Public Space and Public Education

[K Graham]

I have a better idea. How about you religious nuts keep your bigoted views to yourselves and let separation between religion and state play itself out as intended. The only reason schools are trending towards teaching the importance of diversity is because people like you for centuries have stigmatized all of those people your religion has taught you to hate, leading to bullying and dramatically increased risks of teen suicide. Nearly a third of gay youths have attempted suicide. More than half of all transgendered individuals have contemplated suicide. [url=https://www.Hillary Clinton.org/news/new-study-reveals-shocking-rates-of-attempted-suicide-among-trans-adolescen]More than half of the males have attempted suicide[/url] whereas nearly one in three females have. Why? Because they've been taught that they are an abomination before God, and they've been traditionally ostracized and mocked by society. Because of people like you with zero compassion or empathy, they feel like they have no place in this world. Let's face the facts. You belong to a religion that has for more than a century taught that black people are cursed by God, that their skin color was to remind them of their disobedience and inferiority among the whites.

As far as teaching polygamy, I wouldn't give a flying damn if one of my kid's teachers mentioned he/she was a polygamist. But the difference here is that polygamy is illegal whereas being gay is not.

I think the idea is that one never knows what will be the hot-button issue that will make people wish their kids were not being indoctrinated. Is it evolution? Is it gender? Is it family structure? Is it, horror of horrors, religion? Someone is going to be upset by what their kids are exposed to in public schools. If you were my kids' teacher, and I were really religious, I would be worried about your bigoted views about religious people.

Well for me I cannot think of a single thing a teacher might teach my kids that would worry me so long as it isn't teaching them to break laws or to mistreat their fellow man. What people like ajax seem to not understand is that kids tend to ask their teachers questions about current events and cultural matters. It isn't always a case where a teacher goes rogue and thinks he or she can get away with "indoctrinating" the entire class to some dogmatic position the parents might find controversial.

Yesterday I had the missionaries over for dinner. To suggest I'm bigoted towards "religious people" is just off. I'm probably bigoted towards those who exhibit clear religious bigotry, hence my antagonism towards people who associate with white supremacist organizations. In my view some people are simply toxic and we should seek to disassociate from them for the same reasons the world is seeking to disassociate from Putin. Like is short, and shouldn't be wasted trying to "get to know" people who have clearly horrific views that pretty much set their identity. Despite my apostasy, I interact with Mormons on a weekly basis and we all have a mutual respect for our beliefs or lack thereof. We don't talk religion or politics, and that's for the best I think. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Some people are better people because of Mormonism. However there is a flip side to that coin. The old guard Mormons who still have the Journal of Discourses on their shelves along with W. Cleon Skousen's 5,000 Year Leap, they're the ones who tend to maintain the older bigoted views towards minorities.

[Kishkumen]

Well for me I cannot think of a single thing a teacher might teach my kids that would worry me so long as it isn't teaching them to break laws or to mistreat their fellow man. What people like ajax seem to not understand is that kids tend to ask their teachers questions about current events and cultural matters. It isn't always a case where a teacher goes rogue and thinks he or she can get away with "indoctrinating" the entire class to some dogmatic position the parents might find controversial.

In my view the biggest crime here is that for very little reward teachers are asked to do a hell of a lot, and now they have this hanging over them too? Ugh. I think the kids will be just fine, and I am not worrying about the "gay agenda." At the same time, I recognize that, just as in other areas, there are plenty of people who simply will not be rational in ways that I think they ought to be. Sexuality is going to be one of those areas.

Yesterday I had the missionaries over for dinner. To suggest I'm bigoted towards "religious people" is just off. I'm probably bigoted towards those who exhibit clear religious bigotry, hence my antagonism towards people who associate with white supremacist organizations. In my view some people are simply toxic and we should seek to disassociate from them for the same reasons the world is seeking to disassociate from Putin. Like is short, and shouldn't be wasted trying to "get to know" people who have clearly horrific views that pretty much set their identity. Despite my apostasy, I interact with Mormons on a weekly basis and we all have a mutual respect for our beliefs or lack thereof. We don't talk religion or politics, and that's for the best I think. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Some people are better people because of Mormonism. However there is a flip side to that coin. The old guard Mormons who still have the Journal of Discourses on their shelves along with W. Cleon Skousen's 5,000 Year Leap, they're the ones who tend to maintain the older bigoted views towards minorities.

Yeah, I don't really think you are a religious bigot in an active way. You just think people who believe certain things are uninformed, naïve, or even dumb. But I am sure you get along with most people just fine. And you are probably right that lots of people out there are uninformed, naïve, or dumb. Such as the human race and everyone in it. That said, almost no one on this board should be surprised to be mistaken for an anti-religious bigot.

[K Graham]

In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace

The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.

That was 2019, here is 2021:

Currently, about three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) are religious “nones” – people who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religious identity. Self-identified Christians of all varieties (including Protestants, Catholics, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Orthodox Christians) make up 63% of the adult population. Christians now outnumber religious “nones” by a ratio of a little more than two-to-one. In 2007, when the Center began asking its current question about religious identity, Christians outnumbered “nones” by almost five-to-one (78% vs. 16%).

That's three percentage points in just two years.

Now that's progress!

[Kishkumen]

Indeed I am sanguine about the future. I just hope I live long enough to see it. We should be a country that enjoys 100% energy independence on renewables with high speed rails running from coast to coast, with a society that enjoys universal healthcare, and a government that invests in the next generation by providing tax funded college education. This is likely going to be a guarantee in the next hundred years, but the only hinderance and delay is people like ajax who spread fear, uncertainty and doubt while propagating disinformation for a religious cause.

He is no threat to me, but he is producing little racist bigots who will likely be a threat to the next generation. That means my kids, and yours.

I think Ajax is probably a lot of bluster, just as most of us are. His kids might be really nice. Indeed, we may sit next to each other at the Cracker Barrel and not even realize how disgusting our opinions are to each other. I would be over the moon happy to have this happen because that is about the sum total of my optimism.

[K Graham]

In my view the biggest crime here is that for very little reward teachers are asked to do a hell of a lot, and now they have this hanging over them too? Ugh. I think the kids will be just fine, and I am not worrying about the "gay agenda." At the same time, I recognize that, just as in other areas, there are plenty of people who simply will not be rational in ways that I think they ought to be. Sexuality is going to be one of those areas.

I agree completely. I also think teachers are underpaid by a lot.

Yeah, I don't really think you are a religious bigot in an active way. You just think people who believe certain things are uninformed, naïve, or even dumb. But I am sure you get along with most people just fine. And you are probably right that lots of people out there are uninformed, naïve, or dumb. Such as the human race and everyone in it. That said, almost no one on this board should be surprised to be mistaken for an anti-religious bigot.

Yesterday I made a comment on some Leftist site and I was shocked by the responses about the Hunter Biden issue. So yes, I'll admit there are really dumb people on both sides. But most religious people aren't "dumb" per se, they just have prioritized faith over science.

[Gadianton]

What if I used my platform as a teacher to inform the grade schoolers that Mr. Ajax has three wives. Then I'd go through history and teach how this is natural for human beings and that most of our ancestors were polygamist. Then I'd tell the kids that if their parents believe my choice of lifestyle is immoral, it's because they are bigots. I'd tell the young men that it is natural to want to have more than one women and if they feel like they would want this than they should live out their desires rather than hide in the closet because they weren't born monogamous but rather polygamous. Or maybe we could just stick to reading, writing, and arithmetic and leave teaching of controversial views of morality to the parents, maybe even respect the faith and beliefs of everyone rather than push them upon other peoples children.

I think the barest legitimate impulse for public education (or government education for you) discussing this stuff is much less about what is moral and immoral, and more about understanding the backgrounds of other kids. How is some kid going to be treated when the family shows up to the school and other kids have no way to frame what they are seeing? I don't think teachers should teach homosexuality is right any more than they need to teach the Koran is true scripture. But I understand feeling the need to somehow give a heads up to kids that there are these other people out there with different family situations, dressing norms, or beliefs about god and judge the poor kid by his or her marble playing and not by the situation they were born into.

And so, if some wealthy entrepreneur from southern Utah moves to Texas and proceeds to convey his children to school daily by oxen-drawn cart, with three wives getting out to escort children wearing homespun clothes to class in the morning, then that liberal atheist teacher should absolutely be concerned about those kids getting a fair shake from the other kids.

[Kishkumen]

That's three percentage points in just two years.

Now that's progress!

Thank you, Kevin. This should be its own thread really because I do not join you in your happiness about this. Not because I have a special love for Christianity as opposed to other philosophies, but because I doubt that people actually did replace this with better stuff. I happen to agree with Nietzsche, when he saw the death of God as a kind of crisis. What takes the place of God is what we should worry about. If religions that preach peace and love could be so awful, who do we ask to save us when the next thing is even more tyrannical? I worry that we are on our way to constructing something far more worrisome and totalitarian than Christianity or Islam.

[Kishkumen]

Yesterday I made a comment on some Leftist site and I was shocked by the responses about the Hunter Biden issue. So yes, I'll admit there are really dumb people on both sides. But most religious people aren't "dumb" per se, they just have prioritized faith over science.

And I don't know that this is inevitable for the future of religion so much as one of the negative byproducts of the Enlightenment. You can have great civilizational advances that also carry some nasty baggage with them. In the Early Modern Period religion and science were in much closer accord, with fascinating and perhaps even salutary results. Then the optimism to see science and religion mutually reinforcing did not work out as expected, so people increasingly tossed out one version of religion. Mormons just caught up to that, because their religion was engineered to be a response to that crisis. Then science caught up to that. It is the demand that religion and science either compete to find the best system or get along in predictable ways that is the problem, in my view.

[K Graham]

Indeed I am sanguine about the future. I just hope I live long enough to see it. We should be a country that enjoys 100% energy independence on renewables with high speed rails running from coast to coast, with a society that enjoys universal healthcare, and a government that invests in the next generation by providing tax funded college education. This is likely going to be a guarantee in the next hundred years, but the only hinderance and delay is people like ajax who spread fear, uncertainty and doubt while propagating disinformation for a religious cause.

He is no threat to me, but he is producing little racist bigots who will likely be a threat to the next generation. That means my kids, and yours.

I think Ajax is probably a lot of bluster, just as most of us are. His kids might be really nice. Indeed, we may sit next to each other at the Cracker Barrel and not even realize how disgusting our opinions are to each other. I would be over the moon happy to have this happen because that is about the sum total of my optimism.

Oh I agree with this too. My relationship with my Mother is a perfect example. We laugh and hug whenever we see each other in person. She treats my kids a lot better than she treated us growing up, but in terms of politics we're not on speaking terms. Her Facebook page is loaded to the brim with one racist rant after another, and it got so bad I had to block her. I wrote her off and blocked her from my kids Facebook pages when she said we needed to drop a Nuclear Bomb and kill all the Muslims, after the terrorist attack on a train in France back in 2015.

In a more recent, related experience... just a few weeks ago we got a call from a lender friend who informed us that his close friend was about to lose his house to foreclosure and wanted to know if we'd be interested in buying his property so he didn't have that hanging over his credit for the next decade. So we went over there to check it out, and the house looked like it was uninhabitable for humans. I really couldn't understand how people would be able to live in those conditions. We'd need to put at least another $70,000 into it before flipping it. But the couple was very humble and and appreciative of the fact that we were interested in maybe helping them, and that went a long way with us. Especially because they had two boys (21 and 16) and a mother living with them and they were all about to be homeless. When we went to the unfinished basement portion of the home, every square inch of the walls was decorated with five different types of Trump flags, F*ck Joe Biden banners, and I must've counted at least 50 different types of guns. I remember thinking to myself, "Don't say anything, and let's just hope they don't bring up politics."

Long story short, we ended up closing on their property yesterday and they're walking away with about $20,000 cash as opposed to losing their house and getting nothing. They were ecstatic and so appreciative because we're letting them stay in the house for 60 days so we can find them another home to buy before we start to remodel it. They're able to buy another home using their Mom's credit. But yesterday at the closing table, after everything was signed, the man started going off on Obama and Biden about gas prices. He drives a $60,000 Dodge Ram truck that stands three feet off the ground and probably gets 10 MPG. There was so much I could've said, but chose to keep my mouth shut. Then his wife started talking about how the CRA back during Obama is the reason why housing prices have skyrocketed, saying Obama forced banks to give loans to black families who never could afford to make their payments because they were too lazy and used to living off welfare. I was stunned and silent, thought to at least roll my eyes, but I didn't even do that. I kept thinking to myself, this is a family who nearly lost their home to foreclosure and all they can think to do is blame minorities. I felt nothing but pity for them. And for their boys.

[K Graham]

I think the barest legitimate impulse for public education (or government education for you) discussing this stuff is much less about what is moral and immoral, and more about understanding the backgrounds of other kids. How is some kid going to be treated when the family shows up to the school and other kids have no way to frame what they are seeing? I don't think teachers should teach homosexuality is right any more than they need to teach the Koran is true scripture. But I understand feeling the need to somehow give a heads up to kids that there are these other people out there with different family situations, dressing norms, or beliefs about god and judge the poor kid by his or her marble playing and not by the situation they were born into.

And so, if some wealthy entrepreneur from southern Utah moves to Texas and proceeds to convey his children to school daily by oxen-drawn cart, with three wives getting out to escort children wearing homespun clothes to class in the morning, then that liberal atheist teacher should absolutely be concerned about those kids getting a fair shake from the other kids.

Are they really teaching that homosexuality is "right" or are they just teaching awareness of its existence? It wouldn't surprise me in the least if this hasn't been misrepresented by the Right Wing outrage machine.