Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break with
guest Charles Steinberg
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we were going through
some of the exciting battles
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and victories
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that the Northwest
Religious Liberty Association
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is carried on,
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and you've been
a big part of that
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for quite a few years.
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Where else can we pick it up?
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What are some of the
other exciting moments
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for your activities?
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We can pick it
up a couple areas,
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both into Inmates Rights.
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You know, in the Bible, it says,
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"I was hungry, you
gave me something to eat.
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I was in jail
and you visited me."
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So there was a fellow,
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he was a fellow inmate
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in Washington
Correctional Institution.
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He was in for murder.
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His name is Joe Macomb.
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And Joe Macomb
is Native American
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by birth and by culture.
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I remember this case. Yeah.
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And Joe Macomb wanted to
participate in Bible studies
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with the Seventh-day Adventist
and other Christian groups.
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Now in a prison situation,
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the government has
a compelling interest
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in making sure
there's order in the prison.
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And Joe Macomb
contacted our office.
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And he said he's not
allowed to have Bible studies
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with Christians
because he's a Native American.
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So it was the right says
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for data for American
traditional practices,
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coming at odds with Christian
religious accommodation,
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wasn't that?
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Yes.
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In the State of Washington...
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And they were trying
to deny you can have one
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or the other but not both.
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The State of Washington
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when you go
into a prison system,
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you have a piece of
paper, you check the box.
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What is your
religious preference?
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Native American, Protestant,
Baptist, Jewish, Muslim,
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and it was to the
exclusion of the others
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how the rules interpreted.
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And Chaplain Tom Sasse,
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a very ardent
Catholic man, chaplain,
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had a very firm
belief that Native Americans
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could not
fellowship with Christians.
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Because Native Americans
only worship spirit animals
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and only worship spirits.
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And so Chaplain Sasse took away
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Mr. Macomb's Bible,
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took away a cross,
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that he had gone
through a bunch of Bible studies
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with the statement scrolls.
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It's a bizarre situation.
They took away his cross.
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And at the deposition,
that the State of Washington
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and the Seventh-day Adventist
Church General Counsel took,
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they learned that Chaplain Sasse
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had all these prejudices
against Native Americans
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that wanted a
dual religion status.
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And the Deputy Attorney General
that was listening on the case,
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basically, once you
heard the deposition,
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the sworn evidence,
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we're going to
go ahead and change
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this administrative rule
in the state of Washington.
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It'll take a
while for us to do that.
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But we're going
to change the law
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for the benefit of all...
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And that's the best
sort of case to have
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not just to win that case,
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but to write the
result large for other people.
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But again, it was
application of a law
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that had a lot of broad support
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that was signed
by President Clinton
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on the Religious Land Use
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and
Institutionalized Persons Act.
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It was a great victory.
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And I learned
later from Monte Church
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that it became a template
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that other states and
their prison systems used
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to not have as much
dissension in a prison.
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Now, you got to
explain who's Monte Church?
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Okay.
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Monte Church is the director
of Native American Ministries
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within the Seventh-day
Adventist Church at the,
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I believe, the North
Pacific Union Conferences,
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I believe is...
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You know, I know he's native,
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I didn't know at that
time what he was doing.
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But that's one of
the things I learned.
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It's a great victory.
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You know, some
of the other things
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that we've done
over the last 21 years
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at the Northwest
Religious Liberty Association,
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is we've conducted
about 3,700 mediations.
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And that's when an employee
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is asking for a
religious accommodation,
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or they need a letter
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so that they can
change the date of a test
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and the law is not favorable
for most accommodations
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except in Oregon,
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which changed
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the TWA versus
Hardison standard.
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And a lot of times
most people of faith,
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they want to be a good
witness for their employer.
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They want to be able
to be a good employee
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not get written up,
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not get
disciplined, not to get fired.
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Yeah, they shouldn't
have to make a choice
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between their faith
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and their
stewardship as an employee.
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Yeah.
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And there's legal precedent
that makes that difficult.
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Another area that
we've had great success
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and believe it or
not, back in 2010,
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there was a bill dropped
in the Olympia Legislature
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to have forced unionization
of all childcare workers
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in the State of Washington.
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And the
Seventh-day Adventist Church
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I think back in 1974, or '72,
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had a paper basically
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against some aspects
of labor union membership.
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Some members are
members of labor unions,
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some members aren't.
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But one of the things
that I like to look at is
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how good a witness
are you for your faith,
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if you're going to do
economic harm to your boss
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by going out on strike.
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There are legitimate
reasons for labor unions.
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And you know, I think...
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I'm glad you say that
because that's the one area
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I don't quite
whew historic view,
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even though I'm certain
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that at some point of conflict
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in the USSR unions
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could again be a huge problem.
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I think it's a
mixed bag at the moment.
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And there are
some clear advantages
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to Eugene activity.
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Yeah.
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One of my very early cases
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in Northwest
Religious Liberty Association
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involved the plight of a cashier
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at a place called Fred Meyer.
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And Fred Meyer s a
large grocery store
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and multi retail operation.
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And this one lady,
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she wanted to
go celebrate Easter
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at her church.
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And she was Catholic.
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Her manager was Catholic also.
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And he said, "Well, you know,
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we will just go
together to lunch break,
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have communion, and
then come back to work."
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And she's like, "No,
you don't understand.
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I want to celebrate
the entire day of Easter
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and the Resurrection.
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I want my
grandkids to be a part of it.
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I want to take
the full day off."
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And he goes, "Nope.
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I made the schedule,
you have to do that."
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And so on behalf
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of the Northwest
Religious Liberty Association,
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we reached out to Fred Meyer,
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wrote a nice letter to
the union shop steward for,
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'cause she's a
member of labor union.
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And also wrote a letter
to, I think, was in Beaverton,
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Oregon was where Fred
Meyer's headquarters was.
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And the manager was very livid
that they would go to a lawyer
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to write a letter like that.
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And the union shop
steward, he was very much, well,
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we paid double time.
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And so I've got
like five volunteers
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wanting to take a
place on the shift.
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Yeah.
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So it was no problem
just the manager's suffice.
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Just the
manager's intransigence.
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And a lot of time it
really is just education
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to educate
somebody and not their...
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That's the lesson
I've got out of it.
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Nine, ten, so
much more than that
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of these issues
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are so right out of the gate.
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It's just some
communication to the employer
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that this person
really has a legal right
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to be accommodated.
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And can you do it or whatever,
and then it's sort of smooth.
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It's when it goes further
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that it gets
complicated, isn't it?
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Yes. It does. It does.
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One of the other...
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And it's not a sure
bet to go the full run.
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One of the other victories
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we had early on was in
a public school setting.
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There was a fourth grader
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in Washington
State Public School
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that had free reading time.
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And the fourth grader
being a Bible believer,
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brought her Bible with her
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to read during
free reading time.
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And the teacher went up
and confiscated the Bible
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and said,
"Separation of church and state,
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you can't have your Bible here
at the public school ground."
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And the
grandparents called our office.
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And I said, "You know,
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we can do this
three different ways.
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One, I can send a
mean letter to the teacher
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and the principal.
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Number two, and
threatened the law suit.
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Number two, I can
print out these regulations
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from the Federal
Department of Education
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about what's
allowed and not allowed.
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And you and your
daughter can go have a meeting
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with the principal in person."
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And not, you wouldn't go?
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I wasn't involved with that.
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I would get involved
if they refuse to change.
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And they said that...
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The third thing to
do is to do nothing.
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And let these people run over
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your fourth grader's
constitutional rights.
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And the path they chose
was to take the printouts
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that I had done,
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to go talk to the
principal and the teacher
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and the teacher
gotten education.
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And their fourth grader
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was able to get her
Bible back and use it.
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It worked out beautifully. Yeah.
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Over the years in Liberty,
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we've had many articles on this.
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And this might takeaway,
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that it's usually
overzealous teachers
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and school administration,
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not any great move
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against religious
liberty of the schools.
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And different...
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Well, I wouldn't call
them religious liberty groups,
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but different religious groups
that are claiming harassment
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and you know, they really want
the largest share of society.
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They're always
quoting these cases,
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and they don't illustrate
any more than then misguided
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overzealous
actions by an individual.
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The law is very plain
that the student is allowed
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to share their
faith in that environment.
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Exactly. Yeah.
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That reminds me of another case.
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Not necessarily in
schools, but in employment law.
00:09:26.83\00:09:30.77
A person contacted me,
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my cell phone rang
and it was a church member
00:09:32.17\00:09:35.24
of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church,
00:09:35.27\00:09:36.60
named Jeffrey Britt.
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Jeffrey Britt had a
great career in the Navy.
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And then after he
retired from the Navy,
00:09:40.88\00:09:43.95
he wanted to go back to work
for the Navy on the civil side,
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helping with the
library for mechanics
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on very sensitive areas.
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And his employer
was very hostile to him
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having Sabbath's off,
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from sundown Friday
to sundown Saturday.
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They started writing him up.
00:10:02.36\00:10:03.73
They made him use
his vacation time.
00:10:03.77\00:10:05.50
That was direct hostility.
00:10:05.53\00:10:06.87
They didn't
like the whole of it.
00:10:06.90\00:10:08.24
Direct hostility.
00:10:08.27\00:10:09.60
And my cell phone
rang, and Jeff told me that
00:10:09.64\00:10:11.94
they want me to
sign this document
00:10:11.97\00:10:13.41
and they said,
it'll all go away.
00:10:13.44\00:10:15.04
He faxes me the
document, I read it,
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and it says that his boss
00:10:16.95\00:10:18.51
would take sensitivity training.
00:10:18.55\00:10:20.82
And he could get fired
00:10:20.85\00:10:22.78
if he didn't report on
the Sabbath, essentially,
00:10:22.82\00:10:25.19
is the summary of the
form that they thought
00:10:25.22\00:10:27.26
was an accommodation.
00:10:27.29\00:10:28.62
The boss would take or
he would have to take it?
00:10:28.66\00:10:30.93
He would get written that...
00:10:30.96\00:10:32.29
The boss would take
the sensitivity training,
00:10:32.33\00:10:34.60
and that he'd still get fired
00:10:34.63\00:10:36.00
and no
accommodation for the Sabbath.
00:10:36.03\00:10:37.37
Oh, I see. Yeah.
00:10:37.40\00:10:38.73
So anyway, we intervene,
00:10:38.77\00:10:40.64
the Northwest Religious
Liberty Association intervened.
00:10:40.67\00:10:43.57
We had a day long mediator
00:10:43.61\00:10:46.27
with two federal
mediators on the case.
00:10:46.31\00:10:49.08
He actually got a refund of his
vacation pay that he had taken.
00:10:49.11\00:10:51.08
Wow! It was very good.
00:10:51.11\00:10:52.45
So it worked out well.
00:10:52.48\00:10:53.82
Yes, it worked out very well.
00:10:53.85\00:10:55.92
But that's not always the case.
00:10:55.95\00:10:57.89
But it's
important to have people
00:10:57.92\00:10:59.25
that stand up for
their religious liberty,
00:10:59.29\00:11:01.16
whether it be in the school,
00:11:01.19\00:11:03.06
in the workplace,
even in athletics,
00:11:03.09\00:11:05.76
in high school athletics,
00:11:05.79\00:11:07.86
standing up for your faith,
00:11:07.90\00:11:09.43
'cause someone will be
there to take it away from you
00:11:09.46\00:11:11.20
if you're not
standing up for it.
00:11:11.23\00:11:15.34
I've always been
attracted to history,
00:11:15.37\00:11:18.04
the study of history.
00:11:18.07\00:11:19.71
But I must admit,
00:11:19.74\00:11:21.08
I've not always
seen it the same way.
00:11:21.11\00:11:25.01
When I was young
history was dates,
00:11:25.05\00:11:27.12
and places, and
times, and people.
00:11:27.15\00:11:31.02
Most people today see history
more as the trend of events
00:11:31.05\00:11:34.86
and a grand story.
00:11:34.89\00:11:37.89
When I look at religious liberty
00:11:37.93\00:11:39.59
in the United States,
00:11:39.63\00:11:40.96
and as this program
underlined in the North West,
00:11:41.00\00:11:45.33
there's no question
00:11:45.37\00:11:47.00
that the story of
religious liberty protected
00:11:47.04\00:11:50.01
and advanced
00:11:50.04\00:11:52.07
is a story.
00:11:52.11\00:11:53.74
There are many
wonderful anecdotal instances
00:11:53.78\00:11:57.41
of great victories
00:11:57.45\00:11:58.78
and a few
stumbles along the way.
00:11:58.81\00:12:01.62
But there's no
question that great people,
00:12:01.65\00:12:04.09
and great moments
have all come together
00:12:04.12\00:12:07.76
to tell a story at
this telling, at this day,
00:12:07.79\00:12:11.76
a religious
liberty safe and sound.
00:12:11.79\00:12:15.23
I pray that the
continuing efforts
00:12:15.26\00:12:18.10
of Attorney Steinberg
00:12:18.13\00:12:20.47
and many of his
fellows and other groups
00:12:20.50\00:12:22.54
and other
locations within that area
00:12:22.57\00:12:25.44
that they can
continue those great successes.
00:12:25.47\00:12:29.81
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:12:29.84\00:12:32.45