Christian Leftist

Never mind that the purpose of school is to educate, not indoctrinate. Never mind that it is illegal to endorse a religion in a public classom. A punch of bigots concerned citizens in New York City are protesting what they call a “Madrassa” : a public school that teaches required courses in Arabic language and culture.

Keep in mind that their are 70 other multilingual/cultural PUBLIC schools in New York city alone, and NONE of them have fallen under criticism this ridiculous. There are blos popping up claiming that CNN has slanted the story in favor of the school, etc., blah, blah, all of the usual right-wing lies and distortions. The former principal had to resign because she defended the word intifada on a T-shirt. NOTE: I said the WORD ‘intifada,’ not what some extremists have twisted it to mean.

You can watch the clip yourself and see what you think.
Arabic School Controversy

Last week, the Bethel Park H.S. administration decided to expel one of its students after someone reported an airsoft gun in the trunk of his car. That’s right,: not in the school; in the trunk of his CAR.

Airsoft guns shoot plastic BBs. They are painful if you get hit on bare skin, but they rarely cause seriously injury outside of freak accidents and random bouts of idiocy by people whose parents never should have allowed them slingshots, much less air-powered toy weapons.

It’s the height of idiocy to kick out a kid because of an after-school hobby. The details aren’t important as long as he didn’t shoot at anyone in the school.

My brother owns a ton of airsoft guns and plays with them all of the time. He’s also one of the best-behaved, non-violent people you will ever meet. I can only imagine what a stink the local chapter of the ACLU could make of this case if it tried. Doesn’t the board have better things to do than to comb through cars in a parking lot looking for reasons to punish its students?

Michael Griffin stands out from your average chief of a program that relies on federal funding: he agreed to an interview on National Public Radio and spoke frankly when asked his opinion, which is more than one can ask of so many CEOs, CFOs, political appointees or representatives. That act in itself is commendable. Now comes the time when we cringe at exactly what those opinions are.

Here is an excerpt of his responses from an ABC news article on the implications:

“I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists,” Griffin told Inskeep. “I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.

“To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change,” Griffin said. “I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.”

You might remember the brouhaha last year over an elimination of the words “to understand and protect our home planet” from the NASA mission statement, or you might not.

Or perhaps the saga of the 2005 attempt to silence James Hansen, NASA’s senior climate scientist who works at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, slipped past your attention. Two years ago, Hansen warned the public that the earth was approaching a “tipping point” on global warming. The Bush appointee who had censured Hansen lost his job when word leaked out, but that result only came after national exposure of his incompetency.

These quiet uproars are the sort of AP briefs that fail to capture the attention of the major TV news networks. It is difficult to remember to save and document every incident of a political coup when it advances in inches, not feet, over the span of four decades.

Micheal Griffin doesn’t appear to be in danger of losing his job, yet. This raises the issue of what – or who – the word ’scientist’ represents.

The Los Angeles times reports that the religious right is fighting yet another war on campus battlegrounds across the country. They are freedom fighters–for intolerance, that is.

Ruth Malhotra, president of the College Republicans, argues that Georgia Institute of Technology’s tolerance policy that requires its students to be respectful of and to not discriminate against GLBT people violates the civil rights of Christians. Malhotra believes that homosexuality is wrong because of her interpreation of the people; therefore, forcing her to be tolerant of homosexuals (here used as an all-inclusive term) is in itself intolerant of her religious beliefs.

One does not need to point out that the Bible has been used to justify racism and segregation less than half a century ago. Jon Davidson, legal director of Lambda Legal, a gay rights group (NOT to be confused with NAMBLA, for all of you South Park watchers), says that if Christian conservatives claim a right to discriminate against gays, what’s to stop others from claiming the freedom to hate people on the basis of race, religion, social status, gender, etc? Jeremy Gunn, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, goes even further. He posits that “they’re [religious right-wingers] trying to devlop a
persecution complex.”

Malhotra argues that being gay is not the same as being African-American. Presumably, this point of view derives from an assumption that people ‘choose’ to be gay. It is not certain exactly what she said to this effect, but the College Republicans did send a letter to the Gay-Straight Alliance, calling their group something akin to a ’sex club.’ As in, like a strip joint.

This is only one instance in a large number of defiant actions the religious right has undertaken nationwide. Many of them also wear anti-gay slurs on T-shirts to high school, denounce Gay Pride Week at work, refuse to attend diversity training…the list goes on.

So, what do you think? Do religious conservatives have the right to be bigots?