Abstinence message – teachers wrong, student right
From One News Now comes this article about a high school student who dared to wear a T-shirt to school that promoted….(gasp)…..abstinence!
A middle-school student in Minnesota has regained his right to wear at school a T-shirt bearing an abstinence message.
Officials at Hastings Middle School had initially prohibited seventh-grader Johnathon Kinney from wearing the T-shirt with the message “Virginity Rocks!” On April 26, two school teachers confronted Kinney about the shirt, informing him that it was offensive and should be covered up. School officials also warned Kinney against wearing the shirt again.
After contacting the principal about the incident — and finding he supported the teachers’ decision — Kinney’s parents contacted The Rutherford Institute. John Whitehead, president of the Institute, explains the sequence of events that followed.
“We sent a very strong legal letter saying we’re going to sue the school district because this is a First Amendment right of school students,” says the attorney.
“In order to prohibit students from doing anything at schools, you have to show that somehow it’s going to cause disruption or reasonably forecast it’s going to cause disruption,” he explains. “They couldn’t show that here — so once the lawyer for the school board looked at the issue, they knew that school officials were wrong.”
Whitehead tells OneNewsNow that wearing the T-shirt is one way for students who agree with Johnathon Kinney to express their free-speech rights.
“On the front it says ‘Virginity Rocks!’ — and on the back it says ‘I’m loving my wife and I haven’t met her yet,’” he shares. “It’s a pretty radical message in a school system where there are virtually no morals.”
Whitehead says he is pleased that school officials have recognized their error and have agreed to respect the student’s First Amendment rights by allowing him to wear his T-shirt to school.
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I disagree with the student. The back of his shirt claims he hasn’t yet met his wife. Maybe he has and he just doesn’t yet know it. Stranger things have happened.
Wait! He’s in 7th grade? Has he even gone through puberty yet?!?! I’m all for free speech for students, but I wonder if this kid will be singing the same tune in high school.
@Heidi
Why does it matter what he’ll be saying in high school? Free speech is free speech. An extension of that logic is that no one would be allowed to say anything because they might change their mind at some future point.
Norrie,
I agree with the free speech piece, although wonder if you’d be so supportive if his message had been the opposite one! I support allowing kids the freedom to express themselves as they are, after all, learning how to be citizens in the marketplace of ideas. I was just making a small joke, which apparently, you didn’t get. Sigh.
Indeed, I did not get that it was supposed to be a joke. Your comment really sounded as though he should have been less vocal because (a) he’s so young, and (b) he may eventually change his mind. Neither reason holds water.
However, yes, I would be supportive of his free speech if he’d been saying the opposite thing. If you’re not in favor of free speech when you don’t agree with what’s being said, you’re not in favor of it at all.
Then we are in agreement and there is no controversy. I’m not sure I understand how you read those things into my comment, but hey, communication is not always a clear path from “speaker” to “listener.” No harm, no foul.