Robert Talton
R Pasadena
SO MUCH LUNACY, so little space. When Talton approaches a microphone, you can bet that eyes will roll and tongues will wag. Take his crusade to bar gay couples from becoming foster parents. When Talton tried to tack his prohibition onto a bill reforming the Child Protective Services agency, the House was plunged into a debate on the origin of homosexuality. “It’s a learned behavior,” Talton insisted, leading one colleague to ask, “What’s the reason, then, why [some] people…who come from heterosexual families…are homosexual?” When Jane Nelson, the Senate sponsor of CPS reform, pronounced Talton’s amendment dead, he wrote her that he felt called by God to make conservatives uphold their principles.
Ever vigilant, Talton discovered a dangerous threat to the American way of life: the International Baccalaureate diploma program offered by many of Texas’s best high schools. A fellow Republican proposed a simple bill to ensure that students who completed the rigorous high school curriculum received 24 hours of college credit from state universities. But you can’t fool a man who knows a black helicopter when he sees one. “Does this program promote any internationalism?” Talton asked. “Does it have anything to do with the United Nations or UNESCO?…I’ve got a note here from their Web site where they talk about internationalism—and that’s what’s bothersome to me—instead of traditional American values.…Were you aware that the International Baccalaureate diploma was created in English”—and here comes the clincher— “and French by teachers at the International School of Geneva? Now are you telling me that it doesn’t preach internationalism?” But there’s no telling Robert Talton anything.
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