I hated shop class. (Restrain your shock, please.) But I might have hated it less if one of the projects had been a Wiccan altar. Not that I’d even heard of Wicca back then. But I lived in a small town where the only two acceptable religions were Christianity and beer. I would’ve been into it for the shock value. And, frankly, to build something more intriguing than a birdhouse. Like Hank Hill says, birds already have houses – they’re called “nests.”

But a teen in Guthrie Center, Iowa wasn’t in it for the shock value: he’s Wiccan, and wanted to build an altar as an honest-to-Goddess project. That didn’t sit well with Guthrie Center High School shop teacher Dale Halferty, who told the kid to build a birdhouse or some such bullshit instead. Halferty’s now on paid leave while the school aims a fire hose at the ensuing controversy.

State and federal law are clear: students have a right to introduce their religion into school assignments. So Halferty’s on the losing end of this issue. To his credit, he also prevented a Christian student from building a cross – so, kudos for consistency. Unfortunately, Halferty’s motives for creating a secular shop class are, shall we say, less than open-minded:

His viewpoint: “We as Christians don’t get to have our say during school time, so why should he?”

…

“It scares me. I’m a Christian,” he said. “This witchcraft stuff – it’s terrible for our kids. It takes kids away from what they know, and leads them to a dark and violent life. We spend millions of tax dollars trying to save kids from that.”

We DO? There’s a federal anti-Witchcraft program?? Dammit, Obama, I knew you were keeping secrets from me!!

Halferty’s only half the issue. The Wiccan student apparently has infuriated his Christian brethren at the school. At least 70 of these Bob Barr wanna-bes signed a petition saying that witchcraft had no place at Guthrie Center High. Apparently, while everyone in this school takes shop, some students are allowed to pass on History and Civics.

Major-ass religious tolerance kudos, however, go to School Superintendent Steve Smith. He’s not only sticking by the law, but striving to re-educate students (and his wayward shop teacher) about Wicca, which he acknowledges is nonviolent and based on the worship of a sacred Mother Earth. If only we had more administrators like Smith running our nation’s schools.

The teen at the center of this controversy has remained nameless. Which is too bad. He deserves a salute for standing up for his beliefs. When Halferty told him he could build an altar so long as he didn’t bring any religious symbols into shop class, the young adult defied him, and clung to his First Amendment rights to bring a book on Wicca into the classroom. That’s when Halferty lost it, and forbade the project outright. It can be frightening to stand up to authority figures. Congrats, my friend – you done good.

As for Halferty, his attitude from the start has been one of intolerance and bigotry. (His reaction when his student told him about the Wiccan faith: “Ah, you’re kidding, right?”) I’m voting for Superintendent Smith and Principal Gerald Thomas to read him the riot act, send him to diversity training, and order him to keep his disdain to himself. As an American, Halferty has every right to his own beliefs; as a teacher, he has no call demonizing those of his students.

Uncategorized high school, iowa, paganism, religion, religious liberty, spirituality, wicca, witchcraft

The anti-abortion movement is all about protecting the unborn fetus, yes? It’s not about criminalizing motherhood at all, right? Right!

Unless you live in Utah.

Jezebel has the Roundup of Outrage over a bill awaiting the governor’s signature that specifies up to life imprisonment for any woman who commits an “intentional, knowing or reckless act” that causes her pregnancy to terminate. (Abortion is excluded.) The bill is a reaction to a case in which a woman paid a guy $150 to beat her baby out of her.

Nice, right? Two people were involved in that incident, yet Utah fashions a bill that targets the one without a penis.

What’s so monstrous about this law is that, as Dan Savage notes, every miscarriage is a potential criminal case. Savage focuses on the impracticality of this: how do you track every miscarriage in the state when up to 20% of all pregnancies naturally miscarry? I’m thinking more of the impact on the woman herself. Have you ever known a woman who’s miscarried? If so, you know the pain and anguish that accompanies the experience. Can you imagine being a woman (or her partner) and having to endure criminal questioning by the police and state prosecutors during your recovery?

And I don’t give a good goddamn what anyone says – this law criminalizes abortion. If that’s not the intent, then why is the punishment – up to life in prison – equivalent to homicide?

If you think such laws won’t be used maliciously, then you (1) don’t know how power operates, and (2) didn’t hear about Christine Taylor, who narrowly avoided prosecution under Iowa’s feticide law after falling down a flight of stairs. Taylor’s case illustrates my fear: while being treated for her fall, the emotionally distraught mom-to-be confided in a nurse that she didn’t know if she wanted to continue her pregnancy. The nurse told a doctor. The doctor called the cops. Within a span of hours, Iowa had criminalized Taylor’s fears. Taylor avoided prosecution because Iowa’s law only because Iowa’s law applies to the third trimester, and she was at the start of her second.

All that can stop this bill at this point is a veto. It’s on Governor Gary Herbert’s desk. Herbert, while campaigning, made clear that he thinks prosecuting women for “illegal abortions” is just swell:

In concept, I understand what they’re trying to do [with the criminal homicide change]. There should not be the ability of the woman to have gotten off scot-free [when she obtains an illegal abortion]. What we don’t want to do, as we create laws with the best of intentions, is to have some unintended consequences.

We’ll know shortly whether this law falls under Herbert’s “unintended consequences” clause. Wanna take bets?

Uncategorized abortion, christine taylor, dan savage, feminism, health, iowa, miscarriage, reproductive freedom, utah

You cover enough stories about a topic, and you see patterns. Take censorship, where a recurring theme is “The Delayed Freak-Out”: a play or work is used for months or even years without anyone bitching, until – BAM! one or more complaints from a handful of self-appointed moralists send a school district into a lather.

The play “Snow White in The Black Forest” had been performed previously at Robert Frost Elementary in Kirkland, WA before the principal and teachers demanded re-writes. Similarly, no one objected for years when high school students at Fort Madison High School in Fort Madison, Iowa performed Cotton Girls, a play by Scott Tobin in which three 18-year-old girls in 1950s America dish on premarital sex. Two days before a state competition, the school handed the teen actresses a redacted (read: censored) version of the script to perform.

After an outcry, Fort Madison High School relented, and the girls performed the play as written. No victory for free speech here, though. Superintendent Kenneth Marang says that he’d censor all over again, and only reversed course because the girls didn’t have time to memorize the changes. Some legal experts say that the precedent set by Tinker vs. Des Moines could’ve put the school in legal hot water, and that the performance of Cotton Girls outside of the school amounts to an unconstitutional restriction of speech.

Cotton Girls is still under copyright, but Google Books provides the first few pages of the play free of charge. Perhaps it gets racier, but this is the most “offensive” passage to be found:

COLLEEN. Yeah? So, what would you have us doing on graduation night?
BERRY. Things that we should be doing, like normal graduates.
COLLEEN. Like?
BERRY. Like driving around…I don’t know…driving around, drinking, laughing, going all the way with guys.
COLLEEN. Yeah? How’s that idea hit you, Miss? Going all the way with guys? What do you think of that?

MISS. Well, if you want to go driving around, we can go driving around. If you want to mess around with guys, I’ll drop you off.
BERRY. No. Understand that the most important thing is  that the three of us are together.
COLLEEN. That’s right.
MISS. Good then.

If Fort Madison High School officials believe 18-year-olds are talking so euphemistically about sex in the 21st century, perhaps this play isn’t the only thing stuck in the 1950s. Only one of the three girls in the play has “gone all of the way” with a guy. The actresses’ speech coach, Joe Harmon, describes it as a dialogue about sex that doesn’t “romanticize” free conjugation. This play is performed every year by high school girls around the nation; and – shocker! – some have won state competitions with it.

WTF, Iowa? What’s up with you guys and free speech? West Des Moines pulled the same shit several years ago with The Laramie Project. Perhaps the fault lies not in the plays, dear Iowa, but in yourselves, that you are such free speech ninnies.

Uncategorized censorship, education, free speech, iowa, school