You can always count on Fox and Friends to staunchly defend the rights of those who want to impose their religious beliefs on others. Walter Tutka and his lawyer, Liberty Institute Director of Litigation, Hiram Sasser, garnered oodles of sympathy from Steve Doocy of Fox and Friends. Tutka, a Gideon member and former NJ substitute teacher, felt he was targeted and terminated for his affiliation with the organization designed to hand out bibles worldwide.
The Phillipsburg School District asserts he violated two provisions of the law: distributing religious materials and discussing religious materials in a way that is not neutral.
Tutka claims he was merely satisfying the curiosity of a student when he said to the boy, who was last in the line, that the “first will be last and the last will be first.” When the student persisted in his quest for the source of that quote, long story short, Tutka asked the boy if he had a bible of his own, and when the boy said he did not, he gave the student his bible. Six days later, on Oct. 18, 2012, Superintendent George Chando informed Tutka that he was seeking to have the substitute teacher fired because of what happened.
It's not as if Tutka's association with the Gideons was previously ignored by officials. Phillipsburg Middle School Assistant Principal John Stillo sent an email that suggests the school district had an issue with the well-known religious group.
“It has been brought to the administration’s attention that Gideons may be near our campus to distribute literature to our students,” Stillo wrote in a memo to the school’s staff. “Please make sure they DO NOT step foot onto our campus at any time. There will be added police and security presence at dismissal.”
His Jerry Falwell-esque lawyer, Hiram Sasser (that name just sounds evangelical) are proud to announce that the Equal Employment Opportunity Council has ruled in his favor this past December 15. The smooth-talking snake oil salesman, Sasser, smugly proclaimed,
the school district had this allergic reaction to the bible.
Tutka still hasn't been rehired and he won't for some time as the school board is appealing the EEOC decision.
The whole point of this faux outrage is obvious. Conservatives truly feel that Christianity is the law of the land. A Conservative site suggests,
School administrators across the land need to learn exactly what is and what isn’t legal and they need to learn it from someone who actually knows the law, not from liberal organizations that will hide the truth, like the ACLU and Americans for the Separation of Church and State.
Fox News and the rest of the Dominionist Theocrats who wish to supplant the Constitution with the bible will not rest until there is no more separation of church and state. They preach the sanctity of religious freedom while they condemn the "Islamic State." At the same time, they are trying to create the Christian States of America and ignoring the dangerous similarities.
