Im-pose-ing

Sure, the County Clerk in San Diego filed an injunction to limit the scope of the Supreme Court’s Proposition 8 ruling, saying that it should only apply to the same-sex couples in the case or to the counties in which they live. Never mind that arguing with the Supreme Court over a final ruling seems crazy or that I get nervous every time I learn about these attempts to impede same-sex marriage. It was widely thought that this move, like another the week before, would be unsuccessful, and it was - it was dismissed by the California Supreme Court.


Now that they are losing the battle over same-sex marriage, in addition to such matters as the teaching of evolution and prayer in schools, the Christian conservatives are scrambling. They are desperate. That’s all I could think when I read an article in the Los Angeles Times several weeks ago about a judge rejecting a lawsuit against the Encinitas Union School District - near San Diego, coincidentally - claiming that the teaching of yoga in its elementary schools violates the state law against the teaching of religion in public schools.

Really. As the headline read, “Judge finds yoga complaint a stretch.”

As funny as this, including the tongue-in-cheek headline, is, it’s no joke.

Never mind that yoga is seen to promote healthy exercise and eating habits and have the potential to decrease fighting and bullying. Never mind that Encinitas Superintendent Tim Baird assured, “We are not instructing anyone in religious dogma. Yoga is very mainstream.” Never mind that the Naval Medical Center in San Diego - the good old American military - uses yoga to help military personnel wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan recover from injuries and regain self-confidence.

Dean Broyles, the president and attorney for the Escondido-based National Center for Law and Policy who filed the lawsuit on behalf of a couple with two children in the Encinitas public schools, insisted during the hearing that “yoga poses are integrally linked to religious and spiritual beliefs.” After the ruling, noting that he “strongly disagrees with the judge’s ruling on the facts and the law,” Mr. Broyles declared, “This case is simply about whether public schools may entangle themselves with [religion]...and use the state’s coercive powers to promote a particular religious orthodoxy or religious agenda to young and impressionable schoolchildren.”

Whether or not Mr. Broyles and his organization is specifically Christian, it sounds to me like this, along with the other cases, is simply about the religious right wanting desperately to clear the public schools and public life of other orthodoxies and agendas so that theirs is the only one left. They are trying every way they can, to an ridiculous, if not illogical extent, to not let others impose their beliefs so that they can.