Dueling Opinions

Oh, Colorado State Senator Dave Schultheis, you're such a reliable source for apoplectic rage. Whether insulting mothers with HIV or comparing President Obama to 9/11 hijackers over Twitter, Schultheis functions ideally as an ignorance delivery system. America needs ignorance delivery systems, and when Schultheis forgets his primary function and attempts legislation, it can be nerve-wracking.

Colorado Springs' Schultheis has devoted his public career to restricting the rights of people with whom he disagrees – particularly pro-choice women and immigrants – and trying to shoehorn proselytization into public school curricula.

Schulthies' latest Senate Bill 10-089, which would have expanded religious expression in Colorado public schools, was defeated before leaving committee last Monday as Schultheis' Democratic opponents mounted a passionate counter-argument. Had the initiative passed, the "Public School Religious Bill of Rights" would have been posted in public schools and thrown current education policy into upheaval. The bill would open the floodgates for grievance forms from religious students and their parents; any school policies inconsistent with the murky provisions delineated in the web-accessible bill would leave the board of education vulnerable to litigation.

A full-text PDF of the bill is available online, and much to my surprise, at first it seemed that many sections of the bill proposed little more than reinforcement of current school policies. The language was more generic and non-denominational than I'd been expecting from the pious Mr. Schultheis, but two specific provisions, among others that followed, made the senator's dominionist intentions clear: This bill was meant to function as a Christian Bill of Rights.

Consider the two following provisions I transcribed from the text of the bill:

- A Parent or guardian of an elementary school, middle school, or junior high school student to excuse his or her child from any class or the use of specific course material that is inconsistent with the parent's or legal guardian's religious beliefs.

This provision would have allowed over-involved fundamentalist Christian parents to deny their children an education in the sciences because evolution conflicts with their belief that Jesus wrangled dinosaurs. Not only do I recognize the futility of parents trying to protect their children from information, but I think that challenges to one's beliefs is essential for spiritual development.

- Recite religious material when an oral recitation is assigned if the material fairly meets the educational purpose of the assignment.

I don't accept the premise that the Bible ought to be included in the canon of scholastic literature, not only because of the exclusionary implications mandatory readings from scripture would have for agnostics and members of minority religions. Religious texts absolutely do not belong in an academic curriculum. I'm not diminishing the Scared Writ's historical significance, nor denying the innumerable allusions to biblical imagery that appear throughout the annals of literature. I think a capable instructor could conceivably assign readings from the Bible to a mature class within the context of cultural and historical analysis, a dynamic that only seems possible at the university level.