Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond — a Republican — is bucking his own party in a new lawsuit aimed at preventing what would be the first publicly funded religious school in America from opening.
On Friday, Drummond filed the suit in Oklahoma Supreme Court, challenging the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board’s 3-2 decision in June to grant a contract to open St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School. According to PBS, Drummond warned that the establishment of St. Isidore, which is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, would lead to the floodgates opening for religious groups of all stripes to make bids for public funding for schools of their own.
“Make no mistake, if the Catholic Church were permitted to have a public virtual charter school, a reckoning will follow in which this state will be faced with the unprecedented quandary of processing requests to directly fund all petitioning sectarian groups,” the lawsuit read.
Oh wow! There’s a unicorn in the Republican party! It appears that a modern Republican actually had the inclination to think of “what would happen next?”, BEFORE implementing said thing. Whew.
The Church of Satan must be opening a school using the same method.
CoS keeps to themselves. The Satanic Temple are the activists. They’re the ones that do the After School Satan Clubs.
Call The Satanic Temple today.
Lucien Greaves, the cofounder and spokesperson for The Satanic Temple, says his organization may submit its own application if the decision stands.
“We’ll consider opening an alternative school if the courts uphold a flagrantly self-serving & uneducated, utterly unqualified & ignorant school board’s vote to overturn the constitution,” Greaves tweeted.
Rajan Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, said the board should now welcome other religious groups like Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Sikhs, and Bahai’s when they present their applications in the future.
Zed says he has written to the board to apply for a Hindu virtual charter school but has not received a response.
They are always on the case first. They have feelers through all the various church state separation orgs. As soon as one of the likes of freedom from religion foundation, ACLU etc. Hear about a case, someone is bound to send Lucien a message and would you look at that within days they have found a local Satanist to have standing.
Lucien sends smiling letter to the local government with “I heard there was religious freedom on offer, just give us a week we have the Baphomet statue dusted off from the temple and on the way there. It takes like 2 meters by 2 meters and 3 meters tall. You have free lawn available?”
Or a Muslim one
I hope so. Me and my wife are members. Thank goodness they are around.
Unfortunately they weren’t concerned about public money used for religion.
They were concerned that those other religions expect equal treatment.
Apparently we are a smart AG. To bad our governor and the guy in charge of education both fought to open this school. Glad the AG is trying to stop it. But wonder how the courts will rule.
Religion aside, opening the floodgates in this way just doesn’t make sense. Our public schools are already underfunded. Why would they want to use the same pool of money to fund even more schools?
Because the point isn’t to fund schools. It’s to create a Christian Theocracy.
That’s the top priority and long term goal. Until they can get that, they’ll settle for an undereducated public since ignorance is the best friend of the preacher…
I live in Alberta, Canada, which has a separate publicly funded catholic school system. They bus kids to our main government building every year for the big anti-abortion rally.
Jesus Christ this is disgusting. What’s next, livestreams of MAGA rallies in class?
Is this something you can opt out of? As in if an atheist doesn’t want their tax money going to it?
To make them worse. How else is the Republican party going to grow in the future?
It is a way to segregate the “worthy” from the rest (or vice versa I guess depending on if your “worthy” or not).
Interesting tidbit: in the Netherlands all schools are publicly funded, including religious ones.
Well yeah. No one wants to get on Thor’s bad side.
Drummond warned that the establishment of St. Isidore, which is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, would lead to the floodgates opening for religious groups of all stripes to make bids for public funding for schools of their own.
Emphasis mine.
It isn’t that he doesn’t want a Catholic school to be publicly funded. He is worried that other religious groups (subtext: Muslims) will try to get the same funding.
Lol, he didn’t just imply it, he outright went there in a press conference:
"Today, Oklahomans are being compelled to fund Catholicism. Because of the legal precedent created by the Board’s actions, tomorrow we may be forced to fund radical Muslim teachings like Sharia law. In fact, Governor Stitt has already indicated that he would welcome a Muslim charter school funded by our tax dollars. That is a gross violation of our religious liberty. As the defender of Oklahoma’s religious freedoms, I am prepared to litigate this issue to the United States Supreme Court if that’s what is required to protect our Constitutional rights.” - Press release
The broken analog clock is still right twice a day?
While he could have said it differently and with a lot more cultural sensitivity, he’s correct.
If you allow religion in our schools, you are opening up Pandora box. Flying spaghetti monster deserves a space too.
For sure. It just amuses me that someone can find the shittiest possible ways to argue for the right outcome, and that the media can just overlook the shitty parts because they (rightly) agree with that outcome.
I think it’s also worth noting the phrasing is very deliberate - he reportedly has political aspirations and existing beef with the Senator, so he’s appealing to his potential base too. He mentions Sharia later at least once more and makes sure to let people know he thinks kids should be reading Bibles with their family. It’s all filthy and deliberate politics, and it’s clearly the right thing to do, bizarrely twisted into… this.
… that the media can just overlook the shitty parts because they (rightly) agree with that outcome.
This is the definition of “the ends justify the means.”
Yeah, there’s a lot of Macchievalianism in politics. It’s not my favourite thing that humans do.
As the defender of religious freedoms… [we are ok with catholicism but not islam]
This is beyond parody.
They’re not ok with Catholics either.
Sometimes they can slightly tolerate Catholics, but just barely. The same can’t be said of any non-Christian religion.
Or more likely, a satanic temple school 👹
Me thinks someone is preparing to run for governor.
How tf is a muslim school a blatant violation of christian religious freedom? It’s a violation of their ability to be bigots
To be fair, that’s the argument that’s most likely to resonate with a lot of Oklahoma voters
Yes, but to be even more fair, it being effective doesn’t excuse appeals to bigotry.
Ah, so it’s the old Catholics vs Protestants again.
It’ll probably end up being the Catholics vs. the Satanic Temple
I was about to ask when the Satanists were showing up. I love those guys.
More like he knows Lucian Grieves of the Satanic Temple has already prefilled a letter with his lawyer friend to have St. Lucifer’s Preparatory Academy financed by Oklahoma state funds. Just waiting for the Catholic funding to be upheld and the letter gets mailed. Along with affidavit from a local Oklahoma Satanist who is absolutely enthusiastic about having their child schooled at St. Lucifers.
Like protestant vs Catholic is least of their problems. They have to finance a Wiccan Coven school, Muslim masrada, scientologist school, a norse Viking academy and so on.
Since as the rule goes: can’t start making rulings on which religions are in and which are out.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt — himself a Republican who endorsed then-incumbent Attorney General John O'Connor in Oklahoma's 2022 Republican primary — reportedly dismissed Drummond's lawsuit as a "political stunt." "AG Drummond seems to lack any firm grasp on the constitutional principle of religious freedom and masks his disdain for the Catholics’ pursuit by obsessing over non-existent schools that don’t neatly align with his religious preference," Stitt said.Project much?
The “constitutional principle of religious freedom” says there shall be no official state religion. So…when the state funds something religious, what does that sound like to them
They probably think that it’s freedom of choice.
faced with the unprecedented quandary of processing requests
“It’s way too much work and too expensive” is a pretty standard Republican argument against everything, and not exactly what looks like the core of the problem here. But, I guess he is trying to appeal to other Republicans here, and it’s pretty clear there are some powerful ones who want a lot more church in their state.
The whole “Oklahoma voted 60% against removing the state constitution prohibition on funding churches in 2016” thing seems a lot more compelling to me.
Did not expect to see this in my lifetime but I’ll take it.
this fella is going to be fired. may even consider driving instead of flying for awhile
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Muslim school next.
Tell them to go ahead and have their school, but that it means the Catholic Church loses its tax exempt status.
r/atheism leaking 😮💨
Not leaking, atheism is the default belief everyone is born with.
As a parent of 3 I very strongly disagree with this.
Kids are superstitious as fuck. Man’s natural state is believing in the supernatural because of how our brains work to piece together information.
The supernatural, yes. Someone else’s rigidly defined and extremely authoritarian guilt-based explanation of the supernatural though? Nothing natural about that.
It’s NOT natural for a child, being naturally curious and expressive, to be told “this is the only truth and if you don’t agree then that makes you a bad person who’s going to suffer for eternity”
Supernatural / God is an easy explanation for things we don’t understand because it doesn’t actually explain why things happen, it is a scapegoat that avoids answering the question. In the absence of information, it is more comfortable to feel like we have an understanding rather than admit we don’t understand something.
As we grow and learn about the knowledge humans have gathered we understand why things actually happen. For example, humans used to think a sun god pulled the sun across the sky, then we learned about the solar system. As the breadth of scientific knowledge grows, the areas for supernatural/religious claims shrink.
Not walking is also default when youre born, guess what, life happens, it changes you
Your deity of choice (It honestly doesn’t matter which religion you subscribe to) saw fit to include the ability for walking, built in.
A feral child wouldn’t lack for the ability to move, they just need to survive that long.
This C©reator(s) must have been too shy/wise/unknowable to also include the knowledge of their magnificence without another person telling you what to believe however.
If this is what you truly believe, fine. But “life happens” with or without belief in a God.
Yes it can happen, like I said life changes you, so mentioning default state means nothing
If you were to hit a reset button on the world and every human started over with no memory, they would definitely be walking, but there would not be identical organized religions. This is because walking is natural and religion is a creation of man’s imagination.
Why do they have to be identical? Religion would happen like it already has, that was my point
I said identical because if there was an inherent truth to any one religion then it would be replicated. It’s true that other religions would inevitably pop up, but that doesn’t mean they would have any credibility, they would just be random new god(s).
Thats irrelevant the topic you replied to was would religion happen despite being born atheist? The answer is yes
Actually, there is plenty of evidence that as technology and education improves around the world, religion decreases. Most people who are raised in a non-religious family remain unaffiliated. Those who are raised Christian are less likely to remain religious with each passing year.
This is why I don’t think religion would take over the world again after a reset, it would remain a minority belief. The Internet allows people to research all religions and come to conclusions on their own.
If you dont grow up and grow away from imaginary religious nonsense, you are still crawling around on the ground.
sure whatever dehumanizing fantasies make you feel better bud
Dehumanizing fantasies that make you feel better is exactly the sort of imaginary religious nonsense that you need to evolve your thought processes away from, pal.
There are a lot of atheist. But there are a lot more believers. Just you do you brother
Or people don’t like government funded proselytizing. Tax dollars are not supposed to go to religious organizations
Those tax dollars have “In god we trust” written on them my guy lmfao, youre too late if that’s your concern
I take it you haven’t attended a US government course, then? Y’know, “separation of church and state” and all that?
Oh well a course said so pack it up boys, the money in my pocket my country runs on is lying
That was put on money during the cold war as a “fuck you” to atheist communist Russia.
It was changed from “E Pluribus Unum”
That was added during the cold war by lunatics that thought it would protect us from communism somehow.
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about the level of maturity expected from someone who signed up to lemmy for porn
