Texas Board of Education is Preventing Education

The good news is you will probably be more learned than the next generation.  The bad news is you will probably be more learned than the next generation.  Thanks to the conservative majority on the Texas Board of Education who wish to rewrite history to reflect the way our nation should have been founded, the Texas school curriculum will no longer include some of those inconvenient facts, like those in the US Constitution, that might cause students to think that our founders hadn't intended the US to be an ultra-conservative theocracy.  They tried earlier to insert creationist dogma into the science curriculum without success, but they've achieved some of their goals by filtering out some of the extraneous and irrelevant characters like the author of the Constitution and third US president, Thomas Jefferson.  “I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley.

This might not be such a big deal if this enforced ignorance were only limited to the state of Texas, but this has national implications.  Unlike most states, Texas buys the same books for the entire state public school system, making them one of the biggest school book purchasers in the US.  All the textbook publishers want to win that contract, so they write their text books to cater to the desires of the TX BOE.  For the rest of the country, the textbooks available for them to purchase will be slanted toward the bias of Texans.  Parents at the other end of the nation may not even realize that their kids' school books have had historical facts replaced with evangelical conservative dogma.

The problem is, as Steven Colbert pointed out, "facts have a liberal bias."  Ever since the conservative evangelicals have become a strong voting bloc, they have tried to insert their beliefs into the government and educational system in defiance of the Constitution and the laws.  The result is a conservative political policy that reflects the fundamentalist mindset of, "If I believe it, it's true, and no amount of evidence can change my mind."  The efforts to inject creationism and Xian ceremonies into the public schools has been part of this, as has been the need for politicians to flaunt their Xian credentials in order to get elected.

We are reaching a point in American culture where actual facts have no value.  The dogma handed down by religious leaders and the talking points presented by politicians carry more weight and verisimilitude than all the observable data and documentation that can be presented.  To a large percentage of the US population (for young earth creationism, some surveys suggest 40%), Pat Robertson, the TV evangelist, knows more about geology and biology than doctors who have spent their lives actually studying and testing the data, and Rush Limbaugh, the conservative pundit knows more about global warming than the scientists who've been measuring the increasing CO2 % in the air and the decreasing size and thickness of glaciers for decades.  A lot of people are only willing to listen to information that reinforces their preconceptions.  They rail against opposing views and may react violently to anyone demonstrating the invalidity of their beliefs.  And they refuse to learn.

That is the legacy too many people are trying to insure we pass on to our children.  Learning to think critcally and analytically is discouraged. Unquestioningly accepting the words of leaders is encouraged.  Chastising the intellectually superior while canonizing the dull witted athlete is the norm.  Then when the nation turns to crap and other nations become technologically and academically dominant everyone can blame it on the liberals with their elitist, commie, homo, atheist agenda, oh, and the need for more religious zeal.

An 18 Year Old High-Schooler is Destroying America, Apparently

 18 year old Constance McMillen was the subject of an AP article today because she requested that she and her gay girlfriend, another student in the same school, be allowed to attend the prom as a couple.  The school, in Jackson, MS has a rule that prom couples must be a boy and a girl.  When McMillen's request was denied, she sued, with the backing of the ACLU.  The school's response was to cancel the prom for everyone rather than allow two girls to dance together.  Of course everyone knows why the prom was canceled so this girl is likely to be the target of anger from her fellow students.

People in Mississippi have demonstrated their bigotry and willingness to deny people their civil rights many times before, so this event isn't surprising, but the bigots always end up losing in court.  So, when will experience teach them that people they dislike have just as many rights as those they like?

The prejudice against homosexuals is completely irrational, any way.  No one just decides one day that they would like to be shunned, avoided, and have the crap beaten out of them by fellow students, co-workers and neighbors just because it might be fun to share a bed with someone of the same sex.  The only reason the anti-gay people can present to rationalize their hatred is their religious beliefs supported by cherry-picked lines from their favorite book.

Religious beliefs, however, are not civil law.  If these people want to deny homosexuals access to their religious ceremonies, that's OK.  If persons choose not to act on their own homosexual urges, because their religion doesn't allow it, that's fine too.  But, when one leaves the religious environment and enters the secular, as, for instance, a public school, civil law applies and insisting that persons outside of the religious community must abide by rules that apply only within the religious community, is not only ridiculous, it's illegal.

Celibate Marriage Experts?

According to an article in the "Faith and Values" section of the Columbus Dispatch, Bishop R. Daniel Conlon is advocating a renewed effort by Priests to support faith based marriage. To that end, hundreds of priest have gathered at a hotel in Columbus, OH this weekend to increase their education and enthusiasm for supporting the institution of marriage.

The Bishop felt compelled to do this because he sees more threats to traditional marriage than ever before, probably because when Xians feel threatened, they always seem to see more threats than ever before in spite of any evidence to the contrary. Although divorce and cohabitation are mentioned, I'm pretty sure it's gay marriage initiatives that are freaking him out. It's also clear that the Bishop perceives a "traditional" marriage as one Xian man + one Xian woman (preferably of the same denomination) wed in a Xian church by a priest (or a man of the cloth of of another title).

I have a few problems with this (as if you hadn't guessed). First, why would you take marriage advice from someone who's never been married? That's kind of like taking flying lessons from someone who's never been in a plane.

Second, traditional marriage is not unique to Christianity or even the Abrahamic religions. Marriages are found all over the world, including societies that have never heard of a bible. "We have to teach what we know to be God's truth about marriage, perhaps in a more forceful way than we have," Bishop Conlon said. That would be fine if he confined himself to his Catholic flock, but that's not what he said. The jurisdiction of bishops and priests is their cathedrals and churches, beyond that constituency people shouldn't have to be subjected to the mythology called "God's truth".

Third, sometimes divorce, cohabitation, and even same-sex marriage can be the right answer. Rigid dogma and the threats of social isolation and eternal damnation have trapped people in abusive relationships and forced people apart who should be together. If the clergy wants to insist that certain rules must be followed or the offending person must leave the church and if they wish to advise that person that they believe such-and-so will happen after they die, that's their prerogative. It's not appropriate to call their unprovable beliefs "truth", or to insist that a person doesn't have the free will to change to different beliefs, and it is never appropriate to insist that a general public, with guaranteed freedom of religion, should be subjected to their dogma codified into civil law.

So if all the Catholic clergy that visited Columbus want to go home and tell their congregations that that they should only marry if their pretty sure they can stay together "till death do us part", or if you want to send same-sex couples away to get married elsewhere, or if they want to tell persons that they cannot be a church member unless they follow certain rules, that's their job, and best of luck. However, when the clergyman steps out onto the public street, his authority ends and everyone should be free to believe what they want, and participate in marriage according to their own rules, as long as it doesn't break the civil laws.

Ohio Churches Think They’re the Fun Police

Governor Strickland of Ohio has decided to allow slot machines at horse racing tracks, because the state is out of money and he needs to find a new source. I’m not a big supporter of the idea, since I’ll never use the slot machines and the people who will use them the most are gambling addicts. At the same time I don’t think it’s the job of the government to illegalize everything that could be addictive, so, friends and relatives of gambling addicts, show some spine and take control of the car keys and charge cards. The Ohio church people, however, think that it is the responsibility of the government to illegalize anything that they think is immoral.

OK, church people, take a walk around the neighborhood and look at the other houses of worship. Do they believe all the same things that you believe in your church? No, that’s why they’re in different buildings. So what makes you think that whatever is believed in your building should be imposed on everyone else in Ohio?

Nonetheless, the newspapers all have articles about how church people have vowed to fight the Governor’s decision with law suits and protests. The governor, himself is an ordained Methodist minister (it hurts my brain to write that) so it doesn’t take much extrapolation to conclude that not all religious types are in agreement, but that seems to be irrelevant to the outraged guardians of goodness.

Here’s the thing, church people, there’s a place for you to dictate your version of morality; your church. The job of a religious group is to impose their beliefs and moral codes on the people who have agreed to be part of that group, then if one from your group breaks the no slot machine rule, they can be shunned or stoned or forced to clean up after the potluck or whatever. What you do not have the right to do is go out into the greater community and say “All you people who have no prohibition against video slot machines in your sacred texts, must, nonetheless, be deprived of video slot machines so that we are not tempted to break the no video slot machine commandment of our religion.” So, to use the popular sheep herding analogy: go tend your own flock and keep your nose out of other flocking people’s business.