During a recent Appropriations and Budget meeting, Democrat Oklahoma state Rep. Regina Goodwin took umbrage at HB 2077, an education transparency bill introduced by Republican Rep. Chad Caldwell.

Caldwell’s legislation would require the Oklahoma Department of Education to allow parents to review their schools' curriculum on an "online transparency portal." Caldwell proposed the bill as a way to "support parental rights to access, review, and comment upon curriculum, instructional materials, textbooks, and library materials being used by the school district where their child attends school, and which their child might be exposed to without prior parental knowledge or consent."

Sounds reasonable. And eminently necessary in light of what “educators” have been foisting on students in recent years. After all, “educators” are supposed to be public servants, and their paychecks come out of those parent’s wallets.

Rep. Goodwin vehemently disagrees, however. She stated:

“Long story short, this is a very controversial issue, it’s a very controversial bill, there’s nothing that’s simple about it. And when we start having government overreach, which I often hear folks talk about here, this is a prime example of government overreach, and I would hope that we would allow our teachers and our folks that are really trying to do the work of educating—leave them be.”

It’s a good thing Goodwin isn’t an English teacher.

Government overreach is what Goodwin and her ilk support, and the opposite of Caldwell’s desire. The latter’s bill was introduced to address government overreach, by protecting parents—and their kids—from a vast public educational bureaucracy that wants to groom and indoctrinate students without their parent’s approval or knowledge.

At one point, Caldwell asked Goodwin to state whose voices she would like to have silenced.

She replied:

“Voices that should be silenced, quite frankly, I would hope any thinking human being would know anybody that thinks diversity, equity, and inclusion is a bad idea, perhaps those voices that don't want to include all of humanity in this world and in our curriculum and in our education, perhaps those are the voices that should be silenced.”

Incredibly, she then added, “DEI is a deity; diversity, equity and inclusion is God.”

Diversity, equity and inclusion is God?

I beg to differ. Call me a skeptic. Diversity, equity and inclusion is a social construct, essentially a progressive trope, a societal ideal to be achieved according to Marxists and other Democrats. It is not the supernatural Creator of the universe. Nor is it the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost. Rather, it replaces them in the fevered minds of lost and confused individuals like Rep. Regina Goodwin.

Taken to its extreme, equity can only be even partially achieved by a vast government wielding unchecked powers over its citizenry. As such, the pursuit of it is far more likely to destroy societies than to create…anything at all.

Photo credit: Grabien video screengrab