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Five-Year-Old Expelled for Nude Dancing
Sometimes the tabloids can't even touch real life...
By Bryan Zepp Jamieson
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Five-Year-Old Expelled for Nude Dancing
Sometimes the tabloids can't even touch real life...
By Bryan Zepp Jamieson
May 20, 2002 -- Mt. Shasta (APJP/zeppscommentaries.com) -- The bones of this story, as reported by the Sacramento Bee, are straightforward enough.
A five year old girl was expelled from a local Christian school, because her mother, twenty-three year old Christina Silvas, was working nights at a non-alcoholic dance club as a nude dancer. The school principal, Pastor Rick Cole, pointed out that the enrolment agreement included a stipulation that families of children adhere to the "Christian principles" of the school, and, after a couple of unsuccessful efforts to convince Ms. Silvas to get into a different line of work (perhaps one that would force her to provide business activity for the cotton and polyester industries) expelled the daughter with three weeks remaining in the school year. Ms. Silvas went to the press, protesting that the reason she was working at the club was because it was the only way she could raise the $400 a month tuition the school demanded.
My own initial response was two-fold. I wondered how coldly inept Cole must be, if the only way he could maintain discipline was by taking it out on a five year old kid. I also wondered why the hell anyone would dance nude at a club in order to send their kid to a school that would teach the kid that momma was scum of the earth for dancing nude at a club. Neither Cole nor Silvas sounded like anyone I needed in my life, and I moved on to a little tidbit about how Putsch had to know in advance of the 9/11 hijackings.
Predictably enough, the letters to the editor column in the Bee filled up over the next couple of days with opinions on the nude dancer story. Those followed a fairly normal pattern of bifurcated and usually... fairly rabid stances. It made for interesting reading. Most of the letters dealt critically with the brand of Christianity Cole professed, while several targeted the mother as being something of a publicity hound. It was one of those rare instances where I could agree with both sides. But reading the letters, I got the feeling I was the only person in Northern California who did!
Even if either side felt the other should fry in hell forever, or at least be forced to watch Nancy Reagan dance nude so we all can get an idea of what hell is like, both sides did agree on one element of the story. Ms. Silva did sign an agreement with the school, and the school, being a private business, did have the right to kick the daughter out for Ms. Silva's failure to adhere to the terms of the contract. Contract law, reasonable prerogatives of business, and separation of church and state all stood behind the Capital Christian Center. No matter how inclined you might be to shake your head in disgust at Cole for kicking the little kid out, by law and social mores, he was acting within his rights. And Silvas, of course, is free to find a school where her job isn't an issue, as it wouldn't be at most schools.
Well, that's the beauty of America: society at large is free to ignore outfits like Cole's if they want, and go their own way, and Cole is free to set up his own little flat earth academy and play by his own rules.
Now, imagine for a minute that the Draper amendment had passed in California a few years back, and we had vouchers in place.
Suppose that vouchers applied to the Capital Christian Center. You might suppose that vouchers would cover the tuition costs for Silvas' little girl, and so Silvas wouldn't have to dance at a club. You might suppose that.
But the Draper amendment put no caps or restrictions on what a private school might set for tuition. At $400 a month, the Capital Christian Center obviously wasn't running on a for profit basis, and doubtlessly depended on subsidies from the mother church, and a lot of volunteer help. Most small private sectarian schools operate in exactly that manner.
So if they are getting state subsidies to the tune of $5,000/year, sectarian schools, even with the most honest of intent, are going to see this as an opportunity: an opportunity to fix up the building to make it nicer for the kids; an opportunity to pay the teachers something above minimum wage, or maybe even something period; an opportunity to get newer books, computers, equipment; an opportunity to take the kids to see the zoo or something like that.
And of course, even if all that weren't taking place, there's the fact that people who wanted to send their kids to the school but who couldn't afford the $3,600 a year (assuming a nine-month school year) now can, and even if the school is entirely happy with all the new applicants, they are looking at their one room with the 24 chairs and realizing that they are going to have to do some serious expansion. And that costs money.
In the end, you end up (hopefully) with a nicer school with paid teachers, but one which has to charge $200 a month over and above what's permitted for vouchers in order to cover all the new expenses. Mind you, that's just the honest private schools. There's going to be the usual assortment of Sesame Street Enrons in the bunch.
So Silvas ends up dancing anyway, and the school ends up kicking her kid out because they believe nude dancing is exactly as bad as murder or stealing. Only now, in addition to complaining to the local paper, she talks to a lawyer, because while nude dancing may be against their particular interpretation of scripture, it isn't against American law, and the publicly-funded school is violating her civil rights, and the civil rights of her daughter, for discriminating against her for her legal activities.
Her case is the one getting all the attention, but the one the legal experts are watching is the case in some very small town, out in the middle of nowhere, where a Wiccan couple have been told that they can't send their kid to the local school because the church running the school believes Wicca to be witchcraft, and therefore evil. Unfortunately, it's the only school for 50 miles around, the public school having folded from lack of funding after half the Baptists in town decided they preferred a school where evolution was not taught, and so the Wiccans are pretty much stuck. And they are suing. Legal experts are saying they'll win, because in America, they have both the right to access to education and the right to be Wiccans.
Maybe it won't be Wiccans. Maybe it will be Jews, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or atheists, or an African- American couple. But eventually, a case like that will come up, and the conflict between religious rites and secular rights will be joined.
Right now, Capital Christian Center doesn't have to worry overmuch about their legal position, and Silvas can send her child to a variety of other schools, including the public elementary school in the fall, and she won't need to dance nude unless she wants to - and she'll never have to worry about the public school expelling her child because of something she's doing that is perfectly legal.
Vouchers will change all that, and inevitably force the question before the courts: what's more important; the rights of Christians, or the rights of Americans.
Either way, people won't like the answer. Let's just work to keep the wall of separation, and prevent that conflict from occurring.
Copyright © 2002, Bryan Zepp Jamieson.