Orleans board caves to anti-Christian bigotry

It’s official: white progressivism and its anti-Christian bias has infected the Orleans Parish School Board, creating an ugly incident of bigotry.

Last week, the body held elections for this year’s officers. In an unusual move, it suspended its own rules to allow holding over last year’s officers. This brought about the unanimous reelection of Democrat John Brown, and a 4-3 vote returning Democrat Leslie Ellison as vice president.

Plenty of controversy preceded the move. Originally, Ellison had wished to move up the ladder one place, following tradition, as Brown could not succeed himself after two yearly terms. Then, publicized past remarks Ellison made concerning students who identify themselves as something other than their biological sex stirred up opposition to her.

Those comments included some made to a legislative committee in 2012, concerning Ellison’s unwillingness as a charter school administrator to sign off on a Department of Education contract that said the school would not discriminate on the basis of “sexual orientation.” She called this a violation of religious freedom, but she need not have invoked the First Amendment to justify rejection; in the past couple of years, the state’s judiciary has affirmed that executive branch agencies cannot unilaterally rewrite the law to add a protected class in contracting, and the law doesn’t include that category.

Additionally, in 2013 Ellison objected to listing characteristics in anti-bullying regulations the Board considered for the district. Her view follows the Legislature, which has rebuffed numerous attempts to mandate such a list in law because that could threaten, among other things, religious freedom. For example, a student expressing orthodox Christian views on homosexual behavior could become grounds for an allegation of bullying if another student who identified or acted as a homosexual consumed those remarks. In any event, her opposition adhered to the entirely reasonable understanding behind the law that the action of bullying, not the motivation, needed regulation.

However, enough of the Board found her political views, based upon her Christian faith, objectionable enough to deny her the promotion, and even to contest her reelection against Democrat Nolan Marshall. Perhaps not surprisingly, three of its four black members voted for her (Marshall didn’t), while two of the three white members voted for Marshall.

The attitude that religious belief, behavior of which is protected in the First Amendment, should submit to sexual orientation, which the behavior defining it isn’t, sadly has become an article of faith among the elitist white American political left that slowly is trickling down to the mass public in populist form. It speaks volumes that a majority of white Board members, despite that the law and Constitution backs Ellison’s views, punished her for these.

Perhaps even a majority of the Board doesn’t hold the anti-Christian attitudes reflected in its members’ treatment of Ellison, but, if not, it certainly caved in to special interests that reflexively demonstrate these by arguing against her officeholding ascension and/or retention on that basis. Allowing such bigotry free rein in Board actions discredits it.