stryder2112

According to a recent Washington Post article:

The group in question is the infamous Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) and their afterschool Good News Clubs that have been imbroiled in legal conflicts in the past.

According the the Maryland school attorney in the above Washinton Post article:
According to the Bush administration:


Stryder

hezekiah jones

Good lord. Has this Justice Department lost its frickin' marbles?

The Good News Club is a creepy outfit that lures children with pizza and cookies in order to regale them with lurid tales of its bloodthirsty "god" like so:

I agree that the government should provide some assistance to the criminally insane, but this is not exactly what I have in mind.

simian

If I am not mistaken, what the "good news club" is pushing is pretty much exactly what AG Ashcroft wants....

Simian

simian

The group trying to get the religious materials in does get one point correct:

BS and YMCA are blantently Christian groups (GS is not, as far as I know).

Simian

hezekiah jones

Originally posted by simian
If I am not mistaken, what the "good news club" is pushing is pretty much exactly what AG Ashcroft wants....

If so, then he is one seriously depraved individual, not to mention drunk with unconstitutional power. So the government should be laying these despicable, inhuman guilt trips on five-year-olds, yet a pair of art deco tits are an abomination.

Something is deeply wrong with this man.

Arken

How the HELL is this in ANY WAY legal?!

Jewel

Maybe some concerned parent(s) whose child gets one of those fliers will sue.

Ok, so the fliers may not be any different -- without seeing the various fliers, I have no way of knowing. However, how different are the focus' of each group? Besides, I can almost see making fliers for different after school groups available, but can the government legally force the schools to hand out the fliers for any organization to each and every child??

November 2004 can't get here quick enough for me.

Stephen Maturin

Sure as shit looks that way, doesn't it? Regardless of whether or not CEF has a viable equal access claim, the fact that Justice is supporting these crackpots is unconscionable. If it wasn't official before, it certainly is now: Ashcroft is Totally. Fucking. Insane.

I think the comparison they're trying to draw here is not between the groups themselves but rather between the literature already being distributed and the literature CEF wants to distribute. I haven't seen any of it and thus can't say whether the comparison might be valid. You're probably right, though. Anything's possible, I guess, but it's tough to imagine the BSA or YMCA toning down their Jebusy promotional material for anyone.

I tried hunting down the trial court's opinion and DoJ's brief but didn't have any luck. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

RufusAtticus

Because if the school allows extra-cirricular flyers to be sent home, it can't say that religious clubs are not allowed, no matter how overt they are. Access to students at school is a very complicated subject, that's because courts have found that public schools can act as a public forum; however, there are three different levels at which it can take place: completely open, open but with the school maintaining "editorial" control, and closed (i.e. no public input). Also if a school has an established "completely open" policy than the school can't turn around and change it when someone they don't like wants to take advantage of it. If it has the "editorial" policy, then the criteria needs to be well established (publically available), based on the needs of a education environment, and not conflict with any equal protection rights. In the last year a court upheld a policy in the Columbine rebuilding where although the public could paint on tiles, certain ones, including religious themes would not be put up. It held that because the school district never relinguished editorial control, were up front about their requirements, and such requirements were reasonable for a public school environment, that it was not unconsitutional. However, it appears that in this school flyer case, that the district isn't so lucky.

Arken

Rufus,

There has to be some level of control for these sort of things. Would this school also be legally obligated to allow racist group meeting information for example? Could the KKK recruit their Junior Fascist Brigade or whatever the hell they have at this school too?