It's not just Kansas. Think Texas, Florida & Oklahoma

[Photo of Don McElroy...Texas Christianist wingnut]

Kansas has a reputation for being somewhat backward when it comes to real life and things that matter...but I think Kansas can't hold a candle to Texas, Florida and Oklahoma.


Oklahoma first. The people of Oklahoma have consistently elected to the U.S. Congress some of the dumbest wingnuts in the world: Flat-earth people. Global-warming deniers. Creationists. And they're proud of it.

Americablog tells this story, which fits into the Oklahoma framework quite well. Lane Dunkley is 13. His grandfather asked him to go hunting. Lane wanted to go hunting with his grandfather, but needed to take a hunter safety course to obtain an Oklahoma hunting license.

So, Lane and his dad, Daniel Reddy, went to a hunter safety course.

When they arrived, the "volunteer instructor," Kell Wolf, asked if any of the students had voted for Barack Obama. Reddy raised his hand.

Wolf, obviously a true Xtn and lover of God, said Obama was "'the next thing to the AntiChrist' and ordered Reddy and Dunkley from the room. Reddy refused to go. "Wolf said he would not teach 'liberals' and would cancel the course if Reddy didn't leave."

Reddy left.

Word of this incident reached the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. Eventually, the ODWC set up a private class for Dunkley. So far as I know, they didn't fire Wolf.

They should have fired the SOB!


On to Florida. My state. Of which I'm often not proud!

Florida, according to Tracy Clark-Flory, writing at Salon.com, does a piss-poor job of teaching sex education (like many other states!). Clark-Flory notes that a new report "finds that the Sunshine State is also keeping kids 'in the dark.' Florida's schools are legally required to promote 'abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school-aged students' but aren't expected to offer even basic information about safe sex..."

Ho, hum. Again, abstinence outside of marriage is a religious conviction. Why is this "legally required" to be taught in Florida's schools? [Because the religious right wackos have won this battle in their War Against America!]

Oh, perhaps it's also due to the fact that Florida got $64 million buckaroos in federal funding and as we all know, despite all evidence to the contrary, the federal guvmint thinks abstinence education is the cat's meow.

So "...just like Texas, Florida's sex ed programs promote un-sexy things like fear, shame, gender stereotypes and lies."

Clark-Flory spells some of this out:

* Men sexually are like microwaves and women are like crockpots

* The consequence of premarital sex: No ongoing relationships, no commitment, no security, no family and possibly no children.

* Sex within marriage 'will eliminate any of the physical and/or emotional harm caused by contracting a sexually transmitted disease.'

* Condoms fail so often in preventing pregnancy (10-36%) that doctors call them 'antiquated birth control.'

* More on condoms: 'Would you buy a ticket to go bungee jumping from a company that admits their bungee cords will fail about 40% of the time?'


And what are the results of this wonderful non-sex education in Florida? "The most recent data available shows Florida has the third highest rate in the nation of new AIDS diagnoses, the fifth highest rate of new HIV infections; teen pregnancy rates that are the sixth highest in the nation; nearly two-thirds of all new sexually transmitted diseases in the state were among young people; and 15% of new HIV infections occurred among those under the age of 25. ...

"In sum, Florida has some of the worst health outcomes on these key indicators of reproductive and sexual health nationwide."


Then, there's Texas, the Lone Star State, the state of the "all hat - no cattle" prezident, which does not fare any better in terms of sex education, or much else.

And we've written before of the dingbats in charge of general education in the Lone Star State.

This is from Blue Texan.

The chair of the Texas Board of Education, Don McLeroy, is a dentist and a Repugnican. "His website advocates everything from abstinence-only to intelligent design." He also teaches a 4th grade Sunday School Class at Grace Bible Church in College Station.

"McLeroy [an avowed creationist] is among board members who want the standards to require a more critical approach to the teaching of evolution. It's a theory that McLeRoy, 62, believes lacks the empirical data required to be taught without discussion of its particular insufficiencies.

...

"In addition to asking teachers to engage Texas students in a discussion of how gaps in the fossil record might undermine the notion of common ancestry, McLeroy says he will ask board members to adoopt a curriculum standard that would ask students to explain how the complexity of cells does or does not support the idea of natural selection, an explanation of how organisms evolve."


This would be funny if it weren't so damn sad. The man is a moron! As Blue Texan notes, "Whatever the board decides will have a large impact across the country given Texas' ability, because of its size, to influence what is printed in textbooks."

But it's typical. And Pat Robertson warned us 30 years ago that the right wingnuts intended to place their creeps on city councils, county commissions, school boards and in federal offices and on federal benches, so they could take over the world for Jesus.

It's time to fight back. This is all part of the Christianist WAR ON AMERICA - the War on our Constitution, the War on our secular country.


There's more from the Texas Freedom Network here.