SCOTUS to Destroy Separation of Church & State Over a Hamster Book
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Transcript:
Welcome back to the Continued Documentation of America’s Backsliding, where today we get to revisit a Religious Right classic: the parents’ right to control what a public school teaches their children based upon their deeply held religious beliefs, also known as “religious freedom” to them and “Christian supremacy” to the rest of us.
I think I last talked about this topic in December of 2019, which makes sense because the five years after that I was mostly occupied with COVID misinformation, vaccine misinformation, the war on women’s health, transphobia, and fascism. You know, some times it helps to step back and adopt a wider view of things and at other times that somehow makes it worse.
Anyway, back in 2019 I discussed a bill that was introduced in the Ohio legislature, which stated that in public schools, teachers could not “penalize or reward a student based on the religious content of a student’s work.” What does that mean? Well, no one really knows for sure. Does it mean a student can just answer “Jesus” for every question on a test and get a passing grade? Probably not, because it also mandates that “grades and scores shall be calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance, including any legitimate pedagogical concerns.”
So as I mentioned in that video, really, all it means is that if a student is asked the age of the Earth and replies, “My textbook says that scientists think the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old,” their teacher can’t punish them if they add, “but I believe the Bible, which puts the age of the Earth at 6,000 years.” Which isn’t a thing. That’s not a thing that happens. Most students don’t write things like that but for the small minority of weirdos who would, no teacher would punish them. They’d roll their eyes and then check the Go Fund Me that allows them to buy classroom supplies.
I suggested that that bill would surely pass, and it did: Ohio governor Mike DeWine signed it into law in the summer of 2020, because surely there was nothing else to think about concerning the education of children during that time.
If it was fixing a “problem” that didn’t even exist with wishy washy, easy-to-misinterpret language, why did it pass through into law so easily? And not just in Ohio, but in many other states, as well? Because this was part of the Religious Right’s agenda for the past twenty years: pass stupid laws that more easily enable you to goad someone into accidentally violating one of those laws, and then sue them in the hopes that you LOSE so that you can then escalate the lawsuit to the Supreme Court, which is now heavily controlled by, well, the Religious Right themselves. Secure a ruling from them and break down the wall separating Church and State, allowing you to push the rest of your conservative wedge issues into the classroom: no more teaching of evolution, no more sex education, and no more acknowledgement of the existence of queer people, for instance.
And wouldn’t you know it, it took a few years but someone’s managed to do it. In this case, it started in Maryland, where a group of parents objected to the mere existence of books in the classroom that included LGBTQ characters. One such book is called “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” a picture book for children aged 3 to 6 that is about a little girl who doesn’t want her uncle to get married, until she spends a magical day with him and his fiance. Who is also a man. That’s it. There aren’t even any illustrations of them kissing. They could be completely asexual. And in some editions as shown in court, they’re fucking HAMSTERS.
This book is not required to be read aloud in any classrooms in Maryland. However, it is approved to be on the bookshelves in classrooms if the teacher wants, and it is this that the religious conservative parents object to. Because there are already laws that allow religious parents to opt-out of certain education that violates their cherished religious beliefs, including sex ed. But the school board argued that there’s just no way to opt a child out of an environment that includes any representation of a gay person without being wildly bigoted and reducing the educational opportunities of the other children in the classroom.
Two lower courts ruled in favor of the school board, because they are sane. They understand that this would be considered patently ridiculous if a parent claimed that, say, they think Black people are the descendents of Ham and thus bear the mark of evil upon them and condemns them to a life of slavery, and so their child should be able to opt out of any material that shows even an illustration of a Black person. And it sounds ridiculous now but it didn’t sound that way to the religious conservatives of just 60 years ago, who literally opted their White children out of even going to school with Black children. And if the Supreme Court rules in favor of these parents, I assure you that we will be taking one giant step BACK in that direction.
Because again, I cannot stress this enough, they are all about pushing the wedge in. Every time they take an inch, they keep going for the mile. Allowing religious parents to opt out of sexual education was a tremendous mistake–not only because it doomed those children to unexpected teen pregnancies, STDs, and a lack of understanding of concepts like consent which hurts them, the people around them, and society at large, but also because it allowed that tip of the wedge in. “If we can opt out of sex ed because we don’t believe in it, why can’t we opt out of evolution? Ah, thanks. Okay, now we’d like to opt out of seeing a gay person.”
In a fascinating twist, fundamentalist Muslim parents have joined the Christians in this fight, not realizing that they’re next on the menu. Because I assure you, the end goal isn’t a public school that teaches several major religions’ creations myths alongside of evolution: it’s the Ten Commandments, Jesus on the cross, and who knows? Maybe a little curse of Ham. Because seeing a gay guy in a picture book is downright Satanic but seeing a guy’s entire lineage cursed to an eternity of slavery because he saw his daddy’s penis is holy and good.
I’m sorry but it’s really such a stupid fucking book. Christians should read it some time.
Anyway, as of this recording the Supreme Court has yet to rule on this, but it doesn’t look good. In addition to the court being controlled by religious extremists, only three of them (Alito, Jackson, and Kagan) even went to public school. And next week they’ll be considering whether or not to approve the first religious public charter school, and for dessert? This fall they’ll be considering whether or not to overturn state-level bans on “conversion therapy,” the extreme religious practice of torturing people–usually children–into pretending to be straight or cis when they aren’t. So, yeah, dark times ahead! If you’re a parent, I recommend stocking up your library at home with a diversity of educational books. Maybe hide them in a cubby behind your fridge.
