Middle Schooler Records Health Teacher Preaching the Bible as Sex Education

The lawyers are on it.

• As we’re sending out tonight’s newsletter, a man has been arrested in connection with the horrific shootings of multiple people in Georgia massage parlors. But one detail to keep an eye on: The suspect was the son of a "youth minister or pastor" and was himself "big into religion," according to someone who attended school with him.

• A West Virginia middle school student secretly recorded her health teacher giving biblically based sex education, telling the public school students that they shouldn’t have sex until after marriage and that atheists worry her. The teacher even admitted to the class that she knew proselytizing was wrong… but she didn’t stop doing it.

  The sly student’s father reported the indiscretion to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who sent a letter to the school district’s superintendent.

• You're welcome, America.

  Ryan Burge 📊 @ryanburge

  Sometimes, it's helpful to go back to basics. Church attendance (2008 vs. 2019) Never: 20% -> 32% (+12) Seldom: 24% ->22% (-2) Yearly: 16% ->13% (-3) Monthly: 10% -> 8% (-2) Weekly: 19% -> 17% (-2) Weekly+: 12% -> 8% (-4)

  

• A series of bills up for consideration in Arizona, South Carolina, and Montana this week could grant churches “blanket immunity” from almost any wrongdoing imaginable. (And you thought they were dangerous during the pandemic…?)

  According to Heather L. Weaver of the ACLU, here’s what it would mean for these bills to pass into law:

  • Religious organizations in that state could claim immunity from criminal prosecution and civil liability for the sexual abuse or physical harm of children in connection with religious activities or rituals;

  • Religious organizations could be shielded from the consequences of violating state nondiscrimination laws that conflict with their religious beliefs;

  • Religiously motivated hate groups could avoid prosecution for criminal activities associated with exercising their beliefs; and

  • Patients at religious hospitals could be unable to sue for medically negligent or reckless care that was provided based on the hospital’s religious beliefs.

• An Idaho college’s board chair is under pressure to resign because of his brash personality. One of the things he demanded the school’s president do was prevent students from saying the Pledge of Allegiance without the words “Under God,” which one young atheist did during a graduation ceremony last year.

• Who’s going to tell Kathy Fairrington that you can still open your mouth while wearing a mask?

  Christian Nightmares @ChristnNitemare

  During a service yesterday, pastor Kathy Fairrington said, "Isolation is a tool of war... And covering your mouth, that is what the enemy wants to do, that's what government wants to do now. He wants to shut the mouths of Christians, of believers." #ChristianPersecutionComplex

  

• Finally, now that Jerry Falwell, Jr. is out of the Liberty University picture, a lot of changes are taking place to distance the school from some of its more embarrassing affiliations.
  
  Liberty U. has opted to not renew the contract of Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of the school’s own right-wing political think tank, “The Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty.” With Kirk’s departure, the organization has been rebranded with the equally cringe-y title “Standing for Freedom Center.”