2012 Texas Republican Party platform

This was brought up in a Facebook post today. I had to find the source to find out if it was true, after reading the article. There are quite a few parts that I do agree with, but there are some parts that are truly frightening.

These are the various platforms for the Republican Party in the state of Texas for this year. They include things like representatives, and other members of the gov't shall not be exempt from any law or rule that applies to the common person, and no more unelected or appointed bureaucrats. These are good things.

Then we get to Family Values. I know a number of people will agree with some of these things, but this is where I find it becoming scary.

To summarize they only want marriage to be between a man and a woman, but they don't want an unmarried couple to have any rights together.

Neither the United States nor any state shall recognize or grant to any unmarried person the legal rights or status of a spouse. We oppose the recognition of and granting of benefits to people who represent themselves as domestic partners without being legally married.

This means that common law marriages would not be recognized, and if a couple was together for years, and one had a child with someone else, and something happened to one partner, the other would have no rights to the child. Even if that child recognized that member as a parent, and had grown up with them being "mom" or "dad".

Needless to say Planned Parenthood, no abortion, and they would get rid of "no fault divorce" and would recognize Covenant Marriage. Covenant Marriage only recognizes divorce in very limited situations, including domestic violence, a felony including jail time, or adultery.

They would enforce all laws against pornography, any punishment of people opposed to homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.

Then we come to education, which is where it gets really interesting. I found this to be a scary paragraph....

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

There are quite a few policies that I really like, such as supporting the Second Amendment, and a lot of reform that I completely agree with. They would stop electronic surveillance, support a free internet, etc. It's just reading some of the platform points scares the hell out of me.

Whoops. Forgot the link to the PDF.

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