from the Capitol in Austin. The group gave scores of similar monuments to American towns during the 1950s and ’60s, and those have been the subjects of multiple court fights.

Since American law is not based on the Ten Commandments (indeed, only two or three of them apply to our civil law today, depending on how you count them), the “history” argument for their display has always seemed very weak to me — unless you are really going to put out a number of similar precursors, such as excerpts from the Code of Hammurabi, and the Magna Carta, and some competing (or parallel) religious laws.

If it’s not historic, then it’s a proclamation of a specific religious faith. As Justice Stevens noted in a similar 2001 case, the words “I am the Lord thy God,” in the first line of the Indiana monument’s inscription are “rather hard to square with the proposition that the monument expresses no particular religious preference.”

That makes it improper for a seat of government, especially in this day and age, when the assumption that everyone believes in and feels personally bound by the 10C is a dubious one.

I’d be tempted, by the way, while prohibiting the placement of the 10C on governmental property except in very controlled cases, to allow a rolling “grandfathering” clause for this and similar types of suits. If the PDR (Public Display of Religion) has been around for, say, 50 years or so, it should be immune to court challenge of this sort, instead becoming a public landmark of sufficient secular value to warrent keeping. That would remove a lot of the “But that’s always been here” traditionalist objections, while putting a stop to re-establishment of potentially offensive monuments. (If the public as a whole objected enough to such a momument, of course, their local representatives could always vote to get rid of it; I’m talking here about court challenges only.)

If people would like to put statues of the Ten Commandments in their front yard, or as bumper stickers on their cars, or on any private property, or do the same with any other religious symbol and displays, that is their prerogative, and I would object just as strongly to anyone trying block that. But putting the 10C at a seat of the civil government sends a message that seems wholly incompatible with the the constitutional provision against establishment of a religion. And for those who don’t see it, consider if a majority-Muslim community were to put a monument that said, “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet,” in front of their city hall. Would you feel … well, a bit intimidated or unwelcome if you weren’t Muslim?

The biggest regret I have about the Supremes taking this on (well, biggest regret thus far) is that it’s given new publicity to former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, whose grinning face was plastered on CNN during the lunch hour. If that’s not enough to put one off their feed, I don’t know what is …