What kind of odds you want to lay me that Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, subscribes to the newsletter of the far-right Family Research Center (FRC)? I’m laying my money down only if I get to bet that she does, but I’ll give you whatever odds you like. And on the assumption that I’m correct, she’s been hearing that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) currently in Congress and being pushed by Obama, will “impose homosexuality” in workplaces.

No, the FRC doesn’t claim that straight employees will be forced to watch gay porn until they convert to the LGBT lifestyle. But it does claim that businesses, even religious businesses, would be forced to hire gays. The newsletter points out that “[t]his law would punish anyone in the workplace who dares oppose homosexual behavior, cross-dressing and other unhealthy behaviors” and that Obama is trying to “impose homosexuality and silence Christianity in workplaces”–even to the point of forcing workers to remove those offensive (to gays) Bibles from their desks.

Such an imagination these folks have.

The legislation would not force anyone to be hired. It would only mean that it would be illegal “to fire, refuse to hire, or fail to promote employees simply based on sexual orientation,” as it is currently illegal to do in cases of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Additionally, as the Human Rights Campaign points out, current ENDA legislation “exempts small businesses, religious organizations and the military.“

But do you think Cunningham will ponder those fine points of the law once she hears from the FRC? Bear in mind that at the Educational Policy Conference of the Constitutional Coalition last winter, she spoke on the topic “the homosexual agenda in our public schools” and introduced her good friend State Rep. Sally Kern of Oklahoma, who:

achieved brief national notoriety when Ellen DeGeneres played a tape of Kern saying things like:

You know why they’re trying to get early childhood education? They want to get our young children into the government schools so they can indoctrinate them. …. And they’re going after our young children, as young as two years of age, to try to teach them that the homosexual lifestyle is an acceptable lifestyle.”

Ooh, earth to Sally Kern and Jane Cunningham.

And don’t try to tell me I lost that bet.

Representative Calamity Jane Cunningham (HD 86, Chesterfield) is running for SD 7, the seat John Loudon is termed out of. God help us. (It seemed appropriate to register a plea with God, even though–in fact because–Cunningham is convinced she has Him in her corner.)

She knows how much the Almighty hates activist judges, gays, and public education. Perhaps it is because of her pipeline to God on the education issue that the House leadership put her in charge of–what else?–The Education Committee.

There she has worked assiduously to deprive public schools of $40 million every year by trying to pass voucher legislation. Cunningham took pride in attracting hundreds of thousands of dollars in PAC contributions to Republican legislators from All Children Matter, a national pro-voucher organization.

And when the MNEA fought her on the voucher issue, she fought back:

Over the legislative spring break [2007], Queen of Bad Ideas Jane Cunningham and GOP friends Steve Hunter and Marilyn Ruestman spun the squeaky gerbil-wheels of their minds as rapidly as they could and came up with a gem of a bill. Their idea: stop public school teachers in the state of Missouri from participating in their democracy by visiting the state capitol to lobby legislators. ….

Their bill, HB 1222, reads simply…

no public school teacher shall lobby the general assembly unless such teacher makes arrangements to pay the salary of the substitute teacher for the teacher’s class.

Why this antipathy toward public education, an institution whose only sin is educating hundreds of millions of us? For the answer to that, be aware that Jane Cunningham has ties to the Christian Nationalism movement and dominion theology, which tell their adherents that Christians must come to control every aspect of American society, that in fact they have the right to rule non-believers. And those blankety-blank public schools aren’t getting with the program.

Specifically, public schools don’t hate gays enough. In January of last year, Cunningham spoke on the topic of “the homosexual agenda in our public schools” at the “Educational Policy Conference 18,” an annual event sponsored by The Constitutional Coalition. Check out the topics covered at the Coalition’s Conference. The catchiest title was: “Totalitarianism in Drag: The Connection Between Globalism, Phony Academics, Covert Data Collection & Mental Health Screening”.

When she spoke, Cunningham first introduced some of her favorite people in the audience, among them Allen TABOR Icet and Oklahoma representative Sally Kern. Now, that Sally Kern, she’s a caution. Let Ellen DeGeneres tell you about her:

Here’s one of my complaints about public schools: the ones Jane Cunningham attended failed to do their job. She learned how to read but assimilated no respect for the concept of democracy.