Liberty Counsel Clears Way for 'Jesus' in Valedictorian's Address
by Allie Martin and Jody Brown
May 27, 2005
(AgapePress) - A valedictorian at one Wisconsin high school did not have to hide her faith in Christ when it came to her recent graduation speech.When Miriam Cattanach, valedictorian of the Class of 2005 of Spencer High School, submitted her graduation speech to school officials, they said any reference to religion, God, or Jesus must go. Miriam, a committed Christian, said in her speech that Christ is the hope for the future. But when administrators censored her speech, her family contacted Liberty Counsel in Florida.
After the legal group got involved, the school changed its tune, says Liberty Counsel (LC) president Mat Staver. "We wrote a letter to the school authorities and talked to them about what the Constitution says. We simply said that if they insist on censoring this religious message of her graduation speech, that it would be unconstitutional -- and we would have to file suit in court," Staver reports. "After considering this, they changed their mind."
That permitted Miriam to share her testimony during her speech on May 21 -- which was presented free of censorship. LC quotes the senior's comments from her speech:
"There is Someone Who can make the journey seem a lot easier. His name is the Lord Jesus Christ," the young woman told her classmates. "He is the ultimate source of success, love, laughter, dreams, and the future. He is the Creator of the universe who longs to have a relationship with you."
Mat Staver | |
As he has stated numerous times before, Staver explains that students and invited guests do not lose their constitutional rights when they step behind a podium -- a fact evidently lost on some school administrators."This really goes to show you that oftentimes these school administrators get the wrong impression," the attorney shares. "They assume that the safe road is to censor prayer or religious messages. In fact, it's unconstitutional to do so.
"While the school should not either force prayer, on the other hand they should not stop prayer or religious messages," he continues. "They ought to remain neutral." And students honored as valedictorian or salutatorian, he says, should be free to "share their gratitude to God" with their fellow students and family members.
That message, it seems, is not clear to some people. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit to prevent prayer at a Pennsylvania high school's graduation ceremony on Saturday (May 28). According to Associated Press, Keystone School District officials had already agreed to a prayer ban, but the ACLU sued because it said some in the community were hoping that school officials would allow prayer anyway.
An ACLU official says the negotiated settlement, which was signed by a federal judge, also prohibits prayer at Keystone school board meetings "that inevitably references Jesus."
