News-Record.com

That squeaky whiny high pitched voice made me turn off the sound before two minutes had elasped -

I thought they cut her off because she started talking about her gaping hole filled with family and friends.

My, but what passes for intellectual discourse on this blog..

Nancy, I would love to see the court's reasoning. A lot of court decisions are made available over the internet, and I find that reading them isn't such a mystifying process as one might think.

IMO, the school officials would be correct in shutting down someone who stopped a speech to the school and started in on topics that she wasn't asked to speak on. Had she started advertising for a local car dealer, or started giving a political diatribe, no one would have objected to having her shut down. She was trying to take advantage of a captive audience who wasn't there to listen to her religious opinions. If she wants to preach that much, she'll be completely free to stand on a street corner and shout that message to passing traffic to her little heart's content.

Sorry, Namtac, but for once, I have to disagree with you on this. Giving one's opinions is what a valedictorian's speech is about. If every speech had to be pre-screened so objectionable opinions could be removed, what would be the point? The school administrators might as well write all the speeches themselves. As long as the girl wasn't speaking as a representative of the school, putting forth official school policy, I don't see where the separation of church and state was violated. Judging from its reaction, the audience was overwhelmingly in favor of hearing the rest of the speech. What if she had preached humanism? Would the mike have been turned off? Somehow, I doubt it. If she had given a "political diatribe," it wouldn't have been shut off unless it was a conservative diatribe. Let's be real here. Whatever one's opinion of Christianity, its free and open expression in public schools is frowned on at best. In fact, preaching Christianity, or practicing democracy, in school is a sort of secular heresy. That's no way to teach our American tradition of free speech. Censorship so blatant should be met with just the response it got, and we should all join in, whatever our religious opinions. After all, it could be our opinions next.

"Sorry, Namtac, but for once, I have to disagree with you on this."

I think I'll survive. :)

I haven't heard the recording, and I haven't read the court's reasoning on their decision. So in lieu of that, I gave my general opinion on the bit of the story I've seen so far. The nice thing about differences of opinion here is that they don't lead to a loss of respect. I hope.