All right, So for our next segment this week, we're going to be
looking at an article that we found on medium dot com. It was written
by Dan Foster in July seventeenth of this year, and the headline is Florida
teen takes school to court for religious persecution, Bible reading, bullies, and
a First Amendment showdown. So what happened here is that there's this student,
Nicholas Ortiz and his parents, Raphael and Lords Ortiz. They've filed a lawsuit
against the Modern Academy, which is a public charter school in Hialea Gardens in
Florida, which is just north of Miami, and a claim that the school
allowed Nicholas to be bullied and harassed because of his Christian faith, and that
a teacher even had also actively participated in the harassment. And there were these
four main points of the suit, and I'll just do a quick summary here.
So the first one, of course, we said, was that there
was a teacher involved, and so there was a claim that the teacher was
calling them ignorant for believing in the Bible, specifically mentioning the Bible. There
the complaint also alleged that the teacher was inciting other students to bully and pick
on Nicholas for reading the Bible at school. The second point was that students
had physically and verbally bullied Nicholas on multiple occasions in relation to his Christianity.
He was reading the Bible at school and carrying it around with them and things
like that, and that the school did little or nothing to investigate or to
follow up on that. The third claim was that the student claims that Nicholas
had brought it. Other students had claimed that Nicholas had brought a knife to
school, and that he had made violent threats against the school and against other
individual students. The lawsuit does point out that the US Department of Homeland Security
visited their home and found that the accusations were unfounded. And the last point
was that the school didn't punish Nicholas's accused bullies, and in fact punished Nicholas
as a result of a physical confrontation where Nicholas struck out against another student in
response to being bullied. But they also said that he was causing a quote
disruption of the learning and environment, and so so that's kind of the gist
of the lawsuit that's being fired being happening here. I can say for sure
that as a teacher and as a parent of teenagers, cases of bullying in
school are very much a concern for me. And so I could go on
this all night, but before I do, I'm going to pass it to
Mallie. Mallie, what do you have to say about this? Well,
um, I think I just watched this movie. It was called God's Not
Dead. Have you guys seen this? It's so a brave Christian student goes
to a public university where he is challenged by his monstrous atheist, evil professor
guy to admit that God is dead before he's able to, you know,
get a passing grade in the class. And of course, you know,
redemption in the end as the atheist lies dying, accepting Jesus into his heart.
And guys, this doesn't happen. I don't. I really do not
believe this. Now, if it did happen the way they said it happens,
well we need to side with the Christian on it, because that's unacceptable.
We can't bully anybody for any beliefs that, you know, preventing that
protects everyone. There's a point toward the end of the article, as a
matter of fact, where they said, you know, we shouldn't he shouldn't
sue, he should expect persecution. And that's fine if you're a Christian,
but this is for everybody. So you know, if this really did happen,
you do want to sue. M I just don't believe it. You
know, this is Florida sixty eight percent Christian Rhonda Santis territory. They just
passed HB nine nine nine in Florida, which kind of attacks science in the
classroom. So you know, the idea that the majority person in this scenario,
part of the sixty eight percent, is being persecuted by a minority in
Florida at this moment, something doesn't really smell right, you know. Now,
there was a kid in my church when I was a teenager, and
fundamentalist af and this kid was really obsessed with being persecuted because you know,
if you're not being persecuted, you're doing something wrong. That's what the Bible
says. Anyway, So he would go out of his way to go to
malls and you know, talk to girls whose short whose skirts were too short,
and you know, tell them they were going to Hell and stuff,
just so he could get screamed at and feel like he was doing something right.
I mean, this was them for this kid and for a lot of
people. I think that's it. It strikes me as odd that he would
just be sitting reading a very popular book in a school and that's all there
is to it. There's another side to this story, and something tells me
he was preaching proselytizing being aggressive. We'll have to wait and see if I'm
wrong, you know, come at me, bro, I apologize and I'm
on your side. Otherwise, Yeah, right, what do you think,
Chris? I gotta agree with you. There's there's multiple sides to the story.
Um. I mean, if it's all true, we're really known for
our lititious nature in America, and if you were wronged, you have the
right to go after whoever wronged you with your evidence and you know, try
to get satisfaction out of that. Um. But I'm with you in the
I think I saw this movie camp. So what streams to me a little
bit is this seems almost like maybe there was one incident, maybe there were
two minor incidents. I mean, kids bully kids, it's a thing that
happens in school. But it seems like this was blown out of proportion by
the parents who may have seen this movie and are trying to get some some
clout for that. Um. The other part of me sort of wants to
lean back on my own experience with bullying because back in back in the day,
you know, elementary school, I was. I grew up in a
fundamentalist Christian household. I was that kid that was reading a Bible at school.
I was that kid that responded to every question with some sort of Bible
verse or something like that, and didn't really have the social development necessary to
interact with children my own age appropriately because all of that interaction was done at
church. So I think you're absolutely right there's something going on, because there's
something. There's another side of this story, because I know from my own
experience when I was on the receiving end of that bullying. Looking back on
it, I can't exactly say it wasn't justified with the way that I was
behaving and the things that I was saying. And so that's basically all I
have to say about that. It's just kind of it's kind of unbelievable.
What do you think, Scott. I think you're right. I mean,
there are some aspects of the story that I really had a hard time with,
like the science teacher telling him he was wrong for being a Christian.
Now, I can't see a science teacher telling a kid that. I just
can't see it. I could see a science teacher for telling him evolution is
correct, so that would be something I could see happening, But I just
can't see a science teacher telling that. A person telling any student that he
was wrong for believing in his religious faith, especially at a public school.
Although this is a charter school, so you're in that weird private public area.
But still even so, it's just something that you shouldn't do. Um
I do, so some of the parts of the story I really have a
problem with. And then one of the things that the author of the story
brought up with that I thought was really important is, and Mally kind of
touched on it, was the persecution complex. Oh I mentioned Maley's name had
disappeared. I'm very powerful today, don't cross Kelly. So but is it?
Aren't Christians supposed to be persecuted. That's all part of the identity of
being a Christian. So if you are being persecuted, why are you complaining
about it? What is the problem you're having with it? Shouldn't you want
to be persecuted. I don't get why he's saying why he's bringing a lawsuit
because something that is supposed to happen to him is happening. So I have
a want to hear a lot more from Scott though, because Scott is our
resident teacher here. So Scott, what do you have to say? Um?
Well, before I get into that, I did find along the lines
of, boy, this is kind of a fishy sounding story. Is he
being like Chris was saying? Is he being aggressive and and preaching? I
did find I found I looked up the same article on the Christian Post dot
com and I always like to scroll down to the comments to see see what
people are saying, And so here was a comment that I saw there.
I'll just quick summarize it. Uh, this was from somebody who claimed to
be a student at that school. Um, now, don't forget this is
just a public comment on a news post, and so you know, let's
take this with a with a grain of salt here. But the student claimed
to know Nicholas Ortiz and said that he had made racist, sexist, and
anti LGBTQ comments, and he had made death threats against other students. He
also said that Nicholas was very aggressive in his Bible reading and preaching in school.
So it was kind of kind of what Chris was saying about, you
know, is he is he kind of drawing this on himself having said that,
though, um, I think we um, it's very easy for us
to start looking for holes in this persecution story, and and um, in
we could we could even say that they were kind of inviting that kind of
that kind of critique. But I think we really need to underline here if
we have to take a strong takeaway from the story, and that is bullying
is not acceptable. You know, I think that's going to overshadow everything that
we say about you know, whether we think he was telling the truth,
or whether or not, or or they is probably a mixture of all of
these. Right, we've only heard one side of the story. We didn't
the school didn't really have much to say. By the way, if a
teacher had said something like to that to a student, they would have no
problem getting volunteers from that class to say yes he said that, or no,
no they didn't say that. But going back to the bullying, though,
I mean, the school really has two responsibilities here. One is to
keep the students safe, right, and that's you know baseline, students have
to feel safe when they go to school, otherwise it's going to affect their
learning, their ability to learn. What more than that, the second side
of that is that they have to help the students to feel safe. So
even students that are safe, if they are, if they don't feel safe,
that will still affect them. And so what I would have liked to
have seen, and I don't know that this didn't happen, but I would
expect that the story would have mentioned it, is that if the school had
any kind of transparent or public response, Okay, so they have, the
school has to make a stance against bullying here. It's not acceptable in the
classroom. It's not even a charter school. It's not acceptable. And so
I think that has to overshadow, you know, the knits that we're picking,
which are admittedly fun and attractive to talk about, especially on an atheist
theme show like this, But you know, I really feel I can't stress
enough that bullying is a problem and that we need to take it seriously,
even if we have suspicious you know, scenario situations. In a former life,
I taught high school and so I know how high school kids can get
and I could totally see something like this happening if there was an even among
Christian students, even among other religious students, if one of them was waiving
their Bible in the cafeteria and preaching to other students, Sure, yeah,
they're definitely going to be a target for bullying. That doesn't mean that they
should be bullied. It means that, you know, we can understand why
that this person's getting bullied rather than somebody else. But again, you know,
my last thing to say would be we just we have we have to
stop bullying in school. I mean that that's really the main topic. And
for me that kind of colored my entire reading of the whole situation. Regardless
of whether or not he was being aggressive, he needs to feel protected in
school, and he needs to be noticeably protected in school. The fact that
they're even having a discussion was he being protected or was he not being protected?
If the school doesn't have a paper trail a mile long of all the
things they did to protect him, they are falling short there. They are
being deficient in that, and so they have a responsibility to uh to report,
you know, to do it, to perform that kind of service,
to provide that kind of protection for their students. Mally, you're up next
here, what do you got? Wow, Well you gave me a lot
to think about there. I hadn't thought about that, and um, it's
a good it's a really good point. Yeah. The school needs to come
out and declare and follow through on saying, yeah, we do not tolerate
bullying of anybody for any reason, you know, and you know, no
unlesses uh, no exceptions. Uh. Absolutely, I'm not sure one hundred
percent what needs to be done, um to protect somebody who is going out
of their way to bother other people. I don't know what form that takes.
Um, you know you're the teacher. I'm not. Um, hopefully
I will become a teacher when I'm all done with my schooling. But uh,
so far, No, UM, what measure? What kind of measures
are takable in a scenario like this? Well, I mean they could,
um at least investigate. They would have to be able to show that they
at least cared enough to look into it. Um they can if the student,
you know, depending on if they could decide if Nicholas was provoking this
type of response that then they could talk to that, you know, they
would have a record of that. We talked to the students. We found
thirty people in the cafeteria that said he was egging them on, or he
was calling out for persecution, or he was telling people that they were going
to go to hell if they didn't you know, read the Bible or whatever,
and so and so I would I would imagine that the first step,
at the very least has to be, you know, doing some kind of
investigation, gathering information. And I'm not saying that they didn't do that,
although I didn't see any any mention of that in the article, and I
did not I was not able to find any kind of follow up article as
well. I know this was a little over a year ago that this happened,
and so I don't know how fast the wheels of this type of thing
turn in Florida. But I haven't seen any results. But but yeah,
at the very least, there has to be record that they've done something.
I mean, it's do do something before. If you can't figure out what
to do, then just ask questions, talk to people, find out what
happened and then make a decision after that. Chris, you have something you'd
like to add, Yeah, sort of bouncing on the back of something that
Mally said, They're sorry, something that you said. I find it.
I understand where Scott's coming from, and I I you're absolutely correct there should
never be bullying in schools. But I have to wonder what part the persecution
fetish sort of like had had to take in this. I wonder what his
parents were telling him, you know, when he comes home with that,
and you know, it's it's very believable to me that the aggressiveness probably was
built on over time, um, by you know, being yelled at about
this. Okay, well then you need to you just need to be louder
about it. Jesus said, to be loud about it. Jesus said to
you know, preach it to people. Jesus said that if you're you're you're
going to be persecuted. So if you're not, you know, be be
loud, be bold. Um it's good, right. And I almost wonder
in this case if the school hasn't come out with a statement or anything like
that, because it's all going to be aired out in a lawsuit. And
if the evidence points to the way that I think it probably does, it
doesn't look good on a school just to come out and be like, we've
got all this evidence, the kid was the one that did it all,
like this kid, did you know what I mean? Because then they're just
sort of victim blaming almost in the media. And so it's better for them
if it all comes at a too ahead in the lawsuit and they can present
their evidence and the judge can look and say the school did what they were
supposed to do. Yeah, I was like it mentioned that, and Scott,
you mentioned to the death threats, and the article does mention that he
was actually investigated for death threats and they found that they were unfounded. And
I'm wondering did they find that he didn't make those threats? So they did
find that they didn't have enough evidence to prove that he made those threats when
they said it's on the allegations weren't founded. And I thought that was interesting
that you brought up that it was in the comments from in the Christian site
that so we're getting some kind of at least from a supposed eye witness that
we're getting the same stories. So it's kind of interesting to me. I
was wondering, do you think if this child had been a member of a
different religion he would be getting having these kind of problems. Does anybody think
that that would make a difference. That depends if the rest of the story
would remain the same. Yeah, Like if he had from let's say he
was from the Satanic Temple, do you think that he would still be But
I think he'd probably bullied more in that case. But my son actually let
it be known to his friend once into school cafeteria in high school that he
was an atheist, and three of the kids jumped him and beat them up
that day, so just because because they overheard them. So, yeah,
it's the thing that happens. I you know, I would say that a
lot of this stuff is based off of behavior and not necessarily based off of
the religion. Um. You know, kids that age, their hormones are
going and they can they can get aggressive with each other, and sometimes it's
just a matter of they have this aggression and they want to maybe want to
show off in front of their friends or you know, show off in front
of somebody that they're trying to impress, and oh boy, here's somebody standing
up preaching in the cafeteria. Perfect you know, perfect target, right,
And so I would suspect that that was part of it. I don't.
So, you know, it probably if he was acting the same way.
I don't. I don't think it mattered what came out of his mouth.
I don't think it mattered that he was saying Jesus instead of Allah or Buddha
or whatever. I think it was just the way he was doing it and
what he was doing it, and when he was doing it, and the
attitude he was holding while he was doing it. And again, you know,
we only we have limited information on this, so this is kind of
a guess on my part. But my guess is that it wouldn't admit that
this isn't necessarily a question of religion. Although the parent's response was very much
based on their Christian religion, I think the actual incidence between the students is
probably not if it's related to religion at all, Maybe that's just an excuse
to do it all right, this great segment. I really had fun with
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