Now With More Rape And Dung-Eating: Bible Verses The Idaho Public School Way!
These are just very good Bible verses.
In 2021, a Pew Research poll found that only 63 percent of Americans identify as Christians, down from 75 percent a decade ago. This coincides with the well-documented increase in “nones” — a group comprising atheists, agnostics, and those who describe their religion as “nothing in particular” — who now make up about a third of the US population.
Awkwardly, this has coincided with an increase in the number of Republicans who identify as Christian Nationalists or as sympathetic to those views, now over half of the party. It does make sense though. I would imagine that the fewer people believe in a religion or supernatural idea, the harder it is for those who do to maintain that belief or at least not question it.
Thus, we’ve had a whole bunch of proposed bills lately from Republicans trying to force Christianity on other people’s children and reinforce it in those who already believe, while those children are attending public schools. Like this new one from Idaho that will require passages from the Bible to be read, “without comment,” every morning in every “occupied” classroom in the state.
Teachers will be able to refuse to do it if they want, but will have to appoint someone else to do it for them. Children will be allowed to leave the classroom if they have a note from their parents excusing them from it, because godforbid kids are allowed to choose their own beliefs separate from their parents.
“This bill seeks to cultivate morality and encourage good citizenship,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Coeur d’Alene, told the state House on Thursday. Because what’s better citizenship than forcing your religion on other people’s children? And surely there is no other way to teach children morality than by attaching it to belief in the supernatural. I know I’d go around murdering people all of the time were it not for the threat of being haunted by ghosts with unfinished business.
Prayer in school and the reading of Bible passages was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1963’s Pennsylvania v. Schempp, but since we now have a Court sympathetic to Christian nationalism, finding in favor of a coach who was fired for (refusing to stop) praying with his players on the football field, challenges to that precedent have been popping up in several states around the country. In Oklahoma, for instance, schools are now require to plaster the Ten Commandments in every classroom and teach the Bible in schools (and by sheer coincidence, one of the only Bibles that meets their standards is the Trump Bible!).
If you are thinking “Well! If they’re going to read passages from the Bible, won’t they also have to read from other religious texts?” Well, not according to Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center, which authored the bill.
Conzatti explained that he does not believe the law would be found unconstitutional because, prior to 1963, when doing so was found to be unconstitutional, Idaho required Bible passages to be read in the classroom, thus there is historical precedent — which goes along with the Supreme Court’s new direction of considering “history” and “tradition” along with, you know, actual constitutional law when considering a case.
“State legislatures have the primary authority for shaping school curriculum and education standards, and there is no need to give equal time to every competing religious historical or literary text,” Conzatti said.
There are and will be challenges to these laws, but the fact is, we are in a new era. An era in which the Constitution just no longer applies to anything anyone in the Republican Party might want to do. With that in mind, I’ve come up with a few Bible verses that I think might be a great idea to read out loud in Idaho classrooms.
Like this one about how, if you are hostile to God, you will cannibalize your own children, like my gerbils did back in when I was in elementary school.
If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you. I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings. I myself will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled. I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. (Leviticus 26:14-33)
He seems like a very secure individual!
I’m also partial to this one about smashing infants on rocks:
Happy are those who seize your children and smash them against a rock. (Psalms 137:9)
It’s nice to have hobbies.
The Lord also likes to punish men by letting other men rape their wives and kill their children:
Thus says the Lord: “I will bring evil upon you out of your own house. I will take your wives (plural) while you live to see it, and will give them to your neighbor. He shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. You have done this deed in secret, but I will bring it about in the presence of all Israel, and with the sun looking down.”
Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan answered David: “The Lord on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die. But since you have utterly spurned the Lord by this deed, the child born to you must surely die.” (2 Samuel 12:11-14)
There is also some very good advice in here about how people should only beat their slaves half to death.
“When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.” (Exodus 21:20-21)
As well as some rules about rape.
“If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.” (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
Not sure how well either of these would hold up in a court of law.
God also has some very normal rules for traveling abroad.
As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you. But these instructions apply only to distant towns, not to the towns of nations nearby. (Deuteronomy 20:10-18)
As well as some rules about coprophagy that could make even Pasolini gag:
“Each day prepare your bread as you would barley cakes. While all the people are watching, bake it over a fire using dried human dung as fuel and then eat the bread. For this is what the LORD says: Israel will eat defiled bread in the Gentile lands, where I will banish them!” Then I said, “O Sovereign LORD, must I be defiled by using human dung? For I have never been defiled before. From the time I was a child until now I have never eaten any animal that died of sickness or that I found dead. And I have never eaten any of the animals that our laws forbid.” “All right,” the LORD said. “You may bake your bread with cow dung instead of human dung.” (Ezekiel 4:12-15)
Have a disobedient son? Ask your neighbors to stone him to death!
Suppose a man has a stubborn, rebellious son who will not obey his father or mother, even though they discipline him. In such cases, the father and mother must take the son before the leaders of the town. They must declare: “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious and refuses to obey. He is a worthless drunkard.” Then all the men of the town must stone him to death. In this way, you will cleanse this evil from among you, and all Israel will hear about it and be afraid. (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
Yep, nothing like Bible verses to instill morality in children.
After all, we would not want children to go around cooking with excrement the wrong way or to think they could get away with raping someone without paying that person’s dad some money and then marrying them. That would just be foolish. What are teachers supposed to do? Just tell kids not to lie or steal or physically harm other people because it’s “the right thing to do” and not because the alternative is being stoned to death in the town square?
I’d like to have hope that this won’t pass or, if it does, will be struck down by the courts, but there’s really not much reason to believe it will.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
"in every 'occupied' classroom"
They don't even see the irony, do they?
MAJOR BREAKING: Pope Francis has written a letter to US Bishops saying he’s following “major crisis” of “mass deportations;” takes on Vance saying “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan”
https://bsky.app/profile/richraho.bsky.social/post/3lhvlwqd6hc2z
Looks like Pope Francis is pissed off at US Catholic bishops marching lockstep with the GOP.