Blue Collar Scientist

In Kansas, school officials prevented a woman from refereeing a basketball game on February 2.

If you heard about this happening in Saudi Arabia, you’d say, ahh, Sharia law, and shake your head over the insanity of it. But when you hear of someone in the United States being misogynistic, trying to keep women from doing their jobs (or just having jobs), you pretty much know right off the bat that what is going on is some good old-fashioned Christian religious extremism.

Campbell, as a woman, could not be put in a position of authority over boys because of the academy’s beliefs.

This makes me immediately wonder about these boys’ mothers. I gather these kids are only in high school, and have been taught that no woman can have authority over them? What must family life be like? I was a teenager once, and I was an even bigger prick then than I am now. Being taught the meme “god says no woman can have authority over you” would have given me license to be far worse.

These kids are taught to believe that they have an inherent superiority over their mothers, or at least over their friend’s mothers, that they need not pay any respect to a female cop who stops them for a traffic violation¹, that people like the Secretary of State of the United States have no proper authority over our country’s male diplomats, and so forth. I’m guessing these kids will be essentially unemployable outside their micro-economic world, which amounts to those businesses owned and operated by the men of their own religion.

And who exactly are these people?

St. Mary’s Academy, about 25 miles northwest of Topeka, is owned and operated by the Society of St. Pius X, which follows older Roman Catholic laws. The society’s world leader, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was excommunicated by Pope John Paul II in the late 1980s.

Right. These aren’t mainstreamers. They are some fringe group who split off because they thought the Catholics were too liberal. And the Catholics kicked them out, presumably, because they were too whacky.

What do you want to bet that they are against evolution too? I’m sure you’ve noticed that it isn’t your everyday Lutheran who gets in your face with a vicious, teeth-bared, saliva-spewing attack on the morals of the people in this world doing the most to ease suffering and cure disease (evolutionary biologists, as I’m sure you noticed if you’ve been paying attention at all during the last 80 years). The people who do this are the fringe. They are the extremists. Look around, and you’ll see that evolution denialism has some fellow travelers: marginalizing women, racial and gender segregation², big-bang denialism, vaccine denialism, belief in spirit healing over medicine, censorship, a hatred of higher education, discrimination against people with health problems, separatism from the rest of our society, and a slew of other evils. And one thing extremists have in common is that they impose these practices on their followers through autocratic, authoritarian means.

Trolling through their website, it looks like there is a St. Mary’s Academy, and a St. Mary’s College. I’m having a little trouble parsing which is which, since they share the same website, but I gather both are run by the Society of St. Pius X. And you find that these institutions are pretty much what you’d expect.

• At the College, they deny evolution. (The page has been removed, but here it is in Google’s cache. The St. Mary’s College bookmarks, which they style as “our links of Catholic reference,” link to several evolution denialist websites, to no evolution education websites, and to no websites that explain that evolution is easily reconciled with religious belief.)
• They hate higher education. (Again, the page has been removed, but the Google cache has it: “The evolution of modern education after 1960 has metamorphosed American campuses into academic versions of Sodom and Gomorrah, erudite dens of iniquity.” Anyone writing this obviously hasn’t been on a college campus in quite a while.)
• They deny entry to people with health problems: “Good mental and physical health is an essential requirement.”
• They keep their people separate from others: “Students must live in the college dormitories and take their meals in the dining room. The only exceptions are students who live with their families in the St. Mary’s area. No other arrangements may be considered.”
• They are separatists not only with respect to the academy, but they also restrict students’ outside employment: “Off-campus jobs are not permitted unless specific written approval of the Rector is procured. The Rector will determine the character of the individuals with whom you will be working and the general atmosphere of your chosen workplace.” I suppose it is unacceptable for an employee to determine the character of their co-workers….
• They practice censorship: “Alcoholic beverages, drugs, and rock-and-roll music are strictly forbidden.”
• While we’ve already seen how they feel about women, they also regulate womens’ dress and appearance: “No obvious cosmetics may be worn. If an inordinate amount is used, you will be sent to your room to remove it.” And: “During class hours and at liturgical functions, women are to wear skirts, dresses, or jumpers. These will be at least two inches below the knee. No clothing may be tight, see-through, sleeveless, or immodest in any way. Sneakers and sandals are not permitted at these times. During non-class hours, women are to wear skirts, dresses, or jumpers on or off the campus.”
• The Academy apparently sees no difference between bad behavior and neurological disease, and they specifically prevent special ed students from attending (again, page has been removed, but Google Cache helps out): “Since Saint Mary’s is not a reform institution and has neither the means nor the intention of implementing specialized programs, we are unable to admit or retain students who present discipline problems, anti-social behavior, or those who are affected by learning deficiencies.”
• The Academy requires two credits (!) of science for graduation, but three credits in religion.
• The Academy censors students as well: “The possession of non-classical music, as well as books, magazines, pictures, comics, letters, or notes of an immoral content are penalized with suspension/expulsion. The school will confiscate and destroy, without compensation, any material considered harmful to the students’ morals.” And: “It is forbidden to possess radios, televisions, tape or CD players, video games, walkie-talkies, hot pots, etc. Such items will be confiscated.”

And so on.

Just so we’re clear, on the off chance that St. Mary’s allows its students to unleash a storm of commenting here:

• It is not normal or acceptable in any civilized society to group people with learning disabilities with juvenile delinquents.
• It is not reasonable to consider radios and TVs to be subversive to morals. It is not normal to take them away from people by force when they are found.
• It is not Christian to be separatist. Several times in the bible believers are commanded to live their lives openly among the unbelievers.
• In a civilized society, telling a woman what kind of clothes she can wear is one of two things: Kinky, which is a positive expression of sexuality and is quite acceptable if there is consent all around; or perverted, in all other cases.
• It is not sane to deny evolution.
• It is inhuman to treat people with disease as unworthy of your company and unfit to be educated.
• It is especially hypocritical to practice this when your alleged saviour was notable mainly for hanging out with and helping lepers, the blind, and other suffering people.
• It is bizarre and unacceptable to refer to all other universities using language that suggests the people who live and work there want to rape those who visit their campuses.

It is time for the religious extremists to repent and start to behave like members of civilized society.

1. Don’t believe me? The referee they sent packing is a retired cop. [↩]
2. a well-known megachurch in Anchorage has services that are eerily segregated, with whites sitting on one side and everyone else sitting on the other [↩]