A Republican candidate for the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) who fathered a child at age 16 says public schools should be allowed to display the Ten Commandments but shouldn’t teach about birth control in sex education classes.
Eric Mahroum, 31, is challenging incumbent Pat Hardy in Tuesday’s Republican runoff for the District 11 seat on the SBOE. Both are from Fort Worth. The board decides what the state’s public schools will teach 5 million Texas children and adopts textbooks for those schools.
Public radio station KERA in Dallas says one of Mahroum’s two children is home-schooled. From the KERA story:
Mahroum told the Republicans gathered in Arlington he favors allowing schools to arm educators so they can be a first line of defense in the event of school violence.
He stresses his Roman Catholic faith, and believes schools should be able to display the Ten Commandments.
“I’m for that realizing not every child is going to have a Christian background but our country as a whole, we stem from the Judeo Christian values,” said Mahroum.
Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network, which monitors state board decisions, says this election comes as the board prepares to adopt standards that will determine how much students are taught about contraception and whether it’s included in textbooks.
“Right now the standards require that students learn about condoms and other forms of birth control but the health text books in classrooms right now are almost entirely abstinence-only, not a shred of information about condoms or contraception,” said Quinn.
“And that’s alarming in a state with one of the highest teen birth rates in the nation,” he said.
Mahroum, who fathered a child at 16, tells KERA he opposes teaching about contraception. He says the topic should be handled at home.
Hardy says “knowledge is power.” She says contraception should be taught, with local districts deciding how that should be done.
Mahroum is an operations manager for a concessions company. He has been endorsed by Don McLeroy, the creationist former chairman of the SBOE who lost his re-election bid in 2010. Anti-evolution board members David Bradley, R-Beaumont Buna, and Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio, have also endorsed Mahroum. A number of Tea Party activists are backing Mahroum’s campaign as well. Click here for his campaign website.
Hardy first won election to the SBOE in 2002. She is a longtime social studies educator and works for the Weatherford Independent School District. Her campaign website lists endorsements from many of her Republican colleagues on the SBOE, including the creationist current chairwoman, Barbara Cargill. Click here for her campaign website.
You can keep up with Texas SBOE election information on TFN’s Election Watch page.
Religiosity, abstinence, and teenage pregnancy are all pretty interlinked.
I wonder if he thinks we should stone someone who breaks one of the commandments.
Because obviously this all worked so well for him.
Someone who homeschools their child should not be on the State Board of Education.
Since Texas is so big they have GOT to have some smart people too. Why do we only hear from the dumb ones?
“Eric married his 2nd grade sweetheart last October”…are you kidding me? Please let Texas secede from the republic. Stupid is as stupid does.
“Eric married his 2nd grade sweetheart last October”
What are their plans once she starts 3rd grade?
Wendy Davis is a smart one, and I hope she is our next governor. If Ann Richards could win, Wendy can win: http://www.wendydavistexas.com/
This makes my brain itch…
Ridiculous.
This breaks my main itch.
I say let them decide what is best for their kids. As my dad said to me when I got poor grades one semester: It’s ok. The world needs ditch diggers too.
What is it about education that draws these whack jobs into service?
1) The Seven Mountains Theology Movement, which requires “their kind” to take over the entire enterprise of American education to change every American child into a right wing nutjob zombie.
2) Fear of cultural change and a desire to use education to keep everything the same. The problem is that change is inevitable in any human culture. They are too poorly educated to recognize this very basic anthropological principle.
3) Fear of living in a society that does not mirror their two-bit fundie subculture. They are afraid of being the only stranger left in a strange land. They want to convert public education into a tool that can make American society feel more safe for them and what they believe.
4) Fear that God will take away their heavenly rewards if history shows that they failed to fight for what they regard as “right doctrine” and their unique subculture, which they view as a precept-based outgrowth of their doctrine.
5) Basic Principle: Scholars who dispassionately study the many religious fundamentalist movements all over the world (Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or whatever) have found a central thread that runs so true through each one (without exception). They are driven almost entirely by FEAR.
The fact that he had a child at 16, while ironic, is really irrelevant. His ideas are stupid independent of his personal history.
Where DO they FIND these people???????
Judeo-Christian values is a myth. If we really did base our government, laws, and punishment based on the bible, it would be a nightmare, worse than Saudi Arabia: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Actions_punishable_by_death_in_the_Old_Testament
He’s Republican?