Girl Suspended from School For Saying ‘Bless You’ after a Sneeze

-By Warner Todd Huston

A religion hating Tennessee High School teacher gave one of her students a suspension for daring to say “bless you” to a fellow student who sneezed even after the teacher banned the use of “God talk” in her classroom.

For most Americans saying “bless you” after someone sneezes is an automatic reaction. It is rarely connected with religion and is generally just a social custom. But a teacher from Dyer County High School in west Tennessee so hates the phrase that she banned its use in her classroom.

The thus far unnamed teacher put a list of banned words on a white board in the classroom. “Bless you” was on the list.

But, worse, this teacher also threw a student out of the class after the girl, 17-year-old Kendra Turner, dared to say “bless you” to a fellow student anyway.

The girl was handed an in-school suspension for daring to say bless you to her fellow student in violation of the teacher’s banning of the words. Turner, though, says that the teacher has no right to stop the girl form using the phrase.

“She told me that we’re not going to have godly speaking in her class,” Turner told the media on Tuesday. “I said, ‘well my pastor told me it’s my constitutional right.'”

The school, though, is sticking up for the teacher and claims that it was not “a religious issue.”

“In this case, this was not a religious issue at all, but more of an issue the teacher felt was a distraction in her class,” assistant principal Lynn Garner said.

After the incident became public knowledge, students began to make hand-made t-shits to protest this out-of-control teacher’s actions.

So, how exactly is saying “bless you” such a big “distraction” in a classroom? It is only a “distraction’ if the teacher makes a big deal out of it and the only reason to make a big deal out of it is a hate for religion.

There is no other possible reason.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.

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