"By the age of fifty, eveyone has the face they deserve." - George Orwell
Christian dominionist David Barton helps decide what information will be included in public school textbooks. Barton and his ultraconservative associates wield enormous power, since large publishing houses are required to adopt whatever backward "academic standards" the Texas BoE deems appropriate. Their faith-based decisions have resulted in a dumbing down of science, history and sex-ed classes in the Lone Star State. This invariably leaves students unprepared to function in the real world. Not that old Davie gives a damn.
Barton has a dark side. His contempt for gays and lesbians is so intense that in a 2001 essay he wrote longingly about the days when "sodomites" had their genitals hacked off. He has extolled the teachings of Pastor Pete Peters, who advocates the death penalty for homosexuals. More recently, Barton has been spreading the lie that federal hate crimes legislation will lead to religious persecution! (Oh, the sublime irony. Suddenly he's worried about persecution.) So it shouldn't come as a surprise that this homosex-obsessed bigot - and distinguished educator, don't forget! - is heaping accolades upon Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern.
From the Texas Freedom Network: David Barton doesn’t have the academic credentials that would truly qualify him for his post as a social studies “expert” for the Texas State Board of Education, but he has done plenty to show that he qualifies as a right-wing extremist. The latest example is his embrace of Sally Kern, a poster child for extremism in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. In an e-mail yesterday, Barton - head of WallBuilders, an organization that opposes separation of church and state - praised Kern as "a courageous state leader" who is "outspoken" about her "Judeo-Christian values." Kern is outspoken, alright - especially in her venomous attacks on gay people. Last year, she even compared homosexuality to "toe cancer" and said gay people are "the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam." ... Barton thinks someone like that is simply “outspoken” about her “Judeo-Christian values” - as if anyone who is Jewish or Christian wouldn’t find her views appalling. Yet Barton is helping to determine what millions of Texas children learn in their public school classrooms.
"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." - Anne Lamont
David Barton and Sally Kern are grotesqueries cast from the same mold, a pair of gloomy whatnots gracing the mantel of right-wing Christianity. Any discerning homeowner would store these horrors in the basement, out of sight.





