Conservative Christians never stop trying to force their religion into the public schools paid for with everyone's tax dollars, even if this is a back door approach. What they're doing is demonstrating just how weak their arguments are that they have to get to children before they've reached the age of reason. It isn't as if this country suffers from a shortage of churches. The evangelicals are trying to accomplish through government what they have failed to achieve from their pulpits.
You are right that there is no shortage of churches, but the number of regular attendees is steadily falling as outlined regularly by Hemant on this site. And so they are not getting the kids in Sunday school. People are learning that religion is a lousy way to spend your day off.
The late Clive James (UK) once described religion as "a giant advertising campaign for a product that doesn't exist."
All of which could help students spot the egregious violations here, and the blatant attempts by the religious crowd to erode the wall of separation between church and state.
I'm not a lawyer either, but if LifeWise has no problem releasing their curriculum to someone who requests it and unless they state that said document is not to be re-transmitted, the horse is on THEM to demonstrate just why it should not be in the public domain. It's entirely possible that Parrish is in the wrong here, but that should not stop him from maintaining his Parents Against LifeWise effort, with or without the curriculum, and maintain the pressure against LifeWise.
As always with a story like this, followup should be a part of it.
Good point. Also NAL (seems like a missed opportunity to argue with lists sadly and that's my favorite thing) and also this entire adventure feels like something I'd do, and it's possible this could be instructive for me later.
They DON’T release it upon request - they refuse to show anybody the full curriculum, besides their own employees (notwithstanding the hot, unsecured mess of a website they had that allowed access to anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together, who wanted to get to the super accessible curriculum at the time). Unless -and, apologies if I misunderstood - you were referring to the “27 page comprehensive overview” (which is not anything of the sort) described in the suit.
That "hot, unsecured mess" is one hell of a legal loophole, though. They practically gave away the store, and now they want to claim Mr Parrish (funny!) broke in.
So, the obvious next step is to compare the summary with the full curriculum, and post side-by-side examples of where the summary lies and misleads. And that should be able to be kept legal, as long as the person doing it is only quoting bits from the full curriculum. Compare and contrast, students!
***
There is a more "meta" lesson here that Zachary should be warning other parents about: when you send your kids to an in-school class, the state is obligated to tell you what it's teaching via publicly releasing the state or county curriculum standards. But when you send your kid to this release thing, they don't have to tell you squat about what they are teaching your kid. And that should ring an alarm bell with parents. IOW, make it 𝑢𝑛𝑝𝑜𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑟 for LifeWise to hide their curriculum, and then the legal issue is irrelevant.
Was coming here to say this. Full curriculum for public school is available on line for us. Not a 'summary'. As a parent, I would be suspicious of a summary. What are you hiding?
There's a valid point. If public schools have no problem having their school curriculum online and generally available, why should LifeWise get special treatment for THEIRS?
Sauce for the goose is NOT a horse of a different color.
They aren't a public organization, so they don't have to follow the laws we have set for public school districts.
The good news is, state legislatures could absolutely pass laws saying release programs have to make their full curriculum public if they want to take kids out of the public school. (Aside - they could do the same for voucher schools too, if they wanted to.)
The bad news is, these legal requirements don't exist now so LifeWay doesn't have to release anything. Also note that because of the Constitution's "no ex post facto laws", even if such a law was to pass this summer, the best it could do was force them to share the next year's curriculum - it couldn't force them to publish the last year's curriculum.
I don’t have the analysis you speak of, but that’s an excellent idea.
The “overview” in the lawsuit that LifeWise claims to offer is not “comprehensive”. It is 27 pages, but those 27 pages consist of a list of lesson titles - I THINK just for the first year or two of what is actually a five year program - and the first (and most boring) two lessons in the series, and their accompanying worksheets/coloring pages - NOT an “overview”, and most certainly not “comprehensive”.
" the obvious next step is to compare the summary with the full curriculum, and post side-by-side examples of where the summary lies and misleads. And that should be able to be kept legal, as long as the person doing it is only quoting bits from the full curriculum. Compare and contrast, students!"
LIFEWAY: UNFAIRLY TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT! PERSECUTION!!!!!
I wonder just how comprehensive this summary is. What Mr Parrish should have done was post the summary, then do a comprehensive breakdown of it using excerpts from the full curriculum to show where they are lying.
Yeah, "woulda-coulda-shoulda," except that that horse has left the barn. Presuming that Parrish loses his case against LifeWise, I suspect that it's fall back and regroup time for him and PALW, but as I said before, he shouldn't let up.
It’s not comprehensive and it’s not a “summary”. It’s listed on their site as a “sample curriculum” - and is just that. A couple of lessons, and an incomplete list of the lesson titles. Tells you virtually nothing. A public school would not be able to get away with anything of the sort.
Yet the LifeWise folks and their ilk are the same ones screaming at school board meetings about DEI in curriculum and wanting to have books removed from school libraries, accusing schools of a “lack of transparency” about their curriculum. Shame on them!
I associate “parish” with Catholicism (and I may be incorrect about that) and these folks are the kinds of people who don’t regard Catholics as Christian. Their statement of faith that Taco Bob linked to includes the statement that there are 66 books in the Bible. The RCC bible has 73.
Yeah, as far as I can tell, Catholics read their bibles even less than most Christians. One guy actually told me that he tried reading the Bible once but it was too boring.
Whaaat?? The Bible is not boring at all, it is full of grotesque horror stuff and unfair treatment of half of the main characters and other disgusting things. But not boring.
The worst part of this, in my opinion, is that we all know what will eventually happen if it hasn't already. Some local LifeWise 'volunteer' will slip through the very basic background check to abuse some innocent kid, and the school will be sued over it. The local board will have to pay out money it doesn't have, the church that allowed the 'volunteer' access will get off scot free, and the ones who suffer will be future generations of kids since they won't get the education they need.
Released time is a horrifically bad idea. No one interested in actually educating kids would ever want it in public schools, but because it seems like a way to get religious with kids without being biased some places have it anyway. I'd honestly rather have kids in classrooms with drag queens providing the instruction than allow kids to go to churches who will give them candy as a bribe to keep 'em coming back.
Christians have churches, Sunday schools and the believers' own homes to fill their children's heads with ancient myths. That's quite enough (I won't even count private Christian schools). Public schools are for learning facts, not fantasies.
Something I wonder about from time to time....the state pays for the classrooms the students learn in and funds the school buses that bring them to school...and also pays teachers for their time to educate the students... and that must be accomplished within a set time frame during the day...
and along comes a religious group looking to have kids, already conveniently gathered in one place, "released" for some of that time for religious instruction, to be ferried away from this convenient gathering point...
Well, it sounds kind of like poaching to me. They don't want to spend all that time going from house to house to pick kids up or convince busy parents to bring them somewhere outside of school hours. They just go to the school and see how many fish they can catch (with the parents permission, but that's beside the point). The ROI for minimal time and effort is much greater. Go where the fish are, catch more fish.
But the point I am trying to get around to is this: This time during the day has already been paid for by the state for a specific purpose - education - and the religious group is taking some of that time away for free.
I guess the poaching angle wouldn't work that well, but couldn't there be a case made for "theft of time?" IANAL so I have no idea.
Remember, at the top of the Project 2025 list of things to do is, "abolish the Dept of Education." This is a feature, not a bug, and it goes back to the gradual dumbing down of public schools over the last 50 years.
“It’s fair use bitch!” Parrish presidential campaign 2024! “Stand your ground” Zach Parrish, you are a hero! We need more Zach Parrish’s on soap boxes!
Since I was a Catholic kid, we had "released time" when I was growing up. It was called Catechism. They'd whisk us away from school and transport us to the local parish for an hour or so.
The joke was on them, as I had already rejected belief. Fortunately, that away time didn't affect my school grades. I just stayed in public school time, mentally. :)
I had Catechism for three years as a Lutheran. It was held on Sunday afternoon in a building set aside for religious indoctrination on the weekend. Even the Catholic kids I knew went to CCD after school hours. Aren't there enough hours out of school for propagating the opposite of knowledge?
I went to Saturday morning "catechism" classes from first to 12th grade. Also, extra Friday afternoon after-school classes in second and sixth grade--prep for first communion and confirmation respectively. The classes were at the church til they got the parochial school built when I was in fourth grade. Except for the sixth grade extra classes, my dad drove me and my siblings back and forth. And, yeah, I ditched a lot of those classes when I was able to, or "asked inappropriate questions" and got myself suspended a bunch. Even in second grade I wasn't that easy to fool, and the nuns/priests/lay teachers were demonstrable fools. I seriously doubt there were any background checks, as the next parish over was known as a place that the bishop sent abusive priests. (That diocese, Oakland, Calif, declared bankruptcy about a year ago, and that bishop was named as an abuser. Because, of course.)
When the nun said the kids in the church were going to hell for worshiping the wrong god I asked "How can there be a wrong god if there is only one?" That got me branded a heretic, right there. The next year I began wondering if that giant jesus by the altar was anatomically correct? About this time I noticed Chuck and had very impure thoughts about him, but not Pamela. That sealed my fate as EX-kkkrister.
There were so many "inappropriate questions" I wanted to ask in Sunday School, but I didn't want to get my ears thumped or worse when I got home. Most Sunday School teachers are ardent snitches about stuff like that. Or your friends would tell their parents, who would then tell your parents.
OOOOH, yes. I remember one run-in with the nun who taught that second grade prep class. (Imagine stereotypical nun in full nun-drag. They made the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence look tame.) She was going on and on about heaven and hell, so I raised my hand and asked "Where's heaven and where's hell?" I swear she pointed to the ceiling and said, "Heaven is up there", and pointed to the floor and said, "Hell's down there." Now, I was only 7, but I wasn't born at 7 a.m. that morning. Everybody had seen those pictures of John Glenn waving through the window of his spaceship. Everybody and their dog knew the world was round. I'd started reading the daily paper and knew that the godless, communist Russians had spacemen too--but nobody had reported seeing heaven. So I asked if heaven was in outer space and if hell was in Australia. The nun grabbed me and threw me out of the church. I waited on the church steps til my dad came and got me a couple of hours later. When I got home my mom screamed at me for the rest of the afternoon. She'd gotten a call from the nun, who'd accused me of "asking inappropriate questions", suspended me for two weeks, and threatened that, if I repeated that behavior, I'd be unable to do first communion with the rest of the class in May. My grandfather, who was an outspoken atheist/anti-theist and communist, cracked up when he found out what I'd done. For years after, he used that incident (and others of the same sort) as an excuse to tell my mom what an idiot she was for taking us kids to church. (This would have been in the 1959-60 school year.)
Yes, my grandfather was quite a character. Feed him a few beers and he'd be swearing a blue streak in Spanglish, singing songs from the period of the Mexican Revolution, and lots more. (No, he wasn't Mexican. He'd gone south of the border to organize Mexican railway workers. It was during the time that Pancho Villa was operating in the area. He said that all the railway workers and others in the villages were "fiercely loyal to Pancho Villa." He'd picked up border Spanglish on the fly when he got there. He used to make fun of me for my careful, school-learned Spanish.) He was a contradictory guy--sometimes not easy to be around, but had some good stories to tell. He died in '72, when I was in college, and I still miss him.
Got dragged to my sister's friend's church's VBS one time when I was 8. I asked a question, and was told that asking questions and thinking about what they said was the road to hell, because thinking destroys blind faith. Afterwards, waiting to get picked up, I was still (GASP!) thinking about that, and settled on: they say Jesus loves us, and that Jesus gave us brains, but it's mean to give someone a brain and then send them to hell if they use it, so either they're lying, Jesus is lying and/or mean, or this whole thing is a crock. I decided right there that I was not and never would be a Christian.
DM had catechism but it was outside of school hours, I imagine the deal between DM's grandparents would have been cancelled if that implied their daughters (DM included), would miss school, if it was legal. Which is not. At least, not in schools receiving public funds.
IANAL, but Parrish may have a solid case for fair use.
It's a stretch, but it's not a slam-dunk that Parrish will lose the copyright case. Here's a quick summary of fair-use from Wikipedia; see the whole article for details. In my view, Parrish has a pretty good shot at fair use.
1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes. These are given much wider lattitude for fair use. Parrish is definitely not profiting, and can argue that a complete exposé is needed.
2. Whether the work is creative (e.g. a song or book) or factual (such as a curriculum). Creative works have much stronger protection than factual works, and clearly in this case it's not a creative work.
3. Amount and substantiality of copied material. This one doesn't help Parrish.
4. Effect on the work's value. This one is odd -- normally the court is looking whether the infringement encroaches on sales of the original. But in this case, Parrish is deliberately trying to harm the organization, and he might be able to reasonably argue that only a complete exposé would do the trick.
So basically (again, IANAL) Parrish seems to meet three of the four possible tests for fair use. My guess is that it will be a serious court battle and the outcome isn't preordained.
I wish Mr. Parrish the best of luck. He'll need it. The religious org he's up against has deep pockets, a network of fanatics on their side (probably lawyers on retainer as well), and a veneer of respectability that too often goes unquestioned by religion-addled Bible Belt Heartland parents. To be fair, this description can apply to even nominally Christian parents in most geographical regions of the US, but in the Bible-saturated Heartland, they may be particularly unable to separate the issues out and see the forest, not just the trees. Even if the parents aren't complete nutcases (some may even like it simply because it's more convenient than taking their brood to church every Sunday) too many see "nothing wrong" with their kids being exposed to "a little something" they think is a good thing. Even if it is during school hours. What could it hurt?
An outfit with a history of burning people at the stake for not agreeing with them is some how respectable? An outfit with a horrendous record of raping little kids is somehow respectable? They ALL fly the kkkrister banner.
In kkkatlik gulag we NEVER got told of 300 years of witch hunts. Inquisitions were never discussed. Crusades were defending the 'ALMIGHTY" jesus from hordes of hethens. NO mention of 300,000 Cathars murdered as the wrong kind of kkktlik. Why were we never taught this sordid side of kkkatlik history?
“According to a federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday in the Northern District of Indiana, Parrish “posed as a LifeWise volunteer to gain access to internal LifeWise documents.”“
Another argument LifeWise should not be operating in public schools, or have any access to children. Obviously their background checks are not effective. Who are they hiring to be around children?
Too bad the courts aren’t going to address that issue.
Edit to add: here’s the real kicker: at the time Mr. Parrish accessed the curriculum (no idea what they require now) no background check was required to do the signup thingy that gave one access to said curriculum (and uniforms…yikes).
He didn’t “pose” as a volunteer, though. He didn’t do anything that the LifeWise site didn’t allow at the time he accessed the curriculum. ANYbody or their grandma could have done it just as easily - he just got there first. LifeWise’s website (ALSO hosted by Wordpress) was so junky and unsecured at the time, that ANYBODY could sign up using any email account- and gain access to the curriculum, AND the apparel store where, again - ANYone with (again- free-for-all, at the time) access - could purchase “LifeWise teacher” uniform items. That’s really terrible and scary.
Access to purchase police and other uniforms is pretty tightly controlled to prevent everyone playing cop all the time. They made theirs freely available.
OT : Elections results seem to be in. The future First Minister will not be from micron's party but it will not be those fucktards from the rn* !!!! The winner with 205 deputés is the NFP (a coalition of left wing parties, different from the coalition** rallied behind micron to prevent the rn to be the major party at the Assemblée Nationale).
*Far Right wing nuts party, they ended in the third place. Qu'ils crèvent 🖕
We did a family vacation in the French speaking part of Canada some years ago. There were restaurants that offered some haute cuisine poutines. Fancier cheeses and sauces. Pretty damn good,
ETA: I grow some heirloom potatoes in my backyard, along with a bunch of other veggies. Maybe I’ll make some poutine with them. I still remember the first time I served up some Red Finn (maybe Red Thumb?) fingerlings at home. Everyone gobbled them down first.
Will be complicated. He pissed them off with his call to a coalition against them after the June 30th election. They will have demands he is probably not ready to concede. His gamble has failed.
Conservative Christians never stop trying to force their religion into the public schools paid for with everyone's tax dollars, even if this is a back door approach. What they're doing is demonstrating just how weak their arguments are that they have to get to children before they've reached the age of reason. It isn't as if this country suffers from a shortage of churches. The evangelicals are trying to accomplish through government what they have failed to achieve from their pulpits.
Evangelicals do not seem to like the light shined on their perfidy just like roaches do not like it when the light is turned on.
You are right that there is no shortage of churches, but the number of regular attendees is steadily falling as outlined regularly by Hemant on this site. And so they are not getting the kids in Sunday school. People are learning that religion is a lousy way to spend your day off.
The late Clive James (UK) once described religion as "a giant advertising campaign for a product that doesn't exist."
What’s needed is civics, social science, and history, instead of wasting valuable time on something that belongs in church or at home.
All of which could help students spot the egregious violations here, and the blatant attempts by the religious crowd to erode the wall of separation between church and state.
🎯🎯🎯
I'm not a lawyer either, but if LifeWise has no problem releasing their curriculum to someone who requests it and unless they state that said document is not to be re-transmitted, the horse is on THEM to demonstrate just why it should not be in the public domain. It's entirely possible that Parrish is in the wrong here, but that should not stop him from maintaining his Parents Against LifeWise effort, with or without the curriculum, and maintain the pressure against LifeWise.
As always with a story like this, followup should be a part of it.
Good point. Also NAL (seems like a missed opportunity to argue with lists sadly and that's my favorite thing) and also this entire adventure feels like something I'd do, and it's possible this could be instructive for me later.
Ummm ... NAL? Don't know that one.
Just not a lawyer and I honestly thought I saw it used before but I could have dreamt that
No worries. I'm used to IANAL and I guess I didn't infer the "IA."
A misplaced space can really get ya in the keister.
♫♪ 'Cuz I'm your Back Door Man! ♪♫
They DON’T release it upon request - they refuse to show anybody the full curriculum, besides their own employees (notwithstanding the hot, unsecured mess of a website they had that allowed access to anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together, who wanted to get to the super accessible curriculum at the time). Unless -and, apologies if I misunderstood - you were referring to the “27 page comprehensive overview” (which is not anything of the sort) described in the suit.
That "hot, unsecured mess" is one hell of a legal loophole, though. They practically gave away the store, and now they want to claim Mr Parrish (funny!) broke in.
𝐻𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟, 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒𝑊𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑠 𝑎 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑟𝑒ℎ𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑣𝑒 27-𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒𝑊𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝐶𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑢𝑚 𝑜𝑛 [𝑖𝑡𝑠] 𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒, 𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑧𝑖𝑝 𝑐𝑜𝑑𝑒.
So, the obvious next step is to compare the summary with the full curriculum, and post side-by-side examples of where the summary lies and misleads. And that should be able to be kept legal, as long as the person doing it is only quoting bits from the full curriculum. Compare and contrast, students!
***
There is a more "meta" lesson here that Zachary should be warning other parents about: when you send your kids to an in-school class, the state is obligated to tell you what it's teaching via publicly releasing the state or county curriculum standards. But when you send your kid to this release thing, they don't have to tell you squat about what they are teaching your kid. And that should ring an alarm bell with parents. IOW, make it 𝑢𝑛𝑝𝑜𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑟 for LifeWise to hide their curriculum, and then the legal issue is irrelevant.
Was coming here to say this. Full curriculum for public school is available on line for us. Not a 'summary'. As a parent, I would be suspicious of a summary. What are you hiding?
There's a valid point. If public schools have no problem having their school curriculum online and generally available, why should LifeWise get special treatment for THEIRS?
Sauce for the goose is NOT a horse of a different color.
Valid but they can, sadly, oppose that they are a private institution, not a public one 🤬
OH? Then what are you doing in a public school, hmmm, Lifeway?
And, therefore, should not be receiving public tax monies.
They aren't a public organization, so they don't have to follow the laws we have set for public school districts.
The good news is, state legislatures could absolutely pass laws saying release programs have to make their full curriculum public if they want to take kids out of the public school. (Aside - they could do the same for voucher schools too, if they wanted to.)
The bad news is, these legal requirements don't exist now so LifeWay doesn't have to release anything. Also note that because of the Constitution's "no ex post facto laws", even if such a law was to pass this summer, the best it could do was force them to share the next year's curriculum - it couldn't force them to publish the last year's curriculum.
Yep!
I don’t have the analysis you speak of, but that’s an excellent idea.
The “overview” in the lawsuit that LifeWise claims to offer is not “comprehensive”. It is 27 pages, but those 27 pages consist of a list of lesson titles - I THINK just for the first year or two of what is actually a five year program - and the first (and most boring) two lessons in the series, and their accompanying worksheets/coloring pages - NOT an “overview”, and most certainly not “comprehensive”.
Yes!!!! Spot on! They don’t want you to know what they’re teaching your kids. Pretty scary and disturbing.
"Indoctrinating".
" the obvious next step is to compare the summary with the full curriculum, and post side-by-side examples of where the summary lies and misleads. And that should be able to be kept legal, as long as the person doing it is only quoting bits from the full curriculum. Compare and contrast, students!"
LIFEWAY: UNFAIRLY TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT! PERSECUTION!!!!!
I like the idea of posting it side by side.
𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒𝑊𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑠 𝑎 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑟𝑒ℎ𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑣𝑒 27-𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒𝑊𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝐶𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑢𝑚 𝑜𝑛 [𝑖𝑡𝑠] 𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒, 𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑧𝑖𝑝 𝑐𝑜𝑑𝑒.
I wonder just how comprehensive this summary is. What Mr Parrish should have done was post the summary, then do a comprehensive breakdown of it using excerpts from the full curriculum to show where they are lying.
Yeah, "woulda-coulda-shoulda," except that that horse has left the barn. Presuming that Parrish loses his case against LifeWise, I suspect that it's fall back and regroup time for him and PALW, but as I said before, he shouldn't let up.
I just hope he learns from this experience.
It’s not comprehensive and it’s not a “summary”. It’s listed on their site as a “sample curriculum” - and is just that. A couple of lessons, and an incomplete list of the lesson titles. Tells you virtually nothing. A public school would not be able to get away with anything of the sort.
Yet the LifeWise folks and their ilk are the same ones screaming at school board meetings about DEI in curriculum and wanting to have books removed from school libraries, accusing schools of a “lack of transparency” about their curriculum. Shame on them!
Ironic that someone named Parrish is being sued by Jesus, Inc. for spreading the gospel.
I associate “parish” with Catholicism (and I may be incorrect about that) and these folks are the kinds of people who don’t regard Catholics as Christian. Their statement of faith that Taco Bob linked to includes the statement that there are 66 books in the Bible. The RCC bible has 73.
And probably 95% of them have no idea the church even has a bible.
Yeah, as far as I can tell, Catholics read their bibles even less than most Christians. One guy actually told me that he tried reading the Bible once but it was too boring.
Whaaat?? The Bible is not boring at all, it is full of grotesque horror stuff and unfair treatment of half of the main characters and other disgusting things. But not boring.
Lol. If memory serves, I asked the dude if the Bible was the “Word of God”. He hedged.
But you have to translate the old style language, rather like when you read Shakespear.
Sounds like LifeWise Academy is grooming public school kids.
And I'm betting that there isn't a single drag queen at LWA.
The worst part of this, in my opinion, is that we all know what will eventually happen if it hasn't already. Some local LifeWise 'volunteer' will slip through the very basic background check to abuse some innocent kid, and the school will be sued over it. The local board will have to pay out money it doesn't have, the church that allowed the 'volunteer' access will get off scot free, and the ones who suffer will be future generations of kids since they won't get the education they need.
Released time is a horrifically bad idea. No one interested in actually educating kids would ever want it in public schools, but because it seems like a way to get religious with kids without being biased some places have it anyway. I'd honestly rather have kids in classrooms with drag queens providing the instruction than allow kids to go to churches who will give them candy as a bribe to keep 'em coming back.
Released time is theft of time payed for with public money.
That's what I was thinking too.
How boring it must be then.
Creepy AF
Even if Mr Parrish loses, I say good for you sir for posting everything online.
Same.
I do hope many copies were downloaded and saved.
Christians have churches, Sunday schools and the believers' own homes to fill their children's heads with ancient myths. That's quite enough (I won't even count private Christian schools). Public schools are for learning facts, not fantasies.
Something I wonder about from time to time....the state pays for the classrooms the students learn in and funds the school buses that bring them to school...and also pays teachers for their time to educate the students... and that must be accomplished within a set time frame during the day...
and along comes a religious group looking to have kids, already conveniently gathered in one place, "released" for some of that time for religious instruction, to be ferried away from this convenient gathering point...
Well, it sounds kind of like poaching to me. They don't want to spend all that time going from house to house to pick kids up or convince busy parents to bring them somewhere outside of school hours. They just go to the school and see how many fish they can catch (with the parents permission, but that's beside the point). The ROI for minimal time and effort is much greater. Go where the fish are, catch more fish.
But the point I am trying to get around to is this: This time during the day has already been paid for by the state for a specific purpose - education - and the religious group is taking some of that time away for free.
I guess the poaching angle wouldn't work that well, but couldn't there be a case made for "theft of time?" IANAL so I have no idea.
Remember, at the top of the Project 2025 list of things to do is, "abolish the Dept of Education." This is a feature, not a bug, and it goes back to the gradual dumbing down of public schools over the last 50 years.
Regardless of whether or not Mr. Parrish did the 𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘭 thing... he for damn sure did the 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 thing.
“It’s fair use bitch!” Parrish presidential campaign 2024! “Stand your ground” Zach Parrish, you are a hero! We need more Zach Parrish’s on soap boxes!
Since I was a Catholic kid, we had "released time" when I was growing up. It was called Catechism. They'd whisk us away from school and transport us to the local parish for an hour or so.
The joke was on them, as I had already rejected belief. Fortunately, that away time didn't affect my school grades. I just stayed in public school time, mentally. :)
I had Catechism for three years as a Lutheran. It was held on Sunday afternoon in a building set aside for religious indoctrination on the weekend. Even the Catholic kids I knew went to CCD after school hours. Aren't there enough hours out of school for propagating the opposite of knowledge?
I went to Saturday morning "catechism" classes from first to 12th grade. Also, extra Friday afternoon after-school classes in second and sixth grade--prep for first communion and confirmation respectively. The classes were at the church til they got the parochial school built when I was in fourth grade. Except for the sixth grade extra classes, my dad drove me and my siblings back and forth. And, yeah, I ditched a lot of those classes when I was able to, or "asked inappropriate questions" and got myself suspended a bunch. Even in second grade I wasn't that easy to fool, and the nuns/priests/lay teachers were demonstrable fools. I seriously doubt there were any background checks, as the next parish over was known as a place that the bishop sent abusive priests. (That diocese, Oakland, Calif, declared bankruptcy about a year ago, and that bishop was named as an abuser. Because, of course.)
When the nun said the kids in the church were going to hell for worshiping the wrong god I asked "How can there be a wrong god if there is only one?" That got me branded a heretic, right there. The next year I began wondering if that giant jesus by the altar was anatomically correct? About this time I noticed Chuck and had very impure thoughts about him, but not Pamela. That sealed my fate as EX-kkkrister.
There were so many "inappropriate questions" I wanted to ask in Sunday School, but I didn't want to get my ears thumped or worse when I got home. Most Sunday School teachers are ardent snitches about stuff like that. Or your friends would tell their parents, who would then tell your parents.
OOOOH, yes. I remember one run-in with the nun who taught that second grade prep class. (Imagine stereotypical nun in full nun-drag. They made the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence look tame.) She was going on and on about heaven and hell, so I raised my hand and asked "Where's heaven and where's hell?" I swear she pointed to the ceiling and said, "Heaven is up there", and pointed to the floor and said, "Hell's down there." Now, I was only 7, but I wasn't born at 7 a.m. that morning. Everybody had seen those pictures of John Glenn waving through the window of his spaceship. Everybody and their dog knew the world was round. I'd started reading the daily paper and knew that the godless, communist Russians had spacemen too--but nobody had reported seeing heaven. So I asked if heaven was in outer space and if hell was in Australia. The nun grabbed me and threw me out of the church. I waited on the church steps til my dad came and got me a couple of hours later. When I got home my mom screamed at me for the rest of the afternoon. She'd gotten a call from the nun, who'd accused me of "asking inappropriate questions", suspended me for two weeks, and threatened that, if I repeated that behavior, I'd be unable to do first communion with the rest of the class in May. My grandfather, who was an outspoken atheist/anti-theist and communist, cracked up when he found out what I'd done. For years after, he used that incident (and others of the same sort) as an excuse to tell my mom what an idiot she was for taking us kids to church. (This would have been in the 1959-60 school year.)
I’ll try to get this right: Science has questions that can’t be answered. Religion has answers that can’t be questioned.
"Science has questions that 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯'𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘺𝘦𝘵."
FIFY
"Inappropriate" questions made me the detention king of the entire school of over 200 baby boomer kids.
Oh, to have had a granddad like that....
But my whole family going back generations were hardcore believers.
Yes, my grandfather was quite a character. Feed him a few beers and he'd be swearing a blue streak in Spanglish, singing songs from the period of the Mexican Revolution, and lots more. (No, he wasn't Mexican. He'd gone south of the border to organize Mexican railway workers. It was during the time that Pancho Villa was operating in the area. He said that all the railway workers and others in the villages were "fiercely loyal to Pancho Villa." He'd picked up border Spanglish on the fly when he got there. He used to make fun of me for my careful, school-learned Spanish.) He was a contradictory guy--sometimes not easy to be around, but had some good stories to tell. He died in '72, when I was in college, and I still miss him.
I had an entire forest of rulers broken over my knuckles. Each one hardened my hatred of nuns and religion.
Got dragged to my sister's friend's church's VBS one time when I was 8. I asked a question, and was told that asking questions and thinking about what they said was the road to hell, because thinking destroys blind faith. Afterwards, waiting to get picked up, I was still (GASP!) thinking about that, and settled on: they say Jesus loves us, and that Jesus gave us brains, but it's mean to give someone a brain and then send them to hell if they use it, so either they're lying, Jesus is lying and/or mean, or this whole thing is a crock. I decided right there that I was not and never would be a Christian.
DM had catechism but it was outside of school hours, I imagine the deal between DM's grandparents would have been cancelled if that implied their daughters (DM included), would miss school, if it was legal. Which is not. At least, not in schools receiving public funds.
IANAL, but Parrish may have a solid case for fair use.
It's a stretch, but it's not a slam-dunk that Parrish will lose the copyright case. Here's a quick summary of fair-use from Wikipedia; see the whole article for details. In my view, Parrish has a pretty good shot at fair use.
1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes. These are given much wider lattitude for fair use. Parrish is definitely not profiting, and can argue that a complete exposé is needed.
2. Whether the work is creative (e.g. a song or book) or factual (such as a curriculum). Creative works have much stronger protection than factual works, and clearly in this case it's not a creative work.
3. Amount and substantiality of copied material. This one doesn't help Parrish.
4. Effect on the work's value. This one is odd -- normally the court is looking whether the infringement encroaches on sales of the original. But in this case, Parrish is deliberately trying to harm the organization, and he might be able to reasonably argue that only a complete exposé would do the trick.
So basically (again, IANAL) Parrish seems to meet three of the four possible tests for fair use. My guess is that it will be a serious court battle and the outcome isn't preordained.
I wish Mr. Parrish the best of luck. He'll need it. The religious org he's up against has deep pockets, a network of fanatics on their side (probably lawyers on retainer as well), and a veneer of respectability that too often goes unquestioned by religion-addled Bible Belt Heartland parents. To be fair, this description can apply to even nominally Christian parents in most geographical regions of the US, but in the Bible-saturated Heartland, they may be particularly unable to separate the issues out and see the forest, not just the trees. Even if the parents aren't complete nutcases (some may even like it simply because it's more convenient than taking their brood to church every Sunday) too many see "nothing wrong" with their kids being exposed to "a little something" they think is a good thing. Even if it is during school hours. What could it hurt?
An outfit with a history of burning people at the stake for not agreeing with them is some how respectable? An outfit with a horrendous record of raping little kids is somehow respectable? They ALL fly the kkkrister banner.
To the unquestioning flocks and others who for whatever reason assume that religious organizations are benevolent. This is Oklahoma.
It's not only Oklahoma. religions* bad side was not mentioned in history classes.
* Mostly christianity and islam at my time. My niece will be in second grade* this year, so too young to have history lessons on the relevant period.
* Second and third gtade were about prehistoric times in the 80's.
In kkkatlik gulag we NEVER got told of 300 years of witch hunts. Inquisitions were never discussed. Crusades were defending the 'ALMIGHTY" jesus from hordes of hethens. NO mention of 300,000 Cathars murdered as the wrong kind of kkktlik. Why were we never taught this sordid side of kkkatlik history?
Ohio, not OK.
No, they’ve never been okay.
“According to a federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday in the Northern District of Indiana, Parrish “posed as a LifeWise volunteer to gain access to internal LifeWise documents.”“
Another argument LifeWise should not be operating in public schools, or have any access to children. Obviously their background checks are not effective. Who are they hiring to be around children?
Too bad the courts aren’t going to address that issue.
Edit to add: here’s the real kicker: at the time Mr. Parrish accessed the curriculum (no idea what they require now) no background check was required to do the signup thingy that gave one access to said curriculum (and uniforms…yikes).
He didn’t “pose” as a volunteer, though. He didn’t do anything that the LifeWise site didn’t allow at the time he accessed the curriculum. ANYbody or their grandma could have done it just as easily - he just got there first. LifeWise’s website (ALSO hosted by Wordpress) was so junky and unsecured at the time, that ANYBODY could sign up using any email account- and gain access to the curriculum, AND the apparel store where, again - ANYone with (again- free-for-all, at the time) access - could purchase “LifeWise teacher” uniform items. That’s really terrible and scary.
LifeWise claimed he did so, they’re admitting themselves they don’t pay attention to who they bring on.
Yeah, they’re lying, and doing a very bad job of it. Lol
Access to purchase police and other uniforms is pretty tightly controlled to prevent everyone playing cop all the time. They made theirs freely available.
LifeWise? Many, talk about a misnomer! I suppose they consider the BuyBull nonfiction, too.
OT : Elections results seem to be in. The future First Minister will not be from micron's party but it will not be those fucktards from the rn* !!!! The winner with 205 deputés is the NFP (a coalition of left wing parties, different from the coalition** rallied behind micron to prevent the rn to be the major party at the Assemblée Nationale).
*Far Right wing nuts party, they ended in the third place. Qu'ils crèvent 🖕
** Second place.
Congrats to the French for keeping out the fucktards. Its a low bar that I doubt the US will be able to clear in November.
A partial repeat of 2002, which shouldn't have happened, but it's still better than having a pro poutine for First Minister.
Does “pro poutine” mean a professional poutine or does it mean someone in favor of poutine?
(I like poutine.)
Me too. Our son learned to make it in his teens when we made him cook once a week. Had to forbid it being cooked every week though.
We did a family vacation in the French speaking part of Canada some years ago. There were restaurants that offered some haute cuisine poutines. Fancier cheeses and sauces. Pretty damn good,
ETA: I grow some heirloom potatoes in my backyard, along with a bunch of other veggies. Maybe I’ll make some poutine with them. I still remember the first time I served up some Red Finn (maybe Red Thumb?) fingerlings at home. Everyone gobbled them down first.
The second, I use the French spelling for a good reason 😁
(Never tasted it, even a vegan version).
Some seem to think that macron will ally with the ride in order to get his pension reforms through?
Will be complicated. He pissed them off with his call to a coalition against them after the June 30th election. They will have demands he is probably not ready to concede. His gamble has failed.