What do fervent conservative Republicans do when faced with the fact that sometimes the tempting fruits of knowledge conflict with faith? Do they stand idly by while good Christian boys and girls are assaulted by those evil liberal university professors with their Marxist/Satanic ideology? Do they permit godless atheists to teach their children without protection?
Of course not! In the interest of good Christian men and women everywhere, they seek to shield those innocent young minds from the godless commie pinko reality based community of scientists the best way they know how: by legislating the mandatory teaching of God-Fearing Truthiness:
SB 1331
AN ACT
amending Title 15, chapter 14, Arizona Revised Statutes, by adding article 8; relating to UNIVERSITIES and community colleges.
(TEXT OF BILL […])
Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona:
Section 1. Title 15, chapter 14, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding article 8, to read:
ARTICLE 8. ALTERNATIVE COURSEWORK AND MATERIALS
START_STATUTE15-1881. Alternative coursework or materials
Each university under the jurisdiction of the Arizona board of regents and each community college under the jurisdiction of a community college district shall adopt procedures by which students who object to any course, coursework, learning material or activity on the basis that it is personally offensive shall be provided without financial or academic penalty an alternative course, alternative coursework, alternative learning materials or alternative activity. Objection to a course, coursework, learning material or activity on the basis that it is personally offensive includes objections that the course, coursework, learning material or activity conflicts with the student’s beliefs or practices in sex, morality or religion.
God save the Republic and the honorable Arizona Legislature!
More after the fold . . .
Finally, a group of good Christian legislators willing to put their religion ahead of silly ideas like separation of church and state. Because no christian youth should be forced to endure the temptation of reason and logic, or observable fact, if it interferes with their hard won faith. And God forbid their parents should have to pay for such sinful teachings!
Here for your information are the names of the stalwart Republicans proponents of this bill who stand behind Jesus in denying the awful reality and Jedi mind trickiness of college trained biologists, philosophers, physicists and (booooo! hisssss!) social scientists:
Senators Verschoor, Blendu, Harper, Jarrett, Johnson; Representatives Barnes, Biggs, Burges, Groe, Smith, Yarbrough: Senators Bee, Burns, Flake, Gould, Gray, Huppenthal, Martin; Representatives Allen J, Anderson, Gorman, Mason, Pearce, Pierce, Quelland, Rosati.
May the Good Lord keep them and preserve them, bless them and cherish them, and may he grant them his victory by permitting such godly legislation to be passed before those damned to hell for all eternity liberal Democrats can make a stink about it!
Hat tip to an unidentified emailer from Mesa AZ who posted the link to this bill at Altercation.
Also posted at Daily Kos.
VETERANS AND FAMILIES FROM FOUR CORNERS OF NY STATE MARCH IN ALBANY TO SUPPORT INTRODUCTION OF NY STATE DU TESTING AND HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS TASK FORCE BILL IN N.Y. ASSEMBLY
2.2.06 From George McAnanama, Veterans For Peace
Please post widely especially with media and especially with Independent media. We must fight to protect our troops and the Iraqi people because Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Condi WON’T.
We will have a van full of Staten Islanders, heading to Albany for the Press Conference. That group will be led by Debra Anderson of Military Families Speak Out and George McAnanama of Veterans For Peace. We intend to meet with legislators from both legislative branches and both Political Parties. This is a statewide campaign: please read the press release below and share this information with your colleagues.
This isn’t a partisan issue: it is a matter of life & death and health of our returning New York State National Guard and their families. Depleted Uranium is poisoning our troops and the country of Iraq.
January 30, 2006
NO DU Coalition of the Hudson Valley
Joan Walker-845-679-6938
430 Ohayo Mountain Road
Woodstock, NY. 12498
joanwalker@gmail.com
Veterans from many wars and many parts of NY State will march in Albany on February 7th from the Legislative Office Building to the nearby Vietnam Memorial where they will speak in support of a bill which will benefit N Y National Guard soldiers returning today from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The NY STATE DU TESTING AND HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS TASK FORCE BILL will take responsibility for addressing the mysterious symptoms suffered by our NY National Guard soldiers returning from war. These are often diagnosed as “undisclosed illnesses.”
It will assist the New York soldier in getting the most advanced test for detecting exposure to radioactive “depleted” uranium (U-238), a product of uranium enrichment used in U.S. weapons and tank armor. The bill also mandates a Task Force to set up a health registry of NY National Guard soldiers, to investigate the health effects from exposure to radioactive and hazardous chemicals and the precautions recommended for combat zones. No NY taxpayer funds are to be used.
Assemblymen Jeffrey Dinowitz (D-Bronx), Kevin Cahill (D-Ulster County), and other Co-sponsors will introduce this bill at a Press Conference at the Legislative Office Building at 11:00 on February 7.
The Veterans March, to set off immediately after, will be led by Iraq Vets Sgt Gerard Matthew and SSG Raymond Ramos, who are both ill and have tested positive along with other members of their Units, for radioactive U238.
Sgt Matthew’s baby girl, Victoria, was born with the same birth anomaly, missing fingers, seen in Iraq babies since 1991 when the U.S. began fifteen years of bathing Iraq with radioactive “depleted” uranium.
“My husband went to Iraq to fight for his country,” Janice Matthew said, “I feel the Army should take responsibility for what’s happened.”
For info about Albany event & this bill, contact Joan Walker 845 679-6938 or Angela Morano 246-8952.
You should make this a diary Jim
I’m sorry, did you say “honorable”?
They are also suing Governor Napolitano for using the line-item veto regarding their pay raises. linkage
I hope there is honor in sarcasm.
So, only their consituents are supposed to “sacrifice” due to budget problems and they aren’t? What a bunch of hypocrites!
Is Arizona now in open competition with Kansas for the title of “Most Ignorant State” in the union?
Is the rest of the educational community in the country already setting up the remedial education course structures to treat the Arizona youth abused by this outrage so they can better integrate into the real world once they leave their home state?
When a state’s educational system takes this sort of retrograde step should we start to referring to that state as a “cult” instead of a “state”?
Should we now regard our union as comprised of 48 states plus the cults of Arizona and Kansas?
Note; no disrespect to the rational Kansans and Arizonans intended!
Let’s just say their legislators are.
thing could be said about the United States from an international standpoint.
Note: no disrespect to the rational Americans indended!
(see how that line of thought can be dangerous?)
Let their kids get stupid then. I don’t care, they just aren’t teaching my kids that shit! I don’t care if their kids take basket weaving instead and have only a small chance of becoming doctors, scientists, researchers, physicists, astronomers……I just don’t give a rip anymore. Let’s face it, the less these people ever understand about the atom and nuclear fission the fucking better!
Well, except that if these people really understood about things like atomic energy they might get a freakin’ clue about how the universe works, and then maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t be afraid of science any more.
Oh, but wait, that’s the point, isn’t it? They’re supposed to be afraid of things that might lead them to ask questions about their faith.
Hey, I’m a religious guy. I go to church every Sunday and the whole bit. But I don’t have any problem believing that God operates through natural laws, including evolution. What I have a problem believing is that God would give people intelligence, curiosity and creativity, and then forbid us to use them. I also have a great deal of trouble believing that the Bible is the literal word of God, especially since I know as surely as I know anything that it was not written by Englishmen, in English, in 1611, and that there were great arguments all along the way of its compilation of what to put in and what to leave out and how to translate it.
What a hoot. It’s as good as pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions. I can see it now…an American History major is refusing to learn about the Revolution, Civil War, W.W.I, etc. because he/she is morally opposed to war. Or a Pre-med student who refuses to learn about biology because it entails learning about reproductive systems. It would be fun as a student to get really creative with making objections routinely and demanding new coursework.
if I were a Sun Devil or Wildcat and this thing passed.
I would start a paper trail stating that courses I didn’t want to take, such as psychology, statistics, economics, accounting, sociology and any Physical Education class requiring you to suit up were morally offensive to me, and instead I was to be provided courses in the history of rock and roll, the films of John Landis, Latin American dance and comparative applied zymurgy.
What are these people thinking when they write legislation like this?
They don’t need no stinkin thinkin. They’re faith based.
Quite frankly, the proper response to this is to have a college student announce that he finds lowercase instances of the letter L to be phallic symbols and therefore “personally offensive”. He could then demand coursework without a single ‘l’ in it anywhere. Professors would be obliged by law to comply. The press would have a field day.
What about capital I’s? The horror! And God forbid you should use any word that had the letter combinatin “db” — we all know what that represents!
Also the numbers 666 and 69 are to be forbidden, and if I were doing this I’d make up some random thing like how sans serif typefaces were offensive to me, and get all offended and indignant whenever anyone had the bad sense to ask me why.
I’d refuse any math class unless the Pythagorean mysteries were part of the curriculum, myself.
Does that include putting legislators who disagree with your findings into an open boat with no food and shoving them out to sea? Please of please say yes.
More evidence that the inmates are seizing control of the asylum.
The rise of the ignorati and the fall of the American empire.
I’m sure politics and economics are as much of the point.
I guess this means pacifists can skip American history.
My thoughts precisely.
For Native American students in Arizona, 90% of what they’re being offered by way of curriculum is likely to “conflicts with the student’s beliefs or practices in sex, morality or religion”.
Heaven forbid that college is supposed to be about learning-quaint notion isn’t it..simply because you learn something doesn’t mean you have to believe it..
Why the fuck do these people even want to bother with college anyway-they apparently know all they need to know from their faith based reality. Which is apparently very shaky if they think just hearing a new idea might make them chuck their religion over-how did learning become such a sin?
It’s just a way stop on the road to Law School where they can become lawyers and then politicians – then they can make more laws to force the sane portion of the country into abiding by their idiot beliefs.
Instead of bothering with the law why not just make it policy of all colleges that when you hear something or something offends you in class you can just put your fingers in your ears and go Nananana…as a sign of protest…since this might effectively put an end to having any teacher speak for more than a minute or two we can then just declare colleges dead in this country and get on with the business of getting rid of everyone who wants to think for themselves. Long live James Dobson.
So a kid who denies the Holocaust happened can object to being forced to learn about it or see the photographs of the liberated camps, and study instead the writings of those who believe as he does? Kids who believe secular modern music (ie, jazz, blues, rock, etc.) is immoral can skip out of the bulk of Twentieth Century Music despite the fact they signed up for the course? Take a literature class but skip over half the reading assignments because they involve sex, people questioning their faith, or (worse) characters who find ways to deal with their problems without submitting themselves to God or the church’s rules? Study art, but never see or go near even a photo of Michaelangelo’s David… much less the live nude models in Drawing 101?
Yeah, right…..
Alternate suggested text:
Each university under the jurisdiction of the Arizona board of regents and each community college under the jurisdiction of a community college district shall adopt procedures by which students who object to any course, coursework, learning material or activity on the basis that it is personally offensive shall be provided without financial or academic penalty the appropriate administrative form by which they can withdraw from said course effective immediately. If the objectionable course is part of the required curriculum for the student’s declared major, the student may consult with faculty advisors as to suitable alternative major courses of study, or transfer to another school where the curriculum is more reflective on the student’s feelings on sex, morality or religion.
Personally, I used to think 8:00am classes were morally objectionable, but some semesters, I found myself being forced to compromise my principles at least two times a week all semester long.