Contradictory classroom coercion. (The Last Word).(Brief Article)

In Newdow v. Congress, the Ninth Circuit Court's notorious anti-Pledge of Allegiance decision, the court posed as the guardian of a parent's right to protect his child from classroom coercion. Like all organs dominated by the liberal elite, that court is at best selectively scrupulous about such concerns.

Referring to the atheist plaintiff in the lawsuit, the court wrote: "[Michael] Newdow has standing as a parent to challenge a practice that interferes with his right to direct the religious education of his daughter." Classroom recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in its present form places "students in the untenable position of choosing between participating in an exercise with religious content or protesting," frets the court.

Although no official ever attempted to force Newdow's daughter to recite the Pledge, the plaintiff contends -- and the court agrees -- that she was "compelled to 'watch and listen' " as other students enacted "a ritual proclaiming that there is a God, and that our's [sic] is 'one nation under God.'" This, according to the court, is an impermissible form of "subtle coercive pressure."

The instrument has yet to be invented that can measure the infinitesimal odds that the Ninth Circuit Court, or any comparable judicial body, would display similar solicitude toward conservative parents whose students face much less subtle forms of classroom coercion. For example: Every February, students, like most Americans, are admonished to burn incense at the shrine of Martin Luther King Jr., a personage of such purported sanctity that he, unique among Americans, has a holiday all to himself. It defies any rational expectation that the Ninth Circuit judges responsible for the Newdow ruling would rule in favor of a parent filing suit to suppress celebrating the Feast of St. Martin -- or Earth Day, or Kwanzaa -- in his child's school system.

Three years ago, controversy descended upon Bakersfield, California's Rio Bravo-Greeley Union School when 15 students were removed, at parental request, from an eighth grade science class taught by homosexual activist James Merrick. Several students had complained about Merrick's mannerisms and uncomfortably physical teaching style. The parents involved in the student exodus took issue with Merrick's involvement in a campaign to oust a "homophobic" member of the County Human Relations Commission, who had sensibly described practitioners of the homosexual lifestyle as "sick" and said that they shouldn't be allowed to teach children.

Applying the Ninth Circuit Court's language to this case, the Bakersfield parents exercised their right "to challenge a practice that interferes with [their] right to direct the religious ...