Just last week I blogged about how allowing religious indoctrination in an Oklahoma public school destroyed a community with hatred and violence back in 1981.
I wrote that since then, many people had learned from our country’s mistakes and resolved not to make these same mistakes in the future.
But apparently, those people do not include Oklahoma City Reps. Sally Kern and Mike Reynolds, who just introduced the “Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act,” a bill that could allow Oklahoma public schools to interject religion into the classroom.
A nearly identical measure was vetoed last year by Gov. Brad Henry, who said that students are already allowed to express their faith and that the bill could subject school officials to “an explosion of costly and protracted litigation.”
“While well intended, this legislation is vaguely written and may trigger a number of unintended consequences that actually impede rather than enhance such expression,” he wrote.
The current bill, the first filed for the 2009 legislative session, would allow students to express religious viewpoints in class, allow religious clubs to have the same access to school facilities as secular groups and require school districts to adopt policies on student religious expression, according to the Associated Press.
Sponsor Reynolds claims “there’s nothing new about this bill. It makes it very clear that we agree with the Supreme Court.”
So then what’s the point of it?
Kern, a Religious Right favorite, said House Bill 1001 simply provides more “clarity” for school districts.
But anything Kern says probably shouldn’t be taken at face value, considering she claims she has been called by God to be a cultural warrior. Not to mention, she is notorious for her intemperate comments about gay people (claiming they are more of a threat to the nation than terrorists, among other things) and her stance that the United States is a Christian nation.
In her distorted version of America’s history, John Adams, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson believed there was a “true” religion that formed the basis for our country and (surprise!) it was Kern’s fundamentalist version of Christianity.
“When you study [the founders] and read what they had to say,” she observed, “approximately 95 percent of them were Christian, of the Christian religion, professing Jesus Christ as their savior. True freedom comes from knowing God your creator.”
Kern originally expressed this view in a speech she gave in January, where she claimed our country is collapsing because we have abandoned our Christian heritage.
Kern went on to attack public schools, public libraries and the teaching of evolution.
And she now claims this religion-in-schools bill is merely about “clarity?”
Let’s be honest here. This proposal is intended to broadly invite religious indoctrination – and religious divisiveness – into Oklahoma’s public schools. It’s a thinly veiled attempt to knock down the church-state wall and inject sectarian evangelism into the state’s classrooms.
Gov. Henry saw through this measure once already. If the legislature is unwise enough to pass it again, let’s hope Henry gives it the same treatment.
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