Texas fight over cheerleader banners reaches biblical proportions

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-texas-cheerleaders-20121005,0,7309037.story

A judge temporarily lifts a ban on use of Scripture to cheer on a high school football team in Kountze, Texas, but the battle is far from over.


Brook Coates paints Scripture on a car in Kountze, Texas. The community is rallying behind high school cheerleaders who are challenging a ban on biblical banners at public high school football games. (Dave Ryan, Beaumont Enterprise / September 19, 2012)

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times
October 5, 2012

Texas is football country, and in the small town of Kountze, about 85 miles north of Houston, many of the roughly 2,000 residents gather at the public high school on Friday nights to watch the show — the players, the coaches and, of course, the cheerleaders in their red-and-white uniforms, toting homemade biblical banners.



The Lions cheerleaders are not competitive — they don't have a coach or captain or permanent leader — and they make decisions by consensus, including what to write on their banners.

"We just wanted to encourage the boys and the fans in a way that gave honor to God. It wasn't supposed to be a big deal," said cheerleader Rebekah Richardson, 17.

But the banners have landed the cheerleaders in court. On Thursday, they made an often impassioned, sometimes tearful case for the banners — the kind that players run through — as Friday's football game against nearby Woodville approached.

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