Tenn. City Official: ACLU Picked Wrong School District for Anti-Christian Attack
by Allie Martin
October 24, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Hundreds of people are expected to turn out for a prayer rally tonight in one Tennessee town to show support for a school district that has been sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The Wilson County School District is being sued for allegedly promoting religious activities at Lakeview Elementary School in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. This evening's prayer rally at the school was organized by Mount Juliet Commissioner Glen Linthicum. He considers the gathering a way for the community to take a stand against the ACLU, which is suing on behalf of an anonymous family that is upset over, among other things, prayers around the school flagpole, a National Day of Prayer event, and a group of parents who pray regularly for students.
Linthicum thinks many of the people in his community were, like himself, aware of liberal attacks like this from a distance without feeling really involved -- until now. "We watched these issues on TV; we watched them on the national news, where they were going on in California, going on in New York," he says. But this time the issue "turned up in our backyard."
And that proximate challenge is what has "really gotten the people in Tennessee and middle Tennessee really involved in this, and myself included," the city commissioner observes. "If this is in our backyard," he says, "we can no longer be silent or be that 'silent majority.'"
Possibly, Linthicum speculates, the American Civil Liberties Union and its attorneys decided to attack his community's schools because the group saw it as easy prey. "Maybe they thought that the Wilson County School District would roll over in fright to the big, bad ACLU," he says. "We are a small community just outside of Nashville."
However, the commissioner believes the ACLU miscalculated -- and its lawsuit, he contends, is frivolous. "I think they chose an area that they thought would just roll over for them, and they chose wrong," Linthicum says. "I really do."
The Alliance Defense Fund is defending the Wilson County School District against the ACLU's legal action. The liberal group's lawsuit alleges that a student at Lakeview Elementary School suffered damages from the school's alleged endorsement and promotion of a Prayer at the Flagpole event, a National Day of Prayer event, the activities of a 'Praying Parents' group, teacher-led classroom prayers, and a Christian theme and overtly religious songs at a Christmas program.
Linthicum's response to these claims is not a denial but an assertion, that Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu students have "a constitutional right to pray or to read their scriptures at school on their own time, but so do Christians!" He says it is "outrageous" that the ACLU would seek to ban Christianity from the school grounds.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
