Texas Eagle Forum’s December “News and Notes” e-newsletter offers more of the bigotry and pro-ignorance rhetoric we’ve come to expect from that far-right group.
Part of TEF President Pat Carlson’s email notes a Dallas Morning News report about a whisper campaign that led State Board of Education member George Clayton, R-Richardson, to acknowledge recently that he is gay. The newsletter continues:
Because of redistricting, all 15 SBOE seats will be up for election in 2012. We need to recruit and elect/re-elect true conservatives to these important positions so Texas will not go the way of Massachusetts or California in mandating K-12 pro-homosexual education in the classroom.
Gay people can’t be “true conservatives”? Perhaps Carlson’s version of a “true conservative” is one who promotes fear and hate toward people who are different. And what exactly does she mean by a “pro-homosexual education in the classroom”? To our knowledge, Clayton has never even mentioned the issue of sexual orientation in his time on the state board (not, at least, until his personal life was the subject of a whisper campaign by political opponents). Most likely, Carlson simply wants to make sure that state board members don’t object to efforts by far-right pressure groups to demonize gay people in textbooks and other instructional materials, as they tried during the adoption of health textbooks in 2004.
And speaking of health, Carlson’s e-newsletter also noted the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund’s new report showing that more public school districts in the state are moving toward an abstinence-plus approach on sex education. Carlson’s group insists on abstinence-only sex ed policies that keep young people ignorant about even basic, medically accurate information on contraception and disease prevention. From the TEF e-newsletter:
The ONLY PROVEN method to prevent teenage pregnancy is abstinence. Abstinence-plus education gives kids mixed messages—“don’t have sex, but if you do, use a condom.” Condoms and other forms of contraception do not “protect” a teen’s heart and mind from emotional distress and pain, nor prevent pregnancy or STDs 100% of the time; only abstinence does.
What Carlson doesn’t want her readers to know is that Texas has one of the highest teen birth rates in the nation yet has received more federal abstinence-only funding than any other state. Even now most school districts in the state teach abstinence-only or nothing at all when it comes to sex education. In a state where, on average, a teen gets pregnant ever 10 minutes and teen childbearing costs taxpayers about $1.2 billion annually, abstinence-only ignorance clearly hasn’t been a good education strategy.
Ms. Carlson,
Here’s a list of “true conservatives” you might be interested in:
Mark Foley- R FL
David Dreier- R CA
Robert Bauman- R MD
Jim McCrery- R LA
Larry Craig R- ID
Lindsay Graham- R, SC
Karl Rove
Ken Mehlman (baby bush’s campaign mgr, 2004)
John Lowndes- Christian Coalition
George Rekers- Co Founder- Family Research Council ; Focus on the Family Exec, and Southern Baptist Minister
Ted Haggard- Evangelical minister, and leader opposing gay marriage in Colorado
Rick Perry- R Gov., Texas
This is only a partial list of the huge amount of “true conservatives” in and around the GOP and the religious right.
A full list is available upon Ms. Carlson’s, as well as Ms. Shefaly’s request, including the one that has Ms. Shefaly’s son on the full list of “True Conservatives”
I think Rick Perry is gay. He looks gay to me. He has gay mannerisms. Maybe someone should look into that. Being married does not mean that you are straight Many married couples have divorced eventually because one of them has an inherent gayness, long suppressed, that suddenly floats to the top one day.
How about it governor Perry. Are you really gay?
Read the blogs Charles. Those are the rumors
Hello Dan, This comment is a different type. Literally I have a hard time reading the type in your column. Can you make it darker and go to a san serif type like tahoma? Thanks.
We are planning a redesign of the blog and hope to have that done in the first quarter of 2012. One of our goals is to make sure it’s easy on the eyes, although we realize that what works for most folks might not work for everyone. We’ll do our best!
None of the extensive pro-heterosexual education in my public schools kept many of my classmates from being gays and lesbians, so I’m not optimistic that “pro-homosexual” education can change people’s sexual orientation, either.
Gary I’m no so sure about that. Why just the other day Candidate Perry sent a pathetic and pandering, err I mean well thought out, letter to former Herman Cain supporters. In his letter Perry said ” “You don’t have to go to church every Sunday to know something is wrong in America where gays can openly serve in the military but our children can’t pray in school.”
Well done by Candidate Perry, well done indeed. In fact if children could still pray in school then the gays openly serving in the military probably wouldn’t be gay in the first place. Such is the power of prayer.
And wasn’t it just terrible, didn’t it just turn your stomach, the way the mainstream media and the far left teamed up to slander Herman Cain and force him to quit the presidential race? No free pizza for them!
Remember, the Guv never talks about his faith. That’s what his spokesperson said this past summer. And there’s no way he’s a liar.
Right?
He doesn’t need to talk about his faith, everybody knows he hearts Jesus. And if he did try to express his deep and heartfelt beliefs it would be ugly anyway. “Oh yes I have great admiration for the Father, the Son and the ……..umm….uh… err…..the uh…..hold on a second…..hey Mitt can you help me out here?”
Damn it! Prayer was NEVER legal in schools. NEVER. People just overlooked that fact and did their prayers in school despite the prohibitions against it. Christians were told by Jesus himself NOT TO PRAY IN PUBLIC. So why do they bend over backwards to do exactly the opposite of what their guy told them not to do. Look it up in Matthew 6:6 sometime. The so-called “Lord’s Prayer” was just an example of how to pray keeping it short and to the point, it was never meant to be parroted the way it is.
Christians have no respect for what Jesus said. So why do they want to force prayer in public schools where people who ARE NOT CHRISTIANS have to listen to their babbling? If I ever once got up and said a prayer in Hebrew, I’d have been expelled from school because they wouldn’t know what the hell I was saying.
To this day, I leave any secular meeting where they’re going to pray. I belong to an organization that markets a legal product. It has nothing to do with church, yet they invariably attempt to shove prayers in the name of Jesus down my throat and the throats of others who are not Christians. I RESENT IT AND WAS VERY RELIEVED WHEN MY CHILDREN WERE NOT FORCED TO LISTEN TO OR PARTICIPATE IN CHRISTIAN PRAYERS.
Apparently, the Republican candidates do not care that White Christians are beginning to become a minority in this country. Recently, I was called a liar by a member of the Tea Party when I told him that I heard a woman crying at a Tea Party meeting. Over and over and over again she cried, “I want my white America back, I want my white America back.” Damned bigot. I heard it, my sister heard it and my niece heard it; we’re not liars.
President Obama is being slammed because he doesn’t participate in public prayer. Good on him! Republicans think he’s a Muslim because he obeys what Jesus told him to do. The Republicans are nothing other than hypocrites and should be boycotted by Christians who believe in Jesus.
Go read Matthew 6 the next time you are tempted to pay in public.