Is Your Bible Trash?

                                                                                                                    Vol. XIV, No. 5,  May 2001

The Ten Commandments are hate speech and the Bible is garbage. Those are messages to which students in Willis, TX, were recently subjected. In the first instance, two sisters watched their teacher angrily heave their Bibles into a trashcan, declaring them to be trash. In a separate but related incident, three students had their Ten Commandment book covers confiscated and cast into the garbage as their teacher explained that she was simply enforcing school anti-hate speech policies. Other students, she said, might be offended by the historically-accepted biblical tenets.

These startling incidents prompted Mathew Staver, chief counsel of Liberty Counsel - the Orlando-based legal defense organization that works closely with Jerry Falwell's Liberty Alliance - to file a federal lawsuit in Houston, seeking an injunction and damages against the school officials. Staver stated, "Students have a constitutional right to bring religious literature to school and read this literature during their free time. Students also have the guaranteed right to utilize a religious book cover and should be free to do so without fear of reprisal." This dangerous new strategy that likens the Bible to Nazi-like hate speech is a tactic that promises increased acts of coercion by teachers against students who love Christ enough to be persecuted for Him. Leftists who hate the Judeo-Christian heritage of our nation are constantly attempting to discover new ways to ignore and neglect that history. As a result, students of faith are frequently targeted and persecuted for even the most simple expression of their faith.