Ryan Walters Divorce

Divorce sucks. I'm a once-divorced guy on marriage #2, and like virtually everyone in this country, I know sizable number of divorced persons, and not one of them says, "Yeah, that was fabulous and I wish 
everyone could go through it."

Ryan Walters is going to go through it. Not only is he going to go through it, but he's the one who filed.

If you've forgotten about Walters, I could link to a dozen posts about him here, or I could let Robyn Pennachia at Wonkette sum up some career highlights. 

Former Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters is one of the holiest men in all the land. He worked tirelessly for many years to use the power of the state to convert children to Christianity, without care or regard to how “unconstitutional” that was. A Bible in every classroom! Every wall straight up papered with the Ten Commandments! State funding for Catholic charter schools! Forcing kids to watch videos of him praying to Donald Trump! Sure, many of his initiatives failed, but he did ultimately succeed in one thing: spending over $100,000 in taxpayer funds to pay PR firms to promote his “personal brand” and secure over 400 media appearances for him.

He has since finished with that job (though it has not finished with him-- he's just been sued by one of the teachers whose career he tried to destroy for insufficient MAGA devotion). Now he heads a right wing anti-teacher-union group. 

The divorce petition he filed against his wife cites "a state of complete and irreconcilable incompatibility" as the reason for the divorce, claiming that this "destroyed the aims of the marriage of the parties and rendered its continuation impossible." Otherwise known as a no-fault divorce.

I am not here to jeer or mock Walters over this. As I said, divorce sucks, and while it is sometimes inevitable, it's also wrenching and painful and confusing and difficult and all the complicated things a human-to-human unraveling can be. And there are four children involved which really sucks for everyone.

Walters has absolutely been a rabid christianist culture warrior, part of the same crew that considers no-fault divorce a scourge and insists that if we just put the decalogue up in classrooms and make everyone read the Bible and just follow God's law to the black and white letter, our lives will unfold in pristine straight lines. Just live your life in the light, avoid the dark, and don't let anyone tell you that life is sometimes complicated and grey. Folks like this get kicked in the gut but wiggly grey reality all the time; Walters just happens to be one of the ones who gets kicked in public. 

Thing is, Walters has kicked a lot of other people in public who did not ask for it, even as he has used his position to deliver a lot of noise about how other people should live their lives. He has publicly gone hard after some teachers, going as far as trying to have them drummed out of the profession, for not Living Right. So media and social media are making hay out of this newest chapter.

Charges of hypocrisy are not useful. But when someone is this absolute and noisy and combative about his black-and-white beliefs, one must wonder whether they are an actual true believer or if they are just cosplaying for the grift. It's times like this that give us a clue. 

I'll hope that people show Walters some grace. I'll hope that going through a messy, complicated patch will move Walters to broaden Walters' understanding of human complexity and lead to him showing a little grace himself. I'll hope that he doesn't go the MAGA route of deciding that his own failings don't matter because he is not like those Other Terrible People. 

The couple has said they plan to co-parent with their children's needs in mind, and I wish them luck with that. There is no guilt like divorced parent guilt. I've taught plenty of children of divorce and co-parented two of my own, and while each situation has its own challenges, mostly what I've learned is that the biggest damage is done when a parental divorce leads to children learning that they are not the most important thing in their parents' lives, that they are less important than revenge or anger or self-indulgence. 

Walters has never been a serious person (well, maybe back when he was an actual classroom teacher) and he used every ounce of his power to promote an unserious version of school, not intended to educate students to find their way and be fully human in the world. Instead, the culture warrior model of education  is a place where children are empty drones to be stamped into a particular two-dimensional mold in a version of the world that says people get what they deserve and they had damned well better follow the rules (which include things like "make lots of babies" and "women stay home and serve while their husband takes care of Important Stuff") and know their place. 

This is not a serious approach to being truly human in the world, and every fifteen minutes the real world, and every time one of these people gets their hands on real power over education, children suffer for it. Meanwhile, roughly every fifteen minutes, real life trips one of these guys up, unserious people facing a serious moment. Sometimes they block it out with denial, sometimes their weak and brittle views break, and sometimes they grow up a bit. Walters (and family) deserves the space and grace to find their way forward, even if some of us are not inclined to give it to him. 

In the meantime, we should remember that this is why education should present young humans with a full, rich, complicated, and even controversial of the world as it exists, all black and grey and white and wiggly, rather than trying to lock them into some two-dimensional tiny unserious view of the world that tries to pretend that a whole range of humans and human experience does not exist. 

OK: Getting On The Satan Chaplain Train

The push for school chaplains is moving across the country, pushed by the National School Chaplain Association, a group that pretty clearly hopes school chaplains will be a means of putting a particular brand of Christianity in schools. 

So far the movement's two big wins are in Texas and Florida, where the legislatures actually passed a law allowing anyone who wants to call themselves a chaplain to get into schools that set up the chaplain post. In Texas, the big pushback came from actual professional chaplains, and so far, one charter school has decided to bring in a "chaplain," because a real chaplain has actual training, sometimes specialized, and follows a set of professional ethics and is not, in fact, just some untrained true believer who thinks Jesus wants him to go recruit some children. In fact, several states have said no to the amateur hour first-amendment-busting bill.

Florida also passed a "chaplain" law, and that led to a predictable next step, which was for the Satanic Temple to announce that they would also be offering chaplains, with said announcement followed by Governor Ron DeSantis declaring that he couldn't read the plain English of the law that he would forbid any such thing to happen. 

The law is written to avoid any obvious First Amendment violation; in fact, it doesn't even require the "chaplain" to have a religious affiliation. But never mind-- DeSantis will tell you what is and is not a legitimate religion.

Well, if Texas and Florida are going galumphing off into far right field, you know Oklahoma will be close behind.

So here comes SB 36, passed through the House and now facing the Senate. The bill is a step up from the versions in Texas and Florida and some other states by virtue of some amendments to the bill. It requires the "chaplain" to have some sort of "ecclesiastical endorsement from their faith group" indicating they are an "ordained minister or member in good standing." It even requires them to have a bachelor's degree and some graduate work. The House also added a "no proselytizing" clause. 

None of this really addresses the issue that chaplains are not trained as child mental health professionals. Nor does it make it any less a violation of the First Amendment.

Critics have noted that the bill has one particular religion in mind. But you know some other group is cued up and ready to go. And Oklahoma's Education Dudebro-in-Chief Ryan Walters has come out swinging.

Let me be crystal clear: Satanists are not welcome in Oklahoma schools, but they are welcome to go to hell.

Legislators have also announced their inability to read and their misunderstanding of the Constitution opposition to the Satanic Temple. SB 36 simply wouldn't invite the Satanic Temple to send ministers to school children, said one group. 

Instead, it gives permission for the local school boards to decide whether to implement a chaplain program, leaving the decision to the duly elected school board members who represent their community’s values. Additionally, parents can decide whether or not to let their child participate in the program.

All true, but it skips over the part where the Constitution forbids discriminating against an employer on religious grounds. This is not news. The Good News Club, a program of the Child Evangelism Fellowship way back in 2001 won its case before SCOTUS that it must be allowed to have an after school club like any other group. And that was followed by the Satanic Temple winning cases to have its own after school Satan club in districts, because the First Amendment is clear on not allowing the government to pick and choose which religions are okay.

Dudebro Walters is not a dummy. He most certainly knows all this (he was an AP history teacher). But he's got an audience to play to. So here he is on Fox News, sitting in an office, playing the rightwing hits.

Asked to respond to the Satanic Temple's stated intention to expose "harmful pseudo-scientific practices in mental health care," Walters says 

I am not surprised that people who worship Satan lie. They are liars. What they are trying to do in worshipping Satan is ruin the lives of children, undermine the very Judeo-Christian values of this country and destroy our schools.

The Satanic Temple has always been pretty clear that they do not worship Satan, but are on a mission to push back against those with a theocratic bent. Walters declares 

Satanism is not a religion and we will not allow them in our school. Our bill will not allow Satanists into our schools. It will only allow religions, religions that we have protected in our country since the outset.

Sooo much baloney here. The IRS says that the Satanic Temple is a religion. And if we're going to have state officials going around declaring what is and is not a real religion, there is all sorts of bad trouble ahead. This has been a tough line for us to draw as a country, because "since the outset," we have not protected all religions. The Puritans of Massachusetts used to banish or execute folks of different religions-- and I'm not talking about the Salem witch trials, but folks like Mary Dyer, who was executed in Boston for being a Quaker who wouldn't stay properly banished. Or we could talk about when the Baptists had a fun nickname for the Catholic Church and/or the Pope-- the whore of Babylon.

"Satanists want to destroy families, want to destroy kids' lives," Walters continues. He gets out the chaplain talking point that "we've had chaplains in the military, chaplains in Congress" (trained professionals, but, you know, chaplains) and then he pivots to another point.

Under President Trump, you didn't see the Satanists believing they could actually inject themselves into schools, but under President Biden, he has really cleared the way where they feel very emboldened to try to get in there and influence our kids and they are not going to send our kids to hell.

Well, one of the more recent Satanic Temple victories came courtesy of a Trump-appointed judge. But in fact the first round attempts to launch After School Satan Clubs all came when Trump was President, including the first successful attempt in Tacoma, WA. If Walters were serious about getting his facts straight and not just working on his national profile, he could have discovered this by looking at Wikipedia. 

And that religious tax exempt status that the Satanic Temple got from the IRS? That happened in 2019, under President Trump. TST had previously rejected the idea of pursuing such status, but when President Trump signed the "religious freedom" executive order in 2017, church president Lucien Greaves told members, “As ‘the religious’ are increasingly gaining ground as a privileged class, we must ensure that this privilege is available to all, and that superstition doesn’t gain exclusive rights over non-theistic religions or non-belief."

And if you're still wondering which religions the bill is aimed at, Walters has more

We want the influence of Christian ministers. We understand that Judeo-Christian values were the foundation of this country. In the 1960s the Supreme Court weaponized the federal government against Christians. We have allowed our schools to be state-sponsored centers of atheism. 

This fits with the other Dominionist baloney that Walters has espoused, his stated intent to elevate and center one particular brand of Christianity. The same problem keeps tripping these folks up-- that darn First Amendment. You can't write laws that specify that only one brand of Christianity is to be elevated, so you say "religion" when you really mean "my preferred religion." But you're stuck with the language you have, that "religion," means that all brand of Christianity and Judaism and Islam and Buddhism and the Satanic Temple all get to play.

Folks like Walters only have a couple of choices for a fix. Either you officially codify your brand of faith into law, giving it protection and support. Or you leave the code wide for "religion," but you install an official government agency to declare which religions are "real" and may have the full benefit of the law.

Either of these options should terrify Americans, both those with the Christian faith and those outside of it. Walters knows better, and the fact that he's willing to play these games, presumably because he wants power and attention on a greater stage, marks him as a person not remotely serious enough to have any position of authority. 

P.S. Also in the news this week, an Oklahoma man has been indicted after he traveled to Salem with a pipe bomb to blow up the Satanic Temple.