Gateway To Confusion: Religious Right Group Jumps All Over Americans United

Although I’m not a Southerner (I was born in western Pennsylvania), I cannot sit idly by while a lady’s honor is besmirched – especially when that lady is my co-worker.

Two days ago, AU Communications Assistant Lauren Smith wrote a blog post about efforts by the group Gateways to Better Education to usurp Religious Freedom Day (Jan. 16) for nefarious purposes. Lauren rightly pointed out that Gateways is a Religious Right outfit that seeks to sneak fundamentalism into our public schools under the guise of “teaching about” religion.

Yesterday Gateways fired back, issuing a press release accusing Lauren of twisting its agenda. Today I rise in her defense. Everything she wrote is true, and Gateways President Eric Buehrer should be ashamed of himself for this dastardly assault.

I know a few things about the agenda of Gateways and its allies, since I’ve been exposing it for 20 years. One of Gateway’s most appalling stunts occurred in the early ‘90s when the group issued a booklet called “Bunny Goes to School.” It featured a talking Easter Bunny who visits a public school teacher and advises her on ways to teach about Easter in the classroom. The bunny tells the teacher, for example, that there’s no problem teaching the children about Christ’s resurrection.

Other advice given was for the teacher to read the Easter story from the Book of Luke and to invite a local minister in tell kids about it. These would indeed be great activities for a public school to sponsor – if it were itching to get sued.

I interviewed Buehrer in 1994. At the time, I asked him about a claim he made in his 1990 book New Age Masquerade that public schools teach occultism, hypnotism and “one-world” government. He replied, “We’re finding certain practices are pretty widespread – guided imagery, mediation, that sort of thing. Our view is it is a religious practice, though they don’t call it that.”

I’ve also collected a good bit of Buehrer’s fund-raising mail and newsletters over the years. It’s typical of the Religious Right – full of fear-mongering, hysteria and undocumented claims that gay people, witches and the dreaded multiculturalists are taking over the public schools. Here are some choice tidbits:

* A letter on the dangers of sex education asserts that condoms increase exposure to AIDS and says, “Kindergarten children are now being taught about masturbation in some schools!”

* Blasting Halloween (the one holiday Buehrer does not want in our school), Buehrer writes, “Making light of the occult could, later, make it easier for students to dabble in the occult.”

* A letter headlined (in red ink!), “Exposing The Homosexual Agenda In Public Schools” asserts that “Homosexual radicals are aggressively pushing schools to teach children that homosexuality is not only normal but inevitable for many of them.”

In short, Buehrer is offering the same tired Religious Right nonsense we’ve been hearing for years. He works closely with Focus on the Family, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Institute on Religion and Democracy and other groups that have never managed to accept the fact that public education must be neutral on theological questions. These people do not like public schools because the schools refuse to get into the business of promoting religion. Buehrer and his ilk are trying to sneak proselytism back in under the guise of legitimate instruction about religion.

Americans United supports objective instruction about religion in public schools. We will never support efforts to “Christianize” the schools and will continue to stand against the anti-public schools activism of groups like Gateways to Better Education.

To Buehrer, I would only say that it’s a new day in America. We’re more diverse than ever, with some scholars saying there may be as many as 2,000 faiths practiced in America (not to mention millions of Americans who follow no religion). Your plan to convert the public schools into fundamentalist parochial academies is bound to fail – not only because the courts have struck it down repeatedly but because the American people reject it. They want a public school system that welcomes and respects all children, no matter what they believe or don’t believe about God.

That’s how it is. No talking bunny will change that. Deal with it.

By Rob Boston