ACLU stands against bill allowing Bible studies courses in public schools

[MineralMan]

Here's a story about what the ACLU is REALLY doing with regard to the Bible in schools:

https://www.alreporter.com/2019/05/30/aclu-stands-against-bill-allowing-bible-studies-courses-in-public-schools/

ACLU stands against bill allowing Bible studies courses in public schools

The American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama Executive Director Randall Marshall commented against SB14, a bill that would allow public schools to teach Bible studies as an elective course, calling it a waste of money and potentially unconstitutional.

“While Alabama’s schools continue to struggle, we have to wonder why legislators are spending valuable time in session passing a bill to allow public schools to teach Bible classes,” Marshall said. “This is hardly the solution that public schools and their students need to improve their education, and it will instead set up schools to spend extra money on training teachers to teach these courses in a constitutionally appropriate manner, and if not, waste money on litigating unconstitutional classes that cross the line into religious indoctrination.”

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Tim Nelson, R-Florence, passed the House last week and was assigned to the conference committee yesterday. The committee has not met yet to discuss the bill.

It would allow public schools to offer Bible study and religious history courses for grades six through 12. It would also allow schools to openly display religious artifacts, monuments, symbols and texts if correlating with one of these courses.

A school principal could decide to authorize the display of religious artifacts if it is said to be related to an elective course.

[ScratchCat]

1. ??

“While Alabama’s schools continue to struggle, we have to wonder why legislators are spending valuable time in session passing a bill to allow public schools to teach Bible classes,” Marshall said. “This is hardly the solution that public schools and their students need to improve their education, and it will instead set up schools to spend extra money on training teachers to teach these courses in a constitutionally appropriate manner, and if not, waste money on litigating unconstitutional classes that cross the line into religious indoctrination.”

His concern is duly noted, but this isn't a legal argument. The ACLU is usually better than this.

[MineralMan]

3. If it becomes law, that's the time for a legal argument, which the

ACLU has ready.

[ScratchCat]

4. These types of classes

are already allowed and approved in public schools in other States. I believe the ACLU has failed at every attempt to argue they are "unconstitutional". It seems to me, they know they don't have a winning legal argument and are just using a bait & switch tactic where they are criticizing Alabama's "struggling" public school system in lieu of making an actual legal argument.

[MineralMan]

5. Here's one:

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/texas-school-board-agrees-stop-teaching-unconstitutional-bible-class-public-schools

There are many more. Just Google it.

Typically, such cases never go to court. Instead, the ACLU steps in, informs the school that what they're doing is unconstitutional and gives them information on court cases that have held that. It's all pretty clear-cut, really. If necessary, the ACLU will take it to court, but usually doesn't have to, due to precedents already set by the courts.

[Fresh_Start]

2. why not charge the churches to for doing the churches work for them

$500 per student per year would do a lot to help solve local school funding issues OR shut the damn churches up

[trotsky]

6. Wow, so since a certain someone said what the ACLU says is golden, he's going to change his mind?

This'll be fun.

[MineralMan]

7. Well, it's easy to counter false arguments with actual facts.

So, that's what I'll do. Weaning people off sites like religionnews.com is an important step. Such sites do not present truth. Instead, they present distortions of the truth, with whatever is inconvenient carefully concealed or left out.

The ACLU's record is available to anyone who cares to look at it.

Sites like religionnews.com count on people not bothering to fact check what they publish. Many people read those sites, believe what is published there without question, and spread it around. It's important to present factual information that counters the distorted picture presented by advocacy and apologetics sites.

I wish I had more time available.

[trotsky]

9. But what if I really, really like what religionnews.com has to say?

Does that mean it becomes an actual news site?

[MineralMan]

11. Well, as the song goes, "If you don't think twice, it's all right."

Or, if you don't really think at all. If you simply read the articles at religionnews.com as though they were factual and unbiased, then you'll very likely think the site is something like a news site. It's sort of like the Fox News Channel. If you watch that without considering that it might not be 100% factual, then you might mistake it for news. If you only watched FNC, you might have a distorted picture of the world, of politics, and of a lot of other things.

If, however, you read something on religionnews.com and wondered, "I wonder what the source of that quotation about the ACLU and religious groups was..." Then, if you copied that quote and pasted it into Google with quotation marks around it, you might see the same sources I saw, which immediately dated the quote to 1995. Then, you might wonder if what the quote said was still valid, and who exactly was involved with that joint statement. Then, you'd understand that the author of the article deliberately left off the date and the other participants, because it made the quote less useful to the point being made.

If you were even more curious, you'd notice that the quote has been used again and again by right-wingers to "show" that even the ACLU is in favor of the Bible being taught in schools.

If, instead, you had a habit of accepting everything published on religionnews.com as "gospel" truth, you wouldn't do those things. Then, when someone else did and pointed out the date and other information, you'd abandon your thread and go in some other direction.

Bottom line is: religionnews.com is a biased source of articles that have a point to make that might not be 100% supportable. It doesn't qualify as a news site, despite the use of that word in its URL.

Me? I check things like that. But, I'm just an atheist, so what do I know?

[trotsky]

12. Well dang, I bet if someone on DU had used some right-wing bullshit to promote their stance...

they'd be mighty embarrassed right now, huh?

Well, if that person were interested in honest dialog, of course.

[MineralMan]

13. You'd think so, wouldn't you?

[tulipsandroses]

8. I doubt these courses are going to be anything like the Religion course I took in college

Which was a true religious history course that studied the history of the big three religions. I am not against courses like that. Key is history. It was not a bible thumping course.

In college I also took a history course that studied the Crusades from the Islamic perspective.

All of those courses were eye opening for me- I was already questioning things I had been taught growing up in a Christian family -

By this time I had already taken other history classes and learned about the Persian Empire,Cyrus the Great, Darius and Zoroastrianism , The Greeks and Horus and their other Gods

I was the first in my family to go to college by the way so you can imagine what it was like to go home with my new found knowledge.

LOL!, yeah I learned quickly to just shut up and keep my thoughts to myself.

Somehow - I doubt that the way my college professors delivered those courses - will be the way these kids will get these religious courses.

All the religious and history courses I took in college were all elective courses. If you ask me, they should all be mandatory. Including more African History courses. Then maybe, just maybe, we would not have 1/3 of our nation be such idiots/bigots.

To date - The course I took about the Crusades thru the eyes of Arabs was one the best classes I took in college. Up until then, all I had ever heard was the Eurocentric version of the Crusades.

[MineralMan]

10. I took a World Religions course the second time I went to

college. Sadly, my experience was not the same as yours. The instructor (not a professor) was a retired Baptist minister. We had a pretty decent textbook for the class, which I read before the first session, since it was after spring break. Then, when I went into the class for the first day, the instructor began his first lecture by saying, "Don't pay any attention to the textbook for this class. It's all wrong. Christianity is the only correct religion, so this class will study Christianity, rather than the other religions."

Not a good start, I was thinking. At the time, I was a 24-year-old recent veteran and atheist who was no longer nervous around college professors. So, I spoke up. I said, "I didn't come to this class to get preached to about Christianity, sir. The class description says that the class will look at the religions of the world, their impact on history, and compare their beliefs and practices. Is that not what you're planning for this class?"

Well, that went over like an overfed goose. The retired Baptist preacher started laying into me, telling me that I was not going to dictate the contents of HIS class. He said that he would teach it as he pleased.

So, I stood up and walked out. Later that day, I dropped into the Dean of Humanities office and recounted what the instructor had said, and allowed as how I'd have to withdraw from the class, since it didn't sound like it was going to be anything like the course description in the catalog. The Dean said, "I understand. Thank you for bringing that to my attention." Then, he signed my withdrawal form.

So, I withdrew from the class, which ended up being the first and last course taught by that retired Baptist preacher. He was dismissed from his temporary position as an instructor. Later, I took a proper comparative religions class.

Some folks just can't do the right thing. They have to let their personal biases control everything they do, and can't step away from them long enough to be objective. That's what happens in schools like the ones in Alabama. The courses will be little more than proselytizing for Christianity. And that's the problem.