Okla. school ends religious halftime show at AU request

Church & State, Feb 2001

Responding to a protest from Americans United, public school officials in Fort Gibson, Okla., have agreed to drop a football halftime show that promoted Christianity.

Americans United attorneys wrote to the school in December after receiving complaints from concerned citizens. During the show, the band marched in the shape of a cross while playing Christian songs and hoisting a white flag bearing a gold cross.

Fort Gibson School Superintendent Steve Wilmoth said the district's attorneys advised him to stop the performances, and he in turn instructed band director Gordon Macklin to discontinue the show. In a brief letter to Americans United dated Dec. 19, Assistant Superintendent Linda Clinkenbeard informed AU, "The Fort Gibson marching band has discontinued the religious halftime performances as referred in your letter to me dated December 11, 2000."

Macklin said the issue was moot, since the football season is over. "I was not trying to make a statement," Macklin said. "I was just a band director looking for some good music." The Associated Press reported that Macklin had originally planned a halftime show with a "Wizard of Oz" theme, but dropped it when students expressed opposition.

The band director sarcastically added that next year the band would perform "Marilyn Manson's greatest hits, so we'll offend the other side," a reference to a controversial shock rock star. He added, "I can assure you, it won't be anything they could find in the Methodist hymnal."

In other news about religion in public schools:

* The New York City Board of Education in early December ordered a public high school in Brooklyn to stop allowing Muslim students to use the auditorium as a makeshift mosque for daily prayers. Muslim students at Lafayette High School were being excused 10 minutes early from the seventh period of the day to pray in the auditorium. Board officials said the arrangement violated policies forbidding the promotion of any specific religion.

School officials said they were open to working out an accommodation but that it would have to cover all students, not just Muslims.