Those who carry water for the Texas Taliban in the state legislature engaged in quite a lot of mischief in the last session, in their unrelenting efforts to make public education in Texas an outpost of various Christian sects dominant in this part of the country. This article from a Galveston newspaper is particularly good on one of the most venal and disruptive pieces of legislation passed and signed by the reprehensible Governor Rick Perry:
In the mythological world created for religious conservatives by people hustling those same for money and votes, Texas House Bill 3678 is an important law.
It’s meant to prevent religious students from being dragged off to gulags by federal marshals for such crimes as praying over their cafeteria hotdogs and saying “I love Jesus” in class.
The trouble is, such never happens anywhere except in the mythological world of religious conservatives, and yet the law also applies to those of us living in the real world.
The only question about HB 3678 — which lawmakers say we may refer to as the “Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act” or the “School Children’s Religious Liberties Act” and which has about as much to do with those things as the Patriot Act does with patriotism — is: Exactly how bad is it?
Is it just a gratuitous bone for conservative voters, or is it a real threat to the American concept of keeping state-sponsored religion out of public schools?
We think it’s the latter....
What the bill was drafted to do is side-step a 2000 Supreme Court ruling on a school-prayer policy at Santa Fe Independent School District, right here in Galveston County.
In that ruling, the court said Santa Fe couldn’t have a policy allowing hand-picked students to read pre-approved religious statements over campus public address systems at the beginning of every school day, every student assembly and every home football game.
The court said the district could have a policy allowing prayers before graduation ceremonies, as long as they were nonsectarian, nonproselytizing and not censored or otherwise controlled by the district.
The new law is supposed to guide school districts in allowing students to deliver short sermons before every sort of school event.
Not just any students, though. Only juniors and seniors picked from among such elites as “student council officers, captains of the football team and other students holding positions of honor as the school district may designate.” The rest of you may remain seated and keep silent.
What the Supreme Court understood in 2000, but our lawmakers still don’t get, is the other half of the expression exchange. It’s not just a matter of who gets to speak but who is compelled to sit there, captive in the classroom or auditorium or stadium, and listen.
The court rejected Santa Fe’s football-prayer policy in part because of frequency. The justices thought that having to listen to a classmate preach once in a high-school career was a reasonable burden; having to do so over and over again was not.
If this law stands, we suggest there ought to be another. Call it the School Children’s Plain-Old-American Liberties Act. The law would clarify students’ rights to hiss, catcall, boo, hoot, object or disagree via recitation of scripture or to just get up and walk out any time they’d rather not sit quietly captive through a classmate’s expression of a religious viewpoint.
Texas may be notable for how aggressive the local Taliban are, but let's not forget that these pathologies are nationwide, as a recent survey confirms: take a look at the answers to questions 25, 26, and 27 in particular.
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