There was a misprint in the original version of this newsletter – we apologize for the error.
It takes only a quick glance at its website to reveal that LGBTQ students, staff and families are not welcome at Stillwater Christian School in Kalispell, Montana.
“We believe that God wonderfully and immutably creates each person as male or female, and that these two distinct, complementary sexes together reflect the image and nature of God,” the school’s Statement of Faith reads. “We believe that God created marriage to be exclusively the union of one man and one woman, and that intimate sexual activity is to occur exclusively within that union.”
Yet in all likelihood, donors to student “scholarship organizations” that issue vouchers to support this school and others will soon be eligible for 100% state tax credits, even though Montana’s constitution clearly prohibits the direct or indirect use of public funds for religious school tuition. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court is predicted to issue a strongly pro-voucher ruling when it issues its decision in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue,where oral arguments in the case were heard last week.
Conservative justices, who comprise a 5-4 majority of the Court, have signaled in this and other recent cases that they have little use for the “wall of separation” between church and state. Instead, they are troubled by religious institutions being denied equal access to government benefits (such as vouchers), which they see as a violation of the First Amendment’s free exercise clause.
Depending on the reasoning used by the Court in deciding the Espinoza case, a wide variety of state programs, including many related to education and other social services, may be transformed. Governments may be required to provide taxpayer funding to religious institutions that are not subject to anti-discrimination laws and other rules designed to protect vulnerable populations.
Currently, in 17 states where legal barriers have been cleared, a billion dollars per year is being diverted into private schools—the vast majority of which are religious. Like Stillwater, the school at the center of the Montana case, many of these religious academies openly discriminate against LGBTQ families.
“What we define as discriminatory applies differently in public and private spaces,” NEPC Fellow Julie Mead told The (Wisconsin) Daily Cardinalthis past fall. “The voucher language itself, about what schools have to permit and what they don’t have to permit, may make it possible to exclude LGBTQ kids or even straight kids whose parents are LGBTQ,” said Mead, a professor at UW Madison. “And because they have broken no law, they have not discriminated.”
Schools that receive vouchers may also be permitted to discriminate against students with disabilities. For instance, Trinity Christian Academy in Deltona, Florida, which received more than $1.5 million in vouchers last year, does not accept students with a wide variety of disabilities, including students who are not ambulatory, students with emotional disorders, and students with below-average intelligence.
Although the Montana case will almost certainly be decided in a way that promotes voucher expansion, given the Court’s majority of far-right Justices, NEPC Director and CU Boulder Professor Kevin Welner expects even more far-reaching effects. In an interview last week with Time, he said:
“We believe that God created marriage to be exclusively the union of one man and one woman….”
Then how do they reconcile the fact that God has no problem with men having multiple wives and concubines? David had hundreds of each yet he “did everything right in the eyes of God except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.” God only had a problem with sending the husband of one of his concubines off to die, not with having her (or any of the others) as a concubine.
And, ofc, they are find with the story of Lot and his daughters.
cx: fine
I know of an Irish song that has a line in it: “The son of King David had ten hundred wives, and his wisdom was highly recorded.”
“We believe that God wonderfully and immutably creates each person as male or female, and that these two distinct, complementary sexes together reflect the image and nature of God”
OK. Let’s go with this.
Male and female together reflect the image and nature of God.
So, God’s image and nature is both male and female.
The Bible tells us that we were made in the image of God.
Therefore, we are by nature both male and female.
Christ tells us that we should strive to be perfect, even as our father in Heaven is perfect.
Therefore, we should all strive to be bisexual, trans, and/or intersex.
QED
Is that what they are saying? Just trying to get clear on this.
Of course the Christian fundamentalists are going to push this crap. But what worries me more is the right-wing strategists and their low but effective cunning. If you look at polls showing where young people stand on the issues–on gun control, LGBTQX rights, abortion, taxes, Medicare for All, etc.–it’s clear that there are, among them, left-wing supermajorities. In other words, the Repugnicans have lost them. So, what’s a rapacious, Ayn Randian, worker-exploiting, environment-vandalizing, union-busting, war-mongering, white supremacist troglodyte to do? Well, create fundie Christian madrasas throughout the land that will train up the next generation of lemmings and cannon fodder to vote against their own interests as long as this keeps people with the same genitals from kissing in television commercials. And, incidentally, this will kill the teachers’ unions and siphon billions into private profits! So, win, win, win.
This case is extremely important. It will have profound consequences.
I think the public are in for a rude awakening when they realize the ed reform promise that they can “choose” any school with absolutely no trade-offs or risk to the systems they now take for granted is nonsense.
We just discovered this in Ohio. They jammed thru a massive voucher bill blithely assuring the public that public schools wouldn’t be impacted negatively at all and that worked until public school superintendents pointed out that it was a fantasy.
Now they’re frantically throwing together another ed reform “quick fix” that once again excludes any consideration of children in existing public schools. Betsy DeVos is drafting this one. The same Betsy DeVos who sneeringly refers to public schools as “failing government schools” – how do you think that will go for public school students in this state? I’ll take a wild guess- they’ll get screwed again.
And undermine US success.
Sent from my iPhone
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This is a PSA to teachers and guidance counselors.
Please don’t send students to “apprenticeship.gov” without vetting it yourself first:
https://www.apprenticeship.gov/
A lot of what the US Department of Education are presenting as “apprenticeships” are just low wage jobs they seem to have pulled off job sites. There doesn’t seem to be any regulation or vetting of this at all.
15,16, and 17 year olds are vulnerable. Please don’t send them somewhere where they are likely to get ripped off. Just because this has the seal of the federal government does not mean it is high quality or regulated in any way. The last thing these kids need is to spend years at some dead end low wage job because an adult sold it to them as an “apprenticeship” when it is nothing of the kind.
Words have meaning. The word “apprenticeship” means something- it does NOT mean selling them some junk for-profit “training” school or that they work for no pay.
If you want a good apprenticeship that a 17 year old can rely on ask an actual skilled trades person, don’t ask Ivanka Trump.
Hail to the chief. . . . and to Moscow Mitch; but more to the democratic point, to the American people who either stupidly ignore politics or who stupidly or in their adolescent “anti-” attitudes, voted for Trump, and to the shrinking violet-senators who didn’t stop this horror.
Reading the headlines today, I see that Trump has definitely “Learned His Lesson.” CBK
Coming soon! (Thanks, Supremes!) Want to rescue your children from the Ginnungagap of contemporary decadent mongrelized culture? Want them to escape Hel and join Óðinn in Valhalla? Then trot them over the Rainbow Bridge to Bob’s Asgard School for Busy Little Beserkers. And use your Trump, DeVos, Barr, Bush voucher/”scholarship” to pay for it!
Skål!
Join us in the Great Hall this Wodensdaeg for our annual torchlight induction ceremony! –Bob Sheferdtsøn (Hjarðmaður)
This just in from the Huffington Post:
OP STORIES
Friday, February 7
“TREASURY HANDS OVER HUNTER INFO — AFTER PROTECTING TRUMP The Treasury Department has given congressional Republicans sensitive financial information related to Hunter Biden after having refused to give Democrats President Donald Trump’s tax returns. [HuffPost]”
Here we go on Trump’s Payback Express . . . CBK
And so it begins. Jabba the Trump, off the chain
Lots of familiar trogs here. I notice that a lot of the signers have “Most Reverend” before their names, as in Most Reverend Samuel Smiley. Does mean that The “Sort of Reverend” didn’t want to sign it? How about the Reverend Most of the Time? –The Occasionally Reverend Robert D. Shepherd, Society of the Holy Cookie and Incense Ball (SHCIB)
By “here” I was referring to the Manifesto; see below
American theocracy supported by the alliance of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Christian Right and the state Catholic Conferences is all about denial of freedom from religion and, about taking away religious liberty – the Manhattan Declaration signed by bishops of 15 major cities.
FYI: For anyone who wants to read it, here is the “Manhattan Declaration.”
https://www.manhattandeclaration.org/
The wikipedia version (google it) also has some nice commentary about it, including some interesting numbers. CBK
appalling
Bob I see the Manifesto as a moment in history; and that (by the numbers) does not represent the entire protestant or Catholic polity.
Also, by that estimation, to broadbrush to ALL Catholics or Protestants, or to listen ONLY to anti-Catholic ideologues, is to falsely raise the ideas that, in fact, border the extreme, to the all-most-normative for all.
From that view, what’s “appalling” to me is a biased reading of the Manifesto and a forgetfulness, again, of the numbers; and for instance, that Texas protestant church and the groups around and similar to it; but also of me and (from my perch) many like-minded Catholics who want to maintain their active faith while doing what we can to change minds from the bottom up.
To me, Pelosi (Catholic) and Romney (Mormon) are heroes who qualified recently as “profiles in courage.” CBK
Agreed completely, Catherine. I have many Christian friends who are appalled by the likes of Don the Con, and I taught among Sisters of Charity who were incredibly generous and loving people. All this is a horrific distortion of the message of Yeshua of Nazareth, whom I honor. I have seen some beginnings of a Christian backlash against these distortions of his teaching.
And Pope Francis is a truly decent man. I just watched The Two Popes, btw. Great film.
Bob: I haven’t see the Two Popes yet, but will. The push-back for Francis, however, in the Catholic Church is unprecedented. Again, it’s a moment in history. I hope it’s not like the one our Congress just went through; and rather turns out to be a moment of transcendence for the Church. (in my view, long in coming.) CBK
Amen to that, CBK!
Individuals vs. a well-funded political machine that influences public policy e.g. the renewed threat to Roe v. Wade, the threat of tax-funded religious education, the Tennessee state decision to fund Catholic and other religious organizations who discriminate in adoptions based on gender identity, etc.
But, by all means, continue to pretend the bishops, Christian Right leaders and religious conferences exert the same political influence as
Mary Margaret and Barb who go to the inner city and ladle soup to the poor.
Linda: Uh . . . huh. . . . CBK
A lot of Democrats likely hope that prior to the election, the patriarchy gives the nuns back, the wheels for their bus. If the 50% of Catholics who want Trump in office are disproportionately male, it’s unlikely.
In any event, SCOTUS’ religion-first justices probably made the Espinosa decision before their appointment.
My take on Espionza v. Montana:
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2020/01/22/espinoza-v-montana/
I linked to this in my comment here :https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Dangerous-Case-of-Espi-in-General_News-Dangerous_Discrimination_Education-Funding_Education-Laws-200208-256.html#comment755800
Thanks, Susan!
It is up at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Dangerous-Case-of-Espi-in-General_News-Dangerous_Discrimination_Education-Funding_Education-Laws-200208-256.html. with a link to Gary Rubenstein’s blog about “Slaying Goliath.”