Sigh. Just stupid and wrong. Combine political correctness and no money to defend a lawsuit and this is what you get.
A so-called “After School Satan Club” proposed by the Satanic Temple of Seattle to be held at Centennial Elementary School should be allowed to proceed, an attorney hired to represent the Mount Vernon School District said.
“I think that if the school district denied that application, you would face costly litigation that would be distracting from your mission,” said Duncan Fobes of the Seattle-based law firm Patterson, Buchanan, Fobes and Leitch during a Wednesday meeting of the Mount Vernon School Board. “And would ultimately be unsuccessful.”
Fobes was hired by the district’s risk-pool insurance group to assess whether the district had legal standing to deny the temple’s application.
“We believe that it’s clear that, because the district has a policy and procedure that encourages the use of community groups to use your facilities, because you do that, you must open it to this group,” Fobes said. “You don’t have to sponsor the group, you don’t have to help the group.”
A 2001 Supreme Court ruling, Good News Bible Club vs. Milford Central School District, stated that if schools allow any organization to use school property, they must allow all organizations — religious and secular — to have access.
The Mount Vernon district is one of nine throughout the country that has been chosen by the Satanic Temple to host a pilot After School Satan Club program because the districts also host a Good News Bible Club, which is run by the Child Evangelism Fellowship.
“We didn’t invite them to the school, they put our name on a website,” Centennial Principal Erwin Stroosma said. “We feel like we’re pawns in a game — someone else is manipulating us.”
The temple’s application proposes renting space at Centennial for about an hour after school one day a month during the school year.
“This is going to be infectious and widespread,” said Mike Cheek, who has grandchildren in the district. “I know that if there is anything to do with Satan, it is dark and it is evil.”
When asked by a parent to raise their hands if they didn’t want the After School Satan Club to take root at Centennial, nearly every community member in attendance did so.
“They say they’re not going to teach anything bad, but we don’t know,” Moises Pacheco, whose grandchildren attend Madison Elementary, said through a translator.
***************************************************
Let them hold their meetings. And post videotape of everyone entering.
After 8 yrs of the President of the Flies, Legacy!