Justin Harter alerted me to SB 518 which appears to be a campaign in the War on the War on Christmas. That led me to SB 520 by the same author which has the General Assembly assuming the role of government grammar police.
His unflinching gaze, focused laser-like on the issues of the day.
SB 518 allows a school corporation to “instruct students about the history of any traditional winter celebrations, including Christmas, and allow students and employees to offer traditional greetings regarding the celebrations, including Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, “and other seasonal greetings.” So long as the display doesn’t “include a message that encourages adherence to a particular religious belief,” it may include scenes or symbols associated with traditional winter celebrations, including a menorah, Christmas tree, Nativity scene, or other religious symbol associated with traditional winter celebrations. The display must include a scene or symbol of more than one religion and/or one religion and at least one secular scene or symbol. Clearly this is an effort to educate kids about Saturnalia and the solstice-related origins of winter celebrations. Sarcasm aside, this legislation is pretty clearly trying to comply with Supreme Court case law on how you can include religious displays on government property without running afoul of the Establishment Clause. And, I don’t want to take efforts at complying with the Constitution for granted. The problem is that it seems to be trying to address a problem that exists more in the fevered imagination of talk radio hosts than in reality.
Meanwhile SB 520 says simply that a unit of state or local government “shall not use the term “free” to describe a payment, good, or service unless the payment, good, or service is funded entirely through private contributions.” That’s it. No guidance on what constitutes “using the term.” The fiscal note says that the legislation will have no fiscal impact. Luckily it did not say the bill was “free.”
These bills were both introduced by Sen. James Smith (800-382-9467).
Quick, start a business selling Festivus poles to schools.
The picture and caption had me laughing so hard! Yay supermajority working for the people!
Hah! I like to let my id caption the photos.
Joe, here is where I got mine. It has a very high strength to weight. My wife hit my girlfriend with it. What a mess.
http://www.festivuspoles.com/festivuspoles.htm#.WJuNYRAvE0Q
The only saving grace of SB 518 is that it says “may” not “shall”, so hopefully schools will ignore this bit of nonsense. They have all that teaching to the test to do, and can’t even mess around with other traditions, like citizenship.
How could they possibly leave out Festivus Day?
Especially in light of the fact that Trump celebrates it so often with his daily “airing of grievances”.