TRI In The News
Court Mutes School Music
By The Daily Progress
Published: March 24, 2010
Silence is a sad response to censorship.
When the Supreme Court refuses to hear a case on which multiple lower courts have ruled, it is in effect giving passage to the most recent of those rulings. In this instance, the lower court is the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and the ruling was that Kathryn Nurre and the Albemarle-based Rutherford Institute were not in a position to sue Nurre's school district in Everett, Wash., when they forbade her and others from performing "Ave Maria" at her high school graduation.
Public schools have a right and an obligation to protect their students from religious indoctrination, but that protection should not extend to de facto gag orders on self-expression. American valedictorians have been told they cannot quote religious texts in their speeches. American teachers have tried to disrupt those whose faith requires prayer several times a day. To quote Nurre's attorneys, "the censorship in this case regards political correctness run amuck."
We agree and we applaud the Rutherford Institute for once again defending squelched voices and religious freedom. Justice Samuel Alito is also to be commended for his dissent, admonishing his colleagues who wouldn't stand up for Nurre's rights.
What's particularly galling about the Everett incident is that it involves the nixing of an artistic performance. The district reasoned that "many people would see ["Ave Maria"] as religious in nature." That's very clever of them -- the song is the Hail Mary in Latin. Never mind that a significant portion of the works of art this planet has produced have been inspired by one faith or another. Also "religious in nature," and by this logic unfit for public education: the poems "Paradise Lost" and the Ramayana, the novels "Midnight's Children" and "The Chosen" and most of the paintings by Raphael and Michelangelo.
But here's the kicker: Kathryn Nurre is part of a wind ensemble; they wanted to do an instrumental performance. Is the very melody of "Ave Maria" offensive? Anyone who's ever attended a graduation ceremony would probably welcome a break from the Mobius strip tedium of "Pomp and Circumstance," and there is a world of difference between, say, opening a school event with a Christian blessing and having the band play Handel's "Messiah" or Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."
Several years ago, a local high school's advanced choral group sang an a cappella version of "Lord of the Dance," a hymn with 20th-century words and an old Quaker tune. The lyrics run from Genesis to crucifixion, but the singers had confidence that their audience was smart enough to know they were meant to be entertained, not converted. The rendition was so good it could reaffirm your faith -- not necessarily in God, but in public school chamber choirs.
The Supreme Court should have heard Nurre's case and it should have sided with her against officials at Henry M. Jackson High School, from which she graduated without her "Ave Maria." The school was named for a Washington politician who served his state in Congress for more than 40 years. He once said, "If you believe in the cause of freedom, then proclaim it, live it and protect it, for humanity's future depends on it."
Amen.
