Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
An 8th Circuit Court of Appeals panel has upheld a preliminary injunction granted by a lower court preventing the Gideons from being allowed to hand out Bibles to elementary school students during class time:
A federal appeals court today upheld a lower court ruling that prohibited the distribution of Bibles to grade school students in a southern Missouri school district.At issue was a long-held practice at South Iron Elementary School in Annapolis, 120 miles southwest of St. Louis, in which Gideons International representatives came to fifth-grade classrooms and gave away Bibles. A U.S. district judge issued a temporary injunction, and a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis agreed the classroom distribution should be prohibited.
Parents of some students first raised concerns about the Bible distribution in 2005. That fall, the school board voted 4-3 to allow the distribution to continue, even though then-Superintendent Homer Lewis, at the urging of the district's insurance carrier and attorney, suggested an end to the practice. A day after the vote, the Gideons came to the school and distributed Bibles to both fifth-grade classrooms.
So here we have yet another school district ignoring the advice of their own attorneys and plowing ahead with a dubious policy. The problems are obvious: if you're going to allow the Gideons in to distribute Bibles during class time, then you also have to allow other outside groups in to distribute literature. Can you imagine the outcry if a Muslim group came in and distributed copies of the Quran? Or if a freethought group came in and distributed copies of Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell?
As in most such cases, these Christian groups demand for themselves access and privilege that they would go ballistic over if given to any other group. It's just like the situation in Virginia where a Christian group demanded the right to send home flyers for their activities to all students, but when a local freethought group used that same access to promote their own events, all hell broke loose and the school canceled the whole thing.
You can find the ruling in this case here. This ruling is just on the preliminary injunction, the actual case still has to be heard in the district court. What's interesting in this ruling, however, is the same sort of thing I talked about in my YearlyKos speech, school boards ignoring all legal advice and acting in odd ways:
In early 2005, District Superintendent M. Homer Lewis decided to discontinue the District's practice of allowing representatives of Gideons International to distribute Bibles to fifth grade students of the South Iron Elementary School in their classrooms during instructional time. Members of the Ministerial Alliance asked the Board of Education to reconsider this decision. At the Board's February 2005 meeting, Superintendent Lewis told the Board members that "four legal sources" including the school's attorney advised that the practice be discontinued. Lewis stated that if the Board wanted to allow the distribution of Bibles at school, an "open forum" policy could be adopted. The Board voted 4-3 "to pretend this meeting never happened, and to continue to allow the Gideons to distribute Bibles as we have done in the past." However, when the ACLU wrote protesting this decision, the Board voted at its March meeting "to delay the Gideons distribution of Bibles" until the school attorney "gives us his determinations."At the September Board meeting, a representative of the Gideons and two local ministers asked whether the Board would allow the distribution of Gideons Bibles. Superintendent Lewis read letters from the school attorney, the District's insurer, and the ACLU warning that the practice was illegal and could jeopardize the District's insurance coverage. A minister asked whether the Gideons could give Bibles to the children for them to distribute. The Gideons representative advised that Gideons Bibles could not be distributed unless members of the Gideons were present. The Board then voted 4-3 "to allow the Gideons to come in and distribute Bibles to the 5th graders." The school attorney wrote the Board urging it to reconsider this decision. Superintendent Lewis resigned later that month, citing this issue. The Board nonetheless declined to reconsider the issue at its October 3, 2005, meeting. On the afternoon of October 4, a school day, two representatives of the Gideons came to the elementary school and distributed Gideons Bibles to fifth graders. The school principal accompanied the Gideons to the two fifth grade classrooms and observed the distribution.
I think this illustrates, once again, the difference between mundane ignorance and virulent ignorance. If the school board merely had mundane ignorance of what the law said, that would have been solved when their own attorney and attorneys for their insurance company informed them that A) they were gonna lose if it went to court and B) that they would have to pay the full cost of the lawsuit because by ignoring the advice of their attorney they void their coverage.
But that was not enough to penetrate their ignorance. The same exact thing happened in Dover and the school board not only went ahead anyway, but they acted as though they hadn't even been informed of what was likely to happen. That's why Heather Geesey could tell a reporter, "We are not doing to be sued. It's not going to be a problem. I have confidence in the district's lawyers." The same lawyers that had just finished telling the school board that they were going to get sued and they were going to lose.
All of this reminds me of an old Bill Hicks routine about a drought in LA and a news report that said, "We got rain yesterday, but it didn't help the drought." Hicks says, "If rain does not stop your drought....you're screwed. There's no other solution coming down the pike. There's no anti-drought gel being developed by DuPont, water was the #1 answer. What would solve a drought? Water? Bzzzt. Wrong. You ain't from around here, are you boy? Water don't solve no LA drought. Unless it's Evian."
If knowledge doesn't solve your ignorance problem, you're in bad shape. And that's the difference between mundane and virulent ignorance. Knowledge and information will cure mundane ignorance; it won't do anything about virulent ignorance.
Comments
You can bet your ass that if my son ever comes home with a Bible he got from school, there is going to be hell to pay. (pardon the pun)
I think that I would go to every book store in the area and buy enough copies of the "The God Delusion" to pass out to the students in return.
Turnabout's fair play, right?
Posted by: Tanya | August 25, 2007 9:47 AM
Jeeze, the superintendent protested it as well and resigned over the issue. Still going ahead with it in the light of all of that advice? That's mega-stupid ... magical mystery stupid.
Posted by: dogmeatib | August 25, 2007 10:17 AM
I think calling what they did a kind of ignorance is a misuse of the word "ignorance". It wasn't that they were ignorant of the law: their lawyers had just told them exactly what they needed to do to comply with the law. They simply chose to disregard that advice, and then lied about what knowledge they did have.
Excuse me, I mean they voted 4-3 to lie about what they knew. That isn't ignorance it's lying, and if they try to pull this shit in court it will probably be perjury.
It seems much more likely to me that they assumed Jesus would protect them despite the fact that they knowingly broke the law. It's just "man's" law after all, so who cares? It's not like they'll wind up in hell for all eternity for braking man's law, and they might even save a few souls along the way. That's why they (and probably Heather Geesey) could lie about what they knew and continue merrily on their way. Not because they didn't know their actions were illegal, but because they simply didn't care.
I think calling this kind of careless disregard for the law and for the school districts resources a kind of ignorance, (even a particularly bad kind of ignorance) really understates the immoral and illegal nature of their actions.
Posted by: Leni | August 25, 2007 10:32 AM
A very simple solution already exists...parents who dig the Gid Bible thing can take their kids out of school and spend their own money (no...no vouchers..pay your damn taxes) to set up a private christian schools to inculcate their kiddies.
Posted by: PalMD | August 25, 2007 10:33 AM
Tanya, in that eventuality, make sure you let us know - I suspect many of us would gladly kick in a little to help out.
Posted by: BobApril | August 25, 2007 11:30 AM
Can I distribute copies of the Necronomicon?
Posted by: Chuck C | August 25, 2007 2:27 PM
I remember well when the Gideons came to our school back in the sixties. I was in sixth grade at the time. I'd never heard of the Gideons as a society, though my brother had a toy lion he'd named Gideon for some reason. (I seem to recall that Gideon was a villain in some book we'd been reading at the time.) The whole visit was conducted under a veil of secrecy, and we were simply told that we were going to receive a gift of some kind from a benevolent group that took it upon itself to visit schools. Our class formed a line and was conducted to a room adjacent to the office through a door that was normally kept locked. We filed past a table with boxes on it; one of the boxes was open and contained small books of some kind. A person--I seem to recall that he had horns, scaly skin, and a tail of some sort--handed each of us one of the small volumes as we went by. Mine was a KJV New Testament with the Psalms appended; I assume the others were the same. On the one hand--I had just come through fifth grade under a hysterical fundamentalist teacher who used to preach to us for the first hour of each day about the evils of liberalism, evolution, alcohol, and sitting so that one part of the body rests upon another--I was inclined to hand it back with a comment such as "Your childish superstitions are of no interest to me." On the other--well, I recalled something my mother had taught me before unleashing me on the school system. When things get weird, she said, imagine that you are a Martian anthropologist come to study the cultures of Earth. Imagine that you have been invited to take part in one of their ceremonies--and then observe it. I said to myself that this is a gift, that this item they were giving me was precious to them, and that even though I didn't value it, I should accept it in the spirit in which it had been given. After all, when my cat left a dead mouse in my bed, I always assumed that she meant well, that she was giving me something of value to her--it was a sacrifice on her part, after all. She liked eating mice, even if I didn't. So gingerly I accepted the dead mouse the Gideons had offered me, and went back to our classroom with the rest. We were told to say nothing to anybody about the event--and as far as I can recall, this is the first time in some forty-five years or so that I ever did say anything about it.
Out in the schoolyard I looked the book over. (I suppose this was during recess.) There was something in it about Jesus cursing a fig tree that sent me into hysterical laughter. My friends, for some reason, didn't see anything funny about it.
Posted by: sbh | August 25, 2007 5:28 PM
SBH - wow. I bet they'd have a little more trouble with that today. I taught my kids from an early age that if any adult tells them ANYTHING is a secret from their parents, they should come tell us right away. I hadn't intended that to catch Gideons...but I suspect it would have worked.
Posted by: BobApril | August 25, 2007 6:49 PM
"You can bet your ass that if my son ever comes home with a Bible he got from school, there is going to be hell to pay. (pardon the pun)I think that I would go to every book store in the area and buy enough copies of the "The God Delusion" to pass out to the students in return. Turnabout's fair play, right?"
That is your right! But the Gideons can stand accross from the school at the end of the school day and hand bibles to kids passing them. I think it was wrong for them to enter the school or any school unless it is a Christian private School and they are invited.
And if my child would come home with a copy of "The God Delusion", I would probably do the same as you would with the Bible, I would throw "The God Delusion" in the trash! Although I have read it, but wouldn't recommend it to children or anyone!
Charles
Posted by: Charles Sawyer | August 26, 2007 1:36 PM
The responsible thing to do, Charles, would be to recycle it... after you kept it for evidence in the lawsuit you'd be filing the next day.
Posted by: Leni | August 26, 2007 2:42 PM
Martyrdom has always appealed to devout Christians, and it's become so much more pleasant, too. No more getting hung on the cross, beheaded, or shot through with arrows. Just get sued by the ACLU, and, voila, martyrdom! And you can go home to a nice dinner afterward.
Of course the school board knew they were breaking the law. They aren't ignorant. They want that lawsuit so they can polish their haloes and talk about how they're persecuted for their beliefs. The fact that their illegal actions, not their beliefs, triggered the lawsuit will not, needless to say, be mentioned.
Posted by: hoary puccoon | August 27, 2007 7:05 AM
The fact that their illegal actions, not their beliefs, triggered the lawsuit will not, needless to say, be mentioned.
I bet it will, in the next election campaign. I know if I were running against one of them, I'd be sure to bring up the massive waste of scarce funding fighting a court battle that was lost from square one...
Posted by: BobApril | August 27, 2007 8:47 AM
Oh, BobApril, the fact that it's a losing battle doesn't matter to the faithful. It's a Battle For JesusTM, and that's all that matters.
Posted by: stogoe | August 27, 2007 11:17 AM