Perhaps you laughed, perhaps you were astonished when you read that Republicans in Ohio in the House voted for a law that would allow a student’s religious beliefs to give the wrong answers on science tests.

Peter Greene shows that the proposed bill is even worse than we thought.

He begins:

It’s called the “Ohio Student Religious Liberties Act of 2019” and it sets out to accomplish a few things:

It removes the limits on exercising expression of student religious beliefs. The old, struck-out language  said the board of education could limit said expression to lunch period or other noninstructional time. That’s the piddly stuff.

Under the new language, “religious expression” (the stuff no longer limited to non-instructional time) includes prayer, gatherings (clubs, prayer groups, etc), distribution of written materials, and, well, anything religious, actually, including wearing religious gear or “expression of a religious viewpoint” (as long as it’s not obscene or indecent or vulgar). Cue the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster and the local Satanic Temple; if a student offers a prayer to Satan in the middle of English class and some Christians in the class find that indecent and vulgar, can it be suppressed? Congratulations to the first batch of lawyers and judges that are going to have to sort this out. Double congratulations to whatever government body ends up being responsible for determining which religions are state-certified to be protected under this law.

Students hall have access to school facilities before, during and after school that school hours to the same extent that secular activities may do so. Place your bets now on how many schools will simply ban all before and after school activities in order to sidestep this.

Forget about separation of church and state. The Good News evangelicals will convene their meetings in the middle of math and science classes.

The Founders were wiser than we when they sought to separate church and state, to be sure that every individual was free to practice their own religion (or lack thereof) in their own way outside of the public school.

Thus continues our nation’s slide into a pit of religious intolerance and invasions of religious liberty, all–ironically– in the name of religious freedom.