OK: Freedom and Rights Only For The Chosen

It takes someone with no shame to really show how intellectually and morally bankrupt some rhetoric can be. And that someone is Oklahoma's Education Dudebro-in-Chief Ryan Walters, aided by his very special crew. 

Walters wants to see the state "champion religious freedom," like the Catholic "public" charter school that the state is trying to launch (and their Republican attorney general is trying to stop). Somehow, "religious freedom" means to Walters that the Ten Commandments should be posted in every single classroom in the state. 

They should be on display as "a founding document of our country" because our country is "founded on Judeo-Christian values and we should place a priority on learning about this important historical precedent." This will part of his fight against "state-sponsored atheism," a thing that doesn't actually exist. But it's pretty clear that Walters means that religious freedom is actually only for Christians (with some Judeo- thrown in there). Oklahoma students should not have the freedom to have their religious values posted in the classroom if those values aren't "Juseo-Christian," nor do they have the freedom to avoid having the Ten Commandments imposed on them.

But the real display of bullshittery dropped today, thanks to Tyler Kingkade at NBC News.

Here's a real Ryan Walters quote from an interview on far-right Real America's Voice:

Parents absolutely know what’s best for kids, and anyone who doesn’t understand has no business being involved in education whatsoever,

As we've seen repeatedly, parents are only entitled to these kinds of rights if they're the right kind of parents. And nothing displays that like this story. Read Kingkade's full write-up, but here are the basics: 

16 year old trans high school student J. Doe went to court to obtain an order to update his official records to reflect his chosen gender. The state Board of Education caught wind of it and passed a special emergency rule just to stop him. Then they voted unanimously to require J. Doe's records to continue listing him as a female. 

Mind you, at every step of the way, J. Doe has had the support of his parents. But the board not only stepped in to stop them, but took the action without notifying the parents or giving them a chance to have their say. Because the parents who absolutely know what's best for their kids are only those parents that Walters and the board agree with.

Walters, at least, was direct, saying "We're going to stand against this. We're not going to do the transgender game of back and forth, back and forth," imagining, I guess, that transgender persons like to switch genders back and forth repeatedly as part of the evil "transgender ideology." The board offered some sort of half-baked baloney about "accuracy of historical records." Sure.

So once again, we learn that parental rights are only for certain parents, and that those certain parents also have the right to impose their values on Those Other Parents who belief Wrong Things. It's a shame, because parents really should have rights when it comes to their children--but that's all parents, not just a select few.

But now the emergency rule has been solidified, and no transgender student will ever be able to update their records without permission of the Oklahoma Department of Education. 

One wonders what other objectionable actions Walters feels the state should repress. Should students be prohibited from attending non-Judeo-Christian places of worship? Should 18-year-olds still in school be forbidden to register Democrat without Department of Education approval? If it's okay to use the power of the state to repress "transgender ideology" and "atheism," what other sorts of Wrong Thinking should be subject to state oversight, and would it be too on the nose to call these transgressions Thought Crimes? And if all these restrictions are appropriate for students, how much longer before a call to implement them for adults? 

Wouldn't it be interesting to hear Walters answer the question, "The parents that you are certain are dead wrong--what rights do they have?"

J. Doe's family is taking the state to court. Here's hoping, please, that the court calls Walters and his crew out and correctly sees that you can't get away with stripping freedoms and rights by just saying "freedom" and "rights" over and over while you do it.