The Laws are Clear
By Richard Buffum, Los Angeles Times, California
February 21, 1969, North America
If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as it has been said, then a lot of religion is more so. It can get you tossed into the Costa Mesa jail these days.
Fourteen members of the activist Light Club Teens for Christ were jailed and arraigned early this week for socially unacceptable activities on the sidewalks adjacent to the Maude B. Davis Intermediate School and the Costa Mesa High School.
The young Christian zealots, ranging in age from 18 to 22 (four are girls), were passing out religious tracts Monday and trying to convert students to the Gospel as they departed the schools. Some of the rebels for Christ carried crosses, Bibles and waved placards, urging unqualified acceptance of their favorite revolutionary who got Himself into deep trouble with the authorities nearly 2,000 years ago.
However, I hasten to add that the unbecoming activities that landed them in the pokey had nothing to do with preaching and picketing. Police Chief Roger Neth pointed that out. They were plainly arrested and booked en masse on suspicion of all, or a combination of, two penal code offenses and one education code violation.
Properly Poverty-Stricken
Refusal to disperse, willful and malicious obstruction of a thoroughfare and willful and unlawful disturbance of a public school are the specific charges. Municipal Judge Calvin Schmidt set bail at $50 each. They haven’t been able to post it. Authentic, old-fashioned Christians are naturally poverty-stricken.
That’s only one of their problems. Another is they’ve been too busy reading their Bibles and dashing about trying to convert people to learn the rules of the game today. You simply do not disrupt the educational process, even with the word of God.
The laws are clear. They are applied equally to all persons—that is, with a few reasonable exceptions.
You may disrupt an educational institution, including a little innocent smashing of public property and eating and sleeping in the dean’s office, with relative impunity provided: (1) you are a striking teacher demanding more pay; (2) you are a student and want to run the school; (3) some stupid administrator has fired some militant teacher you like; (4) you don’t approve of the curriculum and want to change it.
But, horror of horrors, you do not occupy a public sidewalk at a public school and force subversive quotations from the Bible upon impressionable, young minds. It frightens the kids. It makes their parents uneasy. A Bible-thumping Christian is not to be trusted, and that’s that!
Furthermore, everybody knows that freedom of religion doesn’t include being free with your religion.
I hope the judge finds them all guilty and sends them packing to some foreign country to convert the natives. Not only would he be doing the heathen a favor by saving their souls from eternal damnation, but it would help to unclutter our sidewalks.
Every law-abiding Christian knows there are too many people already marching all over them, yelling obscenities and brandishing signs. There simply isn’t enough room for old-time evangelists preaching the Sermon on the Mount.