Rebellion in Bethany

Almost anywhere else, a ceremonial kiss is part of every high-school queen's inaugural. But not in Bethany, Okla. Most of its 2,600 citizens are Nazarenes, members of a strict sect close to the fundamentalist Methodists, who consider public kissing sinful, along with beer halls, smoking, and women in shorts. Last week, when 16-year-old Basketball King Riddell Riggs defiantly kissed 16-year-old Queen Charlotte McClain before an applauding crowd of students, the incident touched off a near civil war.

Next day, 16 pupils quit the high school, fearing that even stricter rules were sure to follow. Six of the rebels were promptly expelled. At that, some 250 non-Nazarene parents, long fed up with Bethany's blue laws, formed a citizens' committee to protest. The Nazarene Church, they cried, must "cease its domination of the school system." School officials denied that any such domination existed; the committee insisted that it did.

For four days, the battle raged. One night a band of students piled into cars and started a protest parade, dispersed when a policeman called a halt because they had no permit. The citizens' committee stormed before the school board. At the first meeting the board would let in only two of the protesters at a time. Then, as out-of-town newspapers began to play up the controversy, the officials began to backtrack. School Superintendent Harry Edwards said that the six expelled pupils could come back.

The victory did not stop the committee. Once started on their fight they were determined to keep going. They hired lawyers, began demanding that the super intendent, the school principal, and the entire school board be dismissed. "When religion gets into schools like this," they cried, "something is wrong." At week's end, they were preparing to take the matter to court.

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