By Mark McCaig
The contest for Texas House District 135 is in full swing, with recent campaign finance reports showing the race as one of the top targeted races in the state. Incumbent Democrat State Representative Jon Rosenthal reported raising $206,564.23 during the most recent reporting period, while Republican challenger Justin Ray brought in $418,811.43.
For those unfamiliar with District 135, it covers Jersey Village, Copperfield, and parts of the Cy-Fair area in Northwest Harris County. District 135 was a longtime Republican stronghold before flipping to the Democrats in the 2018 Beto wave. President Trump carried the district in 2016, and Governor Abbott carried the district in 2018.
While many Democrats running in suburban areas are running campaigns featuring a centrist message and are distancing themselves from the extreme left, Rosenthal is a notable exception. Rosenthal describes himself publicly as a proud “progressive” who “isn’t trying to walk a tightrope.” This was evidenced by Rosenthal’s rating as Harris County’s most liberal state representative in Rice University Professor Mark Jones’ analysis of the 2019 legislative session. As part of his “bold progressive” campaign, Rosenthal has embraced fringe elements of the far left that hold the values shared by most residents of District 135 in utter contempt.
One such example is Rosenthal’s endorsement by the Freethought Equality Fund PAC, which describes itself as “affiliated with the Center for Freethought Equality, which is the advocacy and political arm of the American Humanist Association.”
The American Humanist Association and its affiliated entities are militant atheist groups that seek to remove any reference to God or Christianity from the public square. One of the key initiatives of the American Humanist Association is encouraging people to boycott the Pledge of Allegiance and the organization has a stated goal of “dismantling Christian privilege.”
Rosenthal’s embrace of this endorsement should come as no surprise based on his own past comments mocking Christians. As I have noted previously on this blog, in an interview on the “Trans Advocate” podcast, Rosenthal made several comments mocking Christians, the virgin birth, and the sacrament of communion. At one point in the interview, Rosenthal called Christian conservatives a “Christian Taliban,” joked that advocates of abstinence education are “these same religious people that will tell you there’s an exception to that rule, right, you can be abstinent and still get pregnant,” and stated “As a non-practicing agnostic, I don’t think I should be, let’s say, required to take communion walking into the Texas legislature. And it’s not that I have anything against eating crackers, but I think those crackers are generally not very tasty.”
The American Humanist Association is also a supporter of the defunding the police, having posted the following on its Facebook page:
The Freethought Equality Fund PAC isn’t the only anti-police organization whose support Rosenthal has sought and embraced. Over the last several weeks, Rosenthal has partnered with the Bernie Sanders-aligned group Our Revolution for regular phone banks supporting his campaign. Our Revolution is one of the most prominent national groups leading the charge to defund the police. In addition to being endorsed by Our Revolution, Rosenthal was a featured speaker at their “Organize to Win” rally earlier this year.
There is no doubt that Jon Rosenthal’s radical fellow travelers will flood District 135 with hundreds of thousands of dollars in the closing weeks of this campaign to boost his re-election efforts. With early voting starting Tuesday, voters must send a message at the ballot box that Jon Rosenthal’s radical agenda does not represent our community.
Mark McCaig is an attorney and Republican Precinct Chairman in Harris County.
Removing references to a particular religion from public lands, buildings, parks and organizations is consistent with the Constitution. Otherwise, the government, who is forbidden from endorsing or supporting any particular religion (or none at all) would have to simultaneously display symbols and sentiments for Judaism, Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Episcopalian, Southern Baptist, Mormon, Shia Muslim, Sunni Muslim, Jehova’s Witnesses, The Church fo Satan, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Shintoism, Buddhism, atheism, Jainism, Zorasterism, Native American religions, and so on. The public coffers would soon run out of money giving each religion practiced by people in our communities their own religious decorations and monuments.
Far better to let each church and each person freely and vocally support their preferred religion, without interference or hindrance by the State. They are invited to do so, and to argue about their respective saints, dogmas, strictures, scriptures and traditions… so long as they don’t do it on the public dime.
“The American Humanist Association and its affiliated entities are militant atheist groups that seek to remove any reference to God or Christianity from the public square.”
This is a lie – the AHA keeps the GOVERNMENT out of religion, including Christianity and any other religion. They are NOT trying to remove anything from “the public square”, but just keeping the government from playing favorites.
Insofar as “the public square” means publicly (i.e. government) funded and supported places and institutions, it’s absolutely appropriate to eject religious statements, monuments, etc. The “private sphere” is, however, the appropriate and welcome place to place such things.
If you’d like to peruse a much more representative list of Rosenthal’s endorsements, see this: https://jonrosenthaltx.com/endorsements/. It’s hard to miss the Houston Chronicle endorsement at the top of the page. I know, I know: just another fringe lefty entity that’s out of step with the _real_ values of District 135. Really — this writer’s extreme distortion is just weak…