Seth CotlarCheck out this 1980 leaflet from the "Pro-Family Forum" claiming that secular teachers were "indoctrinating" young people in public schools. They depicted standard approaches to teaching social studies as a form of "molestation."
Oregon far right activist Walter Huss received this pamphlet from Walter Crotty, who was getting in touch because he'd recently received literature from the combination Christian political organization and Multi-Level Marketing scam called "Help America" that Huss started after he was deposed as OR GOP chair.
That Crotty letter is really something else. "I am doing in-depth research, and am going to take polls and surveys, and am constantly getting books, courses, etc...The Communists have made a study of people and how to manipulate and bedevil them with warped, Red psychology...But with God's help I am (or have the potential) of being smarter than all of them put together (God and one is a majority)"
Crotty was just one of scores of "Christian Patriots" who responded positively to Huss's efforts to organize them to "save America."
"Emboldened by what they see as a conservative mood in the country, parents' groups across the nation are demanding that teachers & admins cleanse their local schools of materials & teaching methods they consider antifamily, anti-American & anti-God." https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/17/us/parents-groups-purging-schools-of-humanist-books-and-classes.html?unlocked_article_code=2LG1nh9lIqiUtEvtZcD182pivKhNOOQ96sTiW-Wx31DHbwKX7mhMqXx6uuL00YFrhMgUdFzMDQ1q7DAON0ApWMFJ-P3Etkrxs16MGUddf0li2HDHg0QFq64_AyYiC_6SGY6wDk4nVDybYU-9wk4q1ySug-0xmcAN6ULDV9NMHTLZvMWMFiZvIOnO_JkMkkrbrZSLbO4SBGMlTJboPSsMqRQgGOHdyDiuHQ9pgAXtulfc85otrDASvgEbtv9m8yvuhALvLox4jB0tvZ5ncm9rTjkGb1uCMX2QPxJObY78BDNTpOM150SiCXruer1UwbDidLaF088_7R-PgXuHYfqgQDM6hwmXYW5Rp9KfsJJfUPasIi4wffztWTKTXHNkXclsTg&smid=url-share
In 1981, just as today, these far right efforts to ban books and shape curriculum to fit their minoritarian view of the world was an authentically local initiative that was also tied in to a coordinated, national movement.
"Secular humanism" was to the far right activists of the early 1980s what "wokeism" is to their descendants today, a "meaningless catch-all term used by these groups to describe all the nation's ills."
Urban Hermit@sethcotlar it may have been a bogeyman to them, because they are anti intellectuals, but I looked into it and became a casual secular humanist when I gave up my Christianity. In fact I think the best version of God is a secular humanist. "No particular version of religion is 100% right, how you treat each other is what matters, and I believe in humans to figure it out and become better". That is the God that I will tolerate.