Religious right groups call for mass exodus from public schools . . . again

Geez, it doesn't even shock me anymore:

Critics of America's public school system have launched a new effort highlighting the need for Christians to exit the system.

The initiative -- dubbed The Call to Dunkirk -- was launched by Dr. Bruce Shortt, author of The Harsh Truth About Public Schools; Rev. Voddie Baucham, author of Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk with God; and the founder and director of the Exodus Mandate Project, retired U.S. Army Chaplain Lt. Col. E. Ray Moore.

Moore explains the proposal. "The Call to Dunkirk is a special emergency effort to try to get other ministries, churches, pastors, and the major Christian right and pro-family movement to join with us and the other K-12 home-school ministries in rescuing the children from the public schools during the year 2009," he says.

New effort my pinkie toe. It's an old effort and a tired one at that.

In 2005, Baucham and Shortt pushed for the same type of resolution via the Southern Baptist Convention:

A popular black evangelist is hoping that the proposed resolution on homosexuality in public schools that he has helped to put before the Resolutions Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention will spark a mass exodus of Baptist children from public schools.

The resolution, submitted by attorney and author Bruce Shortt and Dr. Voddie Baucham, Jr., calls on Southern Baptist churches to investigate whether their local school district has a "gay-straight alliance" or other homosexual clubs. The resolution also calls upon churches to encourage parents' removal of their children from schools that have curricula or programs that treat homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.

Personally, I say if parents don't agree with public schools, they should have every option to homeschool their children. I have friends who do this already.

However, I don't agree with any homeschool initiatives taking money from the public schools and I certainly don't agree with making lgbts the boogiemen (i.e. the reason why children should be taken out of public schools.)

And making us the objects of fear is definitely the reasoning behind this so-called new initiative:

Although Christians have fought other aspects of the culture war such as homosexual "marriage," (Ray) Moore contends they are losing the fight when it comes to the education of their children.

"The real target of the liberals and the left has always been the children. And we can see in California where the conservatives won Proposition 8 -- the vote [was] 52 to 48 [percent] -- but...when Proposition 22 was voted on [in March 2000], they had a 61-percent margin of victory. So the culture is turning against Christianity and against the pro-family movement primarily because we've allowed our children to be educated in their schools," he adds. "They're converting our children; we're not converting them."

Ridiculous. No one is converting America's children.

LGBTs and liberals in general are not sitting in dark rooms taking instructions from a mysterious leader stroking a Persian cat while he periodically presses a button and drops one of us down to a pirahna tank.

If the religious right is truly losing the next generation, then they need to blame themselves and assess their bullshit.

You cannot call yourself pro-family if you are actively working against families simply because they don't fit your idea of the word. And you cannot call yourself Christian if you rely on lies and generalizations to get your point across.

What is happening here is like the ending of the classic fairty tale, the Emperor's New Clothes: Adults are distorting, lying, and obfusticating, but a child's simplicity getting to the heart of the matter.

In this particular case, the heart of the matter is that there is nothing wrong with being a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender person.

Viva la progress!