Wednesday, December 5, 2001
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Wednesday, December 5, 2001 |
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Rutherford Institute defends Columbine column Being out of the office at present, Mr. Whitehead has asked me to respond to Brandon Butler's comments and assure you of his commitment to providing clear and credible commentary to the newspapers that publish his column. Please feel free to publish the following in response to Mr. Butler's letter to the editor: Rather than attempting to engage in a valid discussion of the debate surrounding the Cassie Bernall incident, Brandon Butler's response to John Whitehead's op/ed column on the Columbine tile case suggests an almost palpable hostility to anything and anyone related to religion. Perhaps instead of casting aspersions on Mr. Whitehead's qualifications as a journalist and Mr. Beverly's editorial skills, Mr. Butler might have expended a little more energy into researching both sides of the debate. Had he done so, he might have discovered that while Salon.com did present a rather titillating attempt to "debunk the myth," theirs was not an authoritative or absolute final analysis. In fact, all we truly have to rely on are a variety of student accounts some conflicting of what happened on that black day at Columbine High School. We know that many lives were needlessly lost as a result of rampaging student gunmen. It has been reported that those same gunmen interacted with their victims before shooting them. And while some individuals have questioned whether it was truly Cassie Bernall who expressed her belief in God before being shot or Valeen Schnurr afterwards, there are many eyewitnesses who insist that both incidents took place. Not having been present at the time of the incident, we must rely on credible, available resources. However, while Mr. Butler might choose to make Salon.com his only source of reliable information, Mr. Whitehead chose to base his account on the widely reported testimonies from several student witnesses, in addition to the account referenced in the book written by Cassie's mother, Misty Bernall, "She Said Yes, The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall." In regard to Mr. Butler's charge that The Rutherford Institute is not dedicated to the defense of civil liberties and human rights "in the comprehensive sense," Mr. Butler has only to visit The Rutherford Institute's website, www.rutherford.org, to see how far off track he is. The Institute has a long history of standing in defense of the U.S. Constitution. And while we do handle a number of cases involving religious freedom issues, our volunteer attorneys have also provided pro-bono assistance to individuals whose civil liberties have been violated, whether in regard to free speech, parents' rights, sexual harassment, workplace discrimination, equal access, privacy, and search and seizure, among others in other words, all the freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Furthermore, while I commend Mr. Butler on his championing of the ACLU our organizations have worked together on a number of issues, and we have great respect for their work we disagree on the degree to which individuals should be able to express their religious beliefs in public. In that capacity, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute defended the constitutional right of the parents of Columbine victims to express their religious beliefs in a memorial to their children when the alleged threat of ACLU intervention caused the school to restrict those rights and would do so again, should the need arise. While Mr. Butler certainly has a constitutional right to express his opinions freely, I would suggest that before he makes any more scurrilous accusations, he should research the object of his attacks a little more thoroughly. Nisha N. Mohammed Media Coordinator The Rutherford Institute
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