Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 3, 1993 TAG: 9301040261
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THE DAMAGE IS IN THE UNDOING
ONE MAY DOUBT that references to Christmas and Easter in Mongtomery County school policies pertaining to paid vacations for 12-month personnel constituted either an establishment of religion or an offense against non-Christians.Nevertheless, the decision of the county School Board last May to replace them by references to winter and spring not only achieved a sensible consistency of terminology with the school calendar, it also made tacit, proper acknowledgment of the fact that under the Constitution the public schools of this country are secular institutions.
Apart from the fact that the Board of Supervisors is not authorized to deal with matters of school policy, what is most disturbing about its requesting the School Board to reconsider the change in terminology is that it endorsed wholly unwarranted demands by persons whose motivation and intent were, unmistakably, to secure the very sort of official, state recognition of a religious sect prohibited by the First Amendment.
Complying with those demands, the Board of Superviosrs, in effect, approved that motivation and adopted that intent. So doing, it failed in its duty as a public body to support a basic condition of religious liberty secured in a fundamental tenet of Constitutional law.
What is most depressing about the board's dereliction is that not one of its members dissented. Had circumstances been more conducive to deliberate, clear-headed judgment, had there been opportunity for other voices to be heard, some supervisors, perhaps, would have come to appreciate the character of the demands made of them and the impropriety of acquiesence.
Some might also have seen through and repudiated specious talk about a Christian nation, claptrap about persons' rights as Christians. It is a pity that apparently no supervisor sought even to postpone action until the matter could be thought through.
The whole substantive matter concerning the language of school policies may, as I see it, be summed up in two propositions: (1) Removal of the sectarian references from those policies - though probably neither morally nor legally required - was, nevertheless, entirely appropriate and desirable; and (2) their restoration - especially in view of what transpired at the Dec. 14 supervisors' meeting - would, given its manifest intent, offend in both respects. WILLIAM H. WILLIAMS BLACKSBURG