Looking beyond the beltway for a moment, it appears the beloved culture war is as heated as ever across the country.<\/p>\n
* Alabama<\/b>: A Republican lawmaker recently tried to pass state legislation that would ban public school libraries from stocking plays or books by gay authors, or about gay characters. “I don’t look at it as censorship,” says State Representative Gerald Allen. “I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children.” Allen’s proposal ultimately did not pass<\/a> the State House, not for lack of support, but because the legislature did not have a quorum when the bill came to the floor.<\/p>\n * In Mississippi<\/b>: A new law<\/a> makes it permissible for the state government to promote the Ten Commandments, the “In God We Trust” motto, and excerpts of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount on public property.<\/p>\n * In Colorado<\/b>: A middle school guidance counselor was recently asked to read the Pledge of Allegiance over the school’s loudspeaker. In an attempt to be more inclusive of a diverse student body, the woman, Margo Lucero, got to the controversial part and said, “One nation, under your belief system<\/a>, with liberty and justice for all.” Several local families went berserk and Lucero apologized. Jefferson County School District Superintendent Cindy Stevenson — without a hint of irony –said, “Adults should not try to influence children with their personal conscience.” (Yes, especially when other adults are trying to influence children with a different personal conscience.)<\/p>\n * In academia<\/b>: An increasing number of scholars are shifting from B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (anno Domini) to B.C.E. (Before Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era). Like Bill O’Reilly hearing some store clerk wish him a “happy holidays” in December, religious activists aren’t happy<\/a>. “The use of B.C.E. and C.E. is not mere verbal tweaking; rather it is integral to the leftist language police — a concerted attack on the religious foundation of our social and political order,” said Candace de Russy, a national writer on education and Catholic issues and a trustee for the State University of New York.<\/p>\n No, I guess we can’t all get along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Looking beyond the beltway for a moment, it appears the beloved culture war is as heated as ever across the country. * Alabama: A Republican lawmaker recently tried to pass state legislation that would ban public school libraries from stocking plays or books by gay authors, or about gay characters. “I don’t look at it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}