The cheerleaders of Kountze, Texas are adamant that all they want is to express their faith under the First Amendment, but this is pretty disingenuous. First, their reliance on the First Amendment is cherry-picking both the text1 and the current jurisprudence.2 Second, the context of the actions by the cheerleaders, the school and the community make it clear that what Kountze really wants to is force their faith on anyone who doesn't believe as they do.
Spend any time in this part of Texas and you will be directly asked if you "have accepted Jesus as your personal saviour" by strangers, by people you do business with, by acquaintances. (Hint: "no" is not an acceptable answer.) Fundamental Christianity is on display, in-your-face, unavoidable, and unassailable. People can be quite unpleasant if you are not a Christian. To call someone "un-Christian" is to say they are immoral and possibly even evil. For an independent minded adult, this is exasperating and sometimes uncomfortable. For a child, it is bullying plain and simple.
In other words, the people of Kountze are not interested in tolerance, or respecting other belief systems, or allowing school children to follow their own faith. The people of Kountze believe that their cheerleaders should broadcast Christianity because they believe that Christianity is correct and superior to any other belief system. It does not matter that some of the students at school might be Jewish, or Atheist, or Muslim, or anything else. Those children, and their belief systems, are wrong, and are outsiders. What the community of Kountze really wants is the right to bully kids who are different into falling into line.
Those Kountze cheerleaders are in good company too. Lately, fundamentalist Christian groups have been claiming that they are being "discriminated against" whenever they are prevented from bullying others. Somehow, the request that they don't force others to obey their religion is a persecution. If they aren't allowed to harass other people, or use taxpayer money for their religion, or indoctrinate kids in the classroom, they are the persecuted victims. This is partially because right-wing conservatives are so clever at twisting words and logic to further their goals. They have a long history of altering the accepted meaning of a word and using that altered meaning until it becomes an alternate meaning. Consider the word "life." To you and I this might mean living, or being alive. To the far right, "life" means "anti-abortion." Other words that right-wing conservatives have redefined include "theory," (as in "evolutions is just a"3 ) and "secularism" (now apparently synonymous with "godlessness.")
However, it has become clear that these cries of "discrimination" are not just misuse of words.4 The American Family Foundation recently objected to "Mix-It Up Day," an anti-bullying program in school that encourages kids to interact with kids outside of their social clique. Brian Fischer, speaking for the AFA, said, “Anti-bullying legislation is ... just another thinly veiled attempt to promote the homosexual agenda. No one is in favor of anyone getting bullied for any reason, but these anti-bullying policies become a mechanism for punishing Christian students who believe that homosexual behavior is not something that should be normalized.”5
Notice the wording there. Fischer suggests that Christian students are being punished for their beliefs alone, but the policies the AFA protests are those that govern students behavior, and not their beliefs. He deliberately blurs the distinction between punishing Christian students for believing that homosexual behavior is wrong, and punishing a student for abusing or harrassing other students based on that belief. Of course, most people will not support bullying, but they will support a right to hold a belief, however pernicious and hateful that belief might be.6 The American Family Foundation is defending its right to teach children to that gay students are not normal, and should not be treated as such.
This defense might sound familiar to anyone who has studied Constitutional law. Not too long ago, the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether the government can prohibit certain sex acts between consenting adults.7 The answer was no.8 In a dissent written in his typically snide voice, Justice Antonin Scalia defends the right to deny gay people jobs or apartments:
Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive.
Here is Justice Scalia defending the right to treat gay people with the kind of "moral opprobrium" we reserve for murderers and kitten-torturers:
The Court's opinion contains grim, disapproving hints that Coloradans have been guilty of "animus" or "animosity" toward homosexuality, as though that has been established as un-American. Of course it is our moral heritage that one should not hate any human being or class of human beings. But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible—murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals—and could exhibit even "animus" toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of "animus" at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct.
Again, keep in mind that the belief that gay people are immoral or evil is not at issue. There is no basis in our law or in our society for telling people what to believe or not to believe. What is at issue is how you treat people who believe differently. To be sure, there are Christians who do not believe this way, and people of other faiths who do. Right-wing fundamentalists Christians, however, want the right to treat those people as outsiders, immoral and wrong. They want the right to dictate America's laws and Americans actions based on their religion, because only their religion is right.
This should terrify all of us. Even if you are a Christian, you might not be the right kind of Christian (Roman-Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, and Eastern Orthodox are pretty different after all.) And even if you are not gay, you might not be normal enough for the good people of Kountze (not conservative enough, or too immoral in some way.) What the fundamentalist, conservative Christians in Kountze really want is the right to bully us all.
1 "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
2 Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000)
3 "Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night." —Isaac Asimov
4 a little dry, but interesting: http://post-modernenlightenment.blogspot.com/2011/07/right-wing-language-deconstruction.html
6 Also note this redefinition of a word later in the article: “The reality is we are not a hate group. We are a truth group,” said Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the association. “We tell the truth about homosexual behavior.”
7 More linguistic manipulation: Right-wing conservatives insist on smaller government and personal responsibility except when it comes to gay rights or women's bodies. Or as Jon Stewart put it so elegantly, "I'm not a constitutional scholar, but I'm willing to bet Big Government feels it's biggest when it's inside your anus."
8 Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)