It's that time of year again, when the Texas Republican Party
continues its grim, unwilling march toward the 17th century by updating
its party platform. It's the usual gathering of heavy-duty God talk,
racist paranoia, Victorian-era attitudes toward marriage, crippling
homophobia, and that bit of Texas right-wing weirdness that I've always
been fond of, the abject fear that your child might learn that there are
other ways of viewing the world other than holing up in a house with a
gun in case today's the day that reparations-seekers descend from black
helicopters to kick down your door and confiscate your Bible. The
obsession with giving total control over the minds and bodies of minors
to their parents blows past creepy and right into Flowers in the Attic territory.
It's
hard to know where to begin with the carnival of anti-child horrors in
the document, but things really start to get weird in the "Protecting
Our Children" section, where not only is the U.N. Treaty on the Rights
of the Child denounced vigorously, but a rather troubling demand is made
for a slate of "parental rights" to be granted that are clearly aimed
at giving extremists the right to shield their children from the
existence of the outside world. You'd think conservatives would support
the U.N. Treaty, as it's very supportive of the idea that children
should have a relationship with both biological parents, but apparently,
the U.N.'s belief that you shouldn't beat your children or emotionally
abuse them into terrified silence is just a step too far for the Texas
GOP. Being able to beat children is explicitly mentioned in their
defense of corporal punishment in foster care and in schools. (In case
anyone wants to claim I'm denouncing a light pat on the bottom, my Texas
school used corporal punishment, and it involved having a grown adult
beat your ass with a paddle, so no, this isn't about light pats.)
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