Support TFN with a Matching Gift Today

As 2009 draws to a close today, we reflect on what has been a very busy year for the Texas Freedom Network. And we’re asking for your support for our work in 2010. A few generous TFN donors have established a 2009 Matching Gift Challenge. Every dollar you donate before midnight tonight will be matched dollar-for-dollar – up to the $50,000 limit of our matching gift.

What will your support help TFN accomplish in the coming year? Just consider what we did together in 2009:

• In February we made national news with the release of our groundbreaking report on the shocking failure of Texas to provide responsible sex education in our public schools. That report is helping build critical momentum behind statewide efforts to ensure that Texas students learn medically accurate, age-appropriate information about responsible pregnancy and disease prevention.
• We blocked far-right efforts in Texas to kill embryonic stem cell research — medical research that gives hope to patients and their families struggling with serious and life-threatening medical conditions like spinal cord injuries, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and cancer. If far-right lawmakers had succeeded, they would have banned this promising medical research — even if it were privately funded — at publicly funded facilities. And they have certainly not stopped trying.
• We exposed the irresponsible campaign by radical creationists on the Texas State Board of Education to dumb down instruction on evolution in public school science classrooms. We will redouble our efforts to protect sound science education when science textbooks are up for adoption in Texas in 2011.
• We helped block the renomination of an anti-science extremist as chair of the Texas State Board of Education.
• We joined once again with other supporters of public education in slamming the door on private school voucher schemes in the Texas Legislature.
• Right now TFN is engaged in another critical debate over the future of our children’s education, as far-right extremists try to rewrite history and politicize social studies classrooms. That battle will stretch well into 2010.

The Texas Freedom Network can continue its important work on these and other critical issues only with the support of people like you. So please consider joining our ongoing efforts to support sound science, strong public schools, religious freedom and individual liberties. Click here to make your 2009 gift to TFN today.

The Year in Quotes: Potluck Nuttiness

We heard nuttiness in many forms throughout 2009, including the Texas governor flirting with secessionists and the lieutenant governor criticizing the president of the United States for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. And there was plenty of downright hatefulness. More quotes from 2009:

“There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.”

— Gov. Rick Perry, discussing the possibility that Texas might secede from the United States, Dallas Morning News, April 16, 2009

“The flip side of Obama’s ‘empathy’ is apparent hatred and contempt for white people, traditional families, small business owners, evangelical Christians, conservatives, and everyone else that liberals call the ‘racist, heterosexist, nativist, Christianist, capitalist, homophobic power structure’ in America. In other words, what most of us call normal people. These radical leftists regard folks like you and me and our children as the enemy, and it’s their mission in life to put us in our supposed place, which to them means at the back of the bus. They’re in charge now, and they fully intend to use their power to remake America in their image. If the Senate approves Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, Obama will know that he has carte blanche to escalate his all out war on traditional Americans.”

— Peter Morrison, a member of the Lumberton Independent School District Board of Trustees in Southeast Texas who serves on a Texas State Board of Education social studies curriculum writing team, reacting to President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, TFN Insider, June 20, 2009

The Year in Quotes: Targeting Gay People

The religious right’s relentless demonization of gay and lesbian Americans got only worse in 2009. More quotes from the past year:

“We believe to have ‘fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness’ for the sake of political expediency, or any other reason for that matter, is to offend a holy God, from whom the blessings bestowed upon this country flow. . . . For that reason, sir, the Grand Prairie Republican Club holds strong to our Christian heritage and will take no part in knowingly excepting [sic] or promoting any immorality (by attending or promoting your organization) that may hasten the death of the American Government.”

— Cylynda Caviness, president of the Grand Prairie Republican Club near Dallas, in an e-mail responding to an invitation to attend a meeting of Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay and lesbian Republicans, Dallas Voice, March 12, 2009

“America is on the verge of destruction. You, beloved, are the hope.”

— Rev. Rick Scarborough, head of the Lufkin (Texas)-based Vision America, preaching — in typically apocalyptic form — at a rally in Virginia about the dangers of loosening sexual mores. He warned that gay rights and hate crimes legislation could be used to silence pastors who preach that homosexuality is a sin. Roanoke Times, June 26, 2009

The Year in Quotes: Religious Freedom

So what do religious-righters think about religious tolerance and keeping government separate from religion? More memorable quotes from 2009:

“There is no dialogue, no common ground, no reaching across the aisle in this battle. We are not called to build bridges to Islam. We are called to storm the gates of hell — to defeat the false god of Islam with the unsheathed Word of God and to set people free from the monstrous tyranny and bondage of this religion birthed in the deepest pits of hell.”

— The Rev. Flip Benham, director of the extremist group Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, writing about a planned gathering of American Muslims in the nation’s capital on Friday, TFN Insider, September 24, 2009

Finger Pointing at the Texas SBOE

Once again we see evidence that the Legislature made a huge mistake last spring by not letting Texas voters decide whether to strip the State Board of Education of authority over managing the Permanent School Fund. (Republican leaders in the state Senate helped kill that and a number of other SBOE reform bills.) It has become increasingly apparent that board decisions on curriculum and textbooks are influenced by political shenanigans over how to invest the $20+ billion in the PSF. See here and here for earlier posts on this. Now the San Antonio Express-News reports that board members at the center of those shenanigans are pointing fingers at others.

The Year in Quotes: Sex Education

Today let’s review some memorable quotes from this year on sex education. Check out previous The Year in Quotes posts here and here.

“Men sexually are like microwaves and women are like crockpots.”

“If a woman is dry, the sperm will die. If a woman is wet, a baby she will get!”

“You know people talk about you behind your back because you’ve had sex with so many people. It’s so empty too. Finally, you get sick of it all and attempt suicide.”

“Girls, taking into consideration that guys are more easily sexually turned on by sight, you need to think long and hard about the way you dress and the way you come on to guys…If a guy is breathing, then he’s probably turned on…How can you tell a girl is an easy target for a guy?…By the clothes she wears… A girl who shows a lot of skin and dresses seductively fits into one of three categories: 1) She’s pretty ignorant when it comes to guys, and she has no clue what she’s doing. 2) She’s teasing her boyfriend which is extremely cruel to the poor guy! 3) She’s giving her boyfriend an open invitation saying, ‘Here I am. Come take me.'”

“Giving a condom to a teen is just like saying, ‘Well if you insist on killing yourself by jumping off the bridge, at least wear these elbow pads – they may protect you some?’ Knowing that STDs can kill and that there is at least a 30% failure rate is like helping the teen kill them self [sic]. It is a lie to call condoms ‘safe sex.’ If there is a 30% failure rate of condoms against life threatening diseases, then calling them a way to have ‘safe sex’ is like ‘helping’ someone commit suicide by giving them elbow pads to ‘protect’ them or finding them the safest spot from the bridge to jump.”

— From abstinence-only curricula used in public school sexuality education classes in Texas, Florida and likely other states, Just Say Don’t Know, a report from the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, February 2009

Talking Points

From today’s TFN News Clips:

“Well, you know I’m an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created everything and that he is who he says he was. The Bible says that he created man and woman; it doesn’t say that he created an amoeba and then they evolved into man and woman.”

— Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a possible Republican presidential nominee in 2012, in an interview with Newsweek.

Stay informed with TFN News Clips, a daily digest of news about politics and the religious right. Subscribe here.

The Year in Quotes: Just Plain Kooky

Today we continue our review of the nonsense we heard from the far right in 2009. Some quotes defy attempts to categorize. So let’s just say these are, well, just plain kooky. (Click here to see crazy quotes from the right about science and science education this year.)

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here? … Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

— State Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell, speaking to a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans during testimony on a voter identification bill in the Texas Legislature, Houston Chronicle,April 9, 2009

A Reminder: TFN’s Matching Gift Challenge

We told you earlier this month that a few generous donors have established a $50,000 Matching Gift Challenge for the Texas Freedom Network. Click here to read more about it. Then please  consider joining our ongoing efforts to support sound science, strong public schools, religious freedom and individual liberties. Click here to make your 2009 gift to TFN today.

Talking Points

From today’s TFN News Clips:

“[Texas students] are going to know a great deal about their own state and it is a fine state, but they are going to know very little about the world and they are going to leave high school with a very myopic view of the history of humankind.”

— Gary Nash, founder and director of the National Center for History in Schools and a professor at UCLA, claiming proposed changes to Texas’ social studies curriculum overemphasize the state’s history, depriving students of important lessons in world history.

Stay informed with TFN News Clips, a daily digest of news about politics and the religious right. Subscribe here.

Rick Scarborough: Birther Extremist

Maybe Rick Scarborough should run for chair of the Texas Republican Party of Texas. After all, we’re beginning to think the head of the far-right group Vision America (based in Lufkin) could be even more extreme than the Texas GOP’s current chair, Cathie Adams. (See here and here for examples of Adams’ extremism.)

In a fundraising e-mail today, Pastor Scarborough once again aligned himself with the fringe right-wingers who run around claiming that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States and thus isn’t eligible to be president. Never mind that such nonsense has been debunked definitively and repeatedly, including here. Scarborough has money to raise.

So today Pastor Scarborough’s e-mail notes “two marching evils.” First:

“Out of control spending that will bankrupt the nation if not stopped and reversed, driven by a man who may not even be legally qualified to be our President.”

More about the ‘War on Christmas’ Lie

Texas, of course, isn’t the only place where the religious right is promoting the lie that Christmas is under attack by alleged Christian haters and secularists. Americans United for Separation of Church and State takes a look at how the religious right has distorted — or just plain made up — stories supposedly showing Christmas is under siege. AU’s Rob Boston notes one example — a list of scare stories promoted by FOX News (who else?) in 2005:

What we found, in every case, was that relevant facts had been omitted or that the stories were fictitious. For example, one school in Texas was accused of ordering students not to wear red and green clothes during the month of December. When I called the school, an official there just laughed. There was no such policy in place, but the school was getting so many calls on the matter it actually had to post a statement on its Web site debunking it.

Things got a little testy when I challenged the veracity of Gibson and the entire Fox network. In fact, we ended up screaming at one another. It was perhaps not my finest moment on television, but I have to admit I was angry. Hard-working people in the public schools were being slimed because some folks dislike public education and have an axe to grind.

Read Rob’s full story here.

As we’ve pointed out before, the ‘war on Christmas” nonsense is little more than a cynical fundraising gimmick for far-right groups. In fact, the religious right has even found a way to commercialize it.

Talking Points

From today’s TFN News Clips:

“What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray.”

— U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., proposing from the Senate floor yesterday a prayer before an important vote on health care legislation. Observers took offense at the possibility that Sen. Coburn was referring to the 92-year-old, wheelchair-bound Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.V., who has been in and out of hospitals and lay ill at home.

Stay informed with TFN News Clips, a daily digest of news about politics and the religious right. Subscribe here.

The Year in Quotes: Science

With the new year approaching, it’s worthwhile to remember what we’ve heard from the religious right in 2009. We will start today where we began the year: with the religious right’s efforts to undermine science education by watering down instruction on evolution in public school science classrooms.

“Jeffrey Dahmer Believed in Evolution.’”

— The subject line of a widely circulated e-mail attacking the teaching of evolution in Texas public schools and suggesting that learning about evolution led Dahmer, an infamous serial murderer, to kill and cannibalize 17 boys, TFN Insider, February 2, 2009

“I disagree with these experts. Somebody’s gotta stand up to experts that are… I don’t know why they’re doing it.”

— Texas State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy, R-College Station, in a rambling defense of the creationist arguments he used to attack evolutionary theory during the final debate over new public school science curriculum standards, TFN Insider, March 27, 2009

Perry Says Gore Has ‘Gone to Hell’

The Dallas Morning News yesterday noted that Texas Gov. Rick Perry, when he was a Democrat, supported Al Gore’s 1988 presidential campaign. Then it quoted Gov. Perry’s criticism Wednesday of the former vice president’s position on global climate change policy:

Speaking to a builders group in Dallas, Perry — once a Democrat — was asked about his past relationship with Gore.

“Did you get religion? Did he get religion?” a man in the crowd asked. “What has happened since then?”

“I certainly got religion,” Perry responded. “I think he’s gone to hell,” reports the Dallas Morning News.