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Tag: Gary Click

Ohio Republican Legislators Determined to Put Christian Prayer Back in Schools

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prayer in school

By: Megan Henry, used with permission from Ohio Capital Journal

A proposed bill would require Ohio school districts to have a moment of silence every day. 

Ohio state Reps. Gary Click, R-Vickery, and Eric Synenberg, D-Beachwood, gave sponsor testimony on House Bill 187 Tuesday during the House Education Committee. [Click is a Fundamentalist Baptist who pastors an IFB church]

State law currently allows teachers to have a moment of silence in the classroom, so this bill would change one word in the law — from may to shall, creating a new mandate. The bill leaves the implementation up to the teacher.

“This bill does not ask for much and is extremely non-prescriptive,” Click said in his sponsor testimony. “It does not say where, when, or how long. It just says simply a moment. … Mindfulness is becoming a lost art in the hustle and bustle of modern society and is a discipline worth teaching.”

Students are constantly being bombarded with technology, Synenberg said. 

“While we as lawmakers can’t solve every mental health challenge students face, we do have the ability to create a space for a brief opportunity of peace and quiet,” he said. 

Students have the right to leave the classroom if they do not wish to participate in the moment of silence under the bill, but Synenberg said the legislation can’t prevent a student who chooses not to participate from getting bullied or made fun of. 

“That will have to be dealt with on an individual basis by the teachers (and) administration at school,” he said. “Hopefully, students are not going to do that. I’m sure it could happen, but we unfortunately can’t prevent that.”

Lawmakers on the committee had a lively discussion weighing the pros and cons of the bill. 

“We’ve been having a lot of discussion in the committee so far about how to roll back some of the mandates and regulations in our schools, and obviously this one says shall, as opposed to may,” Education Committee Chair Rep. Sarah Fowler Arthur, R-Ashtabula, said. “So how do you propose that fits into the context of trying to be less burdensome and not adding costs to the local districts?”

Click responded by saying there would be no cost to this bill. 

“This could be defined as a mandate,” Synenberg said. “It is sort of an anti-mandate mandate. So it’s do this, but really what we are having you do is for a small part of the day telling you don’t have to teach, you don’t have to instruct, you don’t have to be disciplining students. You’ll just be present with your students for that time.”

State Rep. Beryl Brown Piccolantonio, D-Gahanna, asked what currently prevents a school from having a daily moment of silence? 

“There’s nothing that prevents them,” Click said. “And yet, for some reason, not everyone does, and we just think it would be a good practice to implement across the state in every school.”

State Rep. Sean Patrick Brennan, D-Parma, said he would occasionally do a moment of silence in his classroom. 

“In today’s day and age — with the mental health crisis that we have on our hands — I think it’s wise,” he said. 

Brennan asked the lawmakers how having a daily moment of silence could help students foster mindfulness, empathy, and gratitude.

“I don’t know if our young people are consistently taught the value of just being still,” Click said. “I think that is a discipline that is worth teaching, and some teachers might want to expand on that and teach their students how to meditate.”

Ohio’s new religious release time law — which passed during the last General Assembly — also changed one word in the law from may to shall, requiring school districts to come up with a religious release time policy. Click sponsored a religious release time bill and language from that bill was eventually added to another education bill that was later signed into law by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine earlier this year. 

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Ohio Republican Lawmakers Voted to Take Away Parental Rights

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Ohio Representative Gary Click, an IFB pastor in Fremont Ohio. Click, a homophobe, wants to ban all transgender healthcare — minors and adults

By Marilou Johanek, Ohio Capital Journal, Used with Permission

Busted. Ohio Republicans love to grandstand on parents’ rights and protection of children when they’re pushing culture war crazy like banning books, whitewashing history, or canceling nonexistent gender indoctrination in grade schools. They’re fighting for your parental rights to be in charge of your child and to protect that darling from all the fearful imaginings invented on Fox “News.”

All for show. A charade to justify mindless legislation on made-up crises. But the gig is up. State lawmakers masquerading as champions of parents and protectors of children just voted against parents deciding what’s best for their children and against protecting Ohio children from harm. Busted.

The supermajorities of gerrymandered Republicans in the Ohio Senate and Ohio House voted to replace parental authority with political control. The radical fundamentalists running state government with an iron fist know better than you parents when it comes to your child. Simple peasants with kiddos can’t be trusted to do the right thing. They need to be told by unaccountable authoritarians in the Statehouse.    

“We tell parents what to do all the time. So this isn’t any different. Sometimes the General Assembly has to step in and tell them what to do,” said Republican state Sen. Stephen Huffman.

“The same government that requires you to send your children to school…has the obligation to prevent parents and physicians from chemically castrating and sterilizing their children,” said Republican state Rep. Gary Click, sponsor of the extreme anti-trans bill becoming law in less than 90 days.

“The governor has said we should let parents make these decisions. Well, that’s nice as a headline,” but “there are parents making bad decisions, as parents always do,” said Republican state Senate President Matt Huffman.

What the impossibly arrogant and outrageous Republican overlords in the Ohio legislature are saying is that parents aren’t up to the job of raising their children without right-wingers calling the shots. Clearly the extremists believe parents with transgender minors are inadequate to the task of providing health care for them not proscribed by politicians (without medical or psychological training). 

When MAGA Republicans overrode Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of an anti-trans bill that bans gender-affirming care for minors and restricts transgender participation in sports, they mocked parents of this state under the pretext of protecting their kids. They trotted out the same fearmongering delusions and alternative realities parroted in scores of other Republican-dominated legislatures to beat up a strawman unable to hit back.

They legislated away the rights of Ohio’s transgender youth and their parents not for any credible, medically-valid, evidence-based rationale, but because exploiting transgenderism is politically expedient in MAGA world. State Republicans enacted a gender-affirming healthcare ban — despite overwhelming opposition from physicians, children’s hospitals, counselors, parents, patients, and every major medical association in the country — because polls backed indefensible cruelty. Republicans stopped Ohio parents, relying on the best medical advice and long-established clinical practices, from giving their trans children gender-affirming treatment that could well save their lives.

The governor relayed parental concerns when he vetoed the bill Republicans restored. “They told me their child is alive only because they received care,” he said. “Ultimately, I believe this is about protecting human life.” Ultimately, Republican lawmakers believed targeting the transgender community with discriminatory legislation was worth sacrificing human life to score ideological points.

They broadly dismissed trans youth as “kids doing something stupid” and portrayed their parents as pushovers who succumb to “the culture that has been created behind this movement.” (?) Ohio Senate President Huffman — presumably a scholar on gender dysphoria, its diagnosis and treatment — also argued baselessly that “parents are being pressured” to accept their transgender children who are being “encouraged by a lot of people” to be trans so “of course, they’re gonna latch onto it.”

With that tortured logic, Republican leadership gaveled a sweeping anti-trans bill into law and ignored DeWine’s warning that the consequences on “a very small number of children … would be profound.” Collateral damage. The price of maintaining a MAGA Republican grip on power through hate-baiting. 

After putting vulnerable transgender youth in unnecessary danger by denying their parents the right to save them with health care, Republican state senators joined their counterparts in the House in refusing to protect Ohio’s kids and communities from tobacco addiction. It’s the leading cause of preventable death in Ohio, according to the state’s health director. 

However, the GOP supermajorities sided with Big Tobacco over local efforts to reduce the high rates of tobacco use among young Ohioans. So flavored tobacco products, hugely popular with high schoolers and young adults, will soon be back on store shelves after Republicans overrode the governor’s veto of a bill that prevented Ohio cities from banning their sale. 

Lawmakers voted not in the public interest or as proponents of kids, many of whom start vaping with widely available flavored products that target children with fruit or candy flavors. They legislated away the home rule rights of people trying to improve public health and prevent kids from becoming nicotine addicts at 14, 15, or 16 years old. Protecting the tobacco industry and businesses was more important.

Ohio MAGA Republicans can wail all they want about the protection of children or the rights of parents but truly the gig is up. The gerrymandered frauds have been exposed again. Busted.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.