Arkansas Republicans Who Pushed Anti-Trans Bill Pass a Bill to Teach Creationism
The right s anti-trans push and the move to return creationism to the classroom emphasizes the anti-science connection.
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GOP state Rep. Mary Bentley has been very busy doing what religious conservatives might say is the lord’s work in the Arkansas state legislature.
A fourth-term member of the House, Bentley has introduced two seemingly anti-science bills in the past month HB 1701 and HB 1749 that enact what some on the religious right might celebrate as Bible-sanctioned policies targeting children.
HB 1701, filed on March 11, stipulates that K-12 teachers in a “science class at a public school or open-enrollment public charter school may teach creationism as a theory of how the earth came to exist.” The bill, later passed in the House on April 7, does not
Rep. Mary Bentley’s bill to teach creationism in school and her anti-LGBTQ bigotry.
The article details passage on consecutive days of the bill to prohibit transition medical services for minors and her creationism bill.
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Passing these two bills might be simply coincidence, but the genesis of the creationism bill is telling. Rep. Mary Bentley preached a creationist sermon on the House floor (see below) urging her colleagues to pass the anti-trans youth bill on March 10. The very next day, March 11, she sponsored and proposed her new bill to put creationism in public schools. The former seems to have sparked the latter. A day later, March 12, Bentley recounted and posted her anti-trans creationism speech in a Facebook post.
04-13-2021
The Arkansas House has passed a measure that would protect educators from any litigation which might result from offending a student if they don t use that student s preferred pronouns or name.
The measure known as HB 1749 reads, An employee of a public school shall not be required to use a pronoun, title, or other word to identify a public school student as male or female that is inconsistent with the public school student s biological sex.
TheBlaze.com reports the legislation would empower an employee of a public school who faces adverse action for calling a student by the wrong name or pronoun to file a legal claim for relief.
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Sponsor of Arkansas Anti-Trans Bill Says Kids Might Identify as Cats
Rep. Mary Bentley s bill would let teachers ignore students preferred names and pronouns, and she says the state should do more in case a youth identifies as a cat, as a furry. April 09 2021 8:36 PM EDT
Arkansas, which has already passed two anti-transgender bills in this legislative session, is advancing another one and its sponsor is worried that students are identifying as animals.
The state’s House of Representatives Thursday approved House Bill 1749, which would bar public schools and state colleges and universities from requiring that teachers use students’ preferred names and pronouns if those differ from a student’s “biological sex,” the