Last month, a public school teacher sued his Colorado school district for allegedly allowing school officials to openly promote Christianity to students, claiming that a local pastor is regularly allowed to use the school’s public address system to “preach his evangelical Christian messages” and that prayer meetings, Bible studies, and Christian events are held during school hours.
Among the complaints listed in the lawsuit is the allegation that this local pastor also hosts weekly Bible study session on campus over the lunch period, which students refer to as “Jesus pizza.”
And Gordon Klingenschmitt, who happens to be a Republican member of the Colorado state legislature as well as a Religious Right activist, is outraged … at this teacher for objecting, declaring on his most recent “Pray In Jesus Name” program — without a hint of irony — that teachers “don’t have a right to impose religious views upon the students.”
“If you don’t want to attend their ‘Jesus pizza,’ that’s fine,” Klingenschmitt said. ‘You don’t have to attend, but you don’t get the right to sue to attend their ‘Jesus pizza’ because you’re a teacher. Let the students organize themselves and have their own event. That’s what the Supreme Court rules!”
Aside from the fact that this teacher is not suing for the right to attend these religious events but rather to put an end to them, Klingenschmitt is bizarrely arguing that it is perfectly fine for school officials to sanction and promote Christian events during school hours whereas efforts to stop that from happening is an effort to “impose religious views upon the students.”
