School Official Calls Group's Biblically-Based Handouts 'Highly Offensive'
by Jim Brown
January 26, 2004
(AgapePress) - A North Carolina school superintendent is condemning a pro-family group and its leader for handing out Christian literature on abortion, homosexuality, and Islam.
Chief Harold Winkler of Cabarrus County Schools recently complained to the Charlotte Observer newspaper that demonstrators from Pastor Flip Benham's pro-family organization, Operation Save America, had handed out "highly offensive" material in front of Concord High School. He says Benham and his group want to deny freedom of religion to certain students in his district.
Benham and other Christian activists did recently gather in front of Concord High School and hand out brochures titled "Abortion is Murder, Homosexuality is Sin, and Islam is a Lie." But the pastor says his group was not trying to intimidate anyone, but rather that the OSA members were merely trying to share Christ with unbelievers.
The North Carolina pastor believes the school superintendent has an axe to grind. "Mr. Winkler, for whatever reason, has just a great antipathy toward Christianity," Benham says, "but we found that true in so many school districts. If one comes out as a Christian and begins to share that truth at the school, he instantly is branded as a bigot that will accept no other religion."
Concord High School recently suspended a Christian guidance counselor with pay for giving Bible verses to a student who asked questions about homosexuality. Benham contends that his group's activity was an attempt to share biblical truth at a school that has a serious problem with homosexual activity among the faculty.
"Mr. Winkler has a very willing instrument in the Charlotte Observer that has done everything that it possibly can to paint us into some light where we're wild-eyed lunatics, demanding that everybody believe as we do," Benham says. "And nothing could be further from the truth."
The pro-life spokesman feels Winkler's charge unfairly characterizes the OSA as raving religious radicals who willfully trample others' rights. "Our group is not like the Ayatollah, who tries to force his dogma down your throat," he says. "Instead we represent a Jesus who says, 'Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'"
Winkler told the press that he passionately disagrees with some of the OSA's philosophy and that he felt compelled to protest the group's actions, particularly for the sake of the school's non-Christian students.
