{"id":4563,"date":"2006-11-17T08:24:06","date_gmt":"2006-11-17T08:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/heads-up-and-out.html"},"modified":"2006-11-17T08:24:06","modified_gmt":"2006-11-17T08:24:06","slug":"heads-up-and-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/heads-up-and-out.html","title":{"rendered":"Heads up and out"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dimitri Cavalli, in today’s WSJ:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The town of Bridgeport, W.Va. (pop. 7,300), recently became the site of the latest skirmish in the culture wars. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the West Virginia chapter of the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of two plaintiffs against the county board of education and other local officials. The suit alleged that Bridgeport High School violated the Constitution\u2019s Establishment Clause by hanging a copy of Warner Sallman\u2019s famous portrait, \u201cHead of Christ,\u201d on a wall outside the principal\u2019s office.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read Cavalli’s piece to see why the picture was there, for how long, what attempts were made to compromise (rejected by the ACLU), what other religious symbols were in the school (a 2-foot statue of Buddha; ignored by the ACLU), and so on. <\/p>\n

Cavalli’s final point is on the financial burden of these cases:<\/p>\n

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There is another aspect of this case that deserves attention. In federal lawsuits against state officials that allege violations of constitutional rights, defendants are required to pay the plaintiff\u2019s attorney fees if they lose the suit. In this case, Americans United explicitly warned the Bridgeport school board that, if it lost the case, it would be paying over a substantial amount of money to its own lawyers and those of the ACLU. Thus there is a strong\u2014and unjustly one-sided\u2014financial incentive on the part of many public institutions to cave in to the demands of groups such as the ACLU and Americans United and settle such suits.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dimitri Cavalli, in today’s WSJ: The town of Bridgeport, W.Va. (pop. 7,300), recently became the site of the latest skirmish in the culture wars. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the West Virginia chapter of the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of two plaintiffs against the county board of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHeads up and out - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/heads-up-and-out.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Heads up and out - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dimitri Cavalli, in today’s WSJ: The town of Bridgeport, W.Va. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}