Christians 4 rebellious teens

Christian legal organizations have united with the American Civil Liberties Union and a gay rights group to defend a teenager who unveiled a large banner that read, "Bong hits 4 Jesus," The Chicago Tribune reported.

With TV cameras rolling as the Olympic torch passed through Juneau, Alaska in 2002, Joseph Frederick, who was on a school field trip, unveiled his banner, "Bong hits 4 Jesus." When his principal suspended him for 10 days, Frederick, now 23, took him to court for violating his free speech rights. Frederick first lost the case, then won in appeals, and now Kenneth Starr, representing the principal, has taken the case to the Supreme Court, where it awaits verdict.

Despite the fact that they find the message offensive, some Christian legal networks (the Alliance Defense Fund, the American Center for Law and Justice, the Christian Legal Society, and Liberty Legal Institute) agree that the case is about First Amendment rights (but freedom of religion rather than speech) and have filed friends-of-the-court briefs for the student.

"I've been doing religious [legal] work for almost two decades, and in my opinion this is probably one of the most dangerous cases to religious freedom in the last decade because you don't think it's about religion," Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel for Liberty Legal Institute, told the Tribune. If the school wins, these Christian lawyers fear schools will be able to censor any type of religious expression, whether it is an anti-abortion T-shirt or a student-run Bible club.

These conservative Christian groups find themselves aligning with Lambda Legal Defense, a gay-rights group, and the ACLU, with which conservative Christians often disagree.

A survey of Tribune readers on religion reporter Manya Brachear's blog, The Seeker, found that 90.5 percent of people believe the banner should be protected by the First Amendment, but only 2.6 percent of these voters say that it is protected because of freedom of religion rather than free speech.