Don't give David Barton's Religious Right propaganda free airtime on public television. It would be a major disservice to your viewers to present his revisionist history as educational programming.
Ben Betz, People for the American Way
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Do you think public television should give free airtime to Religious Right propaganda?
Neither did two senior employees of Alabama Public Television who objected to airing a TV series produced by right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton — a Religious Right activist who supports imprisoning gay people.1
But when they spoke up, they were fired by the Republican-controlled Alabama Educational Television Commission.2
Public television is beloved for featuring entertaining, educational content — not hatred and lies.
Tell the Alabama Educational Television Commission (AETC): Keep Religious Right propaganda off public television. <>
A fringe figure just a few years ago, David Barton has quickly skyrocketed to the center of the conservative movement.
He's busy re-writing Texas textbooks to remove references to Martin Luther King, Jr.3, advising politicians like Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann, and regularly appearing on shows like Glenn Beck's to argue that all our laws should be based on his right-wing interpretation of the Bible.
Now he's trying to push his views into the mainstream, disguising his hateful misinformation as non-political educational content.
We can't let David Barton rewrite history on public television. Let's send a message that public television should broadcast educational content, not hateful lies.
Click here to sign our petition to Alabama Educational Television Commission (AETC).
Thank you for speaking out.
1. "Barton: 'I Don't Care What the Supreme Court Says,' Homosexuality Should be Illegal," People for the American Way, May 24, 2012.
2. "Exclusive: Dismissals at Alabama PTV linked to concerns over proposed broadcast of videos from religious right ," Current.org, June 13, 2012.
3. "Revisionaries: How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting your kids' textbooks," Washington Monthly, January/February, 2010.
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Conservative policy justifies disinvesting in public services and health care by using a moral exclusion argument—i.e. people who depend on these services must be deserving in some moral way to qualify for them.
The anti-war poet and soldier Siegfried Sassoon reports that toward the end of World War I, Winston Churchill told him that war is the normal occupation of man. Challenged, Churchill amended this to “war—and gardening.” Are the two opposites? Some agriculture is a form of war, whether it’s clearcutting rainforest, stealing land from the poor, contaminating the vicinity, or exploiting farmworkers, and some of our modern pesticides are descended from chemical warfare breakthroughs for the First World War. But gardening represents a much wider spectrum of human activity than war, and if war is an act of the state, gardening is far, far more ancient than city-states (if not nearly so old as squabbling).
Pastor William J. Collier and his Church of God's Chosen are holding a Christian conference and all are invited -- as long as they are white.
John Paul II
