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A group of Arizona politicians — all Republicans, of course — have proposed a law (House Bill 2467) requiring public high school students to recite the following oath in order to graduate:

"I, _______, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge these duties; So help me God."

To quote Comedy Central’s Ilya Gerner: “Nothing says ‘I take this obligation freely’ quite like a state law that withholds your diploma unless you swear an oath.”

Kevin Bondelli adds:

"— graduating high school is not the same thing as voluntarily accepting the responsibility of a public office or admission to the legal bar. A high school diploma is, with extremely few exceptions, required to have a chance to live above the poverty level. It is the culmination of an education that up until that point was compulsory."

It’s bad enough the Republicans are demanding loyalty of the kind normally reserved for members of Congress and beyond — but there’s also no way I would say those last four words, and the current text of the legislation does not allow for any alternatives.

In other words, if this bill were to become a law, atheists would either not be allowed to graduate— or they would be forced to lie so they could graduate. Neither option is acceptable.

Mike Sunnucks of the Phoenix Business Journal points out another problem:

"The Arizona bill could also face legal challenges if it is approved."

"Jehovah’s witnesses, some Muslims and pacifist Quakers have in the past challenged loyalty oaths imposed by the federal government and other agencies, saying they conflict with their beliefs and religious professions. Similarly, some Arizona students could challenge the proposed high school oath as a violation of their religious liberties and freedom of expression."

This bill is the work of Representatives Bob Thorpe, Sonny Borrelli, Carl Seel, T.J. Shope, Jeff Dial, David Livingston, Chester Crandell, and Steve Smith.

Smith and Shope have also introduced legislation demanding that all students in grades 1-12 recite the Pledge of Allegiance (with “Under God”) every day. At least in that bill, students can get out of saying it with their parents’ permission.

No such exemption exists in the Loyalty Oath.

Keep in mind that in both cases, the bills do not help children get a better education. That’s the saddest thing about all this. The people who are in charge of fixing the education crisis are proposing solutions that would only waste more classroom time and exclude many students from graduating despite fulfilling their current requirements.

***Update***: While the bill still includes the God language, Think Progress reports that it may be revised:

"As written, the bill does not exempt atheist students or those of different faiths from the requirement, though Thorpe has pledged to amend the measure. “In that we had a tight deadline for dropping our bills, I was not able to update the language,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Arizona Republic. “Even though I want to encourage all of our students to understand and respect our Constitution and constitutional form of government, I do not want to create a requirement that students or parents may feel uncomfortable with.”

So it’s possible alternative language may solve the atheist problem, but *requiring* students to take the oath still poses a host of constitutional issues. Another option would be to make the oath optional, but that would make this bill completely irrelevant.

Which would be fine by me.

(Thanks to Brian for the link)

Scot, as I’ve noted in my published work, an appeal to an alleged slavery analogy is simply a bad case of analogical reasoning. Such an appeal even contradicts the use of an exploitation and orientation argument that you adopt. If the Bible does not intend to indict committed homosexual unions entered into by homosexually oriented persons (as you erroneously believe), why make an argument from analogy that is grounded on the need to depart from Scripture’s stance?

As it is, the alleged slavery analogy actually has little in the way of substantive correspondence with the Bible’s view of homosexual practice. The Bible shows no vested interest in preserving slavery. In a society without a social welfare net slavery is sometimes the only alternative to starvation; otherwise it serves as a penal institution in place of standing prisons or as a means of processing prisoners of war. At a number of points Scripture exhibits a critical edge toward that institution: mandatory release dates, right of kinship redemption at any time, injunctions not to treat Israelites as slaves, protection of runaway slaves, the exodus from Egyptian as a symbol of Israel’s release from slavery, Paul’s letter to Philemon promoting the release of Onesimus, and so on. Relative to the surrounding cultures of the ancient Near East and of Greece and Rome, the biblical witness on slavery moves in the direction of curtailing that institution. Finally, there is no creation mandate for slavery. Slavery is not imaged as part of the pre-Fall structures of the world.

Scot, compare this certainly non-enthusiastic and often critical attitude toward the institution of slavery in Scripture with the Bible’s strong witness in favor of a male-female prerequisite: There is a strong creation mandate for such a prerequisite; the pages of Scripture show strong revulsion for homosexual practice and absolutely no accommodation; and ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity had the most rigorous opposition to homosexual practice of any known culture in the ancient Near East and Greco-Roman Mediterranean basin. Jesus in Mark 10 (parallel in Matt 19) treated a male-female prerequisite for marriage (and thus all sexual relations) as foundational for sexual ethics, including the limitation of sexual unions to two persons.

The only connection that homosexualist interpreters can make between the Bible’s critical tolerance of slavery and its deliberate abhorrence of all homosexual practice is that we have changed on the institution of slavery; therefore, they argue, we should change our position on homosexual practice. Yet that argument can be used arbitrarily for any and every belief and practice promoted in Scripture, for it takes no account of whether substantive points of correspondence exist apart from the desire of the interpreter to deviate from Scripture.

The better analogy is between slavery and support for homosexual practice, for those who argue for the latter on the basis of a “born that way” philosophy are promoting slavery to the desires of the flesh. And still better analogies are the Bible’s stance on incest and the New Testament opposition to polygamy since the reasons why these behaviors are proscribed are related to, or derived from, a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations. As you must know, when one uses remote analogues (here, slavery) and ignores more proximate analogues (incest and polyamory) one shows poor analogical reasoning.