Immigration, clearly, has become one of the most divisive issues in American politics today. And while it’s not an issue the Texas Freedom Network typically monitors, we have begun noting the extremist statements that public officials make in that debate. Speaking on Houston’s KPFT-FM radio station last week, state Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, offered this […]
Religious Right Watch
The religious right strategically uses religion and religious language, combined with patriotic symbols, to push a political agenda that has little connection to the values of mainstream people of faith. It is, in short, a political rather than religious movement. The Texas Freedom Network has monitored the religious right in Texas since 1995.
Resources
- The Rise of the Religious Right in Texas (2006 Report)
- The Religious Right and the State Board of Education (2008 Report)
- The Religious Right and Sex Education
- The Bible and Public Schools
- How the Religious Right Hijacked the National Day of Prayer (2005 Report)
- The Texas Restoration Project
- David Barton Watch
What’s Going on in Virginia?
Virginia seems to be challenging Texas for which state’s elected officials pander the most to the far right. In his first three months in office, for example, Virginia’s Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell rescinded an order barring state employment discrimination against gay people and issued a proclamation honoring the Confederacy that failed to mention slavery, the […]
Breathing Fire in Tyler
Political fire-breathing was center stage at “The Oil Palace” on Saturday in Tyler, the only Texas stop on FOX News show host Glenn Beck‘s traveling road show, his “Take America Back” tour. The event showed once again how religious-right rhetoric increasingly dominates the so-called “tea party movement.” Beck and various Texas politicians provided plenty of […]
Public School Students: Headed to HELL?
Did you know public schools “promote a culture of immorality and death”? That public school students are more likely “to engage in sex and perversions,” “get an STD” and “commit suicide”? Or more to the point, did you realize that putting your children in public schools means they are “more likely to go to HELL”? That’s what […]
David Barton’s Contempt for Teachers
It’s not a secret that pseudo-historian David Barton has no use for the academy. Barton clearly prefers to play like he’s a historian and self-publish his amateur (and heavily politicized) opinions in tract form rather than bother with the whole peer-review process typical in real scholarship. But Barton’s scorn is not limited to college professors — […]
