Education

Utah state Senator Chris Buttars seems to generate news whenever he opens him mouth because you can be sure that whatever comes out it going to be idiotic or offensive or both.  

Buttars has been making news since back in 2006, when he proclaimed that the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education was "wrong to begin with” and again last year when he voiced his opposition to an education bill by saying “this baby is black…this is a dark, ugly thing." In December he was named the “Worst Person in the World” by Keith Olbermann for his effort to make sure everyone said “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.”

And I have a feeling that once this audio clip from Good As You starts to get around, Buttars will once again find himself in the running for Olbermann’s honor.  

ABC 4 in Salt Lake City, which first reported the story, reports that the audio comes from an interview Buttars did with filmmaker Reed Cowan for his upcoming documentary called "8: The Mormon Proposition.” In it, Buttars compares gays to Islamic radicals, compares America to Sodom and Gomorrah, that gays have no morals and that acceptance of their lifestyle will bring about the destruction of the nation. 

The entire rambling clip is over 15 minutes long, but we’ve taken the highlights and edited it down and provided this rough transcript (if the player isn't working, you can listen to the audio here):

I believe in the Constitution being something that was inspired of God and the way these people are destroying the Constitution is they’re saying the Constitution is a living document, that means it’s subject to change.  But truth don’t change, it does not change, and I won’t accept any of that.  So they say, well, marriage is between a man and a women and that’s changed, look around, look at all these combinations. Combinations of abominations, as far as I’m concerned. To me, homosexuality will always be a sexual perversion and you say that around here now and everybody goes nuts, but I don’t care.  

They want to talk about being nice, but they’re the meanest buggers I’ve ever seen. It’s just like the Muslims.  Muslims are good people and their religion is anti-war, but it’s been taken over by the radical side and the gays are totally taken over by the radical side. You don’t see the gay out there saying “let’s not do this gang.” You see them marching around with signs and everything else.

I believe the whole thing is immoral and I believe you're moving towards … you see, if you say to me “quit shoving your morals down my throat, Buttars” my answer back is “you know my morals. What’s yours?” What is the morals of a gay person? You can’t answer that, because anything goes. So now you’re moving towards a society that has no morals and there’s never been a nation that survived that’s done that.

There’s a lot of dollar costs. You take their trying to have insurance rights the same as a man and a woman. Now, when you’re married, insurance companies can quantify, we got this many married people so they run their underwriting.  You have no way to do that with gay people and you’re going to take on paying for all the extra, most often, diseases, and that’s huge. And now you, as a straight, get to share that cost. That’s what I’m talking about. Those kinds of diseases are not exclusive with gays, but they represent the huge majority.

I believe that you will destroy the foundation of American society because I believe the cornerstone of it is a man and a woman and a family.  It is, in my mind, the beginning of the end. Oh, it's worse than that. Sure, Sodom and Gomorrah was localized, this is world-wide.  You can’t tell me that something was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah is not going on wholesale right now and to a large degree among the gay community … The underbelly is they do not want equality, they want superiority.

Exodus Mandate, an organization created to “encourage and assist Christian families to leave Pharaoh's school system (i.e. government schools) for the Promised Land of Christian schools or home schooling,” is not particularly impressed with the current crop of Religious Right organizations.

You see, Exodus Mandate believes that “fresh obedience by Christian families in educating their children according to Biblical mandates will prove to be a key for the revival of our families, our churches and our nation” and, as such, it is now publically calling out the likes of Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, the American Family Association, Vision America, and Wallbuilders all of whom have failed to adequately encourage their members to flee the public school system and are thereby responsible for losing the culture war:

Chaplain E. Ray Moore issued a Report Card at the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) in Nashville, Tennessee, on Feb 10, 2009, at a news conference, on how effectively major Christian ministries and organizations support K-12 Christian education or home schooling. Nine organizations were rated, many of which have actively engaged in the cultural war in the US for the past several decades. Moore said, "Even though these organizations have been valiantly fighting the culture war, they have suffered terrible defeats. They have not been able to arrest and reverse the moral and cultural slide by protests, lobbying, voting and legislative remedies. It's time for these ministries to revisit their methodology and ask themselves if there is a biblical model for spiritual and cultural renewal." The nine criteria used to rate the organizations in the K-12 Christian education Report Card included: promoting a Christian worldview and not promoting K-12 public schools as morally equivalent to Christian and home schools.

The nine ministries generally earned high scores for promoting a Christian worldview, for promoting K-12 Christian education or home schooling and for warning about the dangers of public schools, but they received poor grades for wasting their efforts on public-school reform, on justifying keeping Christian children in public schools to be salt and light, and on promoting a moral equivalence between K-12 public, Christian and home schools. Moore said, "The failure in these criteria is largely due to the fact that some Christian ministries have not yet come to believe that there is an explicit biblical theology of Christian education in the Holy Scriptures. These same ministries have promoted a Christian worldview, and many Christian families, taking this teaching to its logical conclusion, have now outstripped the ministries."

You can see the report card here [PDF], where Coral Ridge Ministries come out on top with a grade of B:

Yesterday we reported that the "controversial" provision in the stimulus bill that we have been writing about for more than a week had been dropped because the section covering spending for higher education had been cut in order to shrink the cost of the legislation.

But, just because it is no longer part of the legislation, that apparently doesn't mean that the Religious Right is done complaining about it.

For instance, the Family Research Council continues to hammer away:

Today there is new evidence that liberals will use Obama's bill to usher in a new era of religious censorship, welfare, and universal health care. Despite Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-S.C.) best efforts, the religious discrimination component still exists in the bill, which punishes schools that allow spiritual activities in their facilities.

Rick Scarborough has also gotten in on the fun:

To put it simply, Christianity is being targeted for discrimination ... it is clear that the intended effect of this portion of the bill is two-fold. First, it discriminates against and minimizes the practice of religion. Second, it attempts to keep religious institutions from being the beneficiaries of federal dollars ... The radical secularists in America are using the power of the Federal government to confiscate the funds of both Christians and non-Christians and use them to force compliance with their anti-Christ agenda.

As has Lou Engle (via email):

There are countless Christian groups that sponsor events and activities on secular campuses all around the country. This small provision, buried so no one could find it, would pressure school administrators to ban these groups, effectively destroying their ability to conduct outreach and evangelization to students who hunger for it.

These very subtle moves by anti-family forces in Congress indicate their long-term strategy to drive religious groups off campus and out of the mainstream.

We should point out that, during the conference on the bill yesterday, there was some wrangling over the fact that spending for school modernization had been cut and that some sort of compromise was reached that puts at least some of that spending back in, so it might very well be that when the final version of the bill comes out, this provision will have been re-inserted.

Not that it matters really, because apparently the Right is going to continue to complain about this provision whether it is actually in the legislation or not.

Anyone who have been reading this blog over the last week knows, I have spent a great deal of time trying to knock down the misinformation swirling around regarding a provision in the stimulus bill that would prohibit funds for being used to upgrade or repair university facilities when said facilities function is primarily religious.

But, despite my efforts, this fraud keeps cropping up on right-wing website, with the Christian Coalition now spreading it and the Family Research Council continuing to peddle it:

First, we know that the current stimulus legislation in Congress is a disaster for the free market economy. But, did you know that there are limitations in the legislation against religious liberty? David French of Phi Beta Cons on National Review Online finds some disturbing facts restricting religious liberty within the stimulus legislation.

The Higher Education, Modernization and Renovation component of the bill requires that the money allocated in the stimulus would not be spent on religious instruction, worship, or any department of divinity, or any building that would be devoted for religious purposes on college campuses.

So, this leaves the question: where will religious groups meet on campus? I guess this means it will be back to dorm rooms or nearby churches. However, this ban would not apply to groups, like Amnesty International, College Feminists, Greenpeace, etc., who can meet in any room on campus. Seems odd, doesn't it? I guess it is 24/7 liberal indoctrination...thanks to the Obama's stimulus plan.

FRC doesn't provide a link to French's post ... but if they did send their readers there, they'd find out that French, who happens to be Senior Legal Counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, links to our first post about this whole issue and says that we are right:

One clause indeed prohibits funding for buildings only when a "substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission." (emphasis added). The meaning here is obvious, and it clearly applies to buildings like chapels, or perhaps divinity schools, or many facilities at religious universities. It has no real application to secular, public universities that open up classroom buildings to student groups.

Another clause, however, prohibits funding for buildings that are "used" for "sectarian instruction" or "religious worship." It does not say "primarily used." It simply says "used." For People for the American Way's reading to be correct, one has to assume that the drafters intended "used" to be read as "primarily used."

I have to give French credit, as his post on this issue is the only one that I have seen that actually seeks to understand the provision instead of simply proclaiming it anti-Christian.  And he raises an interesting point regarding the meaning of the word "used" in the section that proclaims that "no funds awarded under this section may be used for ... modernization, renovation, or repair of facilities used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school or department of divinity."

French is correct to note that the provision does not say "primarily used" ... but neither does it say "occasionally used" and yet, for some reason, that is how the Right is interpreting it.  Despite the fact that, as Sen. Dick Durbin pointed out last week, this sort of language "has been in the law for 40 years [and] is the result of three Supreme Court decisions," the Right's interpretation of this standard, boilerplate language is that it means that any building on campus that is ever occasionally "used" for religious worship (i.e., a student group meets in their dorm for a Bible study) would be prohibited from using stimulus funds, as opposed to the more straightforward and logical interpretation that "used" refers to a building's primary function (i. e., a church is occasionally "used" for potluck dinners and Bingo nights, but its primary function is religious worship).

The language of this provision is clearly concerned with facilities in which a "substantial portion of the functions ... are subsumed in a religious mission" and it is within that context that the word "used" must be understood.  

Only an intentionally obtuse reading of this provision could lead one to conclude that the word "used" in this context was intended to mean "occasionally used" rather than "primarily used." Yet that is exactly what the Right is claiming ... and I, in turn, have had to spend hours of my life rebutting false claims that hinge entirely on their nonsensical understanding of the meaning of the word "used."

I feel so used.

As we reported last night, Sen. DeMint's effort to get a supposedly "anti-Christian" provision stripped from the stimulus legislation failed by the frightening close margin of 54-43.

As is to be expected, the right-wing groups had been peddling this lie all week are not happy, as David Brody reports:

The Traditional Values Coalition just issued this statement:

“Democrats showed their anti-Christian bias by rejecting South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint’s amendment that would have protected religious freedom in colleges and universities receiving federal funds,” said Traditional Values Coalition Executive Director, Andrea Lafferty today. “DeMint’s amendment simply struck the anti-Christian discrimination section from the bill.

...

“This is just the beginning of aggressive anti-Christian bigotry that we will see over the next four years,” said Lafferty. “We suffered a significant defeat to our First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom and free speech today.”

The ACLJ, which was responsible for unleashing this absurd fabrication in the first place, is standing by its erroneous position and threatening to sue if this provision gets signed into law:

This is a very disappointing development. What’s most troubling is the fact that a majority of the Senate supports a discriminatory provision that prohibits religious activity from taking place in college and university facilities nationwide that take federal stimulus funds. If this language remains in the stimulus package that’s ultimately approved by Congress, we will challenge this provision in federal court by filing suit. This provision has nothing to do with economic stimulus and everything to do with religious discrimination.

...

The fact is that unless this provision is removed from the final stimulus package, we'll be in federal court challenging this discriminatory measure.

We wish you the best of luck with that, ACLJ.

Which brings me to my final point.  I'm not in the habit of writing posts that revolve around comments left on blogs - especially comments left on Red State - but today I am making an exception.  Earlier this week, Erick Erickson wrote a post that made many of the false claims we have been systematically rebutting throughout the week.  A commentator there, going by the name PD, weighed in to point out that the language in this legislation is standard boilerplate legislative language.  Another commentator responded that, if the language was so common, why didn't PD provide other examples, to which PD responded with this:

Funds appropriated under a certain higher education grant program “may not be used…for a school or department of divinity or any religious worship or sectarian activity”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode20/usc_sec_20_00001068—e000-.html

Funds appropriated under another program “may not be used…for a school or department of divinity or any religious worship or sectarian activity”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode20/usc_sec_20_00001103—e000-.html

Limitation contained in program to help historically black institutions: “No grant may be made under this chapter for any educational program, activity, or service related to sectarian instruction or religious worship, or provided by a school or department of divinity.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode20/usc_sec_20_00001062—-000-.html

Grants for work-study programs may “not involve the construction, operation, or maintenance of so much of any facility as is used or is to be used for sectarian instruction or as a place for religious worship”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00002753—-000-.html

Money used under a specific community development program subject to limitation that “no participant will be employed on projects involving political parties, or the construction, operation, or maintenance of so much of any facility as is used or to be used for sectarian instruction or as a place for religious worship”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00009807—-000-.html

Aid under program providing grants for volunteer service projects may not be used for ” projects involving the construction, operation, or maintenance of so much of any facility used or to be used for sectarian instruction or as a place for religious worship.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00005001—-000-.html

Energy resource graduate fellowships “shall be awarded under this subchapter for study at a school or department of divinity.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode30/usc_sec_30_00001325—-000-.html

Religious organizations participating in the “Community Schools Youth Services and Supervision Grant Program Act of 1994″ “shall not provide any sectarian instruction or sectarian worship in connection with an activity funded under this subchapter.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/search/display.html?terms=sectarian&url=/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00013791—-000-.html

Funds used under grant program for tribally controlled schools “shall not be used in connection with religious worship or sectarian instruction.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode25/usc_sec_25_00001803—-000-.html

Another construction program: “Participants shall not be employed under this chapter to carry out the construction, operation, or maintenance of any part of any facility that is used or to be used for sectarian instruction or as a place for religious worship (except with respect to the maintenance of a facility that is not primarily or inherently devoted to sectarian instruction or religious worship, in a case in which the organization operating the facility is part of a program or activity providing services to participants).”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode29/usc_sec_29_00002938—-000-.html

Etc., etc., etc., etc.

Well done, PD.  And do you supposed the ACLJ intends to file suit against all of these laws as well? 

Over the last few days, we have been chronicling how a flat-out fabrication by the ACLJ about a provision in the economic stimulus legislation would supposedly ban religious students from using university facilities. 

As we've pointed out repeatedly, the provision says nothing of the sort ... but that hasn't stopped the ACLJ's Jay Sekulow from intentionally spreading this misinformation far and wide, writing about it on his Beliefnet blog where he called it "an unacceptable provision that clearly discriminates against religious organizations," as well as on The Hill's Congress Blog, where he said it was designed to "bolster efforts by those who would like nothing more than to strip religion and faith from our culture."

Sekulow's lies about this provision then induced both the Liberty Counsel and the Traditional Values Coalition to hop on board the effort to get it stripped from the legislation, which in turn generated coverage from right-wing news outlets like OneNewsNow and CNS News.

And you know that it has finally become an official right-wing talking point when it shows up in the Family Research Council's "Washington Update":

Buried in the education component of the bill is language that singles out religious institutions for discriminations ... liberals shouldn't be using the stimulus bill as an opportunity to practice viewpoint discrimination with government funds and encourage colleges and universities to discourage religious activity on campus out of fear of losing out on federal dollars.

Early on, Sen. Jim DeMint hopped on the ACLJ's bandwagon and now Sekulow reports that DeMint has officially introduced an amendment [PDF] to strip the provision from the legislation; an amendment with the stated purpose of allowing "the free exercise of religion at institutions of higher education that receive funding under" the stimulus bill.

Of course, the original provision in no way prohibits the "free exercise of religion" at universities that receive funding, but that isn't stopping the Religious Right from lying about it in order to try to get it stripped from the bill.

There is nothing particularly ground-breaking contained in this latest video update from Rob Schenck of Faith and Action, but it does provide some interesting insight into how closely many of the right-wing groups we write about here are intertwined.

Schenck is discussing the expansion of their ministry into new space and, at the 1:40 mark, he begins to relate all of the various groups who currently occupy space in Faith to Action’s Washington DC headquarters, among them the Christian Defense Coalition, Priests for Life, the National Pro-Life Action Center, the Judicial Action Group, and the Life Education and Resource Network.

Schenck also states that they recently had a new addition, saying they are now sharing the space with the man who is the "eyes and ears of Focus on the Family for Capitol Hill."  That would be Tim Goeglein, the former Bush Administration aide was forced to step down after admitting he plagiarized numerous columns when he was writing for The News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Indiana and last week was hired by Focus to be their chief lobbyist in DC.  In fact, in its announcement, Focus explicitly referred to Goeglein as the man who would “be our eyes and ears in Washington.”

We have written about Schenck a number of times, most recently when he, Pat Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, and Rep. Paul Brown anointed the door at the Capitol before Barack Obama’s inauguration.  While far from a household name, Schenck has seemingly been becoming more influential over the last few years – he met privately with John McCain during the campaign and even received a VIP invitation to McCain’s announcement that Sarah Palin would be his running mate, where he had the opportunity to speak with both of them.  

He also has a history of harassing Democratic politicians, especially former President Bill Clinton, having been arrested back in 1992 for thrusting a fetus at him during the campaign and being stopped by the Secret Service after confronting him outside of the Washington Cathedral in 1996. He was also deeply involved in the early 1990’s in protesting women’s health clinics, including targeting one where a doctor was eventually assassinated.

And now Focus on the Family’s lead lobbyist will apparently be sharing office space with Schenck and the gaggle of fringe Religious Right groups who inhabit his orbit.

I will be the first to admit that understanding Congressional legislation is not the easiest thing in the world.  The language is generally arcane and convoluted and often makes reference to sections that don't appear in any coherent order or even in the legislation itself. 

I've been doing this for nearly ten years and even I generally have a hard time parsing just what various pieces of legislation will actually do from just reading the text of the bill.  But I also have enough experience with this sort of thing to recognize when right-wingers are trying exploit this fundamental problem to serve their own ends. 

For instance, take this American Center for Law and Justice press release about the economic stimulus bill:

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), focusing on constitutional law, today called on the U.S. Senate to remove a discriminatory provision in the economic stimulus package that unfairly targets religious activity at universities and colleges that receive federal stimulus funds. The ACLJ discovered a little-known provision in the stimulus package that prohibits higher education facilities that accept federal stimulus funds from permitting religious groups and organizations from using those facilities.

“This is an unacceptable provision that clearly discriminates against religious organizations that have a legal right to use these facilities,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. “What’s disturbing is an Administration and Congress that moved swiftly to provide federal funds for a host of disturbing initiatives – including the promotion of abortion. And, now, there’s a move to keep religious organizations from utilizing facilities at colleges and universities that take federal stimulus funds. If this discriminatory provision is not removed from the package and is approved and signed into law, we’ll file a lawsuit in federal court challenging this provision.”

The ACLJ then cites this section of the legislation as the cause of the problem (which I've cleaned up and edited for the sake of clarity): 

HIGHER EDUCATION MODERNIZATION, RENOVATION, AND REPAIR.

(d) USE OF SUBGRANTS BY INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION.—

(1) PERMISSIBLE USES OF FUNDS.—An institution of higher education receiving a subgrant under this section shall use such subgrant to modernize, renovate, or repair facilities of the institution that are primarily used for instruction, research, or student housing, which may include any of the following:

[reparing roofs, wiring, AC, fire saftey systems etc...] 

PROHIBITED USES OF FUNDS.—No funds awarded under this section may be used for—

(A) the maintenance of systems, equipment, or facilities, including maintenance associated with any permissible uses of funds described in paragraph (1);

(B) modernization, renovation, or repair of stadiums or other facilities primarily used for athletic contests or exhibitions or other events for which admission is charged to the general public;

(C) modernization, renovation, or repair of facilities—

(i) used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school or department of divinity; or

(ii) in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission; or

(D) construction of new facilities.

Now that seems pretty straight forward to me:  the funding can be used by universities to upgrade or repair facilities that are used for student housing or instruction but can't be used for facilities that are primarily used for college sports or religion or to build new facilities.

Now people can debate the merits of that provision ... but what they can't do is make nonsensical allegations like this:

Under this provision, student groups would be barred from using facilities for worship or even Bible study if the school accepts the federal stimulus funds.

“There is a priority problem in Washington,” said Sekulow. “We’re seeing a troubling pattern develop regarding the use of federal taxpayer dollars. This provision regarding the use of college and university facilities is just the latest example. This is not what ‘economic stimulus’ is about. We know that the American people don’t want their tax dollars used for discriminatory measures. That’s why this provision must be removed now.”

Nowhere does the legislation say anything like that and how the ACLJ got the idea that students would be barred from using university facilities for Bible study is beyond me.  By their logic, since the legislation also prohibits universities from using the money to repair their athletic stadiums, student athletes would likewise be barred from using any university facilities if the school accepts stimulus funds. 

What the bill says is that if a facility's use is primarily religious, stimulus funds can't be used modernize, renovate, or repair it - not that groups will be barred from hosting a Bible study in the student union if the university receives said funding. 

As far as federal legislation goes, this seems pretty clear ... and I can understand why a Religious Right group such as the ACLJ might oppose it, but the least the can do is oppose it for what it actually says instead of concocting some nonsensical myth in order to get it stripped from the bill.

Imagine that you want a job running a right-wing news aggregator and came across this article about Ron Huberman being named to head the Chicago Public School system.  The article is nearly a thousand words long and, in the middle, contains this section:

At 15, while attending Lyons Township High School, Huberman made a declaration that, at first, was difficult for his parents to accept: He's gay.

"It's always difficult for kids. It was difficult for my parents at first. But they've become very accepting and very supportive," said Huberman, who lives with a partner who's a friend from college. They reconnected four years ago.

"It has given me a great sensitivity for the need to be inclusive. If I didn't grow up being part of a group that was viewed differently, I may not have that sensitivity. It makes me in tune to individuals, groups and others who are not fitting in and may need extra support."

While he has an unusual perspective on the issue, Huberman refused to say where he stands on the stalled proposal for a gay high school.

To parents who might be uncomfortable with a gay CEO running the public schools, he said, "There are always those who will look to divide us. I'm focused on what unites us. What I believe unites every Chicagoan is the need to have a world-class educational system for our kids."

Since Huberman's homosexuality is in no way the focus of the article or particularly relevant to his new position, how would scare your right-wing readers into clicking on the article?  If you answered "title it 'Man who engages in homosexual behavior to run Chicago public schools,'" then congratulations, you can now get a job running the Alliance Defense Fund's Alliance Alert site: