Chapter 12: New Year Changes

Within two weeks of their return to school in January, Drew and Connor noticed a number of subtle, not so subtle, and important changes in the Program’s operation and one major change. The major change was that the national office had notified the school that by not forcing religious objectors to participate, the school was effectively giving exemptions and no exemptions were permitted. The feds demanded that the practice be stopped.

But that was easy for the feds to demand but difficult for the school to implement. Drew and Connor noticed that far fewer kids were being successfully coerced to participate. On the first two school Mondays in January, when a student was named in the P.A. announcements, he or she would tell the teacher that they were claiming their right to religious freedom, and being forced to be naked violated their religious beliefs.

The subtle changes involved the naked kids in the halls and classrooms.

As Connor observed, when he was talking to the twins about what he was seeing, “You know, the first several months of the Program was when lots of kids just acted crazy-like about all the groping and stuff in the hallways. There’s less of that now the past weeks, you think?”

Justin answered, “Yeah, well, there seem to be fewer participating kids too. They still call sixteen names to participate but they never seem to get all sixteen. Slater changed how the kids are selected; he’s concentrating on the seniors now. Even if they get sixteen seniors naked every week, it would still take fifteen or sixteen weeks to get every senior through the Program. With the holidays and breaks, that’s a tough job to get everyone. But I’m guessing that only one out of sixteen kids will participate anyway.”

“Many seniors are eighteen now and they’re adults legally. They have their Fifth Amendment privacy rights and can’t be forced to be in the Program,” Jason responded. “The Supreme Court ruled that minors don’t have that right. I think that 30 to 40 percent of seniors are eighteen by now and they can claim that as adults, they can’t be forced into the Program. They enjoy their constitutional rights to privacy.”

“But there’s another amendment that can be used and it applies to everyone—the First,” Connor remarked. “It includes freedom of religion and we learned in Civics that the Supreme Court has decided that religious freedom takes precedence over the other freedoms. The feds and states aren’t permitted to pass a law that denies anyone the right to practice their religion freely. And that’s happening in school right now with lots of kids resisting, refusing to do the Program.”

“Yeah, we’re seeing more of that in our junior classes,” Justin commented. “The kids from religious families simply haven’t been going to the office when they’re called, and during the past two weeks, even some kids who aren’t from religious families are pretending that they are. There’s lots of grumbling that the Program selection situation is so unfair, that by the end of the term, I’m sure that the school won’t be able to get anyone to participate.”

School officials were now making a real effort to coerce the students to agree to be in the Program, but most of the kids were emboldened now. There were two instances where force was used to try to coerce or strip a girl who had been selected for a particular Monday. In one case, which occurred in a classroom when the girl refused to leave with a teacher to be stripped, her classmates came to her rescue and pummeled the teacher who was attempting to pull the girl out of the room.

The second instance occurred in the gym. The AP must have assumed that if the girl was wearing P.E. apparel, it would be a simple matter to force her to strip. He didn’t know that the girl had taken a personal defense class. He came up to her and demanded that she strip right then, and when she refused and walked away, he grabbed her, pulled her arm to turn her to face him, and then tried pulling off her top. She reacted according to her training, with the result that the AP left the school in an ambulance with severe facial scratches and a dislocated shoulder. The girl became an instant hero.

By mid-February, school officials were unable to coerce any student to participate in the Program. And soon, Drew and Connor learned about another attack on the school’s ability to run the Program—this attack coming from an unexpected source. After services on a Sunday in late February, the pastor asked to talk with them.

“I’ve got some interesting news for the two of you,” Robertson told them.

They spoke while enjoying the light Sunday lunch in the church’s social hall.

“You do know that as of January, all of the high schools in the state have started running the naked Program?” Robertson asked.

“Yeah, we did know that,” Connor answered.

“Okay, then. From the members of my regional clergy council, I’ve been hearing that the conservative Christian students in the region’s schools are making a huge outcry not only about being forced to participate in the Program but also being forced to be bystanders in the sexual activities that go on around them. It’s those activities called relief or class demonstrations. And they’re really objecting to having the boys use the girls’ locker room and restrooms, and girls using the boys’, like the schools are requiring.

“Apparently the conservative Christian student population in much of the eastern Pennsylvania Dutch Country, that’s Lancaster, York, Lebanon, Berks, and Dauphin, makes up about half of the students in the schools. All of these students’ families are vehemently opposed to the Program on moral and religious grounds. Not only is the participation a moral problem for us, it’s the implied participation that being a bystander to the sexual activities that go on is a serious sin too. At your school, and in a number of others too, the administrations agreed to somewhat accommodate those students who objected to being exposed to the sexual activities, but when the leaders of the churches represented in my clergy group learned that the feds contacted the schools to tell them that they won’t allow the schools to continue those accommodations, they quickly took action.

“I heard this week that two of the larger churches in the region, back in January, filed a petition...” he pulled out a paper and began reading from it... “for an emergency restraining order in the Commonwealth Court against the Commonwealth’s education department, all of the school districts in the local five-county area, and all of the high schools. This petition cites the petitioners’ personal, deeply held religious belief in modesty as required in the Bible and therefore they must be protected from seeing any school-supported sexual activities while attending the public schools, their attendance being mandated by the education laws of the Commonwealth, and in addition, petitioners must be allowed an exemption from being forced to take part in the Naked in School Program.”

“Oh my goodness ... thank God for their doing that,” Drew exclaimed.

“I’m sure that God appreciates your thankfulness,” the pastor chuckled.

“We did hear reports and rumors about some legal challenges to the Program starting up,” Connor said. “Everyone’s kinda discounted them since the feds have always come up on top.”

“Not this time, so far. There were a few further developments and some came this week. First, the emergency restraining order was granted but was immediately sealed because of a challenge from the feds. That temporarily blocked it from taking effect. Meanwhile, the churches in question brought civil lawsuits against the largest school districts in Lancaster and York Counties. Those two court cases are ongoing regardless of the fate of the restraining order.

“And on Friday, after an emergency hearing earlier in the week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the restraining order, so the order has now become a court injunction. If a student claims to have a religious objection to the Program, they must be granted an exemption. But that’s not the end of this saga, since it appears that the Program office has other legal options.”

“That’s wonderful news, Pastor,” Connor said. “In our school, most every kid is saying now that they’ll refuse to participate. I heard that only 53 kids have been in it so far. When you count all those who refused or who weren’t picked yet but who say they won’t do it when their name comes up, that’s 96 percent of the students. And since the religious kids are successfully refusing, claiming that participating violates their beliefs, all the rest of the kids are claiming that they have the same beliefs. Hey, what a great way to save souls, right?”

They all laughed.

“Hey, does Mr Gelb know about this?” Connor asked.

“He does; I called him after I first heard about the restraining order and he’s kept me up to date on this. He’s the source of all that technical legal jargon I used. Glad I studied theology and not law. But some folks claim that there’s little difference between them.”

Laughter.

By Monday, the student grapevine had spread the news of the state supreme court decision and the injunction; media news outlets had broken the news the previous day. That’s when the news release had been sent out; Sunday was chosen because of the day’s association with religious worship.

Two weeks later, the two teens heard further news about the Program’s religious-exemption legal challenge. It was a report on the local TV evening news.

“ ... given the result that the Pennsylvania courts have backed the churches in their quest for a religious exemption from the Naked in School Program, the federal Office of Social Awareness, the agency in charge of the Program, has appealed the state Supreme Court’s decision to the region’s federal district court. The OSA has claimed that since the Program is a federal law, not state, the state court lacks jurisdiction. Just this week, the federal court has denied the OSA’s petition to block the state injunction from taking effect prior to a full panels’ hearing on the issue. That court agreed with the state’s brief that Pennsylvania’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act applied to school programs, even those that are federally mandated, and religious freedom is guaranteed by the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The hearing for this issue has been scheduled to take place in June.”

There was widespread celebration at that news at school the following day. Even though none of the students were agreeing to participate in the Program now, they now had full legal backing for their refusal. At lunch, Jason pulled out a rumpled sheet of paper.

“You know, because of that court decision, kids in this area, maybe all of PA, probably will get to know the Bible better than most kids anywhere else,” he remarked. “I’m in the process of memorizing this list so I can quote Bible verses condemning public nudity.”

He passed the paper around to the others at the table. It had listed fourteen biblical verses referring to nudity or modesty.

“Hey, I like these,” Connor said. “Especially this one, from Nahum Chapter 3, where it says that God says that when one exposes their nakedness, it makes them shameful, filthy, contemptible, and a spectacle. And this one, Galatians 5:19, where it says, ‘The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery... ‘ These are great. So if you’re asked why...”

Jason interrupted, “Yeah, if I’m picked, I claim a religious exemption and if they say to prove it, I can recite the parts of the Bible that guide my beliefs.”

The others at the table asked him to email a copy of the list to them.

“See?” Jason laughed. “Every kid in the region will become a Bible expert on why nudity is a sin.”

“You do know that most of the verses on your list are misinterpreted or quoted out of context, right?” Drew asked. “Or else they’re metaphor or allegory.”

“Oh, sure,” he answered. “Doesn’t matter. Religious beliefs don’t have to be based on logic, you know.”

“True. Well, you guys, I’m really feeling good about going to school now,” Drew remarked. “I’m just so grateful for what the churches did—how they used the courts to stop that terrible federal law’s interference with their members’ personal beliefs. And the rest of ours too. Looks like the Program will just about get shut down in Pennsylvania now.”

“Yeah, but Drew, you know that you were the one who got all of that resistance started, don’t you?” Jennifer asked. “It was your ideas and those stories you told everyone, even before the Program began, that got people’s attention to the abuses that the Program causes.”

The other kids agreed while Drew blushed.

“Well, maybe this crap will be all over now,” Connor said.

Except it wasn’t.

Apparently the school officials weren’t going to let the students off without some kind of activity based on some of the Program’s principles, including forced exposure and sex. Several weeks later, April appeared at lunch accompanied by Stan. April, a friend of Jennifer’s, was a sophomore on the girls’ soccer team and Stan was on the boys’ team.

“Guys, you’ll never believe this crap the school pulled now,” April told them breathlessly.

“What happened?” Jason asked.

“You know how our sophomore health classes are set up? They combine two classes on alternate P.E. days with a double period and today was a health and hygiene class day; it starts in the gym. When we came into the gym, the teachers started pairing up boys and girls into couples and told us that today we would be starting a three-session unit in hygiene called Advanced Sex Ed. They told us that all of the sophs would be taking it; it was a requirement to pass the term’s health class.

“They combined the classes and selected two groups of equal numbers of boys and girls and sent us to the two health classrooms. Me and Stan got partnered and we went into one of the rooms and there were two teachers for the class, a really youngish man and woman, who we never saw before. I’m guessing that they were student teachers or something. But when we saw that the whole classroom floor was covered with mats, we started to get worried. Then the teachers told the class that it was designed to get us familiar with our sexuality. This first session was to intimately familiarize ourselves with the bodies of the opposite sex, and then they ordered everyone to strip naked.

“That caused total chaos but about three-quarters of the kids completely refused right there. I noticed that the ones who did strip had already been in the Program, like Stan, and he stripped. Me, I refused.”

“I did,” Stan told them, “‘cause I had already gone through with it, so I guess I just automatically got out of my gym clothes—and then I noticed that lots of the others weren’t undressing, like April. She called out, ‘No way will I do that!’ The teachers began making threats and told the ones who refused that they’d fail the entire hygiene class—but nobody changed their minds. So they got sent to the office.”

“Yeah,” April continued the story. “They told us to go there immediately, but when someone said that they had to change back to regular clothes, the teachers said to go dressed as we were. No way was that happening. We all went and got changed and then went to the office. At the office, the AP told us that we’d have a week’s detention and would fail the whole hygiene course. But I’m not gonna do the detention, I’m gonna have my parents complain to the school board. That class is totally obscene!”

Stan nodded, “It sure was. After the dressed kids left and the rest of us got settled down, the teachers showed us a video about sex and sexual response which had a demonstration about how to locate erogenous zones, to do sensual teasing and stripping, kissing, foreplay and masturbation, and then it ended with scenes showing blow jobs and pussy licking! After the video, we were told that we were to spend the rest of the class getting familiar with our partners and using the time to examine each other’s sex parts.

“Well, that was a non-starter. There had been twenty-eight kids at first. Twenty-one had left the room, thirteen girls and eight boys. That left one girl and six boys. The girl said that she wasn’t gonna be on display for a bunch of boys and just began dressing, but since the period was almost over, the teachers just let us go. But before we left, they told us that for the second session, they’d make sure that the kids who refused to take part would be forced to return for it, and we would learn how to sexually please our partners and practice with them by doing the exercises that were shown in that video. The guy said that we would start with the basic exercises, and by the third class session, we were supposed to show that we could make our partners cum using oral sex!”