Texas Creationism Follies, the Sequel
When the Texas legislature kicked out creationist dentist Don McLeroy as head of the state’s Board of Education, I wrote:
It’s almost certain that Perry will select another creationist; he did, after all, pick McLeroy not once but twice, even after McLeroy’s Biblical literalist views were notorious. There’s no shortage of creationist Republicans currently on the School Board, so this debacle is going to have another chapter after all.
Well, here’s the next chapter in the Texas Creationism Follies, as Republican Governor Rick Perry’s likely pick for the best person to supervise the education of Texas children is Cynthia Dunbar (R-Richmond), another religious fanatic with theocratic leanings who considers public education a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion.”
In a book published last year, Dunbar argued the country’s founding fathers created “an emphatically Christian government” and that government should be guided by a “biblical litmus test.” She endorses a belief system that requires “any person desiring to govern have a sincere knowledge and appreciation for the Word of God in order to rightly govern.”
Also in the book, she calls public education a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion.”
The establishment of public schools is unconstitutional and even “tyrannical,” she wrote, because it threatens the authority of families, granted by God through Scripture, to direct the instruction of their children.
Dunbar home-schooled her own children.