The religious right’s tactics seem to have become ever more extreme in the past year. Today an organization with the credible-sounding name of The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) used the Christian Newswire service to blast out a press release suggesting President Obama is a deranged murderer of “preborn children.” The e-mail plays off the [...]
Texas Freedom Network founder Cecile Richards, who currently serves as president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, will be featured at one of three TFN Faith and Freedom Speaker Series events beginning in September. Cecile’s San Antonio speech on September 14 will be followed on September 24 by an Austin event featuring nationally syndicated columnist [...]
Texas State Board of Education Chairwoman Gail Lowe’s peculiar ideas about “citizenship” weren’t the only things that bothered us in the Associated Press article we noted yesterday. Ms. Lowe also suggested that she and fellow members of the board’s religious-right faction were somehow being victimized because of their faith: “Most members of our board are [...]
Texas State Board of Education Chairwoman Gail Lowe has some peculiar views when it comes to teaching students about good citizenship. In her view, labor leader César Chavez and civil rights champion and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall aren’t good role models for that. Right-wing critics want to censor discussion of Chavez and [...]
We warned repeatedly during the recent debate over science curricuclum standards that Texas was in danger of falling behind the rest of the nation in science education. Now a new study to be published in the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach confirms our warnings. The study by Louise S. Mead and Anton Mates of the National [...]
The Texas Freedom Network has taken no position on national health insurance reform, but we have been fascinated by the torrent of e-mails from religious-right pressure groups opposed to it. Oh, we’re not surprised that the religious right opposes reform — the movement’s leadership has long been in bed with economic and ”small government” conservatives (even [...]
We have many times noted (one example) disingenuous claims by creationists that their attacks on teaching about evolution in public school science classrooms have nothing to do with religion. Now anti-evolution pooh-bah William Dembski offers more evidence that those claims are little more than misleading propaganda. Writing on his blog Cultural Noise, Paul Murray notes descriptions [...]
Once again, Texas educators are pushing back against efforts to politicize the state’s public school classrooms. Texas Freedom Network’s reviews of the first drafts of proposed new social studies curriculum standards revealed some encouraging signs. In most cases, the teachers, academics and other community members on the curriuclum writing teams refused to bow to far-right pressure to [...]
Oh, Don. How we have missed you. State Board of Education member Don McLeroy, R-Bryan, is clearly not going to let the Senate’s decision to strip him of his chairmanship relegate him to the back-bench for the debate on social studies standards. This week McLeroy came out swinging on the question of religion’s role in [...]
“End Times” theology has played a disturbingly prominent role in the religious right. The concept of an apocalyptic, divinely guided end of the world is a common feature in preaching by religious-right leaders like Tim LaHaye of the violent Left Behind series and San Antonio mega-pastor John Hagee. Even Peter Marshall, appointed by the Texas State Board [...]
