The Alliance Defending Freedom is representing a student whose drama club production was not allowed to be shown unless he agreed to “dumb down” its Christian message, the group said Wednesday.
In a letter last week to the drama instructor at Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina, the alliance recounted that the instructor had refused to allow a production sponsored by the drama club unless its student creator minimized the religious content so it wasn’t “obvious”:
You explained (1) that this content could anger taxpayers, prompting lawsuits; (2) that you did not want anyone to feel “offended” (although you apparently had no such concerns when the drama club sponsored productions that included rape and incest this year); and (3) that this production would violate the First Amendment if it included religious content.
The alliance then goes into Supreme Court precedent on religious speech and viewpoint discrimination, particularly a 1995 case that said the University of Virginia couldn’t withhold student activity fees from funding a publication dedicated to “evangelizing students to become Christians.”
It also called the instructor “hypocritical” for saying “several times” the Christian production could be offensive while greenlighting productions that discuss rape and incest, and rebuked his apparent claim that the Establishment Clause blocks the school from supporting a religious message.
Read the full alliance press release here and letter to the instructor here.
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