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The Supreme Court heard arguments on April 30 on whether a Catholic school in Oklahoma named for St. Isidore the Farmer can be the first charter school with a religious foundation. It's the latest case to alarm the media about the so-called separation of church and state.

New York Times legal reporter Adam Liptak cited a study finding that since Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court in 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of religious people and groups over 83% of the time, compared with about 50% of the time for other courts since 1953. "In most of these cases, the winning religion was a mainstream Christian organization, whereas in the past pro-religion outcomes more frequently favored minority or marginal religious organizations," two professors concluded.

This underlines how the Left fears "mainstream Christians" are going to ruin public education. On CBS, Oklahoma's Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond was so aggressive about touting a "slippery slope" of allowing Christians to have charter schools, he claimed it would open the door to "Satanic School" and "Wiccan School."

In reality, many public school teachers today preach the polar opposite of "mainstream Christian" values, but that's never something that liberal reporters think should be separate from the state. Take a look at the LGBTQ-pushing teachers sporting purple hair featured on "Libs of TikTok." You can put up rainbow flags on the wall, but you can't put up a cross. You can't "establish" religion, but you can establish its godless opposite.

A week earlier, when the high court took up Maryland's Montgomery County removing any parental choice in opting out students during discussions of illustrated children's books like "Pride Puppy" and "Uncle Bobby's [Gay] Wedding," Liptak found two professors who argued, "The First Amendment does not shield public school students from the mere exposure to ideas that conflict with their personal views, whether secular or religious."

How does Liptak reconcile these two arguments about public schools? It would seem that introducing Catholic views is a dangerous intrusion, but introducing the LGBTQ advocacy is merely "inclusion." If a religious parent showed up in the grade-school classroom to add a little balance to the discussion, they wouldn't welcome that as "the mere exposure of ideas" some find disagreeable.

At least reporters can clearly label the two sides of this debate. On NBC, legal reporter Laura Jarrett (daughter of Obama's White House chief of staff Valerie Jarrett) touted the views of Oklahoma's Erin Brewer, as just a "mom of two teens." Brewer argued, "For the government to choose a particular religion to force us as taxpayers to fund it or to force us as students to study those tenets, that's un-American." Jarrett didn't tell viewers that Brewer was a losing Democrat candidate for the Oklahoma state senate in 2024.

Brewer, like many liberal journalists, decries the spread of "Christian nationalism" and campaigned against Oklahoma superintendent of schools Ryan Walters, who has touted bringing the Bible back into public schools.

Secular reporters often betray that their minds meld with Ron Reagan Jr. and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. "Freedom" is about keeping religion out of the public square, while the opposing view gets untrammeled promotion. "Freedom" also somehow means preventing parents from opting out on the propaganda, and calling that a lesson in "civility and respect." That's Orwellian.

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Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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