quote:

ORIGINAL: Jhud

I don't know if a lawsuit is neccesary, but the reality is if the teacher had said similar things about any other group (blacks, Jews, gays) a lawsuit would be unneccesary because the school would have already removed him from a teaching position forthwith.

quote:

I was thinking along the same lines until I read the actual complaint filed with the court and saw some of the additional things the teacher was sayign to the class. I now am firmly behind the student.

quote:

Is the complaint on the net somewhere?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marcus.

Could you cut and paste some of the info not available on the open sources?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jhud

What I find interesting about this case is that the typical secularist argument against a teacher praying, or Bible reading, or openly discussing their faith is that they hold a position of authority over a student and that doing any of those things would constitute coercion.

However, when a teacher speaks against those things, secularists argue that it merely provides "a basic starting point to provoke discussion"

Yeah, right.

quote:

Exactly. That is why this is being prosecuted as an establishment clause case, even though it isn't religion, but rather, irreligion, that is being established by the government authority.

quote:

15. Dr. Corbett made the following statements during one single class period [my emphasis], October 19, 2007, while teaching the Advanced Placement European History lass at Capistrano Valley High School:
a. “How do you get the peasants to oppose something that is in their best
interest? Religion. You have to have something that is irrational to
counter that rational approach….[W]hen you put on your Jesus glasses,
you can't see the truth.”
b. “Now, the Boy Scouts have said, unless you're willing to love God, and
unless you're willing to – unless you're not gay, um – they are saying,
being gay excludes you. Not believing God or not professing a belief in
God also excludes you….But you see, until they started these rules,
Boy Scouts used to – or Boy Scout troops usually met at schools, and
places like that, parks, government buildings. They can't do that
anymore. They can't do that anymore, because now they are, in their
own mind, a homophobic and a racist organization. It's that
simple….It’s call[ed] separation of church and state. The Boy Scouts
can’t have it both ways. If they want to be an exclusive, Christian
organization or an exclusive, God-fearing organization, then they can’t
receive any more support from the state, and shouldn’t.”
c. “People – in the industrialized world the people least likely to go to
church are the Swedes. The people in the industrialized world most
likely to go to church are the Americans. America has the highest
crime rate of all industrialized nations, and Sweden has the lowest. The
next time somebody tells you religion is connected with morality, you
might want to ask them about that. Um, and let’s see. Is there
something else on that? No.”
d. “U.S. regulators – U.S. regulators say they added new warnings about
the potential risks of sudden hearing loss for men who are using Viagra,
Cialis, or Levitra. So what they have been be telling you all these
years, that you'll go blind, isn't true; but you will go deaf. And now
what I think – some Canadian has to get this, but I have a suspicion, if
you went down the list of side effects, of possible side effects, of this
drug, you could – you could really – I mean, somebody who had all the
side effects would be pretty fun. I mean, there is, after all, the fourhour
thing. So, you know, you know, if you run into somebody who is,
you know, deaf and whose pants felt stiff, he's probably using the
drug….They're happy, but they're deaf.
e. “‘After an outbreak of pregnancies among middle school girls,
education officials in the city [of Brooklyn, Maine] had decided to
make birth control pills available at the middle school health
centers….’ [O]ther people say, you know, we shouldn’t be teaching
our kids how to have sex safely. We should be teaching our kids
abstinence. Well, we know abstinence doesn’t work. And we know
one other thing; and that is, once people become sexually active, they
often don’t stop for, like, 40 or 50 years. I mean, generally, when you
start you don’t, like, have a conversion and try to become re-virginized,
you know. It’s not going to happen.”
UNKNOWN STUDENT: “Isn’t it sort of like to urge more girls to have
sex?”
DR. CORBETT: …Let’s say – and there is a lot of reasons women take
birth control pills, including just, you know, organizing a period so that
it happens – instead of randomly, that it happens at the right time. So,
you know, let's say, for the sake of argument, that there is a girl in here
that a doctor gave birth control pills to because she needed to regulate
her cycle. Girls, as soon as you start taking those pills, at the moment,
you're going to be going, ‘Whoopie. Time to have sex.’ I don't think
so. You know, so the argument that it's just going to make them have
sex is just absurd. If that were true, girls, then the first time somebody
takes you out on a date and halfway through the date pulls out a
condom, and says, ‘Hey, we're safe. Let's go,’ all the girls would say,
‘Sure.’ But they're not gonna say that, you know. Um, now, uh, you
know, the arguments – the way it works is, parents have to give
permission for their child to go to the health center. But they do not
have to have parental permission to get the birth control pills. And, in
fact, it's confidential….So, you know, some parents are objecting,
saying it's taking too much power away from the parents. Parents are
pretty irresponsible. And so is the Bush administration with its
abstinence policy. Spending billions of dollars on something they
know doesn't work, wonderful. Wonderful. Idiotic. Um, birth control
pills for middle school girls. My mother has a solution to this problem.
And I'm sure the girls were careful. My mother thinks that all the boys,
when they reach puberty, should be given a reversible vasectomy….”
f. “….[C]onservatives don't want women to avoid pregnancies. That's
interfering with God's work. You got to stay pregnant, barefoot, and in
the kitchen and have babies until your body collapses. All over the
world, doesn't matter where you go, the conservatives want control over
women's reproductive capacity. Everywhere in the world. From
conservative Christians in this country to, um, Muslim fundamentalists
in Afghanistan. It's the same. It's stunning how vitally interested they
are in controlling women.”
g. “Um, freedom of expression, freedom of censorship. It just makes it a
major literary center of activity. Because religious reforms, now, here –
you know, again, boy, I'll tell you. It does put me in mind of the culture
wars that are going on in the United States today. I mean, here is
Joseph II. He's trying, for example, to end serfdom. Serfdom in which
the peasants, the Serb class, on these estates worked, literally,
property. They had no rights to speak of at all. He doesn't just go that
far. I mean, he tries to get them land. He tries to set them – I mean, um
– he really has the interest of this class of people at heart, and the – the
reforms that he makes really are going to make the lives of these
peasants massively better. So why do the peasants oppose him?
…Because he also tried to reform religion, and the peasants love their
church. It's the same thing here. You know, you go down to Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi, all these states that are as red as they could
possibly be, as right-wing Republican as you could possibly be. When
you first present these people with the economic policies of the
Democratic party, they are all Democrats. Virtually all the social
programs, they like. They lead the Democratic party on social issues.
That's it. Social issues, can you imagine what they're saying on Rush
Limbaugh now? About, ‘Middle school people in New England giving
people birth control pills. My God. What next?’ I love Rush
Limbaugh. A fat, pain in the a** liar. And, boy, is he a liar.
Unbelievable. Um, anyway, the guaranteed freedom of religion for
Jewish people, that upset a lot of Catholics, um, Protestants. That upset
a lot of Catholics, trying to get people to tolerate other religions. But,
come on. The church is there. The local priest is there telling them,
‘Joseph II is satanic. He's like those Democrats that will be around in
another 300 years.’”
h. “…If you're poor, and you live in the inner city, um, chances are
actually greater that one parent will be at home, and that you will be
living in an apartment. You guys, most of you, have parents, two
parents, who work. And if you want to smoke a joint, you can walk out
into the backyard, sit down by the swimming pool, and smoke it. You
do not have to worry about some cop driving by and busting you. In
the inner city, you can't smoke with your mom in the apartment, so you
go down to the street corner. There is no place to hide. They get
busted all the time there. Here, you know, the dealers – I'm sure there
are people in here who know people who will sell pot. That's one of the
ironies of teaching here and one of the ironies of our own judicial
system is that – every year I ask my class this question, and every year I
know what the answer is. I say, if – I'm not going to do this. Let's get
that straight. If I made this offer – I am not making this offer. If I
made this offer, and the offer is: The first person who leaves this room
for lunch, who comes back with either alcohol or marijuana will get an
‘A’ for the year. What would I have? Alcohol or pot?
THE CLASS: Pot.
DR. CORBETT: So the illegal substance is more available to you than
the legal substance. Anyway, um, you know, we've had several
presidential commissions look into our judicial system, penal system,
and they've all concluded the same thing: It simply doesn't work. And
the systems in other nations do work. Sweden, for example, the longest
you can spend in prison for a crime – machine-gunned a kindergarten
class – the longest you can spend in prison is 10 years.
UNKNOWN STUDENT: Oh, what?
DR. CORBETT: Why are you outraged by that? They have the lowest
crime rate in the industrialized world. Where would you rather live if
you're worried about crime? Here or there….There, obviously.”
i. “So we know what rehabilitation works and that punishment doesn't,
and yet we go on punishing. It really has a lot to do with these same
culture wars we're talking about. This whole Biblical notion: Sinners
need to be punished. And so you get massively more Draconian
punishment in the South where religion is much more central to society
than you do anyplace else. And, of course, the Southerners get really
upset, as what they see as lenient behavior in the North. You know,
we're going to solve this problem. Except, guess what? What part of
the country has the highest murder rate? The South. What part of the
country has the highest rape rate? The South. What part of the country
has the highest…church attendance? The South. Oh, wait a minute.
You mean there is not a correlation between these things? No, there
isn't. Um, in fact, there is an inverse correlation. In those places where
people go to church the least, the crime was the most. And that's not
just Sweden and the United States. That's Pennsylvania and Georgia.
It's not even true.”

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jhud

One wonders when the guy had time to actually teach history.

He reminds me a lot of a history professor I had in college. First lecture - every problem in the world is the result of Christianity.

quote:

ORIGINAL: gengwall

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jhud

One wonders when the guy had time to actually teach history.

He reminds me a lot of a history professor I had in college. First lecture - every problem in the world is the result of Christianity.

What I find truly ironic is that there is plenty to be said about the influence of Christianity on European history, much of it negative. He could stay totaly on topic and still get in some swipes at formalized religion. Why he instead insists on bludgeoning and indoctrinating kids on his personal, contemporary complaints is mystifying.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jhud
However, when a teacher speaks against those things, secularists argue that it merely provides "a basic starting point to provoke discussion"

quote:

ORIGINAL: iSERVEaJEW
They have made home-schooling in California illegal already,