Attacking Kids in Jesus' Name

Matthew Staver

The latest legal tactic from Liberty Council, which has been affiliated with Liberty University since 2004, is to subject a school child to potential abuse in the Giles County legal case about the display of the Ten Commandments at Narrows High School.

A student and his parent have been given fictitious names to protect them from verbal and possible physical abuse in this inflammatory First Amendment case. Giles is a heavily Christian county and those asking that the Ten Commandments not be posted because it infringes upon their freedom from religion need protection from people who have already threatened them.

The ACLU and Freedom From Religion Foundation—two liberal groups despised by the right—are defending the student and parent.

Liberty Counsel has been on the right side (meaning “proper” side, in this case; it’s always on the political right side) of a number of First Amendment cases where distribution of literature, free speech and the right to build a church in a single-religion non-Christian community were defended.

It also, in a couple of instances, won rulings (one in Virginia) exempting churches from paying taxes on an unlimited amount of property for the first time since 1777 and opened public schools for religious groups’ meetings. It has been on the repressive side of a number of other cases, including a Ten Commandments case in Kentucky. Most of its religious cases have had to with children distributing literature or holding pre- or post-school meetings, which they certainly should be allowed to do.

Mathew D. Staver is a Liberty University graduate, Dean of Liberty University School of Law, director of the Liberty Center for Law and policy founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel. He has built an impressive school in a short while. The School of Law at Liberty has an avowed purpose of impressing its view of the constitution on all of us with lawsuits and threats of lawsuits, which can have a chilling effect on cash-strapped school systems.