%20Facebook.png)
Of course little Logan should have been allowed to grow his hair long. It has nothing to do with "tribal culture." Boys who aren't part of that culture should also be allowed to grow their hair long - or not, as they wish. I thought that little matter had been more less settled after the Sixties; evidently not.
According to the Facebook version of the post, "after Logan and his family pushed back, the school updated its rules to allow for long hair on boys. Native students have the right to honor their heritage in their expression." Again, all students have that right: MAGA students, white Christian students, students wearing Confederate emblems. And how about child betrothal? That's a heritage that's at least a thousand years old. (As a wise person wrote sarcastically long ago: "I'm a white heterosexual male; oppression and exploitation are part of my culture." We shouldn't hate people for who they are!) The ACLU has had to intervene in schools that tried to block such expressions.
A few months ago Hemant Mehta, aka the Friendly Atheist, posted a video about a high school that gives seniors reserved parking spaces that the students are allowed to decorate, though they have to clear their designs with the administration. A Christian girl submitted a very tame Christian design, which the administration vetoed; she submitted another, tamer design, and in the end the school reluctantly allowed it. This was the right thing to do, as Mehta says in the video. But some of his commenters disagreed, some vehemently. One wrote that it "risk[ed] causing a religious war on the school ground". Another wrote "I don't know tho, 'no religious symbols' feels like a fair rule. Yes, it should have been included in the guidlines, but it's not a crazy ask". Another: "I went to a Catholic high school in the 1980s and there's no way on Earth ANY of us would've chosen some sort of religious theme to decorate a personalized parking space. America has lost its marbles." (Religious - that is, private - schools have more leeway to suppress freedom of expression than public schools. It seems odd to me that religious imagery would have been disallowed at a Catholic school - were students allowed to wear scapulars?)
I'm gonna dissent here. If I was a student with religious trauma (I got some trauma, but not a student now), and I saw a 'God is Love' parking space on my way in every day, I would feel like my struggle had been minimized. I would feel attacked. When I was in high school I had to push back a few times against Christian encroachment into the neutral learning space. It ***sucked***, because their response is never 'we understand your problem' but instead 'why don't you like love?'
Gee, that's too bad. I understand your problem, but it is not the business of the state or public institutions to spare you discomfort - indeed, the Bill of Rights effectively guarantees your right to be uncomfortable. You are not entitled to silence others because of your trauma. I would say the same thing to a conservative Christian who 'feels attacked' by competing religions or no religions at all - and you do know they use that rhetoric.
I speak, by the way, as a lifelong atheist and gay man who grew up in the rural midwest in harsher times. I've encountered plenty of Christian and other encroachment in my time; I do not demand that the state protect me from it. That way lies the same kind of authoritarianism I'm rejecting here, and I speak from decades of experience in a public Big Ten university. The culture of therapy is nominally secular, but it's as much of a threat to freedom as any religion.
I've written about this before (and before that). An alarming number of people find it very threatening that other people are allowed not only to hold beliefs but to try to persuade others to hold them. They cloak this in therapeutic language or other covers, in the name of liberalism and inclusiveness, but they are authoritarians and censors at heart. I may sympathize with their discomfort, but not with their wish to silence everyone else. I fully support helping kids (and adults) learn to defend themselves against religious and other encroachment, though of course most of it will come from their own parents. But I'm in a minority: the Culture of Therapy wants compassionate professionals to "protect" us from the bad guys, because we are too fragile to deal with hostility, criticism, or any difference of opinion at all.
Worse, Mehta in the video defends a hypothetical atheist decoration on the grounds that it wouldn't be "offensive," and supports school censorship of students' speech that is "offensive." Who gets to decide what is offensive? (If offense were a criterion, he'd have to reject statues of Baphomet in public spaces - but he thinks they're cool. They aren't, but they are protected by the First Amendment.) And many people would be offended by atheist decorations; Mehta can hardly be unaware of that.
If you want a society with freedom of religion and speech, you'd better get used to being offended. The First Amendment guarantees your right to be offended. High school is the latest that students of all opinions should start learning that basic truth, and how to deal with it; such education should start sooner. My objection as an atheist to officially sanctioned prayers in public schools is not that they're offensive - I'm not offended by them - but that they are encroachments against the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Life in a free society is not always comfortable.
Back to Logan Lomboy. To repeat, I support his right to wear his hair long, not because it's a thousand-year-old tribal heritage but because all people should have the right to determine their appearance as much as possible. I can't help but wonder, though, what will happen if he decides he doesn't want to wear it long a few years down the road? Will his mother celebrate his decision? Traditional societies aren't generally big on individual choice. After all, he's awfully young, too young to make important decisions like that. His little brain hasn't matured enough ... I'm being sarcastic, mind you: I don't consider it an important decision. What is important, and needs to be protected because it's always under threat, is people's freedom to choose to be different.
