You’ve heard all about the new Louisiana law requiring the display of the 10 Commandments in every schoolroom in the state. But they’re just getting started:
The crowd at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School in Lafayette, La., applauded Gov. Jeff Landry as he signed bill after bill this week on public education in the state, making it clear he believed God was guiding his hand.
One new law requires that transgender students be addressed by the pronouns for the gender on their birth certificates (“God gives us our mark,” he said). Another allows public schools to employ chaplains (“a great step for expanding faith in public schools”).
Then he signed into law a mandate that the Ten Commandments be hung in every public classroom, demonstrating a new willingness for Louisiana to go where other states have not. Last month, Louisiana also became the first state to classify abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances.
“We don’t quit,” Mr. Landry, a Republican, said at the signing ceremony.
No they don’t. Ever. They have been working at this for many decades. And with Trump and the Supremes they believe they are on the precipice of their biggest victory.
Keep in mind that the ultra-right wing Christian Speaker of the House comes out of that Louisiana petrie dish. He has big plans.
Supporters of the Louisiana law now hope that other states will follow its example.
[…]
A poll about religion in schools, conducted last year by The Associated Press and NORC, a nonpartisan research institution at the University of Chicago, showed a country split over the influence of religion in what children are taught in public schools. Among those surveyed, 37 percent said there was too little religion, 31 percent said there was the right amount, and 31 percent said there was too much.
Heather L. Weaver, a senior staff attorney with the Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief at the American Civil Liberties Union, said she would not be surprised if next year’s state legislative sessions took up a “huge influx” of bills rooted in conservative Christian ideas. She pointed to Louisiana as a leader in the movement.
The Christian political movement has been evident in debates across the country over transgender rights, school curriculums, in vitro fertilization and abortion. In Arizona, during the fight over an abortion ban from 1864, the speaker of the House, Ben Toma, told The New York Times in April that “all of our laws are actually based on, what, the Ten Commandments and the Book of Genesis, which are thousands of years ago.”
It is an argument that has been repeated by supporters of the Ten Commandments law in Louisiana, who contend that the commandments are a historical document as well as a religious text.
“This is all born of the leftist culture war tearing down the fabric of the country, and we are saying, ‘Enough,’” said Jason Rapert, founder of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers and a former state senator in Arkansas. “We are going to try to rebuild the foundation of this country.”
I think they mean it. Now that they’ve determined that they can even vote for a lying, criminal, libertine solely for the purpose of obtaining power for their Christian fascist agenda, they are feeling their oats. It doesn’t matter if a majority agrees with them. They can just force it through.