Letter to the Editor
February 15, 2022
Dear Editor:
Per your article on Feb. 7, 2022, I was smeared for filing bills trying to protect the religious freedom of religious and Christian citizens in Oklahoma. Although I did remove the religious freedom bill from consideration based on concerns I might enable anti-religious folks to use the law, I am stunned that you would print something allowing the smearing of my reputation for filing SB1142, which empowers parents to censor the very sexual materials being pushed on children in public schools here in Oklahoma.
For instance, in Bristow, Okla., Christian parents demanded the removal from the public school library of materials most of which by any standard would be considered if not pornographic, at a minimum obscene. In addition, some teachers — I assume not the author’s mother — have used their classrooms and their control and influence (which the U.S. Supreme Court has established is very significant) to push ideologies that go against the closely held beliefs of the majority of parents in Oklahoma.
For 50 years the courts have catered to the atheists in this nation to remove every vestige of Christianity from our public schools, but that was not good enough as now they are filling that void by sexualizing our children and pushing anti-Christian ideologies.
Public school with its powerful influence on children is no place to push ideologies (they certainly are not allowed to push Christianity, which I am not pushing for), and all the many, many books on sex should be limited at best to classes opted in by parents specifically for sex education.
Recently I was interviewed by the local NBC affiliate, KFOR, and I asked them to read on air one of the many books that are inappropriate in a big way, I would call them textually pornographic. Here is a link to my post on that interview, in which both the reporter and her producer refused to read any excerpts from the book(s) as it was too vulgar for the 10 o’clock news, but according to your article giving such material is perfectly fine. Attached is an excerpt from the book mentioned on the news which is required reading in many Oklahoma public schools.
(Editor’s note: The book cited is The Bluest Eye, which was Toni Morrison’s first novel. This book has been one of the most-challenged books in school curricula nationwide because of its graphic content discussing rape and pedophilia. It appears in the Common Core standards for high school juniors. For a discussion of some of the most controversial passages, which includes the section sent by the senator, see this website.)
Censoring material for a parent’s child is not banning books; it is both the right and obligation of parents, not the least of which Christian parents, to guard their child from materials that they deem inappropriate.
As I mentioned, quite a number of teachers in Oklahoma are using their control and influence — I am taking this phrase from the diversity (some might say CRT) training that is being given to teachers in Norman public schools and elsewhere in Oklahoma — within their classroom to push ideologies and anti-Christian themes to extremely influential children. I have attached a lesson one teacher gave to her seventh-grade students on transgenderism here in Oklahoma. I wouldn’t call this reading; I would call this evangelizing transgenderism. Certainly she is free to have her beliefs, but she is no more allowed to use the sanctity of her classroom to push transgenderism and other anti-religious ideologies as she is to witness for Christ. Of course, if she witnessed for Christ, she would most likely be immediately fired and thrown out of the teaching profession.
I wonder when Christians will begin standing up for other Christians and for children, our most precious possession. Clearly Christ tells us in Matthew 18:6 that leading a child to sin is clearly one of the most egregious sins a person can commit, but when Christian leaders like myself try to empower parents to stop others from doing this exact thing I see myself smeared in a Baptist website.
Although today what is wrong is right, I will not be smeared into silence and I would call upon all Christians who believe Christ was serious to stand up for children that are being led to sin in our public schools, and demand they keep their indoctrination out of the classroom.
Rob Standridge, Oklahoma state senator, Norman, Okla.
