Thoughts in a Haystack

... the Cheatham County Tennessee Board of Education on the butt and they responded by voting to settle a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union last fall. The ACLU had alleged a pattern of unconstitutional promotion of religion, as embodied in allegations such as these:

~ A band instructor who, while leading the marching band in practice for an upcoming football halftime performance, stopped and called on a particular student to pray.

~ A December 2007 concert where students sang Christmas and other seasonal songs and the choir director said something like, "We all know the reason we are here tonight, even if we are not allowed to say it" to the crowd.

~ A band Christmas concert in 2008 where students were asked to read lyrics or introductions to Christmas songs before the band played them. One of the plaintiffs was selected to read a religious lyric, but was reassigned a non-religious lyric after another student objected that it shouldn't be read by a non-Christian.

~ Distribution of Gideon Bibles inside classrooms at Cheatham Middle School, in which students were instructed to line up to receive Bibles and to write their names in them.

~ One high-school teacher displayed a foot-tall cross in his classroom next to a whiteboard used for student instruction. Another teacher required students to read and write about the biblical creation stories as an assignment for English class. A world history teacher introduced "intelligent design" as an acceptable alternative to evolution. An American history teacher read, in an angry tone, a handout emphasizing that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation" and criticizing the ACLU.

According to the lawsuit, the classroom incidents were not related to the general curriculum of the class or relevant to lessons being discussed that week.

The settlement sounds pretty comprehensive:

However, as those of us who follow creationists well know, the sneakiness of True Believers^TM should never be underestimated. The freedom loving people of the county should be prepared to watch the school district to make sure it doesn't live down to its name.
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