A 17-year-old US student who enjoys re-enacting medieval battles has been banned from wielding his favourite sword in his graduation yearbook.

Portsmouth High School in the US state of Rhode Island has asked Patrick Agin to submit a new photo after he first posed in full chainmail and armour.

The school rejected the photo, saying it contravened a strict zero-tolerance policy on weapons.

In response, the Agin family is suing the school for restricting free speech.

The full story is here.

Is it just me or is the family blatantly suing the school for attempting to protect their son? How can they think it's acceptable to try and ensure measures are in place that allow students to pose with real weapons in their graduation photos?

This is a good example of a frivolous lawsuit.

Free speech? WTF, swords can't talk! Say he wanted to have a photo taken of him naked drilling a Vietnamese rentboy. Would that be freedom of speech too?

Of course! He should be able to express fully his love of rentboy drillage, and any action taken to prevent that is Draconian!

At first glance, I thought this story was the kind of shit I just don't care about in the news (I hope this causes no offense to you lady whisp!) but now that I think about it, I would really like to hear what some of the gun nutz have to say about this. They hate frivolous lawsuits (and this is one) but I bet they'll find some way to justify the boy's right to carry swords!

Actually it would be kind of interesting...I imagine Charles Heston would start a rally about it if he could...

This is not freedom of speech. This is a matter of freedom of expression, and with the history given for weapons at school I don't really blame the school for forbidding him from bringing a fucking SWORD to picture day, ffs. It's a sword, if you can't see why they would not have you there with it then you're an idiot.

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"the height of arrogance is the height of control of those who create God in their own image"

that's not what it's about though. he didn't bring the sword to school. the school is unhappy with the picture of the sword.

edit: what they didn't tell you is that the school's mascot is a patriot, gun and all. also, in the SCA, you have a "persona" who is different from who you are in real life, so technically that picture is of his "persona", which therefore i don't feel is appropriate for school.

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I didn't read the article (or even the threadstarter's excerpt of it) because I don't really care enough to. :lazy: but if that's all it is then I guess that's a bit different. But schools can still have standards that the kids have to adhere to. I wasn't allowed to wear my "too drunk to fuck" shirt to school, for example. It never even occurred to me to sue over that. It seemed kind of reasonable at the time, actually.

edit because sokkar did! I think we can all agree that violence for patriotism's sake is COMPLETELY different from other kinds of violence, GAH!

I would imagine hereKitty was not allowed to display her sex toys in her school picture either. But did she sue?

It's not any different from a school asking that pupils wear the school uniform during the photo though. At the end of the day, they're paying for it.