The facts of the case are as simple as they are shocking. On Jan. 20, a group of students from Our Lady of the Rosary School in Greenville, S.C., went to Washington for the March for Life. To proclaim their dedication to their cause, and to make it easier for chaperones to spot members of their group, they all wore blue stocking caps labeled “Rosary PRO-LIFE.” But when the group went from the march to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, they were told to remove the pro-life lids or leave the premises. They had transgressed against America’s national religion.
Fox News reported Wednesday that the parents of some of the students “alleged that the museum staff mocked the students, hurled expletives and claimed the museum was a ‘neutral zone’ where political or religious messages were not allowed.” According to one of the students, Patrick Murphy, two women whom the group understood to be security guards approached the group and said, “All people wearing a pro-life hat, take it off.”
The pro-lifers left the museum, but the incident wasn’t over. Murphy said that while the group was standing outside the institution, “they were approached by a man claiming he had reports the group refused to take off their hats and they were in trouble.” Murphy says that he told this fellow: “This is a violation of our First Amendment right. This is a government funded building. How are we paying for this with our taxes and I’m not allowed to wear this hat?” But the man responded that the museum “was a neutral zone and their rights didn’t apply.” Murphy concludes: “We had almost no words.”
Murphy stated that when the pair of security guards first approached the group and told them to take off their hats, “And immediately we’re confused.” They weren’t the only ones who were confused. Alison Wood, the museum’s deputy director of communications, stated that the security guards were way out of line, as “asking visitors to remove hats and clothing is not in keeping with our policies or protocols. We provided immediate training to prevent a re-occurrence of this kind of incident.”
That’s terrific, but it isn’t as if the incident was any real surprise. For decades now, as is detailed in the new book The Sumter Gambit: How the Left Is Trying to Foment A Civil War, a principal focus of the Left’s culture war has been to mainstream its own perspectives, practices, and proclivities, treating them as if they were axiomatically true and accepted by everyone, while tarring dissenting views as “fringe” products of the “far right.” Thus Nikki Haley was correct when she tweeted: “This wouldn’t happen to students wearing ‘Defund the Police’ or ‘Free Palestine’ shirts. Bias against conservatives runs deep in our culture & gov.”
Indeed. The man who confronted the group outside the museum would likely have never considered hats proclaiming “My Body My Choice” or “Abortion = Healthcare” to have been in violation of his suddenly proclaimed “neutral zone.” As far as the dominant cultural Left is concerned, those positions are entirely normal, mainstream, benign, and, indeed, to be encouraged everywhere. But dissent, as is increasingly the case with the Left in all contexts, is not to be tolerated.
Related: Instagram Bans Pro-Life Group at Auburn
Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, which is representing the pro-life students, noted that “other people in the museum were wearing all sorts of different hats as they traversed the exhibits.” Of course, they were. But none of those hats proclaimed any views that the Left’s secular religion considers heretical. Sekulow added: “This is a clear and egregious abuse of the First Amendment, which protects their right to free speech without government interference, and we are ready to take action. A government institution cannot censor an individual’s speech, much less speech from the inherently Christian pro-life position.”
Sekulow also pointed out that the Smithsonian is a “federal entity that receives upwards of $1 billion from the government each fiscal year.” As Haley noted, “Smithsonian runs on our $$, so if it’s going to silence voices then Congress needs to silence its funding.” Yes indeed. If patriots don’t push back against this marginalization, it will only get worse. Defund the Smithsonian!
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