A group of high schoolers was reportedly subjected to profane insults before being kicked out of the federally-funded Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C., all for wearing beanies sporting a simple - and First Amendment protected - pro-life message. And now, they’re suing.
It all started when a group of kids from Our Lady of the Rosary School in Greenville, South Carolina showed up in the nation’s capital to attend the annual March For Life, where hundreds of thousands of pro-life supporters come together each year to advocate for the end of legalized infanticide in the United States. During their visit on January 20, as many attendees often do, the high school group decided to also visit the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, all while wearing matching beanies emblazoned with the slogan “Rosary PRO-LIFE.”
According to a law suit filed by the American Center for Law and Justice, some museum employees began opening mocking and hurling slurs at the kids before a security guard approached the group and told them they had to remove the hats or leave the premises. A parent chaperone with the group said she tried to explain to the guard that the beanies also helped keep the group together by helping them identify one another in the large crowd.
The guard reportedly escorted them out of the building anyway.
And it looks like this story isn't exactly one-sided. The Smithsonian has since released a statement acknowledging the incident occurred and noting that it shouldn’t have happened.
Related: WATCH: Man Told By Mall of America Security to Strip or Leave For Wearing a 'Jesus Saves' T-Shirt
"Asking visitors to remove hats and clothing is not in keeping with our policy or protocols. We provided immediate training to prevent a re-occurrence of this kind of incident, and have determined steps to ensure this does not happen again," said Alison Wood, the museum's deputy director of communications, Fox News reports.
But that doesn’t answer several key questions - namely concerning the fact that several workers - including a security guard - at this taxpayer-funded institution, which receives about $1 billion of our dollars every single year, thought it was appropriate to ask a bunch of high schoolers to leave simply because they wore a hat with a pro-life message.
It also doesn’t address the fact that clearly, the Smithsonian is hiring people whose hatred of pro-lifers is so strong, they feel perfectly comfortable hurling expletives at a bunch of kids while on the job (imagine, if you will, the outcry that would have been triggered had someone with a Women’s March or Black Lives Matter t-shirt been asked to leave the building).
Unfortunately, this isn't the first time a bunch of minors trying to support the right of babies to live have been targeted for their pro-life beliefs while attending the annual march. Back in 2019, Nick Sandmann, then a 16-year-old student at Covington Catholic High School, was targeted by the liberal media for refusing to budge in the face of hostility from an elderly Native American man in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Thankfully, every year, hundreds of people - including massive numbers of high school and college students - show up to the world's largest yearly human rights protest to advocate for the unborn, undeterred by those who may target them for their beliefs.
After all, it's easy to hold your ground when you know you're standing on truth.