Naked in School
Freedom to be Free
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. They said that this first session was to intimately familiarize ourselves with the bodies of the opposite sex, and while everyone was still milling around the room, they ordered everyone to strip naked.
Some kids begin to strip for the Advanced Sex Ed class
“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—six boys and a girl quickly followed the orders—and then I noticed that most 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!”
“Oh shit, that’s a new wrinkle,” Connor groaned on hearing that. “We have that class later today.”
“I’m gonna just cut it,” Drew declared. “I’m gonna go to the office and have them pull their copy of my written statement of my religious rights for modesty to see why I’m skipping that class.”
“I’ll join you—hey, still have the sophs’ phone numbers from the text-message tree?” Connor asked.
“Oh, good idea! Yeah, let me message them. Most of them might not have heard about this abomination,” Drew responded.
When the time for their sex-ed class arrived, instead of going to the gym as instructed, everyone in it went to the office, where they claimed that the sex-ed class violated their religious rights. The AP’s demands to return to the classrooms were met with stony faces and threats of lawsuits; the kids had been emboldened by news of the churches’ success in obtaining their injunction.
“Mr Turner, that injunction applies to nudity and modesty in all school activities, not just to the Program,” Drew told him. “That means it applies to that class too. All of us here have a religious right to be modest and no one can force us to surrender that right.”
Turner took all of their names then and told them, “Either I or Dr Slater will be in touch with your parents and we’ll discuss your disobedience with them. We will determine a suitable punishment. You may continue your P.E. class in the gym.”
That weekend, while Drew and Connor were visiting at the Ritters’ home, Eva spoke to them.
“Your principal called me on Thursday,” she told them. “He said that you cut the required sophomore health and hygiene class on Wednesday and that meant that you are going to fail it and have to repeat it. He wants Frantz and me to go to the school to discuss your additional punishment.”
“Did he tell you about the class we skipped?” Connor asked.
“Only that it was a sex-ed class and all sophomores were required to take it.”
Connor described what that class was about and Eva exclaimed, “Oh my goodness, no! They’re still trying that nonsense?”
“They are. Drew and I went to the office and she spoke to the AP; she told him that she was asserting her religious-modesty rights. We all did. He’s ignoring that.”
“Indeed,” Frantz grumbled. “As I understand it, the court injunction applies to all school officials; they’re required to permit you to observe your moral values. I’ll call him Monday and remind him that he’s required to comply with the court injunction.”
“That’s what I told him, but he ignored it,” Drew said.
“Well, we’ll see if he ignores it when I tell him.”
The following week, Drew’s lunch group heard from April and Stan about what happened in that sex-ed class when Stan’s second session occurred.
“The parents of the kids in that group all got calls from the school. April’s folks told her that she would fail the P.E. course if she didn’t go to the next two sessions.”
“Yeah, but when I told them what we were supposed to do in that class, they said I certainly could skip it and they’d support me,” April said.
“So yeah, I decided to go myself, just for yucks, to see what would happen,” Stan said. “When I got to the classroom, now only five of us guys showed up, those teachers were standing there stark naked! But with just boys there, the session just stopped right then; the teachers called the office and spoke to someone there for a minute and then just sent us away. I’m sure that the teachers never even considered having us boys partner up—just imagine that scene if they did try that.”
What occurred in all of the rest of the scheduled sophomore sex-ed classes was identical to Stan’s. The same thing happened in every class—only a few wound up going, almost all boys, because virtually all of the sophomores just cut the class when their group was scheduled.
Toward the end of the spring term, Drew and Connor heard some gossip from the twins about that sex-ed class. Jason gave them that news.
“Our office spy, Diane, spilled the tea. She heard that more than 80 to 90 percent of the sophs, but it’s probably more, skipped it totally. The rest only went for the first session and the second sessions all petered out ‘cause there were just about no boy-girl couples that would do that stuff.
“She thinks that they’re gonna fail everyone—but heard them arguing over that—but anyway, every soph is gonna have to re-take it this coming school year. And she told me that they’re planning on redesigning that class for the fall to get kids for it by just pulling pairs of boy-girl partners out of every gym class on their gym days instead of having a scheduled class. That way, nobody could just skip going to it.”
“Huh, won’t the same thing happen? Kids will still refuse, right?” Connor asked. “There’s no way to force us and there’s that court injunction too. I’m not gonna worry about it.”
Summer vacation was only a few days away now and Connor and Drew had their summer jobs to look forward to and Drew, her soccer program. At the end of June, the news reported that the religious-freedom case before the federal district court had been decided in favor of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling. Media commentators were opining whether or not the federal OSA would pursue an appeal of that decision with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit; given the vehemence of the wording of the district court’s decision against them, the favored opinion was that they wouldn’t. The opinion had soundly scolded that agency for its blatant disregard for the students’ rights of religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment. Therefore, the OSA was required to allow religious exemptions to participating in the Program, and to forestall any attempt by the OSA to create some kind of rule for church attendance or a test of a student’s “deeply held belief,” the appeals court wrote that a written declaration by the student would suffice for proof.
Despite this ruling, most kids opted to be on the safe side, so many of them searched the Bible for verses to back up their beliefs. As Jason had predicted, every student in central Pennsylvania was becoming a Bible expert on why public nudity is a sin.
At the end of the summer, Drew and Connor welcomed the Ritters home again after their vacation at their Maryland nudist resort. Jennifer was bursting to tell them all about what she and Michael had learned from the Maryland teens at the resort.
“So we found out that the high schools in Maryland are starting the Program this fall,” she told them. “All of us kids had this big meeting one day, after the Maryland kids heard about us being in a school with the Program. They wanted to know what to expect. And damn, their reaction to our stories was total shock!”
“So no Maryland schools started it early?” Drew asked. “Our lawyer, Mr Gelb, told us that some states had schools that had been running pilot versions.”
“No. But some schools showed a video about the Program this past spring. I think most of the kids who saw it were in local middle schools and they said that it terrified them ‘cause of all the sex scenes it showed. But this was something really wild. There was a young teen girl there; her name was Emma, and she’s scary smart. She went to high school in Alaska, of all places, and she told us that they tried running the Program in her high school!”
“What? Alaska, naked, and winter?” Connor said, trying to keep from laughing. “Was she shitting you? C’mon, the feds are dumb, but that idea is so way out there that it’s not believable.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it either, but she had these great ideas, and she wouldn’t have thought of them unless she had seen the Program in action—or trying to get into action. But about a week or so later at our resort, something happened that proved that she was truthful. Four Program enforcing officers got into our resort by climbing over the gate and came looking for Emma to arrest. They had tracked her down from Alaska and wanted to arrest her for interfering with the Program in Maryland.”
“Okay, now you totally gotta tell us about that,” Connor said. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. And it shows that the Program people must be total morons.”
“Sure,” Jennifer said. “Emma told us that after she got the Program stopped at her school—it never even got started there—she got the school’s federal Program coordinator and six enforcers arrested. They were convicted and jailed too.”
“Jeez, this keeps getting better,” Drew smiled. “Did she say how she got it stopped?”
“She sure did. And she also gave advice to all the Maryland kids about what they can do when it starts in their schools. Oh yeah, that’s how the enforcers found her. She told those kids how to resist and the kids told their parents, who contacted their schools and threatened the school officials that if their kid was forced, they’d call in the police and charge sexual assault, just like that they had heard had happened at a school in Alaska. Well, the Program officials at those schools must have realized that having this info circulating was bad for the Program, so they contacted the Program office to warn them that it was happening. Since Alaska was mentioned, the Program office people figured out that Emma was involved; they got her cell phone traced, and sent the enforcers to our resort. Well, those four fed enforcers got captured and are getting charged with attempted kidnapping. Emma’s doing a one-person wrecking job on the Program office’s personnel.”
“Fantastic! Way cool!” Connor exclaimed. “What did she tell the kids at the resort about assaults?”
“Right, that was just one of the things that Emma told us about; it was something that her own attorney in Alaska had recommended. Just like yours did, Drew.”
Drew nodded.
“But instead of being defensive and simply reacting to her school’s plans to start the Program by getting the kids to resist, the way we did here, Emma went on the offense. Before the Program even began, she recruited a whole bunch of kids—called them her ‘army’—she even had officers in it—and they did stuff to the school to make it too cold in the classrooms to be naked. Next, she got her lawyer to get a permanent injunction against school officials, kinda like the churches did here, but the one she got didn’t exempt anyone, it said that no one was allowed to forcibly strip a student. It also stopped officials from using coercion or making threats to force kids to strip. If anyone tried even verbally threatening a kid, according to the injunction, they could be charged with sexual assault on a minor. So, for months, nobody ever got stripped.
“Then, when it got warmer as spring came and the school’s heat was now working okay, Emma’s intelligence service—see, I said she had organized an army—learned that the school’s federal Program coordinator planned to hold a surprise Program assembly, so she set up a trap for the federal people. The Program coordinator brought in those enforcers from out of state for that assembly and at it, the enforcers tried to strip some of the kids. But Emma had arranged for a police swat team to be standing by—when the enforcers grabbed several kids to pull off their clothes, the team rushed in. All the feds got arrested then. It was such an awesome story. Oh yeah. The feds aren’t gonna run the Program in any Alaska schools now.”
“Damn, she sounds like an awesome kid,” Drew said. “She a senior?”
“You won’t believe this either. First, she had her fourteenth birthday there at the resort. And second, she has a doctoral degree in physics. She graduated from high school and her PhD was awarded in the same month, even before her bachelor’s degree. That degree came about a month later. At thirteen years old.”
“Jeez, a genius then,” Connor sighed.
“Yeah, but a totally normal teen kid. Very charming and likable, she’s the definition of got razz, too. And even with her anti-Program background, she’s a nudist. Hint, hint,” Jennifer said.
“Okay, I’ll just ignore that,” Drew smiled. “You said that she had some other ideas about resisting the Program?”
“Oh, right. Sure. Justin and Jason told the group of kids there all about what happened in the Program here—all the crap that they saw, and I told them more of everything I saw too. So Emma suggested that we look into our state’s laws to see if threats or coercion could be considered to be assault here.”
“I think that the religious exemptions have us covered now, though,” Connor remarked. “We may not need the assault laws. But we’re still facing that sex-ed class crap that the school plans to try again in the fall.”
“Yeah, Emma did say something about that class when Jason told her about it. She had this great suggestion. She told us that if school officials warn us that they’ll fail us in hygiene for refusing to strip and do sex acts, then that’s extortion, in addition to its being a sexual assault. She said that if a teacher tells us to strip, we should tell the teacher that we’ll bring a police officer to the class and have him listen to the teacher’s request for all of us to perform various sexual acts in exchange for passing the class. Forced stripping is a sexual act in addition to oral sex and all that other shit they said that we’d have to do. Emma said that even the principal could get arrested for requiring that class, since he’s the one in charge. And, she told us, if we don’t want a direct confrontation, a lawyer could send a letter to the school that tells them what would happen legally if the school starts that class up again this fall.”
“Again, that’s great advice. Jeez, she must have been a terror in her high school, organizing everything like that,” Drew observed.
“She does have this real intensity about her,” Jennifer told them. “Seeing her nude, she just glows with an inner energy—seeing that glow she has was simply riveting.”
“You know, Drew, maybe Mr Gelb can write a letter like that,” Connor said.
“Sure. Let’s ask him.”
“Oh yeah, one other thing,” Jennifer told them. “This was an interesting idea that Andrew mentioned when he was telling us how Emma was getting used to being naked. She was kinda like you, Drew; the Program had soured her about public nudity, but Andrew and his sisters convinced her to give it a chance. He told us that he thought that the Program would work lots better if they just simply let kids be naked without all the sex and humiliation—run the Program like nudist places are run. The others thought that was a great idea but said that it would never happen.”
“Sure, that would be way too far-fetched to happen,” Connor agreed.
“Michael and I met two new families from the York area who’ve been at the resort before and we like the kids in one of them. You know, they live only about twenty miles away—maybe we can visit them sometimes. Anyway, the kids, a brother and sister, they’re in a high school there and they had the Program, obviously. They told me and Michael that when it started last fall, it was kind of crazy like it was here, but their district had a church minister on their school board. He came up with the religious-freedom idea on his own and counseled those kids how to use it. So after the winter holidays, that school couldn’t get one single kid to participate. That’s where one of the churches that got the court injunction is located, in York.”
“Damn, you really did find out a lot,” Connor said. “It’s great to see that we’re not alone in the wilderness of Program refuseniks.”
They all laughed.
Connor did tell Gelb about the hygiene sex-ed class and he agreed that indeed, the way the school was requiring participation was extortion in the legal sense and, in addition, criminal sexual abuse, even in the absence of a passing or failing grade. Even giving a detention to someone who refused would trigger the extortion felony. A conviction could bring a twenty-year prison term. Gelb prepared a letter to the local school board chairman, detailing the potential criminal infraction which would result from making the sex-ed class mandatory in order to pass the course. The chairman, the district superintendent, and the principal, plus the class’s teachers, would all be implicated in the felony. The class could be offered on a voluntary basis, as long as no incentives, or disincentives, were attached.
Emma’s advice to Jennifer and her group at the nudist resort was quite accurate.
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