Schools

At last night’s Republican presidential debate Gov. Rick Perry defended a state law he signed that allows the children of undocumented immigrants living in Texas to pay in-state tuition at the state’s public colleges and universities. Although Perry has attacked the federal DREAM Act as “amnesty,” anti-immigrant activists are furious over his defense of the Texas law.

In a statement, Americans for Legal Immigration-PAC president William Gheen speculated that Perry has “assured his own defeat”:

Texas Governor Perry destroyed his chances of winning the GOP Presidential primary during last night's debate when he defended his support for in-state tuition for illegal aliens which is opposed by 81% of all Americans.

"Rick Perry proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is not the right choice for America by supporting these radical illegal immigration attracting measures," said William Gheen, President of ALIPAC. "Perry's support for in-state tuition for illegals forces taxpayers to pay to replace their own children in the limited seats in our colleges!"

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"GOP voters cannot vote for Rick Perry now without legitimizing and supporting in-state tuition for illegal immigrants," said William Gheen. "Perry has assured his own defeat despite the fact that he is receiving so much support and favoritism from globalist groups in the media. It is clear to me that the globalists who are responsible for illegal immigration in America are using their power to promote Rick Perry at this time."

Chris Chmielenski of Numbers USA also criticized Perry:

Legal immigration aside, the storyline of tonight's debate was Gov. Perry's insistence to stand behind his decision to sign the Texas Dream Act, granting in-state tuition benefits to illegal aliens. Perry's response continues to be that these individuals will become a drag on society, but what he fails to understand is that with or without an education, these young people can't legally work in the United States. Plus, as Rick Santorum pointed out, no one is denying illegal aliens an education. Illegal aliens can still go to the University of Texas, but they should have to pay the same tuition rate that Arizona residents who attend the University of Texas pay.

Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation wrote in an email to members that his stance will haunt him throughout the primary:

Perry blew it.

How?

By pandering to the illegal alien vote.

Perry has gained a lot of traction from the Tea Party movement. By doubling down on the illegal alien issue, he has gained no friend and alienated many in the conservative movement.

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His support of illegal aliens is hurting him.

Even American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer got into the mix, taking particular issue with Perry’s claim that those who oppose in-state tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants don’t “have a heart”:

It’s fine to say we should not punish children for the sins of their fathers. But neither should we reward them. And we are not just rewarding the children, we are rewarding the parents, since many of them stole into the U.S. because they wanted to give their children a shot at a decent education. (The solution: help Mexico improve its educational system.) So Gov. Perry simply cannot get around the fact that he is rewarding the illegal behavior of aliens who have no right to be here. That is an exceedingly troublesome position for someone who wants to be our nation’s chief law enforcement officer.

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Public schools at every level should be reserved for students who have a legal right to be in this country. The immigration status of every applicant should be checked and enrollment reserved for legal residents of the United States. If illegal aliens wants [sic] to pursue higher education, let’s repatriate them to their native land where they can pursue education to their heart’s content.

Two of the most malicious anti-gay activists in the Religious Right came together on Saturday to smear gay rights advocates for supposedly promoting pedophilia. Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel joined Mission America’s Linda Harvey on her radio show to attack the anti-bullying group GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, and its founder Kevin Jennings. Such claims are nothing new from Barber, who said that “GLSEN tacitly advocates sexual abuse,” and Harvey, who wants to ban gay teachers and once likened GLSEN to the Hitler Youth. Listen as Barber argues that GLSEN glorifies pedophilia and Harvey claim that GLSEN encourages minors to have sex with adults:

Barber: Now let me be very clear for those leftists and sexual anarchists who monitor your program, and you know they do, who are going to try to grossly misrepresent what we’re saying here.

Harvey: Of course they are.

Barber: Are we saying that all homosexuals are pedophiles, of course not.

Harvey: No.

Barber: Are we saying the GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight, Education Network, is a pedophile, pro-pedophile movement? Well, yes and no. And here’s what I mean by that, look who the founder is, Kevin Jennings, look who his mentor was, Harry Hay, a pedophile activist. Now GLSEN, I have said the terminology that Harry Hay used was that parents and families and friends of gays should be running interference for pedophiles because the best thing for a kid, for young boys was to have sex with an adult man, this is according to Harry Hay.

Now GLSEN is in keeping with that mentality, they have tacitly as you know all too well Linda, they have tacitly advocated adult-child sex through their recommended reading list for kids in the past that portray in very favorable terms and in a favorable light the idea of boys having sex with men, as you mentioned as part of the empowerment and coming to terms with their in-born sexuality. So again, the left, guys you’re without excuse here if you misrepresent what we’re saying here, but GLSEN cannot get away from the fact that they have recommended reading that portrays in a positive light pedophilia.

Harvey: Right, they could not be, like you said, if they weren’t working hand and glove with these folks, and I don’t know that they are.

Barber: Well they have in the past, not GLSEN necessarily but the homosexual activists have worked hand and glove with the pro-pedophile movement for decades before it became detrimental and it was no longer politically expedient to do so.

Harvey: Well I have called GLSEN a child corruption group and I stand by that because when you look at what they recommend, and the fact that they want to cut parents out of the equation, they want to bypass parents and schools and directly interact with even eleven and twelve year old kids and convince them to go for it, go into homosexuality. This is child corruption and if that child has joined the homosexual club, talked confidentially in a safe space to the homosexual teacher or counselor at school, and then is approached by the, ok let’s not make it the dark, trench coated forty-five year old, let’s say it’s a twenty-two year old, but that’s still an adult with a twelve year old. This is perfectly acceptable, it’s all over the homosexual community, and tell me it’s not, it is absolutely out there.

Recently we have been seeing more and more Religious Right activists like David Barton asserting that the government should play no role in assisting those in poverty.  We had been chalking that idea up to the general right-wing hatred of the government and desire to drastically reduce its size and influence.

But on today's broadcast of "Wallbuilders Live," the American Center for Law and Justice's David French explained that the primary reason the Religious Right opposes government assistance to the poor is that it means those in poverty do not need to rely on churches for help:

French: The fact of the matter is that in many circumstances, particularly in this country, poverty is the result of an awful lot of bad choices. A lot of our poverty is the result of behaviors that often require heart-level repentance to change.

Medicare, Medicaid , and food stamps are not going to get you to turn away from behaviors that are destroying your life, but the Gospel will.

Rick Green: Doesn't it make them more dependent on government, which makes them less likely to come to the church that used to be the epicenter of the community where people would come and meet?

French: That's exactly right. It used to be that if you were hungry, if you needed help, you would go to the church and as the church was feeding you, as the church was providing you with the physical sustenance that you needed, it was providing you also with the much more important spiritual sustenance.

And right now what we're doing is we're saying you're going to be able to have the television, all the food you need, the roof over your head, everything that you need without any intervention from the church at all.

On his radio program yesterday, Bryan Fischer argued that the next President must take a stand for limited government by vetoing any budget that contains any spending that Fischer's believes falls outside the parameters of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.  Claiming that the government "no moral authority" to do anything about schools or roads or pretty much anything else, Fischer called for the wholesale elimination of the Departments of Education, Agriculture, Transportation,  and Health and Human Services as well as the Federal Housing Administration:

Once government does anything that is outside of the parameters of Article 1, Section 8, it is doing something that is immoral, it is doing something that is wrong, it is doing something that it has no moral authority to do.

And I believe one of the things we challenge our next president, next President of the United States, is you get a budget, Congress sends you a budget and it's got any expenditures on there that are not authorized by Article 1, Section 8, you veto that puppy and you send it back.

Article 1, Section 8 defines what he have authorized our central government to do. Government does anything outside ... there's nothing in there about eduction - Department of Eduction is out of here. There is nothing in there about agriculture - Department of Agriculture is out of here. There's nothing in there about transportation - Department of Transportation is out of here. Nothing in there about overseeing the nation's health industry - Department of Health and Human Services, out of here. Nothing in there about managing the housing industry, so the Federal Housing Administration, it's out of there, it's gone. Nothing in there about education - Department of Education is gone, it's out of there. Why? Because our central government has not constitutional moral authority to be engaged, involved in those activities.

Michael Brown has been hard at work establishing himself among the Religious Right's cadre of militant anti-gay activists with the publication of his book "A Queer Thing Happened to America" and by writing pieces, published by the American Family Association's OneNewsNow, in which he asserts that "gay activism" was responsible for the brutal murder of 15 year-old openly gay eight grader Lawrence King in 2008:

After all, it is gay activists who constantly remind us that LGBT kids are bullied and even beaten up at school. They tell us how dangerous the school environment is for kids who identify as LGBT, and yet at the same time, they praise kids like Larry for coming out at 10. They even want more Gay Straight Alliances in our middle schools, where pre-teens can declare their gay identity to their peers and faculty advisors without their parents' knowledge. Why? So they can become targets of hatred and potential violence? If our schools really are so "homophobic" and dangerous, why not encourage these kids to keep their sexual orientation to themselves until they're in a safer environment?

Some of the teachers in Larry's school, along with his adoptive father, specifically accused former assistant principal Joy Epstein, an open lesbian, of encouraging Larry's flamboyant behavior in order to promote her "agenda." If there is any truth to this, it is not just irresponsible, it is reprehensible. (At the least, there is no indication that she discouraged his pushy, sexual behavior.) How could an experienced educator act in such a way, especially with a boy who had such a troubled history? And is it possible that Larry could have benefited from ongoing counseling about his sexuality? Yet gay activists adamantly oppose any form of counseling that does not affirm homosexuality.

What about the other administrators? Why didn't they prevent Larry from dressing up like a girl when teachers reported to them that it was causing disruption among the students? The official school answer is that California law, passed at the urging of gay activists, prevents discrimination based on gender identity or expression, and so Larry was able to come to school wearing women's accessories and makeup. Was it fair to push this on Larry's classmates, themselves young teenagers sorting through their own issues of sexual identity? Was it fair to Larry?

And what is to be said of this memo sent out to the entire eighth grade? "We have a student on campus who has chosen to express his sexuality by wearing make-up. It is his right to do so." In eighth grade? His "right?" What a travesty! Yet this is a "right" gay activists aggressively fight for, as if this somehow makes our schools "safer" and provides a better learning environment for all the kids. Nonsense.

It is true that Brandon McInerney murdered Larry King in cold blood, but gay activism is complicit in his death.

Phyllis Schlafly is a longtime critic of the National Education Association and LGBT rights, and today in The Phyllis Schlafly Report she ridicules the teachers’ union’s endorsement of resolutions calling for a safe and diverse work environment and opposing discrimination against LGBT school employees, families and students. While Schlafly mainly lists excerpts from the NEA, she dubs their anti-discrimination policies as “radical” and leaves no confusion over where she stands:

Eagle Forum always sends an observer to the annual convention of the National Education Association to report on its radical resolutions. The NEA usually has about 20 resolutions endorsing the gay rights agenda, often using the code word "diversity." Here are some excerpts from pro-gay resolutions adopted this year by the National Education Association.

Resolution B-14, for example, states that "discrimination and stereotyping based on ... sexual orientation, [and] gender identification ... must be eliminated" and that these factors must not affect the legal rights of "partners in ... civil unions ... in regard to ... medical decisions, taxes, inheritance, adoption, and immigration." School "activities, and programs must increase respect, understanding, acceptance, and sensitivity toward individuals and groups in a diverse society composed of ... gays, lesbians, bisexuals, [and] transgender persons." The NEA believes that "students who are struggling with their sexual orientation or gender identification" must be provided by the school with "counseling services." Another NEA resolution declared that hiring policies and practices must be nondiscriminatory and include provisions for the recruitment of a diverse teaching staff so that public schools "Offer ... diverse role models" among teachers, ... and education employees."

NEA Resolutions for the classroom demand that the schools "Eliminate ... stereotyping in curricula, textbooks, resource and instructional materials, [and activities" and "Integrate an accurate portrayal of the roles and contributions of all groups throughout history across curricula, particularly groups that have been under-represented historically." Another resolution urges the use of Multicultural education because it "should ... reduce ... homophobia ... and all other forms of prejudice, and discrimination."

Just so you will know -- these are the stated beliefs of the biggest teachers union.

Focus on the Family has been one of the foremost opponents of anti-bullying initiatives that address the problem of bullying against LGBT youth, often working through its affiliate True Tolerance. True Tolerance organizes parents to fight “pro-homosexual curriculum” and holds an annual “Day of Dialogue” to counter the anti-bullying Day of Silence. Candi Cushman of True Tolerance joined Carrie Gordon Earll, the Senior Director of Issues Analysis of CitizenLink (Focus on the Family’s political arm), on yesterday’s CitizenLink Report. On the program, Cushman warned against “one-sided promotion of homosexuality to kids” and Earll lamented that anti-bullying programs are “flooding [students] with adult themes and messages.”

“It just seems irresponsible and possibly even damaging for school officials just to open up their doors to messages from homosexual activist groups, political activist groups, that might push students to prematurely embrace a sexual identity that they’re not really equipped to handle,” Cushman tells Earll. “If we really want students to be safe we shouldn’t be allowing groups to come in and sexualize our children.”

After blaming daycare and public schools for ruining society, Jeffrey Kuhner of the Edmund Burke Institute now has another figure to blame for America’s ills: Martin Luther King, Jr. Reflecting on the recent dedication of the King memorial in Washington, D.C., Kuhner writes in The Washington Times that King’s support for progressive causes was responsible for keeping African Americans bound to the “shackles of affirmative action and the welfare state.” Such claims may be news to Glenn Beck, who claimed that he was going to “reclaim the civil rights movement” and tried to frame himself as the next King. Kuhner writes:

Yet, there was a dark side to King and it should not be ignored. Its effects continue to plague our society. Contrary to popular myth, the Baptist minister was a hypocrite who consistently failed to uphold his professed Christian standards. His rampant adultery and serial, life-long womanizing revolted even some of his closest associates. Large parts of his doctoral dissertation were plagiarized. He had numerous ties with communists and Soviet sympathizers. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover knew this, which is why he considered King a “fraud.”

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King’s leftism ultimately betrayed his original civil rights creed. His call for a color-blind society was contradicted by his multicultural progressivism. Affirmative action, racial quotas, government handouts to minorities - these policies directly violate the basic principle of equality under the law. Contemporary Americans are not judged as individuals, but as members of a racial group, gender or ethnicity. This is a perverse inversion of the very kind of racialism prevalent in the Old South. More than 40 years after his death, we are further away from being a genuine meritocracy. Victimology and racial set-asides dominate large swathes of American life, from university admissions and government bureaucracies to big business and construction. The country has slowly Balkanized, splintering along ethnic lines.

King’s socialism also convinced many blacks to adopt welfare liberalism. It transformed them into a permanent Democratic constituency. The results have been disastrous. The nanny state has crippled the black community, undermining self-reliance, entrepreneurship and personal responsibility. It has fostered family breakdown, soaring rates of illegitimacy and trapped millions in a cycle of poverty and urban squalor. King showed blacks the way out from segregation, but he led them to an economic plantation.

The great irony is that more Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act than Democrats. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the legislation but to overcome the intense hostility of Southern Democrats he needed - and received - strong GOP congressional support. The party of Lincoln not only freed the slaves, it helped to dismantle Jim Crow. Instead of rewarding Republicans, blacks have largely turned their backs on them and with that, have rejected the self-empowerment and prosperity that comes from free-market capitalism.

King’s legacy has been a double-edged sword: He both liberated and imprisoned black America. As we celebrate his achievements with the new memorial in the nation’s capital, for the sake of future generations, let us remember too how King erred. In order to truly create a society where all citizens rise to the height of their potential, we must discard the shackles of affirmative action and the welfare state.

HT: Media Matters

In planning a ceremony to mark the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has kept a policy observed in previous years and declined to invite religious leaders to speak at the events, which a spokesman says is to make sure “the focus remains on the families.” Of course, the Religious Right is now apoplectic and using their outrage at Bloomberg as their latest fundraising tool.

The Traditional Values Coalition emailed members today pleading for donations to stop Bloomberg’s attempts “to exterminate expressions of faith” and set up a fundraising page warning that “Islamists Continue Conquest of New York City…Islamists are spiking the football at Ground Zero! All while Mayor Bloomberg bans faith from New York's 9/11 ceremonies?!”

The American Center for Law and Justice, the right-wing legal outlet founded by Pat Robertson and led by Jay Sekulow, launched a petition demanding Bloomberg change his “damaging policy now” and include clergymen and prayer in the event. Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association said it was a “travesty that Mayor Bloomberg is so confused and clueless about America’s history, and so confused and clueless about the threat Islam poses to the West,” arguing that prayer should be included in the ceremonies but restricted to only Christian and Jewish clergy.

The Family Research Council has its own petition and prayer alert to oppose Bloomberg’s “shocking assault on religious liberty,” calling on members to pray to “Help the Mayor see that he has made a mistake and reverse his decision. Stir the families who will attend the 9/11 memorial service to insist that You, Lord, be honored there”:

The beginning of America's precipitous moral decline can be traced, statistically, to 1962, when atheist Madeleine Murray O'Hare's [sic] legal assault resulted in prayer being removed from public schools. Since then, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld prayer in public ceremonies. Bloomberg's behavior is not a matter of legal philosophy, dullness or insensitivity; it is a deliberate defiance and insult to people of faith across America.

More important to Bible believers, it is an insult to God upon whom our nation depends for our safety. Amid unprecedented natural disasters, economic calamity, homeland threats, wars abroad, troubles in our families and schools, etc., we must not insult God.

The FRC referenced the 1962 Supreme Court case Engel v. Vitale and the 1963 Abington v. Schempp, in which Madalyn Murray O’Hair, an atheist, and Edward Schempp, a Unitarian Universalist, sued against laws in their states that required their children to partake in religious exercises like Bible study and reading the Lord’s Prayer. The Court found such policies a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause.

Many in the Religious Right see the cases as the critical juncture where America turned its back on God. Pat Robertson writes in The New Millennium:

On June 25, 1962, the Supreme Court ruled in a case titled Engle v. Vitale [sic] that state-sponsored prayer could not be said in public school rooms. On June 17, 1963, the court ruled in the case of Abington v. Schempp that the Holy Bible could not be read to students in classrooms.

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Acting on behalf of all the citizens of the United States, our government has officially insulted Almighty God and has effectively taken away from all public school children any opportunity for even the slightest acknowledgment of God’s existence. By rejecting Him, we have made the Protector and Champion of the United States his enemy.

The events that followed are not coincidence. On November 22, 1963, less than six months after the Bible-reading decision, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Within two years after that decision, America was massively embroiled in its second most painful war, which decimated our treasure, our servicemen, and our national resolve.

Robertson goes on to blame Watergate, the 1973 oil crisis, stagflation and the Iranian revolution on the rulings.

David Barton got his start in Religious Right politics by authoring the booklet, What Happened in Education?, where he argues that the removal of school prayer caused SAT scores to plummet. Barton claimed that the two cases represented “the first occasion in national recorded history that the public inclusion of God in academic endeavors had been officially prohibited,” as the only event “corresponding to the time of the beginning of the downturn in scores was the banning of God and of religious principles from schools.” He concludes by urging schools to reintroduce explicitly Christian teachings if they want to reverse the trend.

It’s interesting that the FRC brought up the school prayer cases: both the case of school prayer and clergy participating in the September 11th anniversary ceremonies show the Religious Right trying to gin up panic over a supposed but not actual infringement on religious freedom, and then warning of divine punishment when they don’t get their way.