ACLU enters Jesus picture dispute

The Anti-Christian Litigation Union or ACLU for short, is going after a picture of Jesus in the schools again. Let me see...I think the first amendment says government will establish no laws showing preference for one religion over another. My question is: since when did schools have the authority to pass laws? Oh that's right, they don't! Only congress and the president can do that.
Also, the school wants it to be fair by showing other religious leaders, thinking this will appease the ACLU. Not going to work guys. You see, aside from nothing less than the complete removal of Christianity from the public forum will appease them. On top of that, they can't represent the other religions. No pictures of mohammed (unless they want riots, death, killing, burning and destruction from the "peaceful" muslims) and the Hindus have over 330 million gods at last count, so their part of the wall would be very "busy".
Hey, I have an idea. Why don't the courts just read the constitution and do what it says? Then the picture can stay where it is and the people who were so easily offended by it can seek therapy for something that was their problem to begin with!

The American Civil Liberties Union has stepped into the dispute over a picture of Jesus that has hung on a Bridgeport High School wall for 40 years.
An ACLU official said the group wants the picture taken down.
Harrison County school officials, meanwhile, have other ideas.
The high school could start an "inspirational wall" on which pictures of other influential historical figures are hung together, said schools Superintendent Carl Friebel. The Jesus picture could be relocated to that wall, he said.
Friebel said criteria would be set as to who can go up on the wall.
"It wouldn't be an arbitrary judgment," he said.
Andrew Schneider, executive director for the ACLU in West Virginia, said he'd be skeptical of such a remedy.
"Will they allow Wiccans to put up their displays?" Schneider said. "Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus? I think they would run into some problems."
Harold Sklar, a lawyer with the FBI, says he's been trying to get the picture taken down for the last decade. Harrison school officials have ignored his requests, he says.
Last month, Sklar went before the board of education and asked them to remove the picture. Board members have yet to act or take a position on the issue.
Friebel said they would wait until the ACLU responds to their suggestions for alternatives before putting something on an agenda for board vote.
The ACLU initially recruited Sklar to represent a handful of students who were opposed to the picture, a print of Warner Sallman's well-known "Head of Christ" which hangs outside the principal's office.
Sklar recently contacted Schneider about the seemingly stalled situation. The ACLU sent Harrison school officials a letter outlining case law that "had found these sorts of displays to be basically illegal."
Friebel has said the picture always had a secular purpose.
Schneider doesn't buy that and says a lawsuit could be in order.
"If the picture remained on the wall and the district was not willing to settle this dispute in a way that respected the constitution and religious freedom of the people in the school district, then, yeah, that would be our last resort," he said.
The ACLU recently won a First Amendment federal case against the city of Bridgeport's restrictions on citizens' right to display political signs.
State religious leaders are split as to whether the picture should come down.
Terry Harper, who heads the state's Convention of Southern Baptists, said the picture is nothing less than art and shouldn't be stirring controversy.
State schools Superintendent Lowell Johnson said the picture is inappropriate where it is, but the state would leave the final decision up to the Harrison school board.
The Jesus picture originally hung in a guidance counselor's office back in the days soon after the school opened, according to school officials.
When the counselor retired and left the picture behind, their replacement brought it to a former principal, who hung it across the hall from his office door.
Contact writer Justin D. Anderson 348-4843.