Texas House Thinks Too Many Pledge Allegiance

In 2003, the Texas Legislature passed a law requiring school children to recite the Texas Pledge of Allegiance each day (along with the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance). I have no problem with this law.

In fact, I think it's a good thing to teach our children to love their state of residence and pledge their allegiance to that state. After all, they did leave parents an out. Any parent could exempt their child by giving the school a written request.

But it looks like Republicans in the Texas House think that too many Texas children are now pledging allegiance to Texas. They want to fix it so only god-believers can take the pledge. Last week a bill authored by Rep. Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball) passed the Texas House. This bill adds the words "under God" to the Texas pledge.

Riddle denied that she was trying to promote religion through the pledge. She said she was only trying to make the pledge mirror the national pledge. However, that was shown to be a lie when a group of Democrats tried to amend her bill by also adding "with freedom, and justice for all". Republicans defeated that amendment, even though it would let the pledge mirror the national pledge even closer.

Rep. Lon Burnam (D-Fort Worth) hit the nail on the head when he said, "We see today the real purpose of this bill. It's not to create a parallel pledge. It is to promote one religious perspective that is exclusive, that is not inclusive."

The Republicans, in their pandering to the religious right, are once more trying to shove their religion down the throats of all Texans. It's really sad that they have so little confidence in their beliefs that they think those beliefs could not survive without laws forcing them on everyone.

In their zeal to promote their own religion by forcing it into the Texas pledge, Republican lawmakers are making sure that even less school children will take that pledge.

Can't we have anything good in this state without the Republicans trying to screw it up?