Friday, January 02, 2009

Religious right groups call for mass exodus from public schools . . . again

Geez, it doesn't even shock me anymore:

Critics of America's public school system have launched a new effort highlighting the need for Christians to exit the system.

The initiative -- dubbed The Call to Dunkirk -- was launched by Dr. Bruce Shortt, author of The Harsh Truth About Public Schools; Rev. Voddie Baucham, author of Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk with God; and the founder and director of the Exodus Mandate Project, retired U.S. Army Chaplain Lt. Col. E. Ray Moore.

Moore explains the proposal. "The Call to Dunkirk is a special emergency effort to try to get other ministries, churches, pastors, and the major Christian right and pro-family movement to join with us and the other K-12 home-school ministries in rescuing the children from the public schools during the year 2009," he says.

New effort my pinkie toe. It's an old effort and a tired one at that.

In 2005, Baucham and Shortt pushed for the same type of resolution via the Southern Baptist Convention:

A popular black evangelist is hoping that the proposed resolution on homosexuality in public schools that he has helped to put before the Resolutions Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention will spark a mass exodus of Baptist children from public schools.

The resolution, submitted by attorney and author Bruce Shortt and Dr. Voddie Baucham, Jr., calls on Southern Baptist churches to investigate whether their local school district has a "gay-straight alliance" or other homosexual clubs. The resolution also calls upon churches to encourage parents' removal of their children from schools that have curricula or programs that treat homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.

Personally, I say if parents don't agree with public schools, they should have every option to homeschool their children. I have friends who do this already.

However, I don't agree with any homeschool initiatives taking money from the public schools and I certainly don't agree with making lgbts the boogiemen (i.e. the reason why children should be taken out of public schools.)

And making us the objects of fear is definitely the reasoning behind this so-called new initiative:

Although Christians have fought other aspects of the culture war such as homosexual "marriage," (Ray) Moore contends they are losing the fight when it comes to the education of their children.

"The real target of the liberals and the left has always been the children. And we can see in California where the conservatives won Proposition 8 -- the vote [was] 52 to 48 [percent] -- but...when Proposition 22 was voted on [in March 2000], they had a 61-percent margin of victory. So the culture is turning against Christianity and against the pro-family movement primarily because we've allowed our children to be educated in their schools," he adds. "They're converting our children; we're not converting them."

Ridiculous. No one is converting America's children.

LGBTs and liberals in general are not sitting in dark rooms taking instructions from a mysterious leader stroking a Persian cat while he periodically presses a button and drops one of us down to a pirahna tank.

If the religious right is truly losing the next generation, then they need to blame themselves and assess their bullshit.

You cannot call yourself pro-family if you are actively working against families simply because they don't fit your idea of the word. And you cannot call yourself Christian if you rely on lies and generalizations to get your point across.

What is happening here is like the ending of the classic fairty tale, the Emperor's New Clothes: Adults are distorting, lying, and obfusticating, but a child's simplicity getting to the heart of the matter.

In this particular case, the heart of the matter is that there is nothing wrong with being a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender person.

Viva la progress!

8 comments:

S. said...

Let them take their kids out of public schools! What took them so long?

I'd rather fundie kids just stay at home, than forcing gay students into dropping out, putting a bullet in their head or whatever.

But if that's the case, those homeschooled kids shouldn't be allowed to get their GED or attend any accredited college. They can, however, work at a church vacuuming floors or something.

BlackTsunami said...

Gotta be careful about that. The last thing we need is a "gays won't let our children get into college" controversy.

Some of these home school don't really fit the stereotype that some of us may have for them, i.e. being as rigid as those loudly supporting home schooling. Which is even more proof that the religious right is becoming more irrelevant.

Unknown said...

Scott, my sister had to take one of her three sons out of the public school system and homeschool him for one year. The child was just not learning and was having problems. He was and still is on Ritalin. I am gay. I don't have any children. But, I hope that I have been one darn good uncle to my nine nieces and nephews.

Unknown said...

"LGBTs and liberals in general are not sitting in dark rooms taking instructions from a mysterious leader stroking a Persian cat while he periodically presses a button and drops one of us down to a pirahna tank." Sound like the James Bond movie Dr. No.

BlackTsunami said...

Ernst Stavro Blofeld actually. Remeber Dr. No had those stone hands. He couldn't stroke anything. LOL

Buffy said...

As I said when I wrote about their "call for mass exodus" last year: "Let them". It will be that many fewer bigoted kids and bigoted parents with agendas screwing things up for the decent people.

S. said...

LOL Alvin, I could see LaBarbera/Barber making something up like that. But it's their stupidity that won't allow them into college, not gays.

And Charles, your nephew obviously is an exception to what I was saying. I was referring strictly to children who are yanked out of public schools because their parents don't want them to be around gay students and/or tolerance of gay students.

If people don't want to attend a public school because of diversity of students, why should they be allowed to fuck off for 18 years, then be accepted into a public college? If you're too "goody goody" to be around grade/high school students, then you're too "goody goody" to later become big man on campus.

The public school kids have to get up at 6AM everyday, go to school until 3PM, from K-12 in order to get into college. So why should the rules be bent for kids of fundies? That's what I'm saying LOL

Thomas Mc. said...

Fundies are already dumber than dirt, I'm surprised to hear they ever went to schools!