Biblical verse beyond the pale

In regard to the “Straight Pride” T-shirt incident at St. Charles North High School, I fully believe in a person's right to freedom of speech, religious beliefs and opinion but there are a couple of issues beyond this.

First, using a Biblical verse to make a statement of death and punishment toward a specific group of students should not be tolerated. Second, North has certain rules that disallow the wearing of T-shirts that have a negative or improper connotation. For example, gang or drug references are not allowed and so are many slang and symbol type T-shirts. Therefore, a verse of this nature should not be allowed.

Freedom of speech within a high school, middle school or elementary school should not include any verse that advocates punishment and/or death, Biblical or not.

If these students wanted to state their “Straight Pride” in an appropriate manner, all that was necessary on their T-shirts was that simple line. But when they chose to add that Biblical verse, then “Straight Pride” took a negative tone.

Cheryl Bast

South Elgin