Editorial
Maureen Loya, a veteran group home counselor in Orange County, California has filed a lawsuit against the county because she was suspended for six weeks without pay for exposing four teenagers to Christian music.
What do you Mean "Exposed?"
Did she lock them in a small room and play Christian music for hours and hours on end, trying to convert them to her religious beliefs? No! The eighteen-year veteran employee took four girls on an approved field trip to a 5K run and then on to the beach. As luck would have it (bad luck for the counselor in this case), that particular Saturday in June of 2006, Surf Jam was being held on Huntington Beach. When the group stopped at the pier to eat, the girls overheard Christian music playing for approximately ten whole minutes. Apparently the administrative heads at the group home thought that ten minutes of Christian music in the background turned the entire trip into a "religious activity" and the counselor was suspended for "exposing children to unapproved religious activities."
Was Surf Jam a Christian Music Festival?
If you're like me, you're probably thinking at this point that Surf Jam must have been a Christian Music Festival that somehow escaped your notice back in 2006 and that this counselor took the kids there to try to "get them some religion" on the sly. Nope! According to the Surf Jam website, the event brought together pro surfer Pat O'Connell, E! Network's Sal Masekela and Incubus singer Brandon Boyd to "host a mix of top professional surfers, celebrities from the world of stage and screen, and Surfrider Foundation activists from across the country, to surf and compete with one another, all in an effort to help raise awareness and support for our nation's beach and coastal environments." The list of celebrities included Porno For Pyros' Peter DiStefano, 70's TV star Brandon Cruz, Incubus, Minnie Driver and Switchfoot. It wasn't a concert; it was sun, surfing and sand. Perhaps when someone from Switchfoot took to the waves, they played one of their songs over the PA, but that hardly made it a "Religious activity."
You're in Trouble Now
At some point after the event, the counselor was called into a disciplinary meeting and confronted about the Christian music. Several months later the accusations were brought back to the table and the counselor was suspended for six weeks without pay. She served her suspension and spent the next several months exhausting all of the state administrative remedies available to her before filing the lawsuit to "recover the financial losses she suffered from the suspension and to vindicate her constitutional rights." The Pacific Justice Institute is representing her.
More Questions than Answers
The counselor didn't take the kids to a church ... she took them to the beach!Did she know that Switchfoot would be there? Probably because the chances are pretty good that the Surf Jam folks advertised.
Did she know that Christian music would be played at some point and exactly when that time would be? That's doubtful because no schedule of who would surf when was posted on the site.
Was this a sneaky ploy on the part of the counselor to expose those poor "unchurched" kids to her religion? Again, doubtful. The suit states that "after the girls started complaining that the music was too loud at the Anaheim 5K, Loya opted to take them to the Huntington Beach Pier for pizza." That seems more like a chance "hearing" than a well thought out plot.
But wait, some would say ... she was suspended for "exposing children to unapproved religious activities." Those poor children were exposed to a religion and all they were supposed to be seeing was people in bikinis and beachwear!
Give me a break! She took them to the beach and they heard some Christian music for a few minutes. Hearing a Christian song played in public doesn't equal a religious activity anymore than hearing a song by Deicide played in public turns the day into a satanic activity! Music is everywhere. If Orange County doesn't want the kids in their foster care system to ever hear music because, in their narrow view, a simple, single song can define a place or an event, then they better lock all of the kids in their charge in sound proof rooms because that is the only way they can be "protected" from the evils of music.
What is our Country Coming to?
Huntington Beach, to my knowledge, is a public beach. Even if Surf Jam hadn't been going on that particular Saturday, the chances are much better than average that those kids would have overheard music because people tend to take their tunes with them everywhere they go. Had someone on the towel next to them been playing a song by Third Day, would the counselor have been required to make the kids get up and move?What about red lights? Had they been sitting at a red light on the way to the beach and overheard a song by Audio Adrenaline being blared in the car next to them, would the counselor have been required to run the light or at least demand that the kids put their fingers in their ears and hum loudly to keep from hearing it?
This is just another prime example of political correctness run amok. We bitterly complain about the way things are, yet we sit on our hands and do absolutely nothing when something as ridiculous as this happens. It's time to wake up America! If we don't start speaking out and speaking up when someone tramples on our religious rights, before long we won't have any and we won't have anyone to blame except ourselves.
