AFA: Public School Grades Dropping Due to LGBT-Inclusive Education

The batshitery and outright insanity - not to mention seething ant-gay animus - of the falsely self-labeled far right "family values" organizations truly seems to no limits.  Nor does there seem to be any limit to what societal problems they will try to blame on LGBT individuals.  Name the problem and somehow they will blame it on the gays.  The latest hate and batshitery coming from the hate group American Family Association is that gays and LGBT-inclusive educational policies in public schools are the cause for falling grades and poor student performance.  Yep, that's what Sandy Rios (pictured above), Christian bitch extraordinaire at AFA is peddling to the ignorant and mentally challenged Christofascists.  Right Wing Watch has details:

On her radio program today, the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios read listener responses to her recent interview with anti-gay activist Brian Camenker, who claims that bullying-prevention programs and LGBT-inclusive curricula are ruining American education.

Rios praised one email from “Margaret,” who wrote that “basic skills” like reading and writing are being “pushed aside in favor of teaching moral choices and left-wing agenda. It is no wonder American students have fallen so far behind other nations.” Margaret lamented that schools “rob the innocence of children through forced instruction of alternate lifestyles,” adding: “When two percent of America’s population seeks to dictate to the rest of us how our children should be educated, we have truly sunk into a pit of moral decay.”

Rios concurred and claimed that schools are “teaching radical environmentalism or homosexuality” now “instead of math and science,” which she explained is “the reason our test scores are so shockingly low compared with the world.”

It’s sad; it’s just amazing how they are throwing—whether they are teaching radical environmentalism or homosexuality. Can you imagine that they are teaching this instead of math and science? And they are. And Margaret’s right, that’s the reason our test scores are so shockingly low compared with the world.

According to Rios, it all goes back to a plan of Bill Ayers to “radicalize” teachers and the National Education Association’s goal of “promoting homosexuality in every discipline in public schools.”

The National Education Association was led by a gay man for over twenty years who was not out until he stepped down and they started promoting, radically promoting, homosexuality. This started a long, long time ago, they started with a film called ‘It’s Elementary,’ I remember when that came out; it was a total propaganda piece for homosexuality. Gradually the National Education Association made this one of their largest concerns, was promoting homosexuality in every discipline in public schools, so that’s how it started.

The ultimate irony is that Rios is whining about  science test scores when she and her fellow Chistofascist nutcases want creationism taught in lieu of real science.  She and her listeners belong in a mental institution.

Sally Ride - RIP

As numerous media outlets are reporting, Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly in space, died today after a battle against pancreatic cancer. She was 61. Ride was truly a trailblazer in many ways and in her post astronaut days she continued her work to inspire young people, especially girls, to pursue careers in science and engineering.  One thing in the CNN coverage jumped out at me:

Ride's office said she is survived by Tam O'Shaughnessy, her partner of 27 years; her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear, a niece and a nephew. 

Yes, that's right, Ride was apparently a member of the LGBT community albeit this aspect of her life was surprising to many - myself included.  Ride is another example of why our history instruction needs to feature accomplished LGBT Americans.  Actually, accomplished LGBT individuals of all nationalities.  It is a critical tool in ending religious based bigotry against LGBT people and destroying the stereotypes peddled by the far right virtually every day.  Here are more details from the CNN piece on Sally Ride's remarkable life that ended all too early:

Ride died at her home in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla, said Terry McEntee, a spokeswoman for her company, Sally Ride Science. She was a private person and the details of her illness were kept to just a few people, she said.

Ride rode into space on the space shuttle Challenger in 1983 when she was 32. After her flight, more than 42 other American women flew in space, NASA said.

"Sally was a national hero and a powerful role model. She inspired generations of young girls to reach for the stars," President Barack Obama said in a statement. 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, said Ride "broke barriers with grace and professionalism -- and literally changed the face of America's space program."  "The nation has lost one of its finest leaders, teachers and explorers," he said in a statement.

Ride was a physicist, writer of five science books for children and president of her own company. She had also been a professor of physics at the University of California in San Diego.

Ride flew in space twice, both times on Challenger in 1983 and in 1984, logging 343 hours in space. A third flight was cancelled when Challenger exploded in 1986. She was on the commission investigating that accident and later served on the panel for the 2003 Columbia shuttle accident, the only person on both boards.  She also was on the president's committee of science advisers.

One of Ride's last legacies was allowing middle school students to take their own pictures of the moon using cameras aboard NASA's twin Grail spacecraft in a project spearheaded by her company.  "Sally literally could have done anything with her life. She decided to devote her life to education and to inspiring young people. To me, that's such a powerful thing. It's extraordinarily admirable," said Maria Zuber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who heads the Grail mission.

What an amazing legacy.  May she rest in peace.  I hope she will continue to be a role model for and inspire youth.  The Washington Post also has a good article here.

Religion vs. Evolution

In a timely new study in light of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, the Pew Research Center looks at what religious denominations/faiths accept evolution as the best explanation for the development of human life. What is interesting in my view is that the religions that Christianists view as false religions are the ones most receptive to Darwin's theory while the Kool-Aid drinking, anti-knowledge Christian fundamentalists and Mormons are the least receptive to the theory as shown in the chart below.

Here are some highlights from the Pew article accompanying the graph:
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This view [teaching creationism along side evolution] is not shared by the nation's scientists, most of whom contend that evolution is a well-established scientific theory that convincingly explains the origins and development of life on earth. Moreover, they say, a scientific theory is not a hunch or a guess but is instead an established explanation for a natural phenomenon, like gravity, that has repeatedly been tested through observation and experimentation. Indeed, most scientists argue that, for all practical purposes, evolution through natural selection is a fact. These scientists and others dismiss creation science as religion, not science, and describe intelligent design as little more than creationism dressed up in scientific jargon.

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So if evolution is as established as the theory of gravity, why are people still arguing about it a century and a half after it was first proposed? The answer lies, in part, in the possible theological implications of evolutionary thinking. For many, the Darwinian view of life . . . goes beyond contradicting the biblical creation story and conflicts with the Judeo-Christian concept of an active and loving God who cares for his creation.

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I believe that the battle over evolution is central to the future of the USA and its society. Will science and knowledge prevail, or will the beliefs of the simple minded and fearful who need to put God in a box and read the Bible as literal fact prevail. One can only hope that it is the former and not the latter. Otherwise we can expect a further decline of the USA overtime.

Ending the War on Knowledge and Intelligence

I generally do not agree with Nicholas Kristof on too many things, but in his column in the New York Times he focuses on what I hope will be a significant change ushered in by the Obama administration: an end to the embrace of ignorance and close mindedness that has been a hallmark of the Chimperator's regime and a central theme of today's Republican Party where a lobotomy is a prerequisite to belonging to the party. Sarah Palin and her Bible thumping, creationism loving followers being Exhibit #1 of how low the GOP has fallen intellectually. In my view, there is no way for the USA to overcome its huge problems if the mindset of a 5th grader continues to be held up as the standard of knowledge and excellence. Science, medical knowledge and advance thought must be embraced. Here are some column highlights:

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Barack Obama’s election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual. . . . Maybe, just maybe, the result will be a step away from the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life. Smart and educated leadership is no panacea, but we’ve seen recently that the converse — a White House that scorns expertise and shrugs at nuance — doesn’t get very far either.

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We can’t solve our educational challenges when, according to polls, Americans are approximately as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution, and when one-fifth of Americans believe that the sun orbits the Earth.

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Perhaps John Kennedy was the last president who was unapologetic about his intellect and about luring the best minds to his cabinet. . . . . As for President Bush, he adopted anti-intellectualism as administration policy, repeatedly rejecting expertise (from Middle East experts, climate scientists and reproductive health specialists).

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An intellectual is a person interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity. Intellectuals read the classics, even when no one is looking, because they appreciate the lessons of Sophocles and Shakespeare that the world abounds in uncertainties and contradictions, and — President Bush, lend me your ears — that leaders self-destruct when they become too rigid and too intoxicated with the fumes of moral clarity.

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[A]s Mr. Obama goes to Washington, I’m hopeful that his fertile mind will set a new tone for our country. Maybe someday soon our leaders no longer will have to shuffle in shame when they’re caught with brains in their heads.

Creationist's Anti-Knowledge Agenda

The New York Times has an article that looks at the challenges of teaching evolution and other legitimate science education courses in the face of the ongoing efforts of Christianists and Creationists to dumb down school curriculum to satisfy their whacked out religious beliefs and literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis. Some states are trying to resist these anti-knowledge efforts but the outcome is perilously dependent on voters getting out and voting against Christianist candidates. In today's global economy and information age, it is imperative that the USA and other western nations maintain first class, science based educational systems in order to insure future economic prosperity. The Dark Ages are proof that knowledge can be lost when the forces of ignorance and religious fanaticism are allowed to prevail. Here are highlights from the NYT article:

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ORANGE PARK, Fla. — David Campbell switched on the overhead projector and wrote “Evolution” in the rectangle of light on the screen. He scanned the faces of the sophomores in his Biology I class. Many of them, he knew from years of teaching high school in this Jacksonville suburb, had been raised to take the biblical creation story as fact.

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In February, the Florida Department of Education modified its standards to explicitly require, for the first time, the state’s public schools to teach evolution, calling it “the organizing principle of life science.” Spurred in part by legal rulings against school districts seeking to favor religious versions of natural history, over a dozen other states have also given more emphasis in recent years to what has long been the scientific consensus: that all of the diverse life forms on Earth descended from a common ancestor, through a process of mutation and natural selection, over billions of years.

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But in a nation where evangelical Protestantism and other religious traditions stress a literal reading of the biblical description of God’s individually creating each species, students often arrive at school fearing that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith.