Monday, March 19, 2007

Bong Hits 4 Jesus

OK, I admit, I love this news story. It just about throws a double-left-handed frontways-screwball at you.

The story starts when this kid in high school wants to get on TV, and ... you have kids? Listen, they sometimes surprise you, you might say, and not always in the way that you would have really asked for.

So the Olympics were coming up, and the torch was coming through this kid's town (Juneau, Alaska), and the schools let the kids out to go see it.

Well, this kid makes a big sign that says "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" on it, and when the torch comes by, he holds it up. The principal is standing there, she tells him to take it down, he doesn't. She tears it up and tells him to go to her office right now.

OK, that's great. I have no idea in the world what he thinks his sign meant, but it's got all the elements, doesn't it?

Well, I don't know if he was on TV that day, but he's certainly been in the papers since then.

The principal kicks him out of school for ten days.
Mr. Fredericks’s ensuing lawsuit and the free-speech court battle that resulted, in which he has prevailed so far, is one that, classically, pits official authority against student dissent. It is the first Supreme Court case to do so directly since the court upheld the right of students to wear black arm bands to school to protest the war in Vietnam, declaring in Tinker v. Des Moines School District that “it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

The court followed that 1969 decision with two others during the 1980s that upheld the authority of school officials to ban vulgar or offensive student speech and to control the content of school newspapers. Clearly there is some tension in the court’s student-speech doctrine; what message to extract from the trio of decisions is the basic analytical question in the new case, Morse v. Frederick, No. 06-278. What is most striking is how the two sides line up. Free-Speech Case Divides Bush and Religious Right

Now the question is, what exactly did the kid do wrong? He wasn't at school when he held up the sign.

This article explains one weird thing about the case. The kid, Joseph Frederick, has a bunch of organizations supporting him: the ACLU and the National Coalition Against Censorship, naturally, but also ...
... the American Center for Law and Justice, founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson; the Christian Legal Society; the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization based in Arizona that describes its mission as “defending the right to hear and speak the Truth”; the Rutherford Institute, which has participated in many religion cases before the court; and Liberty Legal Institute, a nonprofit law firm “dedicated to the preservation of First Amendment rights and religious freedom.”

On the other hand, taking the school's side, is the National School Board Association, two school principals’ groups, several antidrug organizations, Ken Starr, and the Bush Administration.

Ken Starr?

Yes, Ken Starr.

I guess the religious groups want to make sure you can't get kicked out of school for holding up a sign that says "Jesus" on it. The drug groups, the anti-drug groups, those are pretty easy to understand. The school board organization, of course, they're supporting their own.

Ken Starr? The Bush administration? Aren't these kind of big guns to bring in for a kid holding up a sign?
Lawyers on Mr. Frederick’s side offer a straightforward explanation for the strange-bedfellows aspect of the case. “The status of being a dissident unites dissidents on either side,” said Prof. Douglas Laycock of the University of Michigan Law School, an authority on constitutional issues involving religion who worked on Liberty Legal Institute’s brief.

In an interview, Professor Laycock said that religiously observant students often find the atmosphere in public school to be unwelcoming and “feel themselves a dissident and excluded minority.” As the Jehovah’s Witnesses did in the last century, these students are turning to the courts.

The briefs from the conservative religious organizations depict the school environment as an ideological battleground. The Christian Legal Society asserts that its law school chapters “have endured a relentless assault by law schools intolerant of their unpopular perspective on the morality of homosexual conduct or the relevance of religious belief.”

The American Center for Law and Justice brief, filed by its chief counsel, Jay Alan Sekulow, warns that public schools “face a constant temptation to impose a suffocating blanket of political correctness upon the educational atmosphere.”

Hey, man, those are some rebellious dudes, those church guys.

Really, this is an unusual alliance of bong-hitters and Jesus freaks, don't you think?
The religious groups were particularly alarmed by what they saw as the implication that school boards could define their “educational mission” as they wished and could suppress countervailing speech accordingly.

“Holy moly, look at this! To get drugs we can eliminate free speech in schools?” is how Robert A. Destro, a law professor at Catholic University, described his reaction to the briefs for the school board when the Liberty Legal Institute asked him to consider participating on the Mr. Frederick’s behalf. He quickly signed on.

And don't get me started on the "war on drugs."

But does anybody understand why the Bush administration has even heard about this kid holding up this sign in Juneau?

This same Catholic University professor talks about it.
Having worked closely with Republican administrations for years, Mr. Destro said he was hard pressed to understand the administration’s position. “My guess is they just hadn’t thought it through,” he said in an interview. “To the people who put them in office, they are making an incoherent statement.”

The solicitor general’s office does not comment publicly on its cases. But Mr. Starr, by contrast, was happy to talk about the case and the alignment against him of many of his old allies. “It’s reassuring to have lots of friends of liberty running around,” he said in a cheerful tone, adding: “I welcome this outpouring because it will help the court see that it shouldn’t go too far either way.”

What he means by that, I don't know.

The administration's position as conservatives is incoherent. As an authoritarian regime, though, they are perfectly consistent.

14 Comments:

Blogger digger said...

I saw this extensive book review of "Cycle Savvy: the Smart Teens Guide to the Mysteries of Her Body" by Toni Weschler in todays Post (health section. The review, on p. F2, entitled Girls Fertility Chartbook Stirs Debate, was written by Maia Szalavitz, begins "Should teenage girls be taught to recognize the physical signs that indiate when they are most likely to become pregnant?" and includeds quotes from Planned Parenthood (pro) and Concerned Women for America (con):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/16/AR2007031602043.html

The book's not about the ineffective rhythm method but rather the "highly effective" fertility charting (where does Rome stand on fertility charting?); the review talks about how much we should tell teenage girls about this. An interesting ripple in the pond of abstinence-only vs. comprehensive sex ed. What do other people think?

March 20, 2007 10:41 AM  
Blogger digger said...

This WWJD banner about bongs really got our justices rolling:

A column by Donna Milbank:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/19/AR2007031901696.html

and an article on p. 3 of Section A, by Robert Barnes:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/19/AR2007031901648.html

I see why all the different groups, including ACLU and ACLJ are in on this, by why the administration, unless they just like the idea of limiting speech in general.

Student speech rights are incredibly important as the legal background for LGBT student expression such as the Day of Silence (www.dayofsilence.org) and GSAs (Federal Equal Access Act essentially is a federal law enforcing first amendment speech rights). By the same token, if you allow some speech, you must allow all speech. So if you allow a GSA, do you allow a (hypothetical) Gay to Straight Club?

Robert

March 20, 2007 10:55 AM  
Blogger JimK said...

So if you allow a GSA, do you allow a (hypothetical) Gay to Straight Club?

Sure, why not?

One thing: PFOX makes a career out of complaining that everybody discriminates against "ex-gays." Can anybody give me any concrete example, even one that has been cited by PFOX or anybody else, where a person has been discriminated against because of being "ex-gay?"

I mean, being skeptical, that doesn't count as discrimination, does it?

JimK

March 20, 2007 11:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/opinion/20tue1.html

The court should affirm the appeals court’s well-reasoned decision that when the school punished the student it violated his First Amendment rights...The court should use this case to reaffirm Tinker’s famous pronouncement that students do not shed their right to free speech “at the schoolhouse gate.”

March 20, 2007 4:38 PM  
Blogger Orin Ryssman said...

Justice Hugo Black, dissenting,

In my view, teachers in state-controlled public schools are hired to teach there. Although Mr. Justice McReynolds may have intimated to the contrary in Meyer v. Nebraska, supra, certainly a teacher is not paid to go into school and teach subjects the State does not hire him to teach as a part of its selected curriculum. Nor are public school students sent to the schools at public expense to broadcast political or any other views to educate and inform the public. The original idea of schools, which I do not believe is yet abandoned as worthless or out of date, was that children had not yet reached the point of experience and wisdom which enabled them to teach all of their elders. It may be that the Nation has outworn the old-fashioned slogan that "children are to be seen not heard," but one may, I hope, be permitted to harbor the thought that taxpayers send children to school on the premise that at their age they need to learn, not teach.

This case, therefore, wholly without constitutional reasons in my judgment, subjects all the public schools in the country to the whims and caprices of their loudest-mouthed, but maybe not their brightest, students. I, for one, am not fully persuaded that school pupils are wise enough, even with this Court's expert help from Washington, to run the 23,390 public school systems in our 50 States. I wish, therefore, wholly to disclaim any purpose on my part to hold that the Federal Constitution compels the teachers, parents, and elected school officials to surrender control of the American public school system to public school students. I dissent.


Wikipedia sums up the late Justice Black's First Amendment credentials thusly,

Black took an absolutist approach to First Amendment jurisprudence, as reflected by his famous aphorism, "No law means no law."

However,

While I have always believed that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments neither the State nor the Federal Government has any authority to regulate or censor the content of speech, I have never believed that any person has a right to give speeches or engage in demonstrations where he pleases and when he pleases. Tinker v. Des Moines, 1969

Once again,

This case, therefore, wholly without constitutional reasons in my judgment, subjects all the public schools in the country to the whims and caprices of their loudest-mouthed, but maybe not their brightest, students.

Thank you Justice Black for stating what some of us still understand about school children...that they are children.

March 21, 2007 4:17 AM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

The Olympic torch passing through town was not a school activity. Public school students were dismissed from school to go see it. The principal had no right to suspend the student for non-criminal off campus behavior.

March 21, 2007 7:52 AM  
Blogger Dana Beyer, M.D. said...

Orin, so you believe in treating 18 year olds as "children"? And you tell them that? And at their 18th birthday they miraculously mature to the point of being qualified to go off to war and kill and get killed?

If they are children, why to we offer them licenses to drive killing machines on our streets?

March 21, 2007 9:10 AM  
Blogger andrear said...

Of coure, "children" are children selectively to conservatives. Don't tell them the truth, don't allow them to dissent -but at 18, give them a gun or a tank and let them kill or be killed. How silly to think that suddenly at 18 or at going to college, this "child" will suddenly be equipped to do all the the thinking certain people would forbid them.

March 21, 2007 10:08 AM  
Blogger Orin Ryssman said...

Dana writes,

Orin, so you believe in treating 18 year olds as "children"?

When they acts as children? You bet.

And you tell them that?

When that is needed, yes. I try not to, but if I am challenged in a way that is rude and disrespectful then yes, I won't hesitate to remind them that they are yet children and that I will treat them as such until they act mature and adult-like.

And at their 18th birthday they miraculously mature to the point of being qualified to go off to war and kill and get killed?

If they make it thru boot camp and become a soldier then yes, they have earned the right to be considered my equal as an adult. That is why I support reducing the age to legally consume alcohol to 18 because if a soldier can be given an M-16 and ordered into harm's way, then when he/she should be able to enjoy a beer when on R&R.

If they are children, why to we offer them licenses to drive killing machines on our streets?

Here in the State of Colorado we have a whole host of restrictions on new teen drivers; I support them in word and deed (that is, I made our older daughter follow them precisely).

andrear writes,

Of coure, "children" are children selectively to conservatives.

Not true...if a 17 year old acts like an adult then I try to treat them like an adult (keeping in mind that they are still child).

Don't tell them the truth, don't allow them to dissent -but at 18, give them a gun or a tank and let them kill or be killed.

Oh, you mean like these students that ditched class to "protest"?

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_5496624

How silly to think that suddenly at 18 or at going to college, this "child" will suddenly be equipped to do all the the thinking certain people would forbid them.

Carrying a sign reading "Bong Hits for Jesus" is a bit of a stretch as far as thinking goes. And the students that protested in Denver? It is doubtful they understand all the issues involved in this, The Neo-Cold War. In fact, I bet they could not identify Iraq or Afghanistan on an unmarked map. How many of these students does anyone think would have given up part of a Saturday or Sunday to "protest"? Enough said...

March 22, 2007 10:49 PM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

Orin said "If they make it thru boot camp and become a soldier then yes, they have earned the right to be considered my equal as an adult. That is why I support reducing the age to legally consume alcohol to 18 because if a soldier can be given an M-16 and ordered into harm's way, then when he/she should be able to enjoy a beer when on R&R."

Holy cow Orin! Making it through boot camp qualifies a kid to be a soldier period. It in no way prepares these kids to be spouses or parents or responsible adults in any way other than being a soldier.

How odd that of all the possible adult pleasures for a young soldier to earn, you select the right to enjoy a beer. Military leaders vehemently disagree with you about lowering the drinking age and in fact they have banned booze in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? Because soldier training, battlefield stress, and alcohol mixed together make for an increase in crime as reported here:

"NEW YORK, MARCH 13: Alcohol, strictly forbidden by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan, is involved in a growing number of crimes committed by troops deployed to those countries. Alcohol and drug-related charges were involved in more than a third of all Army criminal prosecutions of soldiers in the two war zones — 240 of the 665 cases resulting in convictions, according to records obtained by NYT through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Seventy-three of those 240 cases involve some of the most serious crimes committed, including murder, rape, armed robbery, and assault. Sex crimes accounted for 12 of the convictions. The 240 cases involved a roughly equal number of drug and alcohol offences, although alcohol-related crimes have increased each year since 2004.

Despite the military’s ban on all alcoholic beverages
liquor is cheap and ever easier to find for soldiers looking to self-medicate the effects of combat stress, depression, or the frustrations of extended deployments, said military defence lawyers, commanders, and doctors who treat soldiers’ emotional problems.

“It’s clear that we’ve got a lot of significant alcohol problems that are pervasive across the military,” said Dr Thomas R Kosten, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Administration Medical Centre in Houston. He traces their drinking and drug use to the stress of working in a war zone. “The treatment that they take for it is the same treatment that they took after Vietnam,” Kosten said. “They turn to alcohol and drugs.”

The use of alcohol and drugs in war zones appears to reflect a broader trend toward heavier and more frequent drinking among all military personnel, but especially in the Army and Marine Corps, the two services doing most of the fighting, Pentagon officials and military health experts said.

A Pentagon health study released in January, for instance, found that the rate of binge drinking in the Army shot up by 30 per cent between 2002 and 2005, and “may signal an increasing pattern of heavy alcohol use in the Army.”

While average rates of alcohol consumption in the Navy and Air Force have steadily declined since 1980, the year the military’s health survey began, they have significantly increased in the Army and Marine Corps and exceed civilian rates, the Pentagon study showed.

For the first time since 1985, more than a quarter of all Army members surveyed said they regularly drink heavily, defined as having five or more drinks at one sitting."

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/25620.html

Young adult soldiers are enjoying more than "a beer when on R&R." Soldiers are abusing booze and drugs to "self-medicate" themselves due to the stress of the battlefield that military doctors fail to address, and this abuse is leading to a rise in violent crime. This rise in crime could be considered "adult behavior" but it is far from commendable.

March 23, 2007 7:51 AM  
Blogger Dana Beyer, M.D. said...

Orin,

I would hope that if anyone of any age treats you with disrespect that you would call them on it. You sound both reasonable and unreasonable at the same time. Does a 15 year old student have the right to make an articulate protest if he knows the latitude and longitude of Iraq? Who are you to say? The point of freedom of speech is that no one, no adult or child, neither you nor I, has the right or responsibility to make the call.

Yes, we have to draw the line somewhere, and we often do, with the lifting of progressive restrictions. I am really bothered, though, by this sense among some of the Justices that a high school student is somehow less capable of making a valid statement about policy while those running the Bush administration, such as John Yoo, deserve adult respect.

March 23, 2007 7:54 AM  
Blogger Orin Ryssman said...

Aunt Bea, you write,

Soldiers are abusing booze and drugs to "self-medicate" themselves due to the stress of the battlefield that military doctors fail to address, and this abuse is leading to a rise in violent crime.

And then I pick up the Colorado State's own student newspaper (The Rocky Mountain Collegian) and read this below and I wonder to myself (and to you now), what stress could it be that accounts for students drinking like soldiers? Could it be all those textbooks they have to read in the course of their studies?

Still, your point reamins a valid one: stress and alcohol do not mix.

Binge drinking spikes, report finds
The student also shows abuse of prescription and illegal drugs among college students skyrockets

By: JAMES BAETKE

Posted: 3/23/07

About half of all full-time college students are binge drinkers and some are abusing prescription and illegal drugs at a rate never seen before, according to a recent report.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse report released last week also found that one in four college students meets the criteria for substance abuse or dependency.

"It's time to take the high out of higher education," said Joseph Califano in a statement, NCASA's chairman and former U.S. secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. "This college culture of alcohol and other drug abuse is inexcusable."

The 281-page report from Columbia University researchers is the four-year culmination of research, surveys and interviews that concluded "the intensity of excessive drinking and rates of drug abuse have jumped sharply" in college.

According to the findings, between 1993 and 2005 the proportion of students who binge drink frequently is up 16 percent; those who drink 10 or more times a month is up 25 percent; students who drink at least three times a month is up 26 percent; and those who drink to get drunk is 21 percent higher.

You can read the complete article here,

URL,
http://www.collegian.com/media/
paper864/sections/20070323News.html

March 23, 2007 9:07 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"what stress could it be that accounts for students drinking like soldiers?"

What makes you think it's stress causing college kids to drink? Maybe it's just the freedom to do as they please.

March 24, 2007 12:51 AM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

Orin said You can read the complete article here,

URL,
http://www.collegian.com/media/
paper864/sections/20070323News.html


Thanks Orin. I did go read the rest of the article. It didn't report "stress" to be associated with an increase in college binge drinking and it didn't report "all those textbooks they have to read in the course of their studies" to be associated with binge drinking either. Instead it pointed to social groups like Greek houses and the popularity of drinking games.

The report states Greek members are more likely to drink than non-members.

The survey shows that students who live in Greek houses are 19 percent more likely to binge drink than those living in off-campus housing and 28 percent more likely than those in residence halls.

Binge drinking is especially common among Greeks, according to the survey, with nearly twice as many sorority members binge drinking than non-members.

Eighty percent of women and 86 percent of men living in Greek houses binge drink, the report found.

Nearly 38 percent of college administrators say the major barrier to more effective prevention is the public perception that substance abuse by students is a normal rite of passage, according to the study.

"College presidents are reluctant to take on issues they feel cannot change and this growing public health crisis reflects today's society where students are socialized to consider substance abuse a harmless rite of passage and to mediate every ill," said the Rev. Edward Malloy, who works on the NCASA commission.

...The report recognizes the increased popularity of drinking games such as beer pong and the practice of taking 21 shots on one's 21st birthday, and states they lead to a greater intensity of binge drinking.


It is important to note that this association or correlation does not indicate causation. It could be that joining a Greek house causes an increase in binge drinking or it could be that binge drinkers tend to join Greek houses. More research is needed to find out what is causing more college kids to binge drink.

Until we better understand the cause(s) of college binge drinking, I think the laws should remain as they are with alcohol consumption illegal before the age of 21. Rev. Malloy said, "students are socialized to consider substance abuse a harmless rite of passage and to mediate every ill." Lowering the drinking age to 18 would be a huge mistake because it would validate that "rite of passage" mentality IMHO. Given your support for "a whole host of restrictions on new teen drivers," frankly I'm surprised at your view that 18 year olds should be allowed to consume alcohol.

March 25, 2007 12:48 PM  

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