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Emile Lester

The Texas Board of Education, a group whose decisions can set the tone for school districts throughout the United States, heard testimony on Tuesday on a new set of school history and social studies textbooks that critics say advance Christian ideology.

The Republican-controlled 15-member body will be voting this week on whether to approve more than 100 books for use by students from elementary to high schools in the second-most populous US state. Once textbooks are approved by Texas, they often are marketed nationally.

"Texas is in a leadership position and at the moment, they are abusing that position," said Emile Lester, an associate professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, who wrote a critical review of some of the US history textbooks that may be approved.

Lester and others said the textbooks over-emphasised the role the biblical figure Moses and Judeo-Christian traditions played in the formation of the nations' founding documents such as the Constitution, while paying little attention to constitutional provisions on the separation of church and state.

Critics also said world geography textbooks downplay the role that armed conquest played in the spread of Christianity and made mistakes about fundamental points of other major religions.

The board, comprised of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, has asked publishers to make changes critics have demanded, including having language saying man-made activity is seen by scientists as a reason for climate change.

One conservative group called Truth in Texas Textbooks has asked for more language to be included in textbooks about the use of force in spreading Islam globally.

David Bradley, a conservative member of the State Board of Education, said there is grass roots support for many of the positions in the text books being faulted by liberal critics.

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School textbooks are culture wars battleground in Texas

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat and a professional geologist, sat down with energy giant Halliburton two years ago and famously guzzled down a glass of fracking fluid to demonstrate the oil and gas industry is safely creating energy and jobs in his state.

Leaving aside his friendliness to fracking, Hickenlooper is a conventional liberal Democrat on other matters, yet survived a tough reelection during the red Republican wave that washed over the nation earlier this month. Mark Udall, Colorados Democratic U.S. Senator, faced the same voters yet wasnt so fortunate. Like Michigan, Colorado is a purple state, fiercely competitive between Democrats and Republicans, and the outcomes of these two statewide races provide important lessons for both parties regarding the electoral damage culture wars can cause.

Gov. Hickenlooper had been considered among the nations most endangered incumbent Democratic governors, in large measure because last year he signed a highly controversial gun control bill banning certain types of ammunition magazines. The law was so hostile to Colorado gun owners that two Democratic state senators were successfully recalled and replaced by Republicans after voting for it, and a third resigned so as to avoid facing a removal vote.

Hickenlooper carved out a three percentage point reelection victory this month over Republican challenger Bob Beauprez. One lesson for Democrats: Had Hickenlooper not created a rational, pro-growth reputation regarding energy production, its likely Colorados jobs-focused independent voters would have fired him. Another: Had he not waged a culture war on Colorados firearms owners, its likely he would have been re-elected in a landslide.

Colorado Republicans learned a similar lesson in the 2010 U.S. Senate race and applied it in 2014. Republican Ken Buck was supposed to win Colorados other U.S. Senate seat as part of the big GOP victories across the nation in 2010. But despite leading in the polls, Buck ended up losing by less than one percent on Election Day.

A former prosecutor, Buck built his reputation on leading raids against undocumented workers. In a state where one of ten voters is Hispanic, and where nearly two-thirds of them report personally knowing an undocumented immigrant, Bucks prosecutorial excess cost him dearly. Just 19 percent of Colorados Latino voters supported Buck, a critical failing in a close race.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Cory Gardner went a different way this year, even going so far as to say he supports creating a path to legal residency for currently illegal immigrants. As a result, exit polling shows the Republican won about half of Colorados Hispanic vote, on his way to soundly defeating Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Udall.

When he first won the seat back in 2008, Udall took 63 percent of the Latino vote.

But where Colorado Republicans had learned to cool down the culture war rhetoric regarding immigration, Democrats decided to turn up the temperature when talking about the War on Women. Thinking it the path to racking up big margins in the womens vote, Udall adopted such an obsessive focus on reproductive issues that a Denver newspaper columnist called him Mark Uterus.

It failed. Udall snagged a meager 52 percent majority of the female vote, at the cost of ceding 61 percent of the men to Gardner. Thats a certain formula for a landslide.

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Ken Braun: Colorado's failed culture wars provide Election Day lessons for both parties

Nobody is expecting Culture Wars 2.0.

But that doesnt mean arts leaders arent a bit worried. Since last weeks elections gave Republicans control of both houses of Congress, there have been whispers in arts circles about a repeat of the 1994 midterm elections that carried conservatives to power and almost abolished the National Endowment for the Arts.

I was there for that. I always worry about that, says Robert Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts. The good news was we saved the support. The bad news was it was a 40percent cut.

But Lynch and other arts leaders arent anticipating a sequel. The NEA itself is less controversial, they say, because most of its grants go to state and regional partners and arts organizations, with few dollars going directly to artists.

In addition, the conversation for arts funding now focuses more on economic impact, tax receipts and community development.

Its not what we first think of what the arts are for. The arts play a role in nurturing the soul and spirit, Lynch says. But the arts are an important tool to help other issues.

The Newt Gingrich assault on arts funding in the 1990s tapped into a simmering controversy over public funding of art. There was the Corcorans mishandling of an NEA-funded Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit in 1989, followed a year later by the NEA chairmans decision to veto grants to four performance artists based on their edgy subject matter and not on artistic quality, which had been verified through the agencys peer review.

(Those grants were reinstated after a protracted court fight.) By 1996, the NEAs budget was cut from 1992s peak of $175.9 million to $99.4 million. As is clear from this years $146 million appropriation, the arts community still hasnt fully recovered.

Its a year-in, year-out grind, says Heather Noonan, vice president for advocacy at the League of American Orchestras. In the (fiscal year 2016) budget process, well continue to make sure that the NEA isnt disproportionately affected by attempts to cut domestic spending.

Many arts leaders are cautiously optimistic, thanks to the bipartisan support theyve nurtured since the early 1990s. One such advocate is Rep. Leonard Lance (N.J.), the Republican co-chairman of the Congressional Arts Caucus, who was elected to Congress in 2008.

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Will Republican leadership in Congress harm small but significant NEA budget?

A hound of Tehran. (AFP/Getty)

What do neckties, rappers, Barbie and pet dogs have in common?

For some arch-conservatives in Iran, they are all elements of a Western cultural invasion that needs to be confronted. The biggest and most constant threat to the country was how Irans deputy defense minister, Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehqan, characterized it in an impassioned speech earlier this year to denounceWestern ways.

The latest swipe came last week. A group of hard-line lawmakers proposed a punishment of 74 lashes and fines up to $2,600 for publicly displaying certainpets, according to the reformist newspaper Shargh. They mentioned monkeys or other animals. But the proposal is clearly aimed at dogs still very rare as pets in Iran, but increasingly appearing as a sort of badge of sophistication among a certain crowd of liberal leaners.

The proposal backed by a relative handful of lawmakers, according tonews reports is unlikely to pass in its current form. But its an instructive study in Irans never-ending identity crises.

In the years after the 1979 Islamic revolution, the opponents of Western influence "Westoxification in the parlance of Iranian leaders had the upper hand. The enforcers of the new order had almost unchallenged authority to quash anything seen as favoring the Great Satan in Washington and its allies. (Except maybe the pre-revolution Lincolns, Cadillacs and other Detroit imports that were simply too cool to destroy.)

Gradually, however, the barriers began to fracture. Music cassettes of Western bands and VCR tapes of Hollywood movies appeared in the 1980s. Then came satellite dishes. Burger joints, pizza places, jeans. The Internet. Mani-pedis. Now, the latest smartphones and tablets are routed through third countries to skirt U.S. economic sanctions. A popular Tehran fast-food place essentially a clone of Hardee's used to play American cartoons on an endless video loop.

On the Web, an on again-off again Instagram account called Rich Kids of Tehran purports to showcase a slice of the capital as blinged out as any Kardashian.

Meanwhile, the current government of President Hassan Rouhani reads like a Western alumni guide. Rouhani studied in Scotland. A top policy adviser, Mahmoud Vaezi, has degrees from colleges in California and started his doctorate at Louisiana State University. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who went to San Francisco State University and the University of Denver, tweets about everything from the ongoing nuclear talks to his achingback.

Read more here:
WorldViews: Could be the dog days of Irans culture wars

The latest frontline in the culture wars has come into focus: In the face of decisions by Catholic universities to extend health care benefits to those who have contracted same-sex, civil marriages, some bishops and some commentators are digging trenches, bringing up the mortars, and lobbing shells. The whole thing puts one in mind of the Western Front in World War I.

Last month, both Creighton University in Omaha and the University of Notre Dame in South Bend announced they would extend health care benefits to same sex couples. The local bishops objected, with Archbishop George Lucas in Omaha issuing a more pointed challenge. Despite [Creighton President] Father Lannons claim that this is not a statement of approval of same sex marriages, this is precisely the message that the University is giving, Archbishop Lucas said in a statement. I am dismayed that the recommendation of the University Benefits Committee is thought to supersede divine law regarding marriage. Nebraska has not (yet) legalized gay marriage. The legal situation there and in Indiana will be murky until the U.S. Supreme Court re-visits the issue.

I understand that bishops think they must hold the line. I understand that they perceive same-sex marriage as a threat to traditional marriage, a confirmation the most people no longer view marriage as equally involving the procreation and rearing of children as about the union of the spouses. Still, it would seem that any assessment of the pastoral challenge would likely start with the question Why is it that gays and lesbians are the only people who seem to even want to get married these days?

Rusty Reno, the editor of First Things, has now jumped into the fray with possibly the most offensive column I have read all year, a distinction for which there is some degree of high-quality competition. Reno states that the universities decisions are nothing more than cultural capitulation, agreeing with Archbishop Lucas that the decisions send the signal that the Church approves of same sex marriage, and then introduces this analogy:

Im sure Pius XII would have denied that signing a Concordat with Hitlers Germany meant he approvedof Nazism. But it conferred legitimacy and dramatically undercut any basis within the Church for resistance.The same goes for the concordat many Catholic institutions are signing with gay marriage. It confers legitimacy on the sexual revolution and undercuts resistance.

Reno is a bright man and he holds the title of editor, but he seems to have forgotten the first iron law of journalism: No Nazi analogies. If Reno believes that those who advocate for same sex marriage are evil, surely he will grant that there is no evil quite like Nazi evil, and so his analogy is overwrought. I will note one happy consequence of Renos alarmist and offensive analogy: This is surely the first time Fr. Lannon and Fr. John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, have been cast in the role of Pius XII.

One does not go to First Things looking for nuance, but still, Reno might have allowed that America is the only place in the industrialized West where health care benefits are conferred through employment. And, therefore, Catholic employers in the U.S. are involved in the recognition of diverse relationships among their employees that Catholic employers in other countries do not have to face. Still, I do not remember Reno and others complaining when Catholic universities extended health care benefits to divorced and remarried staff members and their families.

Reno is right that there is a moral issue involved but, regrettably, he misses it. If the Catholic Church wishes to be believed when we affirm, as the Catechism affirms, that we respect the innate human dignity of all people, including gays and lesbians, then we have to stop fighting tooth and nail to deny people health care benefits. It does not pass the smell test. I love you, I respect your human dignity, but damn, I am going to make sure you cant get health care, is not exactly a convincing Christian witness. Whatever anyone else does, the Catholic is called to respond with charity, with love. Frustrating access to health care is not loving, it is punitive. Whatever any Catholic institution decides on this issue of extending benefits to same sex couples, it will not only say something about those couples, it will say something about our Catholic institutions. As Fr. Jenkins said in his statement, We recognize an urgent call to welcome, support and cherish gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, who have been too often marginalized and even ostracized, and many of whom bear the scars of such treatment.

Conservative culture warriors like Reno, however, do not worry about the actual impact on gay and lesbian staffers at any Catholic university, hence the ease with which he compares them to Nazis. They are more concerned with making a point. If anyone is looking for an example of ideology getting in the way of the Gospel, here it is.

I also continue to be stunned by the coarseness of the argument that extending benefits constitutes recognition, and recognition constitutes approval. Mr. Reno and his friends should go to Google Images and enter Pope John Paul II Cuba. They will see pictures of Pope John Paul II shaking hands with Castro, at the presidential palace in Havana. The pope referred to Castro as Mr. President. They stood together for the playing of the Cuban national anthem. In some sense, this was recognition of Castros regime, but did any one construe that recognition as approval?

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Contra Rusty Reno et al.