{"id":289,"date":"2010-06-04T10:27:34","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T10:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lynnvsekulow\/2010\/06\/jay-you-are-right.html"},"modified":"2010-06-04T10:27:34","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T10:27:34","slug":"jay-you-are-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2010\/06\/jay-you-are-right.html","title":{"rendered":"Jay: You Are Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jay, you were certainly right to support a student’s right to wear a rosary in spite of a public school’s “anti gang symbol” policy–and indeed to challenge the facial constitutionality of the school’s fundamentally flawed approach to restricting First Amendment rights of students. My position on this was sufficiently “odd” that I notice that the conservative Washington Times <\/u>newspaper did a feature piece<\/a> on it.<\/p>\n

Curiously, though, this incident is symptomatic of many Americans’ failure to look at root causes of problems while trying to locate cheap (and often unconstitutional) pseudo-solutions.  Other schools with gang problems have tried to bar all blue and red clothing (Crips and Bloods “colors”) but then found that actual gang members substituted different colors or established new symbols.<\/p>\n


\nI would place into the same “simple” category efforts by Religious Right advocates who seek to return some form of government-endorsed prayer or other religious activities to public schools.  These are people like David Barton<\/a> who find no problems with religiously focused activities at assemblies or official student-led prayers at graduations, pep rallies and athletic events.  The argument usually runs like this: statistically, we had fewer out of wedlock births in 1945 than in 2005 and since we had prayer in schools in 1945, we should return prayer to prevent pregnancies.<\/p>\n

This country needs to accept the truth of H.L.Mencken’s famous comment: “There is always any easy solution to every problem- neat, plausible and wrong”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jay, you were certainly right to support a student’s right to wear a rosary in spite of a public school’s “anti gang symbol” policy–and indeed to challenge the facial constitutionality of the school’s fundamentally flawed approach to restricting First Amendment rights of students. My position on this was sufficiently “odd” that I notice that the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,139,36,97,11],"tags":[336,395,74,51,67,337],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constitutional-law","category-first-amendment","category-free-speech","category-prayer","category-public-schools","tag-david-barton","tag-first-amendment","tag-free-speech-2","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-rosary-beads"],"yoast_head":"\nJay: You Are Right - Lynn v. Sekulow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2010\/06\/jay-you-are-right.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jay: You Are Right - Lynn v. Sekulow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jay, you were certainly right to support a student’s right to wear a rosary in spite of a public school’s “anti gang symbol” policy–and indeed to challenge the facial constitutionality of the school’s fundamentally flawed approach to restricting First Amendment rights of students. 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An accomplished speaker and lecturer, Lynn has appeared frequently on television and radio broadcasts to offer analysis of First Amendment issues. News programs on which Lynn has appeared include PBS's \"NewsHour,\" NBC's \"Today Show,\" Fox News Channel's \"O'Reilly Factor,\" ABC's \"Nightline,\" CNN's \"Crossfire,\" CBS's \"60 Minutes,\" MSNBC's \"Countdown with Keith Olbermann,\" Fox News Channel's \"Hannity & Colmes,\" ABC's \"Good Morning America,\" CNN's \"Larry King Live\" and the national nightly news on NBC, ABC and CBS. On the radio, Lynn serves as host of \"Culture Shocks,\" a daily look at various issues affecting society and the culture. In the 1990s he served for two years as regular co-host of \"Pat Buchanan and Company\" and after that did a weekly syndicated radio program, \"Review of the News,\" with Col. Oliver North. Lynn is a regular guest on nationally broadcast radio programs, including National Public Radio's \"All Things Considered,\" \"Morning Edition\" and \"Talk of the Nation,\" as well as having appeared on national networks such as CBS Radio, CNN Radio, ABC Radio and AP Radio. Lynn began his professional career working at the national office of the United Church of Christ, including a two-year stint as legislative counsel for the Church's Office of Church in Society in Washington, D.C. From 1984 to 1991 he was legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2006, Lynn authored Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault On Religious Freedom (Harmony Books). In 2008 he coauthored (with C. Welton Gaddy) First Freedom First: A Citizen's Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State (Beacon Press). Lynn writes frequently on religious liberty issues, and has had essays published in outlets such as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Nation. Lynn also has op-eds published frequently by the McClatchy and Scripps-Howard newspaper chains. A member of the Washington, D.C. and U.S. Supreme Court bar, Lynn earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1978. In addition, he received his theology degree from Boston University School of Theology in 1973. 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