It didn’t take long for religious-righters to use the horrifying tragedy in Connecticut last week as another opportunity to bash America for supposedly ignoring God. Today, for example, a Texas-based group with too many names — Liberty Institute presently, formerly Free Market Foundation, and now with a special offshoot called Texas Values — proclaimed its […]
Religious Freedom
The Texas Freedom Network supports the constitutional guarantee of the separation of church and state, which protects the right of all Americans to practice the faith of their choice, or none at all, free of government interference.
Unfortunately, efforts to knock down that wall are a constant in Texas. Politicians and extremists continually work to impose their views on others, especially around issues like abortion, access to contraception, and LGBTQIA+ equality. And in a distortion of the principle of religious freedom, far-right groups have supported legislative efforts to allow people to use religion as an excuse to ignore laws they might not like and even as a weapon to discriminate against others.
Resources
- Prayer in Public Schools: A Primer (2001 report)
- The Texas Faith-Based Initiative (2002 report)NDOP_Report_2005_Revised
- A Report on The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (2005 report)
- Reading, Writing & Religion: Teaching the Bible in Texas Public Schools (2006 report)
- Reading, Writing & Religion II (2013 report)
- Can This Class Be Saved? The ‘Hobby Lobby’ Public School Bible Curriculum (2014 report)
Department of Redundancies Department
We’ll give this to him: he’s persistent. On the first day (today) that lawmakers can file bills for the 2013 session of the Texas Legislature, state Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Van, has proposed a bill — House Bill 49 — requiring public high school students to take a course on the U.S. Constitution. Seems reasonable? Of […]
Most GOP Candidates for Texas Ed Board Support Teaching ‘Weaknesses’ of Evolution, Posting Ten Commandments in Public Schools
During the Texas State Board of Education‘s debate over science curriculum standards in 2008, supporters of sound science education succeeded in killing a provision that would have required students to learn creationism-inspired arguments about the “weaknesses” of evolution. But nine Republicans in state board races apparently will insist that new biology textbooks include those bogus […]
To the People of Kountze, Texas
This column is cross-posted from Texas School Administrators Legal Digest Online. It is written by Texas attorney Jim Walsh, the managing editor of the Digest and co-author of The Educator’s Guide to Texas School Law. Your school superintendent did the right thing. When he ordered the Kountze ISD cheerleaders to cease putting scripture verses reflecting […]
Texas Church Posts Sign: ‘Vote for the Mormon, not the Muslim’
Americans United for Separation of Church and State has asked the Internal Revenue Service to determine whether a Texas church has violated federal tax law by posting a public sign urging people to “vote for the Mormon, not the Muslim.” According to AU, the pastor of the Church in the Valley in Leakey, Texas, posted […]
