Republicans Won't Rest Until They "Get God Back in School"
One lawmaker said the quiet part out loud.
Bob Jones University president Steve Pettit isn’t happy about the Equality Act, an anti-LGBTQ discrimination bill that’s just moved through the House, because it would force him to chose between receiving federal funding or being a bigot.
Public health crisis or not, Republicans haven’t been distracted from what’s most important: Casually working state-sponsored prayer into the public school system.
In Montana it started with a bill that would force all K-12 students to say the Pledge of Allegiance every day (up from the current once a week) followed by an ambiguous moment of silence. Now that the bill has passed the State House, the State Senate is pulling a bait and switch by specifying that silent moment “may include a moment of silent prayer.”
Florida State Reps. Webster Barnaby and Clay Yarborough dropped a bill that would open the PA system to “brief opening remarks” during high school football games. That could mean anything, sure, but let’s use Barnaby’s own words for context:
“I recall the first day that when all of us sat in that House, we opened the House of Representatives with what?” Barnaby said. “Prayer. No one objected to the prayer that was said in the House of Representatives. If it’s good enough for us as representatives it ought to be good enough for our children.”
If these bills pass, it will surely mean costly legal trouble for cash strapped public schools. Take Joe Kennedy, the former assistant football coach at Bremerton High School in Washington, for example. Kennedy continued praying on the field with students despite several warnings until the school recognized he was a liability and let him go. He just lost another “religious freedom” appeal because the law is on the side of secularism when it comes to prayer in public schools.
The Griffith School Board in Indiana knows this, which is why they didn't bother putting up a fight when the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter last month warning them to end opening prayers at meetings. They’ve since ditched the pastor-led prayer and now open with a generic moment of silence.
Lifeway Research has been focused on a startling trend among conservative churches: Pastors are being driven out of their own churches by congregations radicalized by QAnon and anti-mask conspiracies. It’s less surprising to those of us on the outside that if you train a group of people to believe ridiculous stories without question, they’ll be prone to get caught up in other untruths.
Right-wing pastor Rick Joyner isn’t here to dispel any of the above-mentioned paranoia, either:
Finally, does this song make you a Creationist? Because Ken Ham is betting it will.
