"We have become a society that wants quick fixes and simple answers," Keenan said in an interview Tuesday. "When you've trusted employers who let you down, and the natural beauty around you is taken away by forest fires, it's natural to want to hang on to something simple (like intelligent design). The point is, that's a private matter that should be held in a private church, funded with private dollars. But the religious right keeps trying to inject it into the political arena."
Keenan said conservative religious advocates are looking nationwide for places where there's low community involvement, little school oversight and no strong network of parents who scrutinize school board candidates for such agendas. She was bringing her message to a gathering of the Montana Human Rights Network in Hamilton on Tuesday evening, part of a multi-stop swing through Montana this week.
Keenan served 12 years as state superintendent of schools before losing a bid for Montana's lone congressional seat to Republican Denny Rehberg in 2000. After that, she went to Washington, D.C., and worked as a private education consultant. She is now the education policy director for People for the American Way, a national policy research organization that lobbies for liberal causes.
Keenan accused organizations on the religious right, including corporate-influenced research organizations, politicians and foundations, of looking for opportunities to push their social ideas.
"When the religious right entered the political arena was right after the Brown v. Board of Education (Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation) 50 years ago," Keenan said. "That was the first time we started hearing about vouchers so that white children didn't have to go to school with brown children. They wanted to use tax dollars so white children could go to white Christian academies."
The crucial issue, Keenan said, was the constitutional insistence on separation of church and state. She recalled a time when she was Montana superintendent of schools, Marc Racicot was governor, Mike Cooney was secretary of state, Joe Mazurek was attorney general and Mark O'Keefe was state auditor. When someone approached those five officials with a proposal to require prayer in public schools, Keenan realized that all five top state office-holders were Roman Catholic.
"I said, 'Great, it'll be the Hail Mary,' " she recalled. "Imagine what that would have done. Our government must never infiltrate religion any more than our government should be infiltrated by the Vatican."
The United States has avoided the kind of wrenching religious wars now raging elsewhere on the planet because of its strong prohibitions against mingling church and state affairs, Keenan said. But she accused the administration of President Bush and much of the Republican congressional leadership of pushing a religious agenda into public policy to a greater extent than ever before.
"And I think we're less safe now than we've ever been in the history of the country, because of the rest of the world hating us so," Keenan said. "We've been so beaten over the head by terrorist threats since 9-11 that we're willing to give up some of our rights, and we're not so concerned that others have lost them entirely."
On the domestic side, Keenan said the Bush administration is pushing a religiously driven agenda. And a main tactic, she said, was using tax cuts to force state services into incompetence.
"If you starve the government of resources, if you underfund programs, it seems the only option is to privatize them," Keenan said. "You see it in our military, in our schools, in our social services. But what mega-millionaire philanthropist has stepped forward to take over health care? They know they can't afford to, and they can't make money at it. It's something we have to come together to do for the common good. Not everything is market-driven. Government is what brings us together for the common good, not as individuals making money at it alone."
In the case of Darby, Keenan said, the controversy over a national-scale curriculum proposal awakened local interest in what was happening in the school system.
"The latest school board election shows it was rejected," Keenan said. "We've got a basic Montana value here - be respectful of your neighbor. When someone comes in and imposes their beliefs, we say: Nope, that's not the Montana way."
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com
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