Cal Thomas in the Miami Herald today wants God back in the school room. Anti Abortion and not allowing a brain dead woman to die is the policy of Jeb Bush. The proponents of “Life” rather than “Choice” are emboldened by the results of the recent election. I suppose you cannot avoid mixing all three for this is not a local phenomenon but is historical and world-wide. Here in America, it is not just religious fundamentalists – like the evangelists – who are deeply involved. It seems that mainstream religions cannot avoid making choices that are neither religious nor political but emotional and want to either control or dominate public education.
The male/female thing is complicated enough in our day when the roles of men and women have blurred and old verities have had to give way to reality. Women, often enough, are bread winners as well as mothers and heads of families. The old patriarchic system cannot be sustained despite our having a Congress, Supreme Court and an Executive dominated by people playing the male role without considering allowing other, higher voices heard.
I am outraged by the recidivism of Jeb Bush, Catholic Governor of Florida, running to the Federal Supreme Court after being rebuffed by the Florida Supreme Court on the Schiavo case. Here is a tragedy. A women who is brain dead for over a decade is kept alive by a collection of her parents, right to life organizations, the Governor and some politicians who prevented the husband to have a feeding tube removed keeping an otherwise non-living woman, his wife, alive. It is bizarre and unworthy of people living in the 21st Century. It is reminiscent of practices from out of the medieval times where life and death was at the whim of a monarch without checks and balances. The education of that time was simple, brutal and could not be questioned. One rule, one belief and unreason were the norm.
In the Schiavo case the “government” has intervened. It has made a cause celebre out of human misery and taken the decision far away from the immediate participants. The interjection of the Governor’s Office into a private life is the same as a governor who gives and takes away life in matters of commutation of death sentences or refusal to intervene and allow the government to put an innocent person to death by a defective process. There are defective educational principles and political problems associated with just this aspect of how we handle life and death in prison and miss opportunities to teach about rights in schools. We go to war and ignore the increasing numbers of bodies this war leaves in its wake.
The control over education is made by unthinking, unreasoning narrow minded religionists who make our laws while in a morass of politics.