Son of homeschooling mom sees first male Covergirl model on TV, homeschooling mom kind of loses it.

Courtesy of Homeschool Base: 

Mommy, why doesn’t daddy wear makeup? This is the question my 6-year-old asked me on Friday afternoon. We were watching Countdown to Christmas on ABC, and a commercial came up in between watching Toy Story.

The first image is of a boy in a backwards hat with ink and black makeup. He narrates the commercial, but doesn’t reappear until the end. In the last few scenes, he is arching his back and holding his thighs next to six or so other girls. His appears to be the most feminine of all the poses. The tagline read, “Equal is beautiful.” The final image was branded with #LashEquality. 

My son watched this commercial while I wasn’t paying any attention. Because it was just a CoverGirl commercial, I didn’t think I would need to cover the screen. I was pre-occupied, speaking with David (my husband). 

Both of us were caught off guard, we didn’t know how to answer. I don’t know why, but the most logical thing we could think of at that moment was to say, “No, that’s a girl.” 

The commercial comes on a second time. It is undeniable, it’s a guy.

So what is a backward thinking, over protective parent to do when the Satanic world they are attempting to protect their little snowflake from comes bursting into their lives adorned in eye makeup?

Well misrepresent that world of course.

“Daddy doesn’t wear makeup because makeup is for girls.”

This of course is a ridiculous thing to say as her son JUST saw somebody who was NOT a girl on TV wearing makeup.

The mother then compounds her ignorance by responding with this; “That is how his parents chose to raise him...”

That of course is also ridiculous as parents cannot actually "choose" who their children will be. Nor should they try.

All we can do is love and support our children, and help them to make choices which empower them and allow them to be the best they can possibly be as adults.

And we cannot choose their sexuality, which seems to be the suggestion made by this mother, and her deepest fear.

In the end this sad creature decides that she will simply change her brand of makeup, and then makes this rather pathetic observation:

"Our world is headed in a direction where my 6-year-old son is having to grow up so much faster than I want him to."

Now remember her world was undone by a GUY WEARING MAKEUP. 

I mean this is not a video of somebody brutally killing another person on screen, or her son overhearing inappropriate language from an R rated movie, or the death of a beloved pet.

This is just some young guy wearing makeup.

Do you know how you handle that?

You say, "Well he must like to wear makeup, and that's his choice." and you move the hell on.

The fact that this woman sees this as some kind of existential crisis seems to indicate that perhaps SHE needs to start getting out of the house more herself.

Geez!

(H/T to The Friendly Atheist.)

Christian homeschoolers angry that the crap they teach their children is not considered an education by trade and vocational schools.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

Homeschoolers says it’s unfair that they must prove they’ve obtained high school-level academic skills to become a police officer or enter trade school. 

The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is challenging requirements by cosmetology and vocational schools that incoming students show a high school diploma or pass a GED exam to gain admittance. 

“A homeschool graduate is accepted into a cosmetology or vocational school — but then, like a bolt from above, the admissions office reverses course,” said William Estrada, HSLDA director of federal relations. “Officials tell the applicant that the school cannot accept homeschoolers.” 

The Christian legal advocacy group has handled numerous calls from homeschooled young adults who say they were turned away from trade schools or police departments because they had not passed a General Educational Development exam — which they say graduates of traditional high schools are not required to do. 

“Vocational schools are more likely to be audited for compliance with federal higher education laws,” Estrada said. “They’re worried that if they accept a homeschooler who doesn’t have the documentation of a public school graduate, it could cost the vocational school its accreditation.”

So I guess that teaching little Johnny that the earth is only six thousand years old and is older than the sun does not fly in a school where the little snowflakes are expected to know actual facts.

Texas family argues that they do not have to really teach their children anything while homeschooling them because Jesus is coming.

"Oh thank God, now I don't have to finish my homework."

Courtesy of KRGV: 

Laura McIntyre began educating her nine children more than a decade ago inside a vacant office at an El Paso motorcycle dealership she ran with her husband and other relatives. 

Now the family is embroiled in a legal battle the Texas Supreme Court hears next week that could have broad implications on the nation's booming home-school ranks. The McIntyres are accused of failing to teach their children educational basics because they were waiting to be transported to heaven with the second coming of Jesus Christ. 

At issue: Where do religious liberty and parental rights to educate one's own children stop and obligations to ensure home-schooled students ever actually learn something begin?

Well the woman has a point.

After all if she teaches her children facts, they may not be so easily manipulated by her iron age superstitious nonsense.

People have literally been waiting for the return of Jesus Christ for over two thousand years. Putting their lives on hold, terrifying their children with stories of the Rapture, ignoring Climate Change, and refusing to learn anything that might refute their faith that this life is nothing except a stepping stone to the eternal life which awaits them.

This is child abuse, plain and simple.

Christian homeschooling organization used and heavily promoted by the Duggar family is being sued for covering up, you guessed it, sexual assault and harassment of employees.

Courtesy of the Washington Post: 

Five women have sued the Institute in Basic Life Principles, once a leader in the Christian homeschooling movement, charging that the organization and its board of directors enabled and covered up sexual abuse and harassment of interns, employees, and other participants in its programs. 

Each of the plaintiffs — Gretchen Wilkinson, Charis Barker, Rachel Frost, Rachel Lees and a Jane Doe — seeks $50,000 in damages, alleging that the organization and its board acted negligently, with willful and wanton disregard for them, and engaged in a civil conspiracy to conceal the wrongdoing. 

The lawsuit is the latest chapter in a long-simmering scandal that has engulfed the ministry once admired by conservative Christian parents for teaching them how to raise obedient, devout and chaste children since the 1960s. The ministry has found dedicated followers in politics, including Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), who sought to replace Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) as House Speaker, and in entertainment. 

Last year founder and long time President, Bill Gothard, resigned amid allegations that he had sexually harassed more than thirty female employees over the years.

Oh and who could forget this:

Earlier this year, IBLP was once again in the headlines after the gossip magazine In Touch reported that Josh Duggar, the eldest son of reality television stars and longtime Advanced Training Institute members Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, had been sent to an IBLP training center as a teenager after he admitted he had sexually abused four of his younger sisters and a family friend.

That's right, the guy who the Duggars sent their sister fondling son to in order to straighten him out, had to resign in response to charges of sexual harassment, and his organization is being sued for covering up similar activities among staff members.

Oh and Josh Duggar himself is currently in hiding in response to being outed as a customer of Ashley Madison, having admitted to a porn addiction, and being accused of paying a porn star for rough sex. 

Gee, uh...anybody else seeing a pattern here?

Four of the six Christian homeschooled brothers who molested their younger sister for a decade plead guilty.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

Four homeschooled brothers pleaded guilty Thursday to molesting their younger sister from the time she was 4 years old until she was almost 15 – and their parents and two other brothers still face charges related to the case. 

The oldest brother confessed in December 2012 to molesting the girl after becoming a born-again Christian, and a pastor from the Baptist church in Wake Forest, North Carolina, contacted authorities the following day. 

“He confided in his pastor and his pastor told him that was wrong and not the way normal families are,” said Perquimans County Sheriff Eric Tilley. 

Eric Jackson, then 25, told authorities that he and all five of his brothers had sexually abused their younger sister for a decade, and authorities say their parents knew but did nothing to stop the abuse. 

An elder at Hope Baptist Church, which Jackson and another brother attended, compared the pattern of abuse to other “horrible” sins such as adultery and homosexuality. 

“If Jesus had not saved Eric, perhaps the devastating culture of this family could have continued, even to more generations,” wrote elder Scott Brown. “But the gospel transforms and shines light in dark places. Jesus was the source of light that caused things to be brought into the light.”

So Jesus could bring things to light after the fact but could do nothing to prevent this child's abuse? 

Not a terribly impressive deity is he?

Still I am going to give this pastor some credit for not helping to hide the secret as the Duggar family's religious advisers seem to have done.

However in this case just like the last, it is the parents who most deserve our disgust.

They knew about this and did nothing to protect their children, both the molesters who will now serve time in jail for their offenses, and the molested who will serve a life sentence in a prison from which there is not parole.

Gee two different Christian homeschooled families, kept apart from their contemporaries, and now revealed to have serious episodes of incest and sexual abuse.

Anybody else noticing a pattern?

Mike Huckabee explains that he is NOT homophobic, he's just a good Christian.

Courtesy of Right Wing Watch:  

Mike Huckabee, doing his best to channel Dr. Jenna Jacobs, said in a recent interview with televangelist Jim Bakker that he doesn’t have any personal animus towards gay people, explaining that he opposes gay rights merely because that is what the Bible commands him to do. 

Huckabee, who once called homosexuality “an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle” and demanded that the government quarantine people with HIV/AIDS, said he is offended that anyone thinks he is homophobic. 

“The way that we’ve allowed words like tolerance, bigotry — what has happened to us, we allow ourselves to be called homophobic or bigoted, we’re not,” Huckabee told Bakker in the latest segment of their interview recent interview to be posted online. “We are just people who believe that there is a standard that was not ours, it was God’s, it was given to us and for us to change it we have to get his permission.” 

This led Huckabee to rant against the public schools for undermining “core moral values” and teaching that America is an “evil, imperialistic nation,” telling Bakker that “it’s pretty frightening in that there are so many ways in which the education system is not educating but indoctrinating, it’s why we see so many parents who are going to homeschool or pulling their children out of government-operated school.” 

Remember homeschoolers this book has all you need to know about the history of America.

And whatever you do don't let your children read those textbooks in public school because they are edited by none other than Satan himself. And as for college, do you really hate your kids enough to send them to that den of sin?

Just remember folks this is the guy who just quit his Fox News hosting position to run for the President of these United States, and the people watching this show (Damn I thought Jim Bakker was dead.) are behind him 100% of the way.

I swear these people scare me WAY more than Al-Qaeda or ISIS ever will.

Texas court rules that the Rapture is no excuse for parents to stop sending their children to school.

"Dear teacher, Johnny can't come to school to day, he done got raptured."

Courtesy of Raw Story:

A Texas court ruled this month that parents who allegedly stopped homeschooling their kids because they believed Jesus Christ was returning to Earth were not exempt from state education regulations. 

According to a ruling last week by the Texas Eighth District Court of Appeals, Michael McIntyre and Laura McIntyre removed their nine children from a private school in 2004 to homeschool them. 

Michael McIntyre’s twin brother, Tracy, testified that the parents used empty space in a motorcycle dealership that he co-owned as a classroom. But Tracy said that he never saw the children reading books, using computers or doing arithmetic. Instead, the children were seen playing instruments and singing. 

“Tracy overhead one of the McIntyre children tell a cousin that they did not need to do schoolwork because they were going to be raptured,” the court document noted.

I have to admit that the Rapture is one of my favorite Christian mythologies. 

It always seems to me that it is amazing that fundamentalist Christians do ANYTHING since they seem to live under the perpetual believe that at any minute they will be scooped up and taken to a place where having a drivers license, or a Master's degree, or a real job will not make one bit of difference.

Of course predictions for the date of the Rapture have been set going back as far as 53 AD, which means Christians have been left disappointed for more than 2000 years.

And STILL they buy the BS.

You know what might keep this kind of ignorance from happening in the first place?

A good public school education that's what. Which might in fact be the REAL reason that these parents do not want their children exposed to it. 

Guess which famous Teabagger's daughter might be a skank. Good guess, but no not that one. (At least not this time.)

Courtesy of DListed:  

According to Us Weekly, 57-year-old Ray Donovan actor (or Manny from Scarface, whichever brings up less of a “??????” for you) Steven Bauer attempted to out-creepy Woody Allen by showing up to the premiere of Magic in the Moonlight with his 18-year-old girlfriend Lyda Loudon. According to her Twitter bio, Lyda is a “part-time nightmare-inspirer, journalist, host of Sarcasm Overdose, ceo, actress, unsalvageable degenerate film/music/cigar/espresso addict” aka she’s unemployed. But Lyda is not just a barely-legal J-list star fucker (yes she is, but go on); she also founded Tea Party Youth and the L3 Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to “educate millennials with the tools it will take to turn America’s future around”. 

Of course, it gets better (it always gets better). Lyda’s parents are former Missouri Republican senator John Loudon and Tea Party founder and author “Dr. Gina“ (she sounds like a no-nonsense discount gynecologist). Meanwhile, Steven used to be married to Melanie Griffith, and they have a 28-year-old son together. You know your girlfriend is too damn young if she can’t remember Melanie before the Antonio tattoo. Hell, your girlfriend is too young if her age is anything that ends in “-teen“!

Wow, and people say my writing style is aggressive, with no holds barred.

Of course those of us at IM know "Dr. Gina" as a Sarah Palin pal, who once famously quit the reality show "Wife Swap" after her husband complained that "dark forces" had invaded their home.

Of course Loudon is a fundamentalist Christian, who homeschooled her daughter which adequately explains why Lyda now identifies herself as an "unsalvageable degenerate" and is currently dating a man old enough to be her creepy pedophile uncle.

Look kids will do what kids will do, but if you host a radio show and write books that gives advice about about raising children and maintaining strong relationships, it might help to have a child who actually makes moral and ethical decisions.

And by the way, the same goes for Loudon's crazy friend in Arizona.

Teabagger who claims to be "homeschooling expert" says that sex education is a liberal plot to create more Democrats. Wait, what?

Marjorie Holsten thinks sex ed is a Democratic plot.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

A conservative activist, who has been billed as a homeschooling expert by tea party groups, warned over the weekend that sex-ed courses were a plot to increase the number of Democratic voters by destroying marriages. 

In an interview with radio host Jan Markell, Marjorie Holsten argued that the only way that schools could teach sexual education in the Common Core curriculum would be to waive obscenity laws in many states. 

“People say to me, why would they teach such awful things to our children?” she remarked. “If you go deep down and you connect those dots, you see that when children are desensitized to sexual things, that affects their ability at a later date to bond with a spouse.” 

“And so if you have somebody who can’t bond, they’re not going to have a stable marriage. When you have unstable, broken households, how do they vote? Democrat. So this has a very evil underlying intent.”

Okay I am really confused by this.

How does understanding how procreation works, and how to prevent pregnancy and STD's, change a person's political outlook?

Is this woman admitting that the only way to keep making new Republicans is to have ignorant teenagers popping out kids before they learn any better? After all teen moms don't usually make it to college, and remain undereducated for the rest of their lives.

So THAT'S their plan!

And just how does this woman expect children to learn about sex if they do not have the opportunity to learn about it in school?  

Oh, she has an answer for that?


“They should learn it the way I did, by watching animals do it on the street,” Williams joked. 

“Actually, that was how I taught my children,” Holsten admitted. “We started with a boy guinea pig…” 

“What? You taught your kids sex-ed with guinea pigs?” Williams interrupted. 

“Well, we had a boy and a girl guinea pig that clearly liked each other,” Holsten said. “You really couldn’t see anything because they’re big, furry little fuzzball things. I mean, that’s why there isn’t guinea pig porn movies.”

She does understand that there is some difference between how human beings make the beast with two backs, and how guinea pigs do it right? Or maybe she doesn't.

You don't think she does that squealing thing during.....never mind. 

By the way I have not yet done the Google search but I would not be so quick to suggest that there is NO guinea pig porn out there.

I know I'M not going to look, but it just might exist.

Are we putting religious tolerance above the rights of America's children?

Courtesy of Alternet:  

The appropriate balance between freedom and harm can be hard to strike, particularly when it comes to religious freedom. In an attempt to find this balance, religious conservatives have been granted exemptions from a wide range of civil rights laws and social obligations. In the last two decades, one of the exemptions they have secured in many states is the right to opt out of school attendance for their children. 

Led by a group called Home School Legal Defense Association, a network of institutions and activists have sprung up to advocate the rights of parents to educate their children—or not—as they please. Now the largest generation of home-schooled children are coming of age, and some are telling horror stories that suggest parent privilege may have gone too far. 

A recent testimonial posted at Homeschoolers Anonymous opens like this: 

"It was not so much homeschooling that traumatized me as much as my mother’s mental illness. This was hidden by homeschooling, and the pain that damaged me came from the constant exposure to her psychiatric illness. I feel like someone roasted me over a fire, leaving me with burns to rest the remainder of my life, and I didn’t even know at the time what fire was. "

As with nutritional or sanitary neglect, lack of education can create lifelong hardships for those it affects. Ask any adult who has taken a college course while working full-time. Then imagine tackling years of remedial elementary, middle and high school courses while supporting yourself—and possibly a family—with a job so menial it doesn’t require a high school education. This outcome may not be the homeschool norm, but on websites like Homeschoolers Anonymous, homeschool alumni are reporting experiences of educational neglect in alarming numbers. 

Homeschooling families often portray themselves as a persecuted minority, but compared to homeschooled victims of neglect and abuse, responsible homeschooling parents are a formidable army. Represented by groups like the HSLDA, which has lawyers, publicists and media personalities at its command, these groups can easily paper the walls of a legislator’s office with letters listing their demands. But for young children who are having their futures stolen, these groups offer no solutions. 

Boiled down, most arguments for unregulated homeschooling amount to the same thing: “We must ignore the problems of abused homeschooled children to maintain the sovereignty of parents.” 

At the heart of this claim is religious homeschoolers’ insistence that God has elevated parents above any earthly authority. This is an attempt to resurrect an Old Testament-era legal theory, which afforded children no more right to life, liberty and self-direction than a sheep or a goat. It’s true thatbiblical fathers could do anything—including selling off their sons and daughters—but outside of homeschooling circles, few Americans would argue for a return to that kind of absolute parental license. 

In America, children are not possessions for parents to use or destroy. Rather, children are recognized as dependent beings whose bodies and futures are held in trust by their parents. Educational neglect is an abdication of a parent’s legal obligation of good stewardship. By failing to educate, parents potentially squander a child’s entire lifetime of future earnings and achievements. It’s difficult to imagine a more brazen theft. 

Having been burned by this debate before, I think it is important right off the back to differentiate between those who homeschool due to poor schools in their districts, or children with specialized needs, and those who homeschool for purely religious reasons, or as a method of controlling the lives of their children.

I have to say that as a person working in the mental health community, that there are many children with special needs who do not receive a diagnosis until they reach school age, and are evaluated by educational experts.

Therefore a child with learning disabilities may not receive that very important early intervention, and be left to sensibilities of a parent, with no background in education, who may see their child's lack of progress as a behavioral problem which needs to be addressed through punitive measures rather than educational strategies.

And that does not even consider the number of abusive, or mentally ill, parents who keep their children out of the public school system in order to protect themselves from prosecution or the risk of having their victims removed from their homes. 

I believe that I have already once shared the story of the little girls who lived behind me when I was a pre-teen, and who were kept home from school and raped repeatedly by their father, a deacon at a local church. When they made the mistake of confessing that to me that one day while out playing the family packed up and moved away the very next day.

I never saw or heard from them again.

As a professional I have seen numerous cases of abuse in the homes of religious homeschoolers that went unreported until somebody called the state and the children were removed from the home. Once the children were convinced they were safe the stories they would tell have left scars on my heart that will never fade.

Once again this is not ALL homeschooling families, nor is it ALL religious homeschooling families. Not by a long shot.

But it DOES happen, and all that it would take to minimize how often is to make sure that the homeschooling environment was regulated, and that the children are taken for regular doctor visits and possibly screenings for any potential learning difficulty or psychological concerns.

That may seem intrusive to some parents, but the fact is that often parents are NOT able to identify what is best for their children due to their own prejudices or the fact that they are too close to the problem.

To be blunt it is most often in the child's best interests for the role of parent and teacher to remain separate, and for the parent to remain involved, but not in charge, of a child's education.

And in my opinion, there is NEVER a time that religion should be considered before the best interests of the child. NEVER.

The stupification of America through Christian home schooling.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

A popular curriculum used by home-schooled students has drawn criticism for inaccurate, misleading information and an over-reliance on rote memorization, but those aspects may not be the worst things about it. 

A lot of the material that children are exposed to in the Accelerated Christian Education is just astonishingly stupid, according to a former Christian fundamentalist. 

Blogger Jonny Scarmanga shared some of the multiple-choice questions he found in some ACE packets used by British home-school students Monday on the blog, Leaving Fundamentalism. 

In one question aimed at 9- or 10-year-old fourth-graders, students are given this example: “Children played happily in the water spout.” They are then asked to define a water spout from three examples: “a stream of water,” “two dry ducks” or “playground.” 

Another example shows that “Elisabeth Howard sat and listened carefully.” Students are then challenged to identify whether Elisabeth Howard is “a kind of airplane” or “a missionary.” 

Still another question asks 12- or 13-year-old seventh-graders to identify whether sports coaches, piano tuners or librarians “can touch the lives of their students.” 

If that sounds like a trick question, that’s because it is. 

“The correct answer, for those puzzled, is piano tutors,” Scaramanga writes. “It’s not that ACE doesn’t believe that sports coaches or librarians can touch students’ lives. The point is that the exact sentence, ‘Piano tutors can touch the lives of their students,’ has previously appeared in (an ACE packet), and the student is expected to remember this. Verbatim regurgitation of previously seen material is the entire point of the ACE system.” 

The ACE curriculum relies on thousands of these multiple-choice questions to imprint the materials in students’ memories. 

The ACE curriculum is accredited by the Middle States Associations on Elementary and Secondary Schools and by government-funded voucher programs in 11 states. 

In the past, the curriculum has drawn criticism and scorn for teaching that the existence of the Loch Ness monster disproves evolution and that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. 

The materials also include a strong conservative political bias that suggests God’s own views are right-wing, while liberals are villainous, and students are taught that government programs should not be used to meet needs that can’t be filled by family members or churches. 

But those biases and falsehoods pale in comparison to a stupefying curriculum that expects to engage 10-year-olds by asking them whether an envelope is “a letter holder” or “donkey supplies.”

"Is our children learning?" Remember that famous George W. Bush quote?

Well the answer is that if you are using a Christian homes school curriculum probably not.  

The now inescapable conclusion that we MUST reach in response to what we are learning about Christian homeschooling is that it has literally NOTHING to do with education, and EVERYTHING to do with indoctrination. And to that end ignorance provides fertile soil to implant faith based "truths" to replace scientifically proven facts.

At this point I simply cannot see this outside of the context of a religion that has recognized that its influence and control over the people of this planet has a shelf life, and that the expiration date is rapidly approaching. Which is forcing them to fight with everything they have to defend themselves against progress and the logic on whose wings it is fast approaching.

I recognize that it may be insulting to those of you who still have a faith, but the facts are that it is easier to attract into the fold those who feel rather than think, and those who seek comfort rather than those who seek truth.

The Sarah Palin's of this world simply cannot exist in a world without religious faith. Nor by the way can Fox News, Right Wing radio, the "Pro-Life" Movement, televangelists, faith healers, or Islamic terrorists.

That may seem like a discordant group but all of them benefit from those who have less access to scientific information, and more access to propaganda and faith based "education."

Christian homeschooling appears to be designed to protect a base of supporters that many on the Right, both religious and political, rely on, and who they are desperately afraid of losing.

Those who don't know, believe what they are told by those who claim to have "special knowledge." And that is an important part of the business model not just for religion, but also for Fox News.

How Fundamentalism took over the homeschooling movement in America.

Courtesy of American Prospect:  

Homeschooling didn’t begin as a fundamentalist movement. In the 1960s, liberal author and educator John Holt advocated a child-directed form of learning that became “unschooling”—homeschooling without a fixed curriculum. The concept was picked up in the 1970s by education researcher Raymond Moore, a Seventh-Day Adventist, who argued that schooling children too early—before fourth grade—was developmentally harmful. Moore’s message came at a time when many conservative Christians were looking for alternatives to public schools. Moore’s work reached a massive audience when Focus on the Family founder and Christian parenting icon James Dobson invited him onto his radio show for the first time in 1982. Dobson would become the most persuasive champion of homeschooling, encouraging followers to withdraw their children from public schools to escape a “godless and immoral curriculum.” For conservative Christian parents, endorsements didn’t come any stronger than that. 

Over the next two decades, homeschooling boomed. Today, perhaps as many as two million children are homeschooled. (An accurate count is difficult to conduct, because many homeschoolers are not required to register with their states.) Homeschooling families come from varied backgrounds—there are secular liberals as well as Christians, along with an increasing number of Muslims and African Americans—but researchers estimate that between two-thirds and three-fourths are fundamentalists. 

Among Moore and Dobson’s listeners during that landmark broadcast was a pair of young lawyers, Michael Farris and Michael Smith, who the following year would found the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). With Moore’s imprimatur and Dobson’s backing, Farris and Smith started out defending homeschooling families at a time when the practice was effectively illegal in 30 states. As Christians withdrew their children from public school, often without requesting permission, truancy charges resulted. The HSLDA used them as test cases, challenging school districts and state laws in court while lobbying state legislators to establish a legal right to homeschool. By 1993, just ten years after the association’s founding, homeschooling was legal in all 50 states. 

What many lawmakers and parents failed to recognize were the extremist roots of fundamentalist homeschooling. The movement’s other patriarch was R.J. Rushdoony, founder of the radical theology of Christian Reconstructionism, which aims to turn the United States into an Old Testament theocracy, complete with stonings for children who strike their parents. Rushdoony, who argued that democracy was “heresy” and Southern slavery was “benevolent,” was too extreme for most conservative Christians, but he inspired a generation of religious-right leaders including Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson. He also provided expert testimony in early cases brought by the HSLDA. Rushdoony saw homeschooling as not just providing the biblical model for education but also a way to bleed the secular state dry. 

With support from national leaders, Christian homeschoolers established state-level groups across the country and took over the infrastructure of the movement. Today, when parents indicate an interest in homeschooling, they find themselves on the mailing lists of fundamentalist catalogs. When they go to state homeschooling conventions to browse curriculum options, they hear keynote speeches about biblical gender roles and creationism and find that textbooks are sold alongside ideological manifestos on modest dressing, proper Christian “courtship,” and the concept of “stay-at-home daughters” who forsake college to remain with their families until marriage. 

HSLDA is now one of the most powerful Christian-right groups in the country, with nearly 85,000 dues-paying members who send annual checks of $120. The group publicizes a steady stream of stories about persecuted homeschoolers and distributes tip sheets about what to do if social workers come knocking. Thanks to the group’s lawsuits and lobbying, though, that doesn’t happen often. Homeschooling now exists in a virtual legal void; parents have near-total authority over what their children learn and how they are disciplined. Not only are parents in 26 states not required to have their children tested but in 11 states, they don’t have to inform local schools when they’re withdrawing them. The states that require testing and registration often offer religious exemptions. 

The emphasis on discipline has given rise to a cottage industry promoting harsh parenting techniques as godly. Books like To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl promise that parents can snuff out rebellious behavior with a spanking regimen that starts when infants are a few months old. The Pearls claim to have sold nearly 700,000 copies of their book, most through bulk orders from church and homeschooling groups. The combination of those disciplinary techniques with unregulated homeschooling has spawned a growing number of horror stories now being circulated by the ex-homeschoolers—including that of Calista Springer, a 16-year-old in Michigan who died in a house fire while tied to her bed after her parents removed her from public school, or Hana Williams, an Ethiopian adoptee whose Washington state parents were convicted in September of killing her with starvation and abuse in a Pearl-style system. Materials from HSLDA were found in the home of Williams’s parents. 

I know from experience that there are few topics that elicit as an emotional response from my readers as that of homeschooling.  However I am also compelled to bring these facts to your attention, because this is how many Fundamentalists are undermining education in this country, isolating their children from their communities, and keeping social services from discovering harmful activities happening within their homes.

I have had some contact with children who were home schooled in the past, and most of them were seemingly quite well adjusted. Others exhibited symptoms of isolation, paranoia, and social awkwardness.

However the fact remains that there is a very purposeful agenda within the home school community, and it is NOT to better educate our children.

Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli is reaching out for help in the upcoming race. Help from Christian homeschoolers.

Courtesy of Right Wing Watch:  

Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli attended a fundraiser co-hosted by anti-gay and anti-choice activists. Now, the far-right state attorney general is calling for help from Religious Right leader Michael Farris, who runs Patrick Henry College and the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). 

Generation Joshua is the youth branch of the HSLDA, which sends homeschoolers to work on “races across the country, phone-banking, literature dropping and campaigning on behalf of conservative candidates” who oppose abortion rights and gay equality. “Many battles have been won on the homeschooling front, but there are many battles left to fight because the giants of abortion, homosexuality, and moral relativism remain in our land.” 

Cuccinelli was the keynote speaker at the Generation Joshua’s first annual Future of America Banquet, and now the right-wing organization is returning the favor. 

Watchdog.org reports that Generation Joshua is hoping to send around 200 students “to work with the Cuccinelli campaign in two weeks” as part of “Operation: Shock and Awe,” which is complete with this fantastic video:

Last December, Farris gained publicity for his drive to make sure that no gay students are attending Patrick Henry College. A Patrick Henry professor during the college's annual “Faith and Reason” lecture criticized the government for prosecuting rape, sexual harassment, child abuse and domestic violence cases. 

Oh yeah, nothing creepy about that!

I know that sometimes I get a lot of flack for speaking out against homeschooling, and yes I do realize that there are many parents educating their children properly, with NO religious indoctrination including in the curriculum, however the fact is that religous and political organizations have purposefully used homeschooling to isolate a population of young people, and use them for propaganda purposes, political activism, and to train them to openly challenge evolution and climate change in universities and other venues.

They are using Christian homeschooling to dumb down the population and reinforce the kind of faith based outlook which makes them easy to manipulate, and that is going to have serious repercussions on the future of this country.

Creationist Ken Ham claims that Christianity is under attack because people are upset that some parents are teaching their children to be idiots.

This is from Ham's website, ironically name, Answers in Genesis:

Christian education is under attack in America as never before. (Yep got to remind the sheep that they are constantly being persecuted, despite the fact that they own everything, control politics, and live in a country that they constantly brag is a "Christian nation.")

 Today, we bring your attention to another attack on Christian education. A Christian K–12 school in South Carolina, with dedicated and highly qualified Christian teachers,1 has come under vicious attack by atheists. Why? Because one of its instructors, a fourth-grade teacher, tested her children about biblical creation, science, and dinosaurs (using AiG resources), and she has become (in)famous on many atheist websites and blogs.

The to demonstrate how unfair the criticism is he provides a picture of the actual test. Here it is.

As you can see we Atheists are completely overreacting to a test which tells the child that dinosaurs were only about he size of sheep, the earth is NOT billions of years old, and that the Bible is the "History book of the Universe." How unreasonable of us.

Hamm goes on: 

The atheist buzz about the dinosaur-and-Bible quiz, however, is not really all that surprising. Over the past few years, we have seen atheists becoming more aggressive and intolerant towards Christians. (See the sidebar for just a few of the many examples we could cite.) They are attempting to impose their belief system (yes, their religion) on the culture. 

It seems that since the last presidential election, atheists have grown more confident about having something of a license to go after Christians. These secularists want to impose their anti-God religion on the culture. They are simply not content using legislatures and courts to protect the dogmatic teaching of their atheistic religion of evolution and millions of years in public schools. There is something else on their agenda: they are increasingly going after Christians and Christian institutions that teach God’s Word beginning in Genesis.

"Teaching their atheistic religion of evolution?" Seriously?

Clearly this moron has NO idea where the difference lies between science and faith, and seems to be laboring under the assumption that they share similar traits.

NO! They do NOT!

Science is open to challenge by ANYBODY, and every student who enters into a university classroom is encouraged to exam the evidence, test the hypothesis, and see if they come to a similar or different conclusion.  That is science.

Now religion?  Yeah, not so much.

And yet this idiot, who cannot tell the difference between the two, writes "science" textbooks for children.

As an Atheist let me just say that I am not interested in attacking religion simply for being a religion, if it is taught as a relgion.

But when you try to pass it off as science? Yeah then we have a problem!

Homeschoolers taking to the internet to blog about their experiences. As you might imagine they are not positive.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

In 2006 the evangelical magazine World featured 15-year-old Kierstyn King—then Kierstyn Paulino—in a piece about homeschooled kids who blog “to rebel against rebellion.” She was quoted describing her heroes: “‘First, Christ. After that: soldiers, my parents, and Ronald Reagan.’” On her blog, she wrote posts with titles like “The Case for Christians in Government,” arguing, “Our founding fathers built this land on Judeo-Christianity, and we have strayed too far from Christ.” 

These days King, 22, has a hard time stepping into a church without having a panic attack. She escaped—her word—from her family in Georgia on her 18th birthday and lives in Maine with her husband, also a former homeschooler. Very little is left of the ideology her parents worked so furiously to instill in her. She’s ashamed of the work she did as a leader in various homeschooling youth organizations, which, she writes, “contributed to the amount of hurt I and many others who grew up in this radical/evangelical/conservative/christian subculture endured and continue to endure.” 

She is, however, still blogging, both on her own and as part of Homeschoolers Anonymous, a new site that publishes children of Christian homeschooling families speaking out about upbringings that, they say, have left them traumatized and unprepared for adult life. “Our primary concern is for people to be exposed to our experiences growing up in the conservative Christian homeschooling world and to see how those ideologies can create abusive situations,” says Ryan Lee Stollar, one of the site’s founders.

I personally think that this huge push for homeschooling is essentially driven by religious fundamentalists who are terrified that society will teach their children that their belief system is antiquated and no longer relevant in these changing times.

And before you jump all over me, yes I realize that not ALL parents who home school do so because of a desire to control their children or keep them separated from others who might point out facts that debunk their parent's values or faith.  However you also must realize that YOU are not part of the Evangelical push to avoid public school in favor of religious based homeschooling.

I am thrilled to see that sometimes even early indoctrination is not enough to keep out young people from learning the truth. It give me hope for our future.

Evangelical homeshoolers rejecting Creationism in favor of Evolution. Possibly the best news of the day.

Courtesy of The Atlantic:

For homeschooling parents who want to teach their children that the earth is only a few thousand years old, the theory of evolution is a lie, and dinosaurs coexisted with humans, there is no shortage of materials. Kids can start with the Answers in Genesis curriculum, which features books such as Dinosaurs of Eden, written by Creation Museum founder Ken Ham. As the publisher's description states, "This exciting book for the entire family uses the Bible as a 'time machine' to journey through the events of the past and future." 

It's no secret that the majority of homeschooled children in America belong to evangelical Christian families. What's less known is that a growing number of their parents are dismayed by these textbooks. 

Take Erinn Cameron Warton, an evangelical Christian who homeschools her children. Warton, a scientist, says she was horrified when she opened a homeschool science textbook and found a picture of Adam and Eve putting a saddle on a dinosaur. "I nearly choked," says the mother of three. "When researching homeschooling curricula, I found that the majority of Christian homeschool textbooks are written from this ridiculous perspective. Once I saw this, I vowed never to use them." Instead, Warton has pulled together a curriculum inspired partly by homeschool pioneer Susan Wise Bauer and partly by the Waldorf holistic educational movement.

For many evangelical families, the rationale for homeschooling has nothing to do with a belief in Young Earth Creationism or a rejection of evolutionary theory. Some parents choose to homeschool because they're disenchanted with the values taught in the public school system. Others want to incorporate more travel into their children's education. Still others want to implement specific learning techniques they believe are more suitable for their children. 

 But whatever their reason for homeschooling, evangelical families who embrace modern science are becoming more vocal about it -- and are facing the inevitable criticism that comes with that choice. "We get a lot of flak from others for not using Christian textbooks," Warton says. 

The assertion that anyone who believes in evolution "disregards" the Bible offends many evangelicals who want their children to be well-versed in modern science. Jen Baird Seurkamp, an evangelical who homeschools her children, avoids textbooks that discredit evolution. "Our science curriculum is one currently used in public schools," she says. "We want our children to be educated, not sheltered from things we are afraid of them learning."

I think I shared with you the story of my daughter bringing her home school "textbook" to me which simply answered a question about where man came from by quoting Genesis, and in which a frighteningly large number of study questions could legitimately be answered with "God did it."

Ever since then I have had a very low opinion of Christian homeshoolers, and opinion that was in no way helped by watching the documentary "Jesus Camp." but I have to say that it THIS trend continues I will have to reevaluate my innate distrust of home schooling.

However I doubt very seriously that I will not always be a little suspicious that the purpose for MOST homeschoolers is to keep their children isolated from alternative points of view that might endanger their ability to indoctrinate their children into certain religious or cultural traditions that are not supported by our progressive nation as a whole.

Lawrence O'Donnell visibly chokes up as he describes the Senate's "Day of Shame."

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Courtesy of MSNBC:  

“Having worked in the Senate for seven years, I think the Senate remains a great institution which has done much, much more to be proud of than the rare occurrences that it should be ashamed of. I don’t usually think that when a vote doesn’t go my way in the United States Senate that the Senate should be ashamed of itself,” said O’Donnell in Tuesday’s edition of The Last Word. 

Despite impassioned pleas from decorated veterans Sen. John Kerry and Sen. John McCain, the vote to ratify to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) fell short on Tuesday, 61 to 38. All of the opposing votes were from Republicans. 

The CRPD was modeled on the Americans with Disabilities Act, a law passed by the Senate 22 years ago. Similarly, CRPD promoted nondiscrimination and accessibility measures, making sure things like sidewalk ramps and handicapped accessible restrooms are up to par with U.S. standards. 

O’Donnell accused these GOP senators of failing one disabled person in particular: former Republican Majority Leader Bob Dole, himself a disabled veteran, who was sitting in a wheelchair on the chamber’s floor. 

“Bob Dole reached into their hearts and today found…nothing,” said O’Donnell. “With one word–no–they failed their old friend. They dishonored themselves and they dishonored the United States Senate.

I have to admit that in the last twelve years I have become more an more cynical, but this incredibly distasteful display of cowardice by the Republican party has shocked me. And the truly puzzling part is that I cannot think if a reasonable excuse for their behavior.

It is as if they are hand me down puppets and anybody, with ANY political clout, is welcome to pull their strings.

Here is another observation.

I don't know how many of you bother to visit over at Fox, and I am certainly not suggesting you do so, but if you did you would notice that the "pundits" over there are forever worked up over something. The "War on Christmas," Obama's socialist policies, Benghazi, etc., etc., etc..

However it always feels to me as if they are playing a part.  You know, as if they simply don't believe in ANY of it, but know that it fires up their audience and attracts their dimwitted viewers like moths to an open flame.

I do not have the same opinion of the folks over at MSNBC. Which is perhaps why I choose to watch them almost exclusively.

They are true believers.

When Lawrence O'Donnell goes on one of his rants, you can feel his passion. When Rachel Maddow zeroes on on a story and then explains it in terminology that makes a complicated issue accessible to the audience, you know it is important to her that you understand. When Chris Matthews cries out in frustration that the President blew his first debate, you feel that his anguish was real. The same goes for Al Sharpton and Ed Schultz.

In other words they are not simply on television to gin up ratings or sell their books, they are there to inform, to correct, and to inspire the viewer. And I have to say that they do that quite well.

Operatives backed by the Koch Brothers are attempting to destroy public education in America.

Make no mistake, be it the voucher system, charter schools, or the promoting of home schooling, the underlying purpose is to undermine, and eventually do away with, the public school system.

The video shows what happened in just one county, but tactics like this are being used all over the country.

Just like recognizing Dominionism when it rears its ugly head we also have to recognize the agenda of those who are attacking our public schools and fight them at every turn. (Different tactics, with a similar agenda, are currently being used right here in Anchorage, Alaska.)

Make no mistake my friends, we are in a battle. And we have to first recognize our enemies, and then be prepared to stop them before they can gain a foothold and begin to deconstruct the very foundation on which this great nation was built.  Our public education system.

How come I didn't know that Clark Griswold was running for President?

Oh I'm sorry it is not Clark Griswold, it's Rick Santorum!  But you do see how easy it is to get them confused, right?

I know what you are thinking. "Oh Gryphen, you are messing with us. That MUST be a parody."

Nope, it's not.

It is the desperate attempt by Rick Santorum to mimic Sarah Palin's "highly successful" political bus tour/family vacation in order to get some national attention.  Because dammit, Rick Santorum recognizes a good idea when he sees one!

Gee I wonder if Santorum will "ride a hog" like Sister Sarah did?

By the way I also stumbled across some footage of the Santorum road trip that was not used in the political ad. (If you are at work you might want to skip this video until later, as it contains some quite a lot of adult language.)



But don't worry kids, it will not JUST be about Rick "The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex" Santorum taking his children around and lying to them about American History, he will also be sharing that ignorance with the American people he meets along the way.

Santorum said he’s been criticized for saying earlier this week, “Schools indoctrinate our children.” He added, “I said ‘indoctrination’ and I meant it.”

Rick Santorum speaks earlier Thursday at a restaurant in Rock Rapids.


As an example, he said: “Sixty-two percent of incoming freshmen come into college with a faith conviction and leave without it. … I suspect if you took a control group of kids who don’t go to college, that doesn’t happen.”

“We see this humanism and secularism being pushed on our children,” said Santorum, who, with his wife, Karen, has been home-schooling their seven children through about eighth grade.

That's right folks!  Rick Santorum's message to America is "Don't allow your children to become educated. It just makes them too intelligent to buy into your Theocratic bullshit! And THAT is just bad for America!"


(H/T to the Huffington Post.)

Hot potato issue of the day, Homeschooling.

If Alaska parents want to home-school their child, no paperwork needs to be filed, no phone call made. No one need be told.

As for the student, no specific subjects need to be studied, no number of hours need be logged behind a desk, no tests taken.

Alaska has the most lax home-schooling law in the country.

No one even knows how many Alaska children stay home instead of attending a public or private school -- they aren't tracked or monitored.

As many of you know I did work for the Alaska School District until just recently and I can attest that it is one of the best education systems in the country. Wonderful teachers, a varied curriculum, and countless opportunities are available for children with special needs or who are academically gifted. I would not claim that every single child that enters Alaska schools gets exactly what they need, but I can say that the effort is definitely made and the resources are almost always readily available.

There are special ed teachers, counselors, school psychologists, school nurses, physical education teachers, etc., who receive the specialized training in their field of expertise to provide the services they were hired to provide. What parent has all of those resources close at hand in the home when their child needs them?

And there is a very important the social component to attending school. Part of our education system is learning how to successfully interact with other people. And that is made much harder when the child is almost exclusively surrounded by family members.

I used to teach gymnastics and I would often get home schooled students looking for a PE credit to meet their educational requirement. For the most part the kids were quite intelligent, but they had limited social skills. One boy in particular did not know how to express to me that he was not feeling well and ended up vomiting in the middle of the trampoline. He was so overcome with shame that he locked himself in the bathroom until his Mom came to get him. And this kid was fifteen years old!

Home-school advocates say the lack of reporting and regulation is the way it should be because it leaves parents free to make choices for the child. But others say it leaves an uncounted number of children at the mercy of parents who don't have what it takes to give kids what they need to avoid being left behind in life.

I consider myself to be pretty intelligent, on paper I appear even smarter, but I am all too aware of my limitations. I could confidently manage to assist my children in learning to read, discovering science, and studying history, but when it came to math I might as well be a tree stump for all of the help I would be able to provide. Math skills simply elude me.

I could probably teach from a manual provided by homeschool publishing companies, but I would not be able to expand on the information provided. I could not flesh it out, or come at it from a different direction if my child proved to be as dense as I am on the subject. I simply do not have the tools. But a high school math teacher undoubtedly would.

Across the country, the popularity of home-schooling is growing. The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that from 1999 to 2003, the number of home-schooled children increased from about 850,000 to roughly 1.1 million, a 29 percent jump. National home-schooling proponents suggest even higher estimates today of around 2 to 2.5 million children. But again, no one knows for sure.

2.5 million homeschooled children? That is a whole hell of a lot of kids! These are future adults who may not accept the same scientific facts as their peers. Who may not have learned to take turns like their peers. Who may not have been exposed to as many people of a different ethnicity, or even gender as their peers. And yet we expect them to interact as effectively with each other as their peers?

I have to say that kind of concerns me.

In school we learn to accept that there are people who do not believe like we do.

In school we learn that the rules of society are to be obeyed.

In school we learn that often things are not simply black and white, but rather varying shades of gray.

In school we learn that as great as mom and dad are, they are not always right.

Where else will those lessons be taught if we do not attend school?

So exactly why do parents choose to homeschool their children?

Some parents home-school for religious reasons. Some because their child has learning disabilities and needs special one-on-one attention that schools don't offer. Some because they don't like the public school social environments where their kids are bullied. And others because they think their kid will get more out of individualized instruction.

I know that there are parents who choose to homeschool their children because they really do believe they can provide the best education for their little one. And for a handful that is probably true.

But a lot of parents seem to be choosing to keep their kids home NOT because they can give their children the best education possible, but because they want to control what their child learns. Perhaps they do not feel comfortable exposing their child to other ethnicity's, or liberal points of view, or, and this is most often the case, secularism.

They do not want their little snowflake to realize that people of a different faith are not monsters, or that evolution is not a sign of the Apocalypse, or that the earth is not the center of the universe. They want to shape the mind of their child to think EXACTLY LIKE THEY DO.

They want to create, in effect, a clone who accepts their own stilted view of the world.

Now let me add this disclaimer. There are indeed a number of legitimate reasons to homeschool your children. But I stand by my assertion that those are the exception to the usual reason that parents choose to do so. For the majority of the parents making the homeschool choice it is less about education, and more about control.

And this is especially true concerning fundamentalist Christian parents who are terrified that somebody may teach their child information not sanctioned by their church. So to keep the minds of little Jimmy and Sally pristine and uncluttered with "facts" they simply remove them from the source of that kind of information, the public school.

By this method an army is created of people who have never learned to utilize "critical thinking", who readily accept as "fact" whatever their parents, ministers, or elected officials tell them, and who are easily directed to do whatever their masters tell them to do.

We have seen them for ourselves. They are the thousands of people attending 9-12 protests, they are the screamers at the health care town halls, they are the supposed millions of people who watch FOX News like it is the gospel. This what the Republicans have been trying to accomplish for decades by vilifying public schools and pushing for private (read "religious" schools) and homeschools.

This is THEIR demographic. Those that are instructed to"believe" instead of using that amazing intellect of theirs to "think"(Why would a GOD give you such a magnificent organ if he did not want you to use it?). That is the monster that the conservative Republicans are attempting to create. A simple minded mob that responds to their Pavlovian catch phrases.

Abortion! "Save the babies!"

Communism! "Save our democracy!"

Atheism! "Save our religion!"

Socialism! "Stop this President!"

I am afraid my friends that Frankenstein has successfully brought his creature to life, and it will take far more then simple pitchforks and torches to drive it away.