Florida DOE targeting Christians for harassment
The Florida Department of Education appears to have it in for Christians as evidenced by the following.
Florida DOE guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust contains false information regarding the Crusades. The guidelines state...
"Before embarking on their journeys, Christians attacked Jews, considered enemies of Christ, in French and German towns. In the First Crusade (1096), about 10,000 Jews of Northern Germany and France were killed."
However Thomas F. Madden, associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University, who is also author of numerous works, including A Concise History of the Crusades, and co-author, with Donald Queller, of The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, gives a less bigoted version. In his paper, The Real History of the Crusades, he states...
"During the early days of the First Crusade in 1095, a ragtag band of Crusaders led by Count Emicho of Leiningen made its way down the Rhine, robbing and murdering all the Jews they could find. Without success, the local bishops attempted to stop the carnage. In the eyes of these warriors, the Jews, like the Muslims, were the enemies of Christ. Plundering and killing them, then, was no vice. Indeed, they believed it was a righteous deed, since the Jews' money could be used to fund the Crusade to Jerusalem. But they were wrong, and the Church strongly condemned the anti-Jewish attacks."
Madden also wrote in The Church and the Jews in the Middle Ages...
The Church actively opposed these attacks, and local clergy often came to the defense of Jews in their community. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, preaching the Second Crusade, told the soldiers of Christ, “The Jews are not to be persecuted, killed, or even put to flight.” When a fellow Cistercian monk began exhorting Germans to destroy the Jews before waging war on the Muslims, St. Bernard went personally to put a stop to it. As Rabbi Efraim of Bonn wrote:
Bernard said to them [the Crusaders]: “It is good that you go against the Ishmaelites [Muslims]. But whosoever touches a Jew to take his life, is like one who harms Jesus himself….”
In other words saying "Christians attacked Jews" at the outset of the second Crusade would be the same as claiming that "Jews spread Communism in Europe". A few were involved, but many more opposed it. Blanket accusations like that are bigoted and designed to attack a group based on demonizing them.
But on an even more blatant scale is the way the Florida DOE has waged war on Dr. Karen "Kay" Stripling. The Saint Petersburg Times reports...
In a case with ties to a federal criminal investigation, a North Florida woman is suing the Florida Department of Education for religious discrimination.
Karen W. "Kay" Stripling, an evangelical Christian from Marianna, says her company - which helped high school drop-outs earn diplomas through GED classes held in churches - was targeted several years ago during a "witch hunt" of faith-based providers, according to a lawsuit filed in late June in Leon County circuit court.
Education Department officials refused to pay her company, Read & Lead, more than $200,000 it owed and then told state and federal investigators she mishandled public money, the suit says.
The suit says those statements led investigators to threaten Stripling with a federal indictment and the possibility of fines and prison time, but that investigators backed off after concluding the department's assertions were wrong.
Not only did the Florida DOE refuse to pay Dr. Stripling for an entire year's work, they filed false accusations with federal and state investigators. Among the false charges were...
That Read & Lead was a "Local Education Agency" and that under federal reimbursement guidelines it therefore could only be paid under a "cash advance" or "reimbursement" payment system; (Not only was it paid based on "performance" criteria the previous year, the contract with the state was specific in that Read & Lead's funding was to be provided based on "performance" not "re-imbursement")
That Read & Lead under the Contract was operating under a cash advance payment method; (It had received no cash advances)
That Read & Lead had received an advance payment of state or federal funds under the Contract;
That Read & Lead had been allocated an advance payment of state or federal funds under the Contract;
That Read & Lead had received federal cash advance payments under the Contract;
That Read & Lead had been allocated federal cash advance payments under the Contract; (There had been no advance payment of any kind. This false report was to ensure federal prosecution, by implying that Dr. Stripling and Read & Lead had defrauded the US government as well as the State of Florida. But the allegations were based on complete lies.)
That as a condition to being paid on invoices under the Contract, Read & Lead was required to submit receipts and other documentation proving the costs of all the underlying expenditures incurred by Read & Lead in meeting Contract performance goals; (Not in their contract and not required the previous year.)
That Read & Lead and Stripling had commingled alleged federal cash advance payments with other funds belonging to Read & Lead or Stripling personally, in alleged violation of federal criminal law;
That Read & Lead and Stripling had commingled alleged advance payments of state or federal funds with other funds belonging to Read & Lead or Stripling personally, in alleged violation of state or federal criminal law; (Since there were no cash advances, it couldn't have been "co-mingled")
That Read & Lead had not been legally, properly and competitively awarded the Contract; (It had, and the State of Florida listed it among other "Community Based Organizations" providing Adult Education.)
That Read & Lead and Stripling had made materially false statements in the award proposal/application which was submitted in Response to DOE's Request for Proposal/Application; (Another completely fabricated accusation.)
That Stripling lied about having a legitimate Ph D. and that her degree was of questionable validity because it was from a "front" school of theology; (Dr. Stripling has a master's degree in Psychology from Troy State University and a Ph D. in Instructional Design from North Carolina College of Theology which is accredited through the Southern Accrediting Association of Christian Schools.)
That Stripling was a security threat.
From Dr. Stripling's lawsuit filed against the Florida DOE...
When in February 2007 the Plaintiffs filed a public records request under chapter 119 of the Florida Statutes for of all records relating to Stripling and Read & Lead from the DOE, the Plaintiffs learned from emails prepared by DOE employees that DOE had ostensibly allowed an ongoing internal breach of security “by having no secure file area” and that as a result “somebody removed all documents from our files for all seven of the projects that [Stripling] was involved with, including her applications, amendments, award letters, everything.”
Although DOE had allowed “somebody [to] remove all” of the Plaintiffs’ official files, the Plaintiffs discovered that DOE representatives had managed to insert into Plaintiffs’ official DOE file numerous press clippings concerning Christian activism in public education. These clippings included articles and editorials ridiculing and criticizing former Governor Bush’s private school voucher initiative as a wasteful and costly experiment, decrying creationism as unscientific, lauding courses teaching homosexuality and Marxism and criticizing those who oppose such courses, warning of the dangers of “religion in schools,” noting the efforts of “evangelical Protestants” to publish textbooks “endorsing the Bible as absolute authority,” and mocking the “Christian version of intelligent design” as teaching that “a thingy that may look like Santa Claus spent seven days creating everything you see.”
It's obvious that a group of rabid, anti-Christian bigots are being allowed to run amuck within the Florida DOE, waging a campaign of intimidation, lies and harassment in order to prevent Christians from participating in Florida's funding of Community Based Adult Education. The Florida DOE, rather than punishing the guilty, are defending the bigots and allowing the religious discrimination and harassment to continue.
I would have though Florida would be tired of being the source of so much stupidity, what with Al Gore's temper tantrum, the armed kidnapping of Elian Gonzalez, the murder of Terri Schindler and the bogus, politically motivated charges against Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. They must be real gluttons for punishment.
Posted by Danny Carlton at August 3, 2007 9:24 AM