Graduation Speech or Sermon?

Not even a close call. This young woman selfishly turned a public event, paid for by the tax dollars of everyone, into her own private church service.

She knew better. Especially after school officials specifically told her not to do it.

Such arrogance and selfishness doesn't reflect well on the Christian faith.

The First Ammendment is suppose to tie the governmnet out of religion and stripped it of its ability to censor it.

Im sure this school is teaching monkey- turned-into=man evolution. It's the root cause of stupidity in schools today and the main reason why America (liberal part) will be a big casualty of Doomsday.

If America wants to be secure, it should also focus on its own stupidity and not just the stupidity of others like Islamic terrorism coz after all, these Islamic terrorists hate America for its ultra liberalism and sexual promiscuity.

Who would have thought that this kind of censorship would happen in America? I thought these things only happen in godless communist countries.

There is no more difference and God is angry about it. They both (liberal America and communist countries) will be doomed.

This is a free country. If the audience feel "offended", they have the option to just watch the ceiling during her speech. But others would want to hear it. For as long as she is not exceeding her time limit, everything (all topics) should be allowed in her speech.

Will God bless the idiot part of America? Nope. God will burn it.

The girl wants to be very effective in her speech and she thinks that the most effective speech is a sermon.

The best way to learn about gold is to let other people learn how to get it.

The girl is a genius. Sadly for her, the school officails are morons.

How about one set of rules for all. So every graduation speech is emailed for approval to every student and parent. Anything that generates 10% objections is cut out. Ought to keep things short. Liberals can veto God and Christians. Moslems and Jews can veto secular humamism. Seriously, if she earned the right to speak for a few minutes, why cut her off? As usual the 9'th circuit is out to lunch. The case should be appealed. Whatever rules the schools have must be content neutral. Sure, Principal Skinner, as an agent of the State can't give the speech. Neither can the football coach. But the student does not represent the state and thus cannot represent a public endorsement of religion. Just another example of liberal bigotry.

I've watched the video clip and very clearly the audience love her speech. It's very heart breaking that the school officials are the ones who actually need to learn and not the students.

Are we governed by idiots?

The court's decision was spot on. There must have been other people in the audience who are not Christians. Why couldn't she have gave a speech about one's ethical obligations in society? The religious right must be full of insecure people when they have to carry religion everywhere.

Spiderman2--I see that you have a big problem with evolution. Are you afraid of science? I do agree with you on Islam but for different reasons. Islam is a major threat to the Western way of living, to freedom, equality, justice.

There are two types of evolution. It could be true that the universe evolved (there are facts to show it) but it's a different story when we're talking about biological evolution.

Science is yet ignorant of how DNA works or how stem cell works. It's just plain stupidity that these idiots can conclude that humans evolved from lower forms just by examining bones or by watching bacteria transform. Humans don't divide like bacteria and it's plain stupidity to compare bacteria to humans.

Also, bacteria remain as bacteria so where are they getting their garbage ideas?

"[T]he root cause of stupidity in schools today" are theocratic fascists like spidermean2. Swallow his nonsense and you'll think Bernie Madoff was a financial genius.

Actually, Madoff was genius by spidermean2's standards. Madoff got people to believe his bald-faced lies. No one believes the theocratic fraud of spidermean2.

If this delusional twit has the right to shove god up everyone else's sphincter at a taxpayer-funded event, other students have the right to preach "kill the ni**ers, kill the Jews" at the same event.

The truly devout would cheer. Sons of Ham, Christ-killers, and all that Christo-fascist garbage that holds together the flock. Freedom of religion, you know. Or more acurately, freedom of delusion.

spidermean2 wrote: "There are two types of evolution. It could be true that the universe evolved (there are facts to show it) but it's a different story when we're talking about biological evolution."

That is plainly not true. The evidence for biological evolution is in many forms and consistent and has more evidence behind it than the evolution of the universe you claim has support. Please explain where the fossil evidence is wrong, the commonality of DNA is wrong, the common physical properties is wrong and where evolution cannot make valid predictions. Your claim relies on thousands of scientists being brainwashed and in a large conspiracy to tell a lie for no reason.

spidermean2 wrote: "Science is yet ignorant of how DNA works or how stem cell works."

Not true at all, but maybe you are ignorant of these things.

spidermean2 wrote: "It's just plain stupidity that these idiots can conclude that humans evolved from lower forms just by examining bones or by watching bacteria transform."

Its a little more than that but shows your lack of understanding of evolution.

spidermean2 wrote: "Humans don't divide like bacteria and it's plain stupidity to compare bacteria to humans."

But humans DO divide like bacteria. Please explain how humans multiply without their cells dividing.

spidermean2 wrote: "Also, bacteria remain as bacteria so where are they getting their garbage ideas?"

In your lifetime, yes. But even in your lifetime you see bacteria changing, disease bacteria altering their genetic makeup to get around antibiotics, etc. If evolution did not exist this would not be possible. Either the genes of living things can change from generation to generation or not. We know it does. There is volumous evidence of life forms evolving over time. The mechanisms are understood well enough that a scientific theory, evolution, has been developed to explain why it happens and to make predictions that have been found to be true, the real test of a solid theory. Your claims that you cannot understand it, or it conflicts with your beliefs and therefore must not be true is what we in the scientific community call ignorance and bias, something we work hard to keep out of science since it clouds the truth.

I find it amusing that people are defending her right to spew her particular religious beliefs to a captive audience.

Suppose the valedictorian had been a muslim and her speech had consisted of islamic scriptures that condemned everyone in the audience as infidels and called for them to burn in hell.

Would you be okay with that? I doubt it. Funny how people defend the right of people they agree with to make such statements...

fr spidermean2:

>...Who would have thought that this kind of censorship would happen in America? I thought these things only happen in godless communist countries. ...

There was no "censorship" here. She'd been told to leave the references to God out of the speech, and was rightfully stopped from preaching, which is what she was indeed doing.

Had she been "speaking" at a religious school event, that's one thing, but this was a public school, and she needs to learn that not everyone believes the same thing as she does. I hope she learned that lesson.

@Spidermoron2

The right of people not to be preached at takes precedence over the right of someone to preach at them.

People, please. Spidermean2 is a well known Internet troll who decides to wallow out from under his bridge from time to time in an effort to rankle the civilized. Just ignore him/it.

I suppose all you intolerant evangelicals would have had not problem if she had begun spouting Islam or Buddhism. Hypocrites.

Ms. McComb fails to understand that there are times and places where her preferences and feelings as an individual are properly subordinated to the larger good of the community, which, in this case, must be assumed to be religiously diverse. In other words, she has been poorly educated on the content of American citizenship and her misbehavior at commencement indicts not only herself, but those charged with teaching her.

It's so amazing that some people can listen for years about the stupidity and lies about evolution but can't stand a minute of sermon or speech about God. They love to listen that their great great grandpa was a baboon. They think that if the baboon stops climbing trees, their hands slowly get shorter and their legs longer. What a bunch of idiots. Do we believers have a choice to turn the mic off if these idiot evolutionist teachers present their lies? After all, what they're saying is against the religion of many.

Maybe these people have IQs similar to baboons that's why they think baboons are their long lost relatives.

These baboon have stem cells too. What do biologists know about monkey stem cells that made them to believe that they evolved into human stem cells? How do ape livers or kidneys evolved into human kidneys and livers? How about their stomach, and heart and tongue and lungs, and a hundred more body parts?

What was their bases when these biologists only discovered or studied stem cells just a few years back?

How is it posible to conclude that a person evolved when they don't know how stem cells of apes and humans differ?

IDIOTS!!

Please turn off the mic when these evolutionists make speeches also. It's high time that these people be gagged too just as what they did to that poor girl.
Let's have the same rules for everybody. After all, evolution is a religion too == a religion of idiots.

It is not appropriate to use a graduation ceremony as an opportunity to proselytize religion. This girl went far, far, over the line, and the court was right to dismiss her claim.

Please keep your religion to yourself. Pray to yourself, pray in church. Why do you insist on forcing your religion on others? Those who do so are no different than the Muslim ayatollahs who preach jihad.

It is obvious that evolution is leaving part of the human race behind...the ignorant evangelical right-wingers who think they should be allowed to preach their religion anywhere and everywhere, regardless of situation or setting.

It's an interesting problem for the libertarian in me. I don't want to have to hear religious crap in any setting, at the same time I don't want any government body deciding for people what they can and cannot say.

Politics swings back and forth, the religious freaks like spidermean2 have an inordinate influence on the republicans, and they will be back in power some day.

Do we want these insane people telling us we aren't allowed not to believe? You can bet they will if they get the chance. If they're in control of the government you can be sure they'll exert this same kind of power.

On the other hand, I don't want my tax dollars being spent supporting some fanatic speaking on my dime.

What to do, what to think?

The favored format of "believers"...A captive audience at a government sponsored function.

Don't be fooled. They would like nothing better than to legislate "non-believers" into submission.

"This is a very important free speech case that will affect the rights of all persons across America," Whitehead said in a statement. "If government officials can extinguish speech by turning off microphones at public assemblies, then none of us will have any rights."

Too late...The Bush administration herded protesters into fenced "free speech zones" blocks from public events.

Christians don't want rights for all.

Spidermean...I know one thing from readin your rant. You, sir, have a deeply disturbing fixation with baboons.

Get help, please.

Let me start with the premise that I believe the Supreme Court correctly ruled that school-sponsored prayer violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. If the speech in question had been given by the principal, or the topic selected by the school, it would clearly have been inappropriate.

However, when it is a student who is speaking, the situation is different and there are many key questions, the answers to which are not apparent from this brief article. Cases like this pose a difficult balancing act between potential Establishment Clause violations by the school and free exercise rights by the student.

My own view is that a valedictorian ought to be allowed to talk about whatever he/she wants, so long as it isn't defamatory or patently offensive (for example, racist or demeaning the religions of others rather than declaring her own faith). I remember too many valedictorians during the 1960's and 70's whose speeches on the Vietnam War were censored by school authorities, and I am extremely reluctant to allow the authorities to censor any speech.

So long as it is clear that the speech is the student's and not the school's, and that the student has not been selected for the purpose of proseletyzing or offering prayer, I am not sure there is a First Amendment problem with allowing the student to speak, and there may be a big one in silencing her.

On the subject of evolution: If evolution does not exist, why do humans have vestigal organs like the appendix? God, being omniscient and omnipotent would KNOW such a worthless organ would do nothing but get infected and have the POWER to not include or remove it in His designs for humans.
On the subject of the speech: It is possible to talk about values, faith, ethics, morality and personal growth in completely universal and non religiously specific way, even if ones viewpoint on all these subjects is entirely defined by a religion. As a Catholic, I know the best way to get my point across is not to thump a bible or simply argue "God said so", the best way is to craft said point on a level that any human regardless of religion, culture or creed would be able to see the credibility. Basically it's her own fault for being a horrible speech writer and relying on scripture as a crutch. If she really believed what she wanted to say, and had not simply been taught/told/indoctrinated she should have been able to emphasize Christian values and leave the audience knowing the impact her faith had on her life, even if they did not know it was her faith itself that had said impact.

These Christian zealots would be no less tolerant than fundamentalists Muslims if the law would allow them to be. To impose your personal religious views on an audience without their permission is ugly and selfish ... and not something Jesus would do, at least I don't think he would!

Brittany -it seems- was brainwashed at an early age, she's unable to freereason, she doesn't know that "that" story in the gospels has been invented ( just read some early books of Robert McNair Price). How there can be a loving/just Supreme Being where there so many species of obligate carnivores?

The young lady should have anticipated this hostility toward religion and prepared for it. When the plug was pulled, she should have pulled a portable microphone from under her robe and continued. When they tried to take it away, she should have clubbed them with it repeatedly.

One of the basic rules of rhetoric is that the speech should fit the occasion. If I had been invited to give a eulogy and decided to use the opportunity to make a political speech excoriating the Religious Right, the audience would be absolutely right to take me to task for it. I would have taken the microphone away not for religious content, but for poor mastery of rhetoric...

The really sad thing is that this graduation ceremony which was meant to be a celebration of the achievements of the entire graduating class was instead perverted into being all about one student. And please don't be deceived; this young woman (I will not call her a lady) knew exactly what she was doing when she did this. I'm sure that her parents had their lawyers on speed-dial the instant that microphone was turned off.