Victory, or Closing the Final Chapter

Momentous developments have occurred since I last was able to update this page. I will add more posts below, but here’s the rundown:

-In March, students formed the Traditional Values Club, an organization dedicated to “Judeo-Christian” values. One of their first acts was to request a Christian flag be hung to represent their club, with the cross also representing a “t” for traditional values. While initially opposed, they successfully argued that the Equal Access Act and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause granted them the equal rights to school facilities as the Diversity Club, and their flag was hung.

-Exhibiting their usual “tolerance” and “acceptance of differences,” forty teachers led by the union president Doug Norton (donor of the “Diversity” Flag) angrily demanded the principal remove the TVC’s flag. The Diversity Club advisor, Catherine Capy, said that her students “say it's one thing to have a flag that stands for diversity, but quite another to have an ‘overtly religious symbol’ that excludes certain groups.” As opposed to, say, a gay pride flag that stands for at most ten percent, Ms. Capy? If her students truly say that, then it is even further proof that their idea of Diversity is nothing more than a front to cover their agenda, and an affront to true tolerance.

-In May, Howell High School teacher Margaret Breece posted an inflammatory bumper sticker reading “Hatred is not a family value,” underneath the TVC’s flag. She claimed she was “trying to make a political statement.” To make that statement, she was willing to slander the club’s members who had demonstrated nothing but the utmost consideration even in the face of constant harassment from HPS employees. Breece was given a three-day suspension, which is currently being fought and likely will not be served.

-As calls for both flag’s removals intensified, members of the HPS administration attempted to evade responsibility and asked the TVC and the Diversity Club to meet to negotiate the removal of the flags. The meeting was refused on several accounts. As the Traditional Values Club President wrote in explanation:

- The TVC members are “concerned how some of the teachers would react to any participation on our part in taking down the flag they feel so passionately about,” and “would not like to be put in the position of either setting or doing away with school policy.”

- “The circumstances of this meeting [were] worrisome,” and “while we are not opposed to the removal of all flags, in light of the opposition towards our club, the Traditional Values Club is hesitant to respond to anything short of a blanket administrative decision.”

Cureton ended by urging the administration to remove of both flags to allow for “a spirit of harmony and amity” between the two clubs.

-In a personally saddening yet wise decision by the administration, HHS Principal Marge Hamill was demoted to the assistant principal of a middle school. Her last official action was to order both flags down in response to a teacher survey where a majority of the staff voted for their removal. “I was just trying to be supportive of all the students in my high school,” she said. “I see now that I made the wrong decision.”

Maybe it’s my pollyannaish streak, but I respect her for that. Though it is saddening for all of us that she was unable to realize her mistake for what it was sooner, and spare herself and our community from all the past, needless strife, few people are able to admit when they have erred.

I wish her the best of luck in her new position, and truly hope and believe she will be happier there.


Yet the Fight Continues

Thus ended a long and bitter struggle. Along the way, I have made friends, lost friends, debated, argued, struggled, mourned, and learned to face the fierceness of the “principalities- the powers- the rulers of the darkness of this world.”

We’ve succeeded in forcing the school board, administration, and teacher’s union- uniformly intransigent against the removal of the flag- to abandon their position. They quite literally have lost their colors.

But sadly, they remain determined to impose their radical liberal agenda on our students. We must be every bit determined as they. We cannot afford to abandon our vigilance in the face of this victory, or our triumph will only be a short-lived façade- a cover for our ultimate defeat.

Just this week, the school board announced plans to provide 12-13 year olds with pamphlets demonstrating how to use a condom. They also changed the sex-ed curriculum to allow teachers to define “anal sex” “oral sex,” ”homosexuality” and “masturbation.” The enemy remains committed.

Let us then be so committed, and steel ourselves to face the storm.

Keep up the fight.

And may God preserve us all.



“I have fought the good fight- I have finished the race – I have kept the faith.”- 2 Timothy 4:7.