Texas Wants to Steal Religious Freedom From Parents | Opinion

SB 1515, a bill that would have mandated the display of the Ten Commandments in Texas public school classrooms, died after failing to get a vote in the state House of Representatives on Tuesday night. This bill was just the latest attempt by Christian nationalist politicians to use the power of the state to push conservative Christian ideology onto children.

Despite their near-constant insistence that religious freedom is under attack in the public square and their portrayals of LGBTQ inclusion or discussions of systemic racism as forms of indoctrination, the Christian nationalist politicians who are behind SB 1515 and other bills like it across the country are the biggest threat to free speech, free inquiry, and genuine religious freedom today.

The defining characteristics of their ideology are hypocrisy and lies. They revel in it. When SB 1515 was introduced, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick tweeted that he would "never stop fighting for religious liberty in Texas" and that "allowing the Ten Commandments and prayer back into our public schools is one step we can take to make sure all Texans have the right to freely express their sincerely held religious beliefs."

Allowing them "back in?" The Ten Commandments and prayer were never removed from schools in the first place. Trust me, I would know. In 1963, the founder of my organization, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, was on the winning side of a court case that ended mandatory Bible readings and prayer recitation from public schools.

There has never been, nor could there ever be, any law banning student-led and student-initiated prayer from schools. Students learn about the Ten Commandments—and other religious texts—in world religion classes.

And what I and the overwhelming majority of Americans view as religious liberty is incompatible with Lt. Gov. Patrick's authoritarian, big-government mandate that the Ten Commandments—a Protestant version of them, to be specific—be hung in every classroom and used as a basis for instruction, or that our kids' math teachers lead their classes in devotional prayer.

The last thing any of us should want is for public school teachers to become ministers of the faith, indoctrinating our children into the state's preferred religious tradition.

Recent surveys show that almost a third of Americans are nonreligious. Those of us who want nothing to do with Lt. Gov. Patrick's religion—not just atheists and nonbelievers, but Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Mormons, Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus—are being told that his judgment about moral and religious teachings should trump our own. What happened to their supposed concern about the rights of parents?

The answer is simple: Patrick and his Christian nationalist allies don't care about the rights of non-white, non-straight, non-conservative, and non-Christian students and parents. They believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that America was founded as a Christian nation and should return to that imagined historical tradition. And they believe that requires using the government to prop up their beliefs and indoctrinate our kids.

To justify their ahistorical beliefs, they have to rely on the testimony of hucksters and frauds like David Barton, the founder of WallBuilders, a group that purports to teach about "America's forgotten history and heroes." Barton, an amateur historian and Christian nationalist activist who is probably best known for having his book recalled by its Christian publisher due to massive factual errors, presumably describes this history as "forgotten" because "completely made up" likely wouldn't sell quite as many books or get him as many speaking engagements.

Barton and his son Tim were on hand at a hearing for SB 1515 to argue that hanging the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms was vital to restoring the moral fabric of our nation and would even prevent school shootings: "If we had more people following the Ten Commandments, we would solve as many of the issues we are seeing today. [...] If more students were learning things like, 'don't kill other people,' the world would be a far better place."

But that's a far cry from what the Ten Commandments actually say. Sure, "thou shalt not kill" is in there. But so are requirements to "have no other gods" and to "remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." As are prohibitions on creating "graven images" or using the "the Name of the Lord thy God" in vain. And the rest—prohibitions on lying, adultery, stealing, and coveting, along with an admonishment to honor our parents—are far from unique to Christianity.

Rather than spend their time addressing the very real problems faced by Texans — a gun violence epidemic, rising housing costs and homelessness, and repeated failures of the state's electrical grid — legislators are instead focused on torturing women who are carrying non-viable pregnancies, investigating the parents of trans young people, banning books and discussions of accurate racial history in public schools and universities, and elevating one particular set of religious beliefs above all others.

While SB 1515 failed this time, it wasn't the only attempt at Christian Nationalist indoctrination coming out of Texas. A bill allowing unlicensed, unregulated chaplains to replace school counselors has passed both chambers. It allows taxpayer money to be spent to pay the chaplains' salaries, but the bill lacks any safeguards against state-funded evangelism.

We've not seen the last of Christian nationalist bills like SB 1515. The Supreme Court, dominated by the same ideology espoused by Lt. Gov. Patrick and his allies, has shown a willingness to favor religious litigants even when it violates decades of precedent. And like David Barton, when the truth isn't on their side, the court will simply invent more convenient "facts" or "history" to justify its actions.

How long will Texans sit by while their elected officials ignore the actual problems facing their state and instead spend their time on worthless bills like SB 1515? It's difficult to know. But for now, it's fortunate that public school teachers won't have to find space to hang another religious poster on their classroom walls. And they won't have to figure out how to explain "graven images," "adultery," or exactly what a "maidservant" is to third graders.

Nick Fish is the president of American Atheists and a seasoned civil rights and civil liberties advocate with 15 years of policy, political, and organizing experience fighting for the rights of atheists, humanists, and all nonreligious Americans.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.