A Texas middle school that banned the mention of Jesus on a holiday poster received a stern warning from the state’s Attorney General who warned the principal that the school was breaking the law.
Fox News’ Todd Starnes is reporting on the incident which took place at Patterson Middle School in Killeen, Texas where the school nurse named Dedra Shannon was told she had to remove a poster depicting a scene from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” which she had taped to her door.
The poster featured Linus alongside a tree with the inscription, “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior which is Christ the Lord. That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” Linus said.
Even though both students and faculty liked the poster, the principal told Shannon she would either have to remove the reference to Jesus or remove the entire poster.
“She said my poster is an issue of separation of church and state,” Ms. Shannon told Starnes at the time. “She said the poster had to come down because it might offend kids from other religions or those who do not have a religion.”
Rather than compromise her faith, she decided to remove the entire poster.
“I wasn’t going to leave Linus and the Christmas tree without having the dialogue. That’s the whole point of why it was put up.”
Shannon’s father, Danny Breyer, is the pastor of the Soldiers of the Cross Cowboy Fellowship near Fort Hood, and he alerted Starnes to the incident. Not long after the popular Fox columnist and unabashed Christian wrote the story, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton saw it and decided to do something about it.
“This is an attack on religious liberty and a violation of the First Amendment and state law,” Paxton said. “I am calling on the school board of the Killeen ISD to immediately reverse their unlawful decision.”
Paxton is referring to a law passed in Texas in 2013 called the “Merry Christmas” law which stipulates that no school official in Texas can silence a Biblical reference to Christmas.
“I am proud to have voted for the Merry Christmas law in 2013, when I was a member of the legislature,” Paxton said. “We passed that law precisely because of this type of discrimination against people of faith.”
In other words, it wasn’t the nurse who was violating the law, it was the principal!
Even though the school district has not responded to calls for comment, it has a reputation for being faith-friendly. For instance, they recently changed the name of “Winter Break” back to “Christmas Break” and defied the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s demand to eliminate prayer before school board meetings.
What’s even more impressive, they also chose to ignore the Department of Education’s “Dear Colleague” letter which demanded that they open all bathrooms to people of the opposite gender.
Starnes is confident that the incident at the middle school will be resolved shortly.
“Either way, Attorney General Paxton dropped a great big Yuletide truth bomb on the Killeen Independent School District,” Starnes concluded. “Don’t mess with Texas and don’t mess with Christmas. Otherwise, you might just find your tinsel in a twist.”
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