Texas GOP are banning books but want to force the Ten Commandants on students

The Texas Taliban wants to go national

The Texas GOP have banned more books from school libraries this past year than any other state in the nation, targeting titles that deal with abortion, LGBTQ representation and race. Those were the recent findings of PEN America, a nonprofit organization advocating for free speech.

However, not content to just ban books that conflict with their white supremacist, rightwing, Christian nationalist agenda, Texas’ Republican controlled State Senate voted just days ago to force every public classroom in the state to display The Ten Commandments. And to ensure that students see and read it every day, the legislation literally requires the image of this religious document to be at least 16 inches tall by 20 inches wide and “in a size and typeface that is legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the classroom.”

This is the Texas Taliban in action.

The laughable yet dangerous irony is that Republicans defend posting The Ten Commandments in class as embracing the so-called “Judeo-Christian” origins of our country.  While nothing in the Constitution supports the GOP’s mythology of our nation’s founding, back in the real world, the GOP is now engaged in openly trafficking in anti-Semitism with their repeated claims that George Soros—who is a wealthy Jewish man—is the puppet master behind many Democratic officials. These Republicans do not care about “Judeo” anything—just as they have long peddled anti-Muslim bigotry. They only care about their perverted version of Christianity that teaches people to hate in the name of Jesus—the exact opposite of Jesus’s teachings.

The GOP state Senator who drafted the bill, Phil King, stated during a committee hearing earlier this month that the Ten Commandments are part of American heritage and it’s time to bring them back into the classroom. In his view, posting the The Ten Commandments in every class “will remind students all across Texas of the importance of the fundamental foundation of America.”

The “fundamental foundation of America”—as expressed in the original US Constitution—also protected slavery by way of “The Fugitive Slave Clause” which required the return of runaway slaves to their owners and the infamous “Three-Fifths Compromise.” But such a conversation in a Texas public school would likely be illegal thanks to the GOP championed “Critical Race Theory” bans. The true history of America makes the white right uncomfortable so they banned it in schools out of fear students will learn about the suffering of Black Americans at the hands of white supremacists.

The Texas GOP Senate was not done, though, this week in further ushering in their religion in public settings. The Senate also gave final passage to legislation would allow public schools to adopt a policy that requires time be set aside for students and employees to read the Bible or other religious texts and to pray.

Then the GOP passed a third bill that ensures school employees can "engage in religious speech or prayer while on duty." (Some Democrats joined in supporting this measure.). The concern here is what exactly is “religious speech while on duty”? Again, we are not talking mainstream Christians but religious fundamentalists more akin to the Taliban that I, as a Muslim, have long denounced.

Does that mean some right wing teachers will openly demonize LGBTQ students because they don’t approve of their existence? Will these same right-wing teachers/zealots try to convert people to Christianity? Will they tell their classes that Jewish, Muslims or other students are going to hell because they are not Christian?! That is all very possible.

Wondering why the sudden rush by the Texas GOP to impose religion in public schools? Well, we can thank Donald Trump and the three Justices he appointed to the Supreme Court. Just as Trump’s three justices are the reason Roe v Wade was overturned, it’s also why last year we saw two big cases further erode the wall between Church and state.

The first was a case involving the state of Maine where the court ruled 6-3 that that Maine could not prohibit parents from using a state-funded tuition assistance program to pay for their children to attend private religious schools.  Alarmingly, the two schools cited in the case have a history of homophobic and transphobic policies. The six justices in favor were all GOP appointed.

The dissenting opinion--written by then Justice Stephen Breyer and joined by Justices Elena Kagan and in part by Justice Sonia Sotomayor—made it clear how dramatic this ruling was, explaining that the Supreme Court “never previously held what the Court holds today, namely, that a State must (not may) use state funds to pay for religious education as part of a tuition program designed to ensure the provision of free statewide public school education.”

But it was the second opinion last year that really took a sledgehammer to the wall between church and state. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled –again 6 to 3-- that a Washington state football coach’s post-game prayer on the 50-yard line was protected by the First Amendment. The students who didn’t want to join the prayer felt coerced to do so but the conservatives on the court didn’t care.  Again the dissenting opinion by the liberal justices summed up the unprecedented nature of this decision, writing the court "consistently has recognized that school officials leading prayer is constitutionally impermissible" and said the ruling did a "disservice" to schools, students and "the nation's longstanding commitment to the separation of church and state.”

The Texas GOP Senators literally cited this case involving the football coach as the reason they believe these new measures are constitutional. In short, they are emboldened by the religious extremists who now compromise the Supreme Court.

Given the GOP loves to copy each other, we can expect other Republican states to follow Texas’ lead and enact laws that impose their version of Christianity on students while at the same time banning books the GOP finds inconsistent with their religious agenda.  After all, recent polls find a majority of GOP voters now support “Christian nationalism”—which is simply the idea of imposing their religious beliefs as US law.  The poll—conducted in early 2023 by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution--also alarmingly found that more than half of those who want Christian religious law also “support the idea of an authoritarian leader in order to keep these Christian values in society.” Now you understand why a majority of Republicans view Trump’s Jan 6 attack as an act of “patriotism.”

The First Amendment of the Constitution begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” But today’s GOP does not care. Indeed, they are not hiding their goal of seeking to establish their version of Christianity as the law of the land—as we are witnessing with their abortion bans all predicated upon their religious beliefs. This is just one more reason that we must win in 2024 on the federal--and state levels. If not, the GOP will soon be able to pass federal legislation to impose nationwide what they are now doing in Texas.

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