A film crew from the Netherlands was allowed into a Texas high school, prompting
outrage from parents in the community. Trustees Sandy Walker and Mike A. Young
were involved, later apologizing for the incident but failing to provide clarity on the
purpose of the film. The crew, associated with an evangelical network, raises
concerns about right wing propaganda and student privacy violations. A mid backlash. Walker
resigned, but Young has yet to step down. Parents now to pursue legal
action if both don't resign. This story is from The Friendly Atheist, published
February nineteenth, twenty twenty four. Helen, what are your thoughts all right
now? I don't know about you know, my fellow panelists and all those
wonderful nonprofits viewers out there, but the actions of the principle seem like pretty
fucking hypocritical in the wider context of Christians rally and protect children, and you
know, and you allow a foreign film crew to comment to high school in
color Texas and film students and staff without any transparency and basically without parental permission,
and basically pulling these wools over people's eyes and being like, no,
we have and the and the principal and a couple other people in the school
war were basically like, no, we have permission, we do, and
then they find out later no, they don't. The principle was not on
site when this occurred. I don't. I'm talking about the transparency, not
the fact that he was on site. So because and that's the thing that
kind of grinds my gears is that when I hear, you know, the
Christians talk about, you know, protecting children and that you know, they're
they're the party of family values, but then they completely overstep and and basically
say like, but for Christian things, we don't actually have to get the
parental permission. And that really drives me up a fucking wall because I hate
hypocrisy. So I do have more to say on this. You know,
I'm gonna you know, like I like a little like you know, I
like to build, So Cynthia share, I will share, Helen, because
guess what, you want to know what but this story actually inspired Oh I
have like a in a really good way. I don't know. You tell
me, I'll tell you, I'll reserve it. I'll give you a judgment.
Okay, Yeah, because like Phoebe judges all the time, so you
know, TV can judge too. Okay, So if I royally fuck up
all my job and do something I know I have no business doing, right,
I am just going to say the same thing that Sandy Walker said at
the end of her tweet Facebook apology. I'm gonna and I'm going to end
it with the Bible verse like Genesis nine eighteen to twenty, which is the
story of how Ham told his brother Shim and Jfis that Noah was passed out
drunk in his tent and he was naked, and Shim and Jacob covered him
up and walked backwards so they couldn't see h their dad's junk because ill gruss.
Yeah, I agree, And then Noah wakes up out of his drunken
stupor stupor, and he curses Ham and Canaan and he praises Shim and Jacob.
That's what I'm gonna do, because obviously, if you end your apologies
every time with a Bible verse, no matter what you are, fine,
am I right? That's all right? It sounds logical. So I'm gonna
I'm gonna start quoting from you know when when Abraham tried to kill Isaac and
then it just everything go away. Perfect, it's perfect, it's fine,
it's fine with Jesus. Jesus was maybe he's just gonna cry. He's gonna
cry on my commentary. Oh yeah, but I'm actually comment on this story.
It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. The producers of God Jesus Trump have
no business filming in the Texas public school interviewing students and wearing badges given to
them by trustees to go all over to school and do whatever the hell do
they want it, because that's basically what they did. The two trustees,
Sandy and Michael, are so full of baalem donkey scat it is not even
funny. Why have you hit me these three times? Bible? Read the
Bible. That's what you need to do. That's a problem. I have
sinned. I have not indulged in the Book of Christianity as much as I
should have done. I have spent indulged myself in the Book of Judaism more
than I should have done. So I well, you know, tell this,
go do ten hell Mary's five Glory bees and in fifteen our fathers.
Yeah, my Catholic kind of I mean, I don't like, I don't
know, I don't know the laws are and other religions. I'm just saying
that, you know, if you I guess like you just tell Baby Jesus,
you're like baby Jesus's so sorry, and then everything's fine. I mean,
but in seriousness, guys like you know, it's what I have to
like echo your sentiments. Ellen when it comes to these people, specifically with
Sandy Walker and Michael Young were actually their trustee positions were funded by right wing
conservative pacony that has been going all over the United States putting people who have
their particular values. Was his crystal fascism into UH school board position that that's
what they've been doing, and so they decided to go all the way and
talk to people from the Netherlands how an evangelish o rope TV, that's what
they're called. And I know that I completely probably butchered that, but ask
me if I care. No, it's actually on oh what okay? I
didn't even like Google to translate to try to even say that word, right,
Are you sure you're not from the Netherlands? You know what you know,
Phoebe, I know that you've already judged me, but I don't care
anyway. I mean, but you know, I'm really but but seriously,
like, I'm just really remiss that they actually just sat there and decided to
come in here. They were going to talk to students, get no permission.
And then even Sandy Walker even had the nerve the audacity to unmitigated call
to actually say that I care so much about our students, so we really
believe in protecting them. But you didn't. You didn't, girl. You
let these people come up in there, gave them badges and told them to
come up here and just do whatever the hell you want. Talk to me,
talk to Micah, talk to little Timmy down the corner, and everything
like that, and then it'll be all the ronky dory. Even haven't said
even in the article that they that they found that there were drones, three
drones that was actually circling Central High School, filming students as they were being
dismissed from the from the high school. How in the world, especially what
there's no parents around to say this is cool or not are able to do
this. And you know, it's really shitty that how people who may be
on the left side of life are always accused of if you have like lefty
socialists, you know, like I've been told many times that I believe pink
values or you know, ideals, that you are one of those people that
because you believe in choice, you believe in body autonomy, you believe in
actually being able to choose the type of health care that you get for yourself,
that you are against children and you don't believe in protecting children. But
all that particularly, that all goes out the window is as soon as that
child is born, as soon as their child is that child is born.
They don't care about a damn thing when it comes to kids. They don't
care about protecting them. The only thing that they care about is their particular
narrative. And it sucks, Phoebe, You're missing something else here, which
no, no, I'm not missing anything because I was shut up. Let
everybody shut you. Oh my god. But anyway, give missed out that.
Sorry, go ahead, tell him up, shut up? Will you
shut up? Shut up away. The thing that annoyed meent of most here
was they were creating false flag propaganda throughout what they were doing. They had
a list of books that were banned, and they had a bag full of
these books, and that they were putting them on the shelves in the library
and then filming. Look all these books that are banned. Look all these
banned books that we put on the shelves. I got me the most here
is that it was so disingenuous here. It was so outrageous, it was
so absurd what was going on here that if you had written this down as
the plot of like a B movie, you would have been laughed at and
told go away. That's stupid, that's really stupid. So you mean to
tell me that you're going to set this whole scene where these two people who
are on the board of trustees are going to hire a load of people from
the Netherlands to come over sneak their way in, stick got the books in
the library that they are think going to film and make out our you know,
the school, violating all the rules. They're not going to tell anybody
that they're here. They're going to fly from drones around and then they're going
to sneak off as if nothing. E laughed out of the building if you
pitch that as a script. As they say, fiction is more believable than
reality sometimes. And here is the thing. There are three main groups here
who have been violated. You have parents of the children, the children themselves,
and the employees of the school itself, because those three groups did not
have any say in this. If I rocked up to a school with Cynthia
and Aaron and Helen had given me a load of security tags for the three
of us and we was only wandering around a school and hadn't told anybody,
we would be chased out of the building. We would be had up.
We would have the old bill running after us faster than you could say,
get out of the building. We would be all over the press. We
would have people chasing after us, and it would be absurd what was going
on. So it's a double standard gone mad. So it's wond rule for
them. And yeah, they knew what they were doing was dishonest. They
were sneaking around. They didn't come in through the front door, right They
the trustees went to the front door and then kind of snuck them in the
back door. From what I understand from what actually happened, they didn't get
the They wait until the principal was out of the school. Uh to bring
them in. Uh. Like you said, they put fake books in the
library. Not fake books, but books that weren't library books in the in
the library to make it look like they were just being dishonest the whole time.
And I wish people like this would ask themselves, what I want another
religion to do what I'm about to do, because if the if there were
if if they thought, you know what, if I there are some Satanists
going to do what I'm about to do, uh, you know, I
think they'd probably be pretty shocked, pretty want they would not want that to
happen. And so if they don't, if they wouldn't want another religious group
to do it, then they shouldn't do it. But but Christianity is feeling
very embold right now with the change in our political landscape, and so they're
trying to get away with stuff that they would not have even dared to get
away with ten, fifteen, twenty years ago because they knew of the backlash.
But they're very emboldened right now, and so they can pull these power
moves. And our schools they need to be free from religion because when you're
that way, it makes it better for all the religions. Right, so
if our schools are purely secular, no religion gets an advantage. No religion
gets a disadvantage. People kids are just getting taught what's evidence based things and
things that can be that have support behind them, and not religion. The
deeper problem with this, I think, is that God told them to do
something and so nothing was going to stop them from doing it. And that
is a really really dangerous attitude to have. There's nothing to prove that God
said what they say. God is saying, there's no evidence for it,
but they can just pull it out of the air and say, oh,
well, God wants their religion in schools, so we're going to do whatever
needs to happen. What's the next step after are taking over schools? You
know, there's there's nothing you can't justify by saying that God told you to
do it. Helen. Yeah, And something that just struck me when you
were talking Aaron, is that so people are saying, like you know,
throughout the country that God is telling them to do this, and God is
telling them to do that. So the imaginary voice in your head is telling
you to do things that are taking away, you know, us from a
secular society. That's what's going on. And it's like, is an inconvenience
that you know the inmates are running the asylum, because that's the way I'm
kind of looking at it, is that the imaginary voices in your head are
telling you that we have the right to circumvent parental consent, student consent and
transparency. We because the imaginary voices in our heads and this magic and this
you know, magic book we have is more important than you know, actually
caring about our students and parents gonna we're just gonna skip all right, all
over that shit. And that drives me again, fucking crazy because again,
you are deciding for other people. We don't do that. We allow people
in a free country to make decisions that are right for themselves and their family
members. That's what we do. That's what schools are supposed to do.
And it makes me mad that these parents and I'm a parent that sent their
kids to this institution that looks after their kids for the majority of the day
and trusted them to do the right thing, and they're basically yeah, and
two members of the tool board who you know, are crying wolf. You
know, they're trying to show themselves from criticism and said like, oh,
we you know, none of the students were filmed. That's bull crap.
When there's drones flying around and students have said we were filmed, don't try
to play that game. It's like, no, you got cop with your
fucking hands down, your hands down, and trying to shield yourself from criticism
because guess because enough people got mad that included your staff in your school,
and the and the families and the students are all pits and you're trying to
be like, well, we didn't know, you know, it wasn't as
bad as you think it was. And it's all propaganda stuff because this particular
film company, I would like to point out their tagline is what is the
last Last? The last city? Here we go, God Jesus in Trump.
So yeah, that's where we're sitting all and I'm and I'm just so
unbiased. What you're saying completely unbiased is what you're saying clearly clearly unbiased.
It was fair and balanced as Fox fair balance. That's yes, you know,
guys, I actually found another so go ahead, well we can talk
afterwards, Helen goals goals, But anyway, you know, I found another
story actually that talked about this, that was from CBS News and and I
actually pulled something that one of the students said. He said that we were
all so confused. He was his sophomore named Henry Hogg. He said,
they came up and sat behind our table and just started recording. So like
these kids were just minding their business, they were sitting, they were talking
to one another, and then all of a sudden, you see the Netherland
crew coming over here and just go click right on them. Creepy very And
you know, you know how folks from Texas or are so like Second Amendment,
protect our kids, God, Jesus and babies. You know that chick
from from Georgia blah blah blah, YadA, YadA YadA. You know,
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. But here's another quote that I found from a
parent whose child actually tend Central High School. He said that they tout safety
and security and then violate the very procedures that are important. So what,
like I said before this is these these people care. They don't give two
shits about kids. They don't. And even though that, you know,
miss Walker said in her you know, I'm sorry for two thousand and four
when she I believe that she says, I take the safety and privacy of
our students seriously. I apologize for allowing students to be captured on film.
Excuse me, ma'am. If you didn't take the safety of your students seriously,
you would have directed the film crew not to film students in the first
place, especially when it came to not having permission from parents. And I
find it so ironic that these are the same type of people who would say,
we can't have these particular books in our libraries because we don't want kids
to read them. If it's about the LGBTQIA plus experience, if it's about
African American history, if it's about anything that they deem as Wokester is going
to be a prompt and they got to have the parents, Well, the
parents didn't know if these books were going to be in here, and they
need to know and they need to have permission or even how last week that
the that the show talked about how permission slips were sent home in a Miami
Dade County school to teach kids. If it's okay for parents to say that
it's okay to teach my kid African American history, I mean, the double
standard is astound. It is absolutely astound, and unfortunately This is where we
are at, guys, but we're gonna talk about it even more