Spellings Funds Right-Wing Rock in High Schools

It is rare for an education issue, any education issue, to make the political blogs, so one eyebrow lifted over my coffee cup this morning when I saw this at HuffingtonPost. It seems that ED is funding a rock band to tour high schools spreading approved propaganda on drug awareness and abstinence, while selling other favorite political messages of the folks at ED. Here is a clip of the story:

In the group’s numerous school assembly appearances, frontman Bradlee Dean has covered most of the right-wing topics du jour. At one stop, for instance, Dean strongly defended the Second Amendment and said that “blaming Columbine on guns is like blaming spoons for Rosie O’Donnell being fat.”

Invoking another favorite target of conservatives – the “liberal” media and entertainment industry – Dean has repeatedly criticized them for supporting and promoting adultery, homosexuality, and abortion.

On religion, Dean has praised Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” and members of his entourage distributed religious literature at several stops. He has also told students that “there is nothing in our Constitution or founding documents about separation of church and state” and criticized the theory of evolution.

Speaking of science, in another appearance, Dean attacked Alcoholics Anonymous, stating that alcoholism is not a disease. He also comes armed with statistics: apparently pornography increased by a staggering 97 percent when Bill Clinton was President, according to Dean.

And perhaps most bizarrely, in at least one assembly, the boys and girls were divided into two groups for part of the performance. In the girls’ session a female staffer from the band told the girls that they “would get black spots” on their wedding dresses if they held hands with a boy and would be serving “leftovers" to their husbands if they lost their virginity before marrying a “God-fearing man.”

The Des Moines Register reported that after one 2004 performance, Junkyard Prophet handed out CDs to a few random students that bore this message: “the death sentence [is] on you due to your sins! The very evidence of your sin will be your death! It is appointed to you to die and after that you will be judged according to your ways! His judgment is so thorough every thought will be brought to the light. When all your sin against God is exposed, how will you escape the damnation of hell?"