Louisiana Lawmakers Want to Force Students to Publicly Declare Rights Come From the 'Creator'

[rug]

Bill Ignores Separation of Church and State, Science, Atheists, Agnostics

by LAUREN MCGRATH
June 10, 2016 2:49 PM

A recent House Bill introduced to the Louisiana State Senate would require all public school students in grades 4-6 to recite every day a passage from the Declaration of Independence claiming that their rights are given to them by "their Creator." The House has already passed the bill, 70-23.

State Representative Valerie Hodges' HB 1035, which arrived in the Louisiana Senate last week, injects the following into elementary school students' morning pledges, taken from the Declaration's introduction:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

While the Pledge of Allegiance already contains verbiage referring to "one nation under God," added to the original in 1954, HB 1035 takes the now religiously influenced declaration a step further with this addition to schoolchildren's morning routine. Though many see the bill as innocuous, as it would only affect three grade levels, others worry that this is simply inching towards more aggressive policies enforcing the inclusion of religion in secular spaces.

Rep. Hodges' biography on her website notes she "was a missionary along with her husband for 18 years," and states they founded and still oversee a dozen churches in Nicaragua and Mexico.

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/857912/proposed_bill_in_louisiana_forces_students_to_thank_creator

https://www.legis.la.gov/legis/BillInfo.aspx?i=230310

[3catwoman3]

1. I find the whole idea of missionaries very disturbing.

People need to mind their own business, especially in spiritual matters. If you want to help people in need, just help them, with no strings attached to any belief system.

[cheapdate]

2. Thomas Jefferson, the author of those words, had a library full of the writings

of "heretics and infidels". By necessity, he stayed publicly discreet about his deist beliefs, which were somewhere in the middle of the "infamous" Dutch atheist Spinoza and the inscrutable "Nature's God" of Locke.

The "Creator" Jefferson had in mind doesn't mean exactly what the Louisiana lawmakers think it did.

[rug]

3. They ignore that expressions of religious, or nonreligious, belief are protected speech.

[Igel]

4. You don't have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

Non-speech is protected.

I have trouble believing that recitation of this part of the organic laws of the United States would be treated differently.

[rug]

6. It's a stunt that, if passed, will be thrown out by the courts.

[cheapdate]

5. The "origin" of rights, if such a thing exists,

is an unsettled question, to say the least. The idea of the government forcing anyone to acknowledge one answer as the correct one galls me to my very core.

I'm personally of the opinion that 1) we are biologically predisposed to have some basic instinct for fairness and cooperation, and 2) we learn essential morality from our earliest stage of infancy in the arms of our mothers or caregivers (we are cared for and learn that caring is what we do, we are loved and learn that loving is what we do, etc.)

[Brettongarcia]

7. Is Louisiana the lowest state in academic achievement

Or is it another southern state: Mississippi? Where Mitch McConnell went to law school. (The aptly named Ol' Miss).

[rug]

8. And he went there two years after James Meredith desegregated it.

He's still pissed off about it.