Oklahoma- together with Kansas and Arkansas, it's the hard, stupid core of American right-wing conservatism.* I mean, the kind other American conservatives (the kind that call themselves Classical Liberals or Southpark Republicans) are embarrassed by. The left has Berkeley. You get the picture, surely.
Perhaps some of you furrinners** think the whole of the U.S. is run by people who think like that school board, but it's not. There's a great deal more squawking in the media by Christians (who, I should ad, the mainstream media holds with some contempt) who feel threatened by the pervasive secularization of American culture. I don't have much time for them, either.
But the sort of discrimination- I think we can all agree to call that spade a spade- is rare, especially from a public school. It was an outrage. I'd like to think it could only happen following the Columbine shootings- those of you who were in school then might remember what it as like. A lot of schools suddenly became very frightened of their nonconformists; plenty prohibited wearing black clothes. My high school was closed for a day because someone scrawled a nasty note in a bathroom stall about some popular kids deserving to die. It was a very paranoid time and a lot of schools got away with policies that wouldn't have flown otherwise. Please keep that in mind.
Just so I'm clear, I'm opposed to this in general and in specific. I've gone to school with Southern Baptists, Wiccans, Pagans, and most the in-between. I by far prefer the Wiccans. I'm one of those bland, non-militant atheists that wishes we should all get along, so long as public policy isn't based on scriptures.
*Unless you count those neo-Nazi wackjobs out in Montana and Idaho.
**That's "foreigners" rendered with an ignorant Southern accent
