School board members in Harrison County, W.Va., remain obstinately in favor of promoting Christianity at Bridgeport High School.
Late yesterday, after spending at least an hour in a closed-door session, the Harrison County Board of Education announced it will continue to fight a federal lawsuit seeking removal of a portrait of Jesus at Bridgeport High School. Board member Mike Queen, who has been a loud supporter of the religious display, said more than $150,000 in private funds had been raised to help the district pay for the legal challenge.
According to the Associated Press, Queen told a cheering audience of 50 people, “This board is moving forward.” Many attendees wore white T-shirts that read, "You can’t take our Jesus down."
The Charleston Gazette reported today that a bevy of national Religious Right groups are competing for the job of defending the Warner Sallman picture of Jesus and that school board members are to meet Friday to discuss representation.
Queen, who has led the fund-raising effort, has been told to cease his work by the West Virginia Ethics Commission. However, he announced that a nonprofit group would be created to keep up the drive. Queen, who initially suggested that fighting the lawsuit would not cost too much, has likely been clued in to the fact that litigation is actually a very expensive endeavor. Indeed, just last year, a public school board in Pennsylvania had to pay $1 million in attorneys’ fees and court costs over its failed defense of a policy promoting “intelligent design.”
Americans United is one of the groups representing two Bridgeport citizens in their challenge of the religious display. AU Executive Director Barry W. Lynn told The Gazette, “This is going to be a very expensive civics lesson for [the school board majority] to find out that there are some things, even if you are passionate about, that you don’t fight in court.”
The Charleston Daily Mail lambasted the Harrison County School Board in an editorial published today. The newspaper complained that $150,000 is being spent “to defend their indefensible stubbornness in federal court.”
“It is shameful conduct from a school board, and from Christians,” the newspaper concluded.
The school officials’ conduct is not only shameful, it’s irresponsible. The school board is a sending a terrible message to students and parents – that it is bent on promoting Christianity over other faiths in the high school and that the First Amendment is no impediment to its desire to do so.
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