Ah, the dual standard, or how not to use the brain

So here’s what our friends on the AGN’s editorial page write this morning noting the Miami-Dade County school board pulled a book about Cuba from school libraries because of its pro-communist/Fidel Castro slant. As one board member said the book misleads, confounds or confuses and ‘has no part in the education of our students, most especially our elementary students, who are impressionable and vulnerable.’ The same thing can be said for books that promote homosexuality, yet most efforts to either remove such books from school libraries or restrict student access are met with legal threats. Students should have an accurate portrayal of history and not propaganda aimed to influence a particular belief or value. It is just interesting what books some school boards consider placing in that category.

Of course, that means it’s OK to push intelligent design — the right-wingers’ code words for creationism. Has no one read “Inherit the Wind?” Has no one seen the movie?

And meanwhile, the Associated Press reports Katharine Jefferts Schori, the newly elected presiding bishop of the of the Episcopal Church, saying, when asked if it was a sin to be homosexual, “I don't believe so. I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us.”

Further, asked to reconcile the her position on homosexuality with specific passages in the Bible declaring sexual relations between men an abomination, Jefferts Schori said the Bible was written in a very different historical context by people asking different questions.

"The Bible has a great deal to teach us about how to live as human beings. The Bible does not have so much to teach us about what sorts of food to eat, what sorts of clothes to wear -- there are rules in the Bible about those that we don't observe today," she said. "The Bible tells us about how to treat other human beings, and that's certainly the great message of Jesus — to include the unincluded.”

So, are John Kannelis, Dave Henry or Les Simpson better qualified students of the Bible than a priest and bishop?