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.
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…
Alberta, Canada, 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).
Conservatives have been trying to kill public schools since integration was forced on them. Notice that this was a “virtual” school?
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.
You mean you didnt expect actual change in your life by only typing in political subs? Can’t argue with that
I assume they meant a Republican taking a stand against Christian nationalism.
He didn’t, his problem is that they may have to fund other religious schools if this goes through.
Yes, while doing nothing to change their opinions besides typing here
What are you talking about?
Too bad we don’t have a political party with a platform that includes being true to the foundations of our government, such as adhering to the Constitution.
Open it so we can burn it down.
this fella is going to be fired. may even consider driving instead of flying for awhile
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”
You’re right that it is human psychology but 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 of something rather than admit we don’t know why it happens , so we are inclined to believe the leading theory even if it doesn’t have supporting evidence.
As we grow and learn about the knowledge modern 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.
Fuck you
about the level of maturity expected from someone who signed up to lemmy for porn
