The Independence Law Center Doesn’t Want You to Know It’s Working to Bring Conservative Christian Dominion Over Pennsylvania’s Public School Districts
From Bucks County Beacon
The Independence Law Center has been busy serving up anti-LGBTQ, anti-reading, anti-student policies for school districts throughout Pennsylvania. A few weeks back, Jeremy Samek, lead counselor of the ILC, sat down with James Corrigan at Fox43 in Central PA for an interview.
Samek worked hard to make ILC seem very sane, sensible, and secular:
“Jeremy Samek, senior counselor of the ILC, says the firm’s mission is to draft policies for boards that are fair to all students while maintaining common sense.
‘There’s a lot of things in the culture that people are trying to determine how do we accommodate everybody as best we can.’ Samek said. ‘And these school districts are reaching out to us for help, because they want to find ways to accommodate everybody.’”
At the mention of a “religious motivation” to the ILC’s work, Samek pushed back.
“These policies that we’ve helped schools put into place are not related to religion at all,” Samek explained. “Actually, these are purely based on trying to accommodate and find common ground when it comes to things like sports, or when it comes to things like keeping parents involved in what’s going on with their student at school.”
When asked if the ILC believes in the separation of church and state, Samek says that it is the law of the land.
“There’s an establishment clause in our country,” Samek said when asked whether he believes in the separation of church and state. “There are numerous court cases in various contexts where that would be the case. So the separation of church and state, the Establishment Clause, is absolutely part of our law.”
That is not really an answer, but the picture Samek tried to paint is clear enough, and that is some serious bullshit there. However, it fits well with ILC’s continuing attempt to be more like serpents. But let’s take this a few steps at a time.
The Pennsylvania Family Institute was founded in 1989 as a “key strategic voice for the family, and for the Judeo-Christian principles needed for a free and prosperous society.” Their stated mission is to “strengthen families by restoring to public life the traditional, foundational principles and values essential for the well-being of society.” As with many Christianist political groups, they’ve learned to couch their goals in more secular language, but their true nature often peeks through.
Our goal is for Pennsylvania to be a place where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive, and life is cherished.
Not just any God, mind you.