Quoting Rick Duncan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
What if a teacher walks into class, sees the display, and states that he does not agree with its posting in his classroom. May the school discipline him for merely making it clear that the display is the message of the school board as opposed to that of the teacher himself?
It be interesting to speculate, too, whether gay students would then have some sort of disparate-impact and/or harassment claim (against the teachers individually? the school board?) under the state or local non-discrimination ordinances (there is no federal gay rights law, of course).
I also think there is a non-constitutional religious liberty policy issue when teachers are required to teach under a banner that violates their sincerely held religious beliefs?
Rick, the problem with this, is seems to me (and like yours, this isn't a legal argument, but a practical one), is that the vast majority of religious believers (of all types) probably encounter, in their daily work lives, any number of policies, things they are expected to do, colleagues they are expected to put up with, etc., that they could claim violate some sincerely held religious belief of theirs, if they insisted on being strict and literal about it. But most people do what they need to do to get by each day, if for no other reason than they've absorbed the American ethos of live-and-let-live pluralism.
Not long ago, civic-republican oriented conservatives wrote books with titles like "The Culture of Complaint," about how too many Americans had become whiny, oversensitive rights-claimers to the exclusion of larger notions of duty and citizenship. I confess, the idea of teachers taking offense and asserting "rights" against policies that are intended to help their own students learn in safer and more effective environments strikes me as being just as regrettable.
Steve Sanders _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
