#everett piper

John Whitehouse at MMFA:

On July 9, Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction Ryan Walters announced that a number of people — many of them key figures in right-wing media — would be rewriting the social studies curriculum in the state.

The list includes right-wing hosts with ties to Walters like Steve Deace, Dennis Prager, and Stacy Washington. Also included is Kevin Roberts, the head of The Heritage Foundation, which has organized Project 2025.

Walters announced an “executive review committee” to revise Oklahoma’s social studies curriculum. Members include Dennis Prager, Robert Pondiscio, David Barton, Kevin Roberts, Everett Piper, John Dwyer, David Goodwin, Mark Bauerlein, Steve Deace, and Stacy Washington. [Oklahoma State Department of Education, 7/9/24]

After implementing a mandate that the state’s public schools teach the Bible, Walters claimed that right-wing commentator and pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, who has promised to “embrace Christian nationalism” and previously ran for U.S. Senate in Oklahoma, encouraged him to implement such a policy last year. [Media Matters, 7/8/24]

Walters has approved PragerU Kids — which is widely criticized for pushing right-wing propaganda, such as including distorted histories about slavery in its history lessons — as curriculum for Oklahoma public schools. In one supposedly educational video, for instance, a cartoon version of Fredrick Douglass describes slavery as a “compromise to achieve something great.” [MSNBC, 9/7/23; Media Matters, 9/8/23; NBC, 8/10/23]

Dennis Prager is an anti-LGBTQ pundit who has hosted The Dennis Prager Show since 1999. In 2009, he founded the conservative nonprofit organization PragerU, which publishes short videos on political and international issues.

David Barton is a pseudo-historian and Christian nationalist well-known for spreading the idea that the country was supposed to be a Christian nation. Barton is the founder of WallBuilders.

Kevin Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank leading Project 2025.

Steve Deace is a host for BlazeTV who has made many anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ remarks.

Stacy Washington is a commentator, radio host, and Air Force veteran who has appeared in many right-wing outlets. She was formerly a host of a program aired on American Family Radio, the radio arm of extreme anti-LGBTQ group American Family Association, before the network culled much of its programming and its dedicated Urban Family Communications network.

Right-wing indoctrination artist Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Schools Ryan Walters announced that he is having a team rewrite the state’s social studies curriculum, with many of its names right-wing media figures such as Everett Piper, serial history revisionist David Barton, indoctrination mill head Dennis Prager, and pundit Steve Deace.

See Also:

David Badash at NCRM:

Oklahoma Wesleyan University President Dr. Everett Piper on Tuesday expanded his attacks against LGBT people. His target Monday was 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, who Piper falsely accused of "telling us what kind of sex you like," while attacking him for what he says are Buttigieg's "proclivities," "sexual appetites," and "personal peccadillos" – in other words, only that he is gay and married to a man.

Dr. Piper penned his original attack in an op-ed at The Washington Times, titled, "Pete Buttigieg doesn't get to make up his own Christianity." Ironically, The Washington Times was started in 1982 by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who believed he was the "messiah," and created an entirely new "brand" of Christianity which he spread around the world.

On Tuesday, Piper took to Twitter to attack the entire LGBT community.

His logic: One unnamed person on Twitter holds the keys to the entire LGBT community's reputation.

Another irony: Right wing Christian extremists like Dr. Piper have been telling LGBTQ people they are going to hell for decades – if not longer.

Peter Montgomery at RWW:

On Sunday, the day that South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg officially launched his presidential bid, the Washington Times published a commentary by right-wing university president Everett Piper under the headline, “Pete Buttigieg doesn’t get to make up his own Christianity.”

Piper is president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, and has made a name for himself and his school in recent years by aggressively attacking familiar targets of the right wing, like “political correctness.” Piper pulled his school out of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities a few years ago because the association’s leaders did not immediately kick out two colleges that accepted faculty members who are married to someone of the same sex.

Piper’s dislike for Buttigieg, a gay Christian, is hardly surprising: In another Washington Times op edthat ran about a year ago, Piper compared what he considers the immorality of the LGBT movement with that of ISIS.

In his recent column, Piper postured as a reasoned voice even as his own words betrayed him. “Mr. Buttigieg, has it ever occurred to you,” wrote Piper on Sunday, “that the ‘Mike Pences of the world’ don’t have a problem with who you are,’ but rather we just disagree with what you do?”

[...]

In his Sunday column, Piper seemed particularly upset about what he characterized as Buttigieg’s “ridicule of the vice president’s religious convictions.” And then Piper went on to ridicule the religious convictions of Buttigieg, who has said that his marriage has brought him closer to God.

“What gives you the right to redefine a sacrament of the church?” asked Piper. “You don’t get to make up your own Christianity.”

Turns out Buttigieg didn’t have to “redefine a sacrament of the church.” He attends an Episcopal church that extends the sacrament of marriage to same-sex couples.

Here’s a bit of news for Piper: A lot of American Christians share Buttigieg’s view of marriage. In fact, about two-thirds of mainline Protestants, white Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Hispanic Catholics support marriage equality—along with a majority of white evangelicals under the age of 30.

Perhaps Piper, like some other Christian conservatives, believes that liberal Christians—those who support LGBT equality or defend a woman’s right to have an abortion or advocate for government action against poverty and hunger–are not really Christians.

Zack Ford at ThinkProgress: 

Everett Piper, the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University with a national platform for his conservative views, capitalized on that platform earlier this month with an op-ed comparing LGBTQ people to ISIS.

In his opinion piece published in the Washington Times, Piper argues that moral approval of same-sex relations constitutes a slippery slope (a common logical fallacy) that leads to approval for pederasty, adultery and incest. He proposes an exercise to help those who don’t share his irrational fear:

Go to any article in any magazine or website that argues for “conversations” about sexual morality and simply replace the acronym of the day with another set of letters. For example, every time you see LGBTQ in an article, simply replace those letters with ISIS. Change nothing else. Do this throughout the entire column in question.

In doing this, something will quickly become quite obvious. Sentences will emerge such as these: “Love is love and ISIS has the right to love who they want to love.” “The ISIS community simply wants to be accepted and affirmed.” “What right does anyone have to refuse to bake a cake for an ISIS wedding?” As such absurdities jump off the page, hopefully it becomes clear how absolutely ridiculous our culture’s game of sexual politics has become.

If people deserve respect just because of how they identify, Piper has no idea how to distinguish one identity from another. “In this brave new world of hyphens and acronyms, we paint ourselves into a corner of ‘tolerance’ where we must affirm the proclivities of anyone who ‘identifies’ as ISIS just as much as we do all who identify as LGBTQ,” he writes.

Piper truly doesn’t know how to morally distinguish between someone who might be gay and someone with hateful views. “What is the difference between affirming one sinful inclination and affirming another?” he asks. “In other words, why is an inclination toward anti-Semitism something we all assume we can and should condemn, control and change, but an inclination toward a given sexual act is not? Why do we ‘normalize’ one sinful predisposition but condemn another?”

Piper never tries to answer these questions (personal incredulity is another logical fallacy). To him, sin is sin, and the sinful nature of LGBTQ identities is a moral absolute. The lives of LGBTQ people are of no concern to him, including their ability to form families, find jobs or housing, or participate in public life.

Not a Day Care

By Walter E. Williams

LewRockwell.com

September 28, 2017

  Not a Day Care

  Our college-age population consists mostly of 18- to 30-year-olds, and likewise our armed forces. I wonder whether they shared common responses to the 2016 presidential election. Many college administrators provided students with therapy dogs, play dough, coloring books, bubbles, videos of frolicking kittens and…

Julie Kliegman, The Week, Nov. 30, 2015

One university president recently sent a strong message to students who raise concerns over campus activities, including lectures and sermons, that make them feel uncomfortable: “This is not a day care,” wrote Everett Piper, the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, in a blog post spotted by Inside Higher Ed Monday. “This is a university!”

In the midst of debates over campus protests and trigger warnings, Piper wrote of a student who he said recently spoke to him about a university chapel sermon that made him feel bad for not showing love. Here’s the president’s response to him, and to other students who may feel similarly:

If you want the chaplain to tell you you’re a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you’re looking for. If you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love, this might be the wrong place.

College President Tells Students to ‘Grow Up’ Because Campus Not Meant to Be ‘Safe Space’

By Natalie Johnson

The Daily Signal

December 2, 2015

  College President Tells Students to ‘Grow Up’ Because Campus Not Meant to Be ‘Safe Space’

  (Image courtesy of hnguitarist/Flickr,CC)

  As debate heats up over “safe spaces” at campuses across the United States, one college president is standing up to students who claim they’re victims when their opinions are challenged.

Everett Piper,…