School administrators in Montana agreed that Bozeman High School’s chapter of Fellowship of Christian Athletes violated the school’s anti-discrimination policy against the LGBTQ and so they decided to discriminate against Christians in the name of anti-discrimination.
Painted as heroes of inclusion in The Bozeman Daily Chronicle, four mean-spirited girls repeatedly complained to faculty and eventually the Bozeman school board that their Christian classmates think differently on religious issues. Apparently brainwashed either by fascist-leaning parents or by the public school system itself, Maggie Callow, Katherine Callow, Esmie Hurd and Kate Bick – blissfully unaware of the right to religion and free speech granted in the First Amendment supersedes local school board policies, demanded their Christian classmates be prohibited from peaceful assembly on school grounds.
The four girls demanded this first of the club’s faculty adviser, then two principals, and ultimately the school board and superintendent. Their chief complaint is that a purity pledge is required of the Christian club’s leaders which forbids both homosexuality and heterosexual sex outside of marriage. This, the girls argued, conflicts with highschool’s motto of, “acceptance, respect, and integrity.”
The principals told the girls that there had been no complaint from anyone that the Fellowship of Christian Athletes club had discriminated against anyone. Therefore, they presumed, this wasn’t a problem. The young women, intent on signaling their virtue before the world and on taking newspaper photos as though they were heroes of inclusivity, continued to fight for religion-based discrimination against their peers.
The superintendent of Bozeman schools, Bob Connors, said Tuesday that an attorney with the Montana School Boards Association, “advised the school district that the FCA’s national mission statement does violate the Bozeman School District’s discrimination policy.”
It is unknown whether or not the attorney considered that the school district’s discrimination policy violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The FCA chapter was given two options by the school board. They could “change its name and continuing as an inclusive Christian club,” (in other words, change their religion) or stay as FCA but become an unofficial club that would not be recognized by the school, allowed space in a school publication, or mention in announcements.
One of the discriminatory girls’ mothers told the Bozeman newspaper, “They’re not anti-Christian or against kids having a safe place at school to share their faith together.”
Of course, they are anti-Christian and against kids having a safe place at school to share their faith. It just so happens that the Christian faith is against homosexuality, and the girls demanded – and received – a prohibition against their peers’ religious expression.
Essentially, the arguments from the anti-Christian side is that students have a right to religion, so long as religion agrees with school board policy. That is not how Constitutional rights work.
A large increase of students later attended the FCA event in Bozeman, demonstrating support for religious freedom among locals there.
The Alliance Defending Freedom has sued schools in the past – as early as 2006 – when they denied inclusion to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
According to the Alliance Defending Freedom, “FCA has the legal right to meet on high school and college campuses across the country where other student-led groups meet as well. Students have religious rights to FCA meetings on many campuses around the country.“
FCA has been sued repeatedly since 2018 by students and faculty alleging discrimination. A Mormon student sued FCA for not allow them in a position of leadership because it violated FCA’s bylaws (the C in FCA stands for Christian). The court dismissed the lawsuit.
It’s not open-minded or inclusive to ask for discrimination of people based on their religion. It is the right of students to be anti-homosexuality, just as its the right of students to be anti-murder or anti-theft. If the school board cannot demonstrate actual discrimination is being done by the FCA club (which is more than that they hold a contrarian opinion on the definition of sin) then the only ones discriminating are the school administrators and these poor young socially-engineered women who were never educated on Constitutional rights.
