Reply #19: I guess so!

[iverglas]

I have to say I almost literally don't believe it when I hear stories like this. It's like hearing that little green folk from Mars landed in the playground. It's just so utterly bizarre to think that this sort of thing actually happens.

But the thing is, wishful thinking won't make it stop, and indignation and outrage won't make it stop. People who want to exercise their rights often have to actually do something.

The US Constitution says:

Amendment XIV

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The way we'd look at it up here is that if a state (provincial, here) government gave a religious organization access to children in a public school for its proselytizing, it would be denying children who do not want to be proselytized the equal protection of the law.

It would also be denying their parents, and other taxpayers who did not want to fund schools where religious proselytizing takes place, the equal protection of the law. They are being compelled to allow their children to be proselytized, and to fund schools where a religious organization is allowed to proselytize the students.

I always see the "church and state" quibbling that goes on south of the border in situations like this, and whether this has to do with the "establishment of religion", as completely beside the point.

A society that guarantees the equal protection of the law just has a duty to protect schoolchildren in publicly operated schools from this kind of discriminatory treatment.

And the parents and taxpayers who object to such violations of children's and families' rights just might have to do something to stop it.

If a complaint to the principal doesn't work, then complain to the school board. If that doesn't work, complain to the state's department of education. (And be very sure, at each step, to point out that if there is any fallout for one's child from what one is doing, in terms of adverse treatment by teachers or other students, that will be a whole nother subject for complaint.) If that doesn't work, take legal action. Go for an injunction to prohibit the school board from discriminating against one's children by giving religious proselytizers access to them -- to the exclusion of all others not given such access, and contrary to the wishes of parents of other religions and no religion -- in circumstances in which the children have no choice but to receive the message that is conveyed.

Yes, it's lovely to teach children to be strong-minded independent thinkers.

But they're children, and they're impressionable and vulnerable, and parents are entitled to protect them from messages they do not want them to receive, and from discrimination in the schools where they go to learn, not to be proselytized and potentially adversely impacted if they do not go along with the proselytizing.

If one kid's parents don't do something, all the other kids whose parents might not even know what's going on are being affected too, and the potential results aren't nice to contemplate.