But that’s not the issue in this case — the issue is whether the ring is a required religious symbol. It seems pretty clear to me that it’s not, and that there’s no branch of Christianity that believes a chastity ring must be worn — unlike branches of Islam which do require veiling.

I think you’ve missed the point of the case. She has a right to freedom of religious expression. Her school can’t stop her expressing her religious belief unless they’ve a good enough reason to.

The chapter-and-verse you give above – that this only applies to ‘required’ symbols of ‘recognised’ branches of religion – is the school’s opinion. Whether it’s the law is an open question. Her opinion, and the issue on which the case turns, is it’s that they don’t get to decide what’s protected and what’s not on that basis. She is claiming she has a right to religious expression – which included optional expressions thought up by newfangled cults – and a public authority can’t stop her from doing this without good reason.

The issue isn’t whether the ring is a required religions symbol. It’s whether only people whose religious expressions are deemed to be ‘required’ are protected.

What if the issue was an anti-gay t-shirt at a school that otherwise required uniforms? That’s also an expression of religious belief that violates the school’s dress code, just like the chastity ring. Would you agree that a student should be allowed to wear that as well?

But it’s not an absolute right – the right to religious expression can be trumped by other considerations (like preventing the intimidation of other students). You can ban even required religious symbols if you’ve a good enough reason – UK courts have ruled that schools can ban religious dress like the niqab should they go about it the right way. But you do have to have a good reason. If the ring is protected, they they can still ban it, if they show a good enough reason for overriding people’s right to religious expression. Though I doubt they’ll be able to demonstrate a good enough reason in the case of this ring though.

I had a duscussion with an old school friend about uniform . She thought lack of jewelry serves the same purpose as a uniform, as a sort of leveller of cliques, as well as for practical reasons, and to ceep class crazes to a minimum. Small transgressions are usually tolerated, but when it becomes a craze, such as karma bracelets were a few years ago, they get banned to avoid thefts and peer pressure, as well as avoiding getting sued by parents for loss or injuries. It would be pointless to enforce uniform and ban make-up to reduce peer pressure but allow jewelry, so although I see nothing wrong with jewelry, I know why it is banned. I know that many teenagers try to get away with whatever they can for a laugh, but if they sign up to uniform, they have to live with it, if it is reasonable.

Children are not allowed to wear anything other than ear studs and a religious necklace from a young age in uniform-wearing schools, so it cannot have been a surprise to the girl or her parents, because this is the system that ahs been in place for a while.

I guess it’s cultural, because our society is more secular, and these rings are new, I just dont think they are required. There are schools without uniforms, and faith schools of different denominations, so if the girl and her parents objected very strongly to the uniform code they had agreed to, they were not being forced to follow.

The Right here are very much crying persecution, which incenses me a bit, because even I have to admit as a liberal Christian that we usually aren’t. I feel as long as there’s an option to display your faith, if you wish (although I don’t think it’s a rule in Christianity), then you have your human rights. If we all got to choose what messages and beliefs to support, I’d like to see some ‘Gay rights’ rings. That and a Jesus tattoo. :)

Many schools have ID cards. Whilst the hijab (headscarf) is fine, a veil renders ID cards pointless, because nearly anyone can be under them.

British schools, even those with uniforms, are actually very lenient in practice when ti comes to religious symbols. Pupils are allowed a necklace with a religious symbol, and, where required or reccomended by their faith, they are allowed headscarves and bangles. The main point where I probably differ in my opionion here is that I dont’ see the ring as a true religious symbol, because it is not required by any branch of that faith. Perhaps it is more of a symbol in America, but here it really is not percieved as such, because its’ a relatively new fad. Being a young Brit, I know exactly what lengths teenagers go to to pass off jewelry as a religious object in the hope of wearing it, and it is really telling that the girl was only banned when she started a trend in her school, with 11 others wearing the rings. I think that makes the diggerence. Whilst I think Amanda Marcottes views are very mature, and banning them does make a bit of a martyr of a silly girl who won’t even be attending the school any more, or ever wearing uniform again, I still feel that uniforms should ahve some limit, because if tehy don’t anything with any belief or message must be allowed. I just think that if a reasonable effort is made to meet religious needs, that is enough. Tehre are pelnty of schools with no restrictions after all.

Anyway, after she got some crap from the administration, her friends all hit Hot Topic and such and bought tons and tons of the ugliest, biggest, blingiest pentacles they could find and wore them to school the next day. The administration ended up making a rule that no more than six religious items could be worn at any given time. Heh.

I fuckin’ lol’d.

I attended a Cath HS for two years, and I’m reminded of the staff’s general fear of the student body. The admin wasn’t nearly so afraid of our ability to think for ourselves as those from some of my previous schools (I actually have fairly fond memories of the place, as most of the teachers genuinely cared about our education) but there were just enough people who shit themselves whenever someone broke “the rules.” I still remember rather vividly the day our senior class came in out of uniform on a (gasp!) uniform day. (I still have my detention slip! Poor guy watching the room had to write one each for all 28 of us. I was terribly amused–still am–that on “reason for detention” he wrote out “other: being a senior”).

I personally don’t see why there’s such a big deal about her wearing it. As far as its being “counter-culture”, I agree that it is. Considering modern society is not chaste till marriage, that chastity has become “counter” simply by minority status. “Liberal” is the new status quo. Though it does seem the “Christian Conservatives” are attempting a “comeback”.

I’m not saying it’s right, just sharing a tid-bit of knowledge since a part of my family is fundamentalist.

There’s a fairly clear commercial motivation why they’re trying to get the court to say that wearing the silver ring is a required religious symbol.

The school has a ban on visible jewellery, which the girl and her parents were well aware of. There was nothing to prevent the girl from wearing the ring as a pendant under her clothes inside school hours.

pupils often try to accessorise to make a statement as a “fuck you” to the school and so there has to be some sort of ruling to decide what is allowed and that line has to be put somewhere. a girl at my school flaunted the rules by wearing a cross (allowed because religious) but her cross was about 5 inches high…. in instances where pupils are covered in accesories the school may be a tad annoyed because it makes the pupil look scruffy and when out of school everyone can attach this scruffy pupil to the school by seeing the uniform, as well as overaccessorising often being associated with more rebellious kids.

i think the schools would ideally not want religious symbols worn either if possible because the whole idea is to keep the pupils the same and feel equal (no showing off with high value clothes either) but that it a line the system knows there would be much trouble to cross… wherever the “line” is put it will annoy those just below it but i think it is a good system to keep pupils the same since it helps stop cliques and showing off or embarrassment due to lack of money for clothes.

i can’t say i support the banning of the niqab because i can understand just how important it is to those who wear it…. but in a classroom it is very difficult for teachers when so much communication between teacher and pupil is blocked. a solution (maybe sometimes tricky) could be sexual segregation but this would be the choice of the pupil-they may want to be at a mixed sex school. i went to an all girls school with female teachers and have many muslim friends. some wear headscarves if they want to but within school they dont have to worry about it so much because they only come across women.

That alludes to an important issue: why are religious symbols assumed under this dress code to be of so much greater importance than every other meaning attached to jewelry? If a teenager’s mother dies and bequeaths her wedding ring to her daughter, or a necklace that her own mother used to wear, why is that student’s desire to wear a tangible reminder of her mother’s love not as important as it would be if she believed God told her to wear the ring/necklace?