I equate the American Taliban's attempts to force their extremist views down everyone's throats as the rape of the mind. As taking perverse pleasure in forcing another against their will to be subservient to your malicious exercise of power.
Here is another sickening example of the American Taliban in action - a couple of creationist SC senators have decided to force their religion into the law by blocking eight-year-old Olivia McConnell's idea to have the wooly mammoth named the state fossil:
Creationists Stall Eight-Year-Old Girl’s Idea for State Fossil for South Carolina
The third grader at Carolina Academy wrote a letter to her state lawmakers, Rep. Robert Ridgeway and Sen. Kevin Johnson, in a bid to give the woolly mammoth that honor [being named the South Carolina state fossil - diarist]. Olivia has sound reasons behind her nomination: One of the first discoveries of a fossil in North America was that of a woolly mammoth’s teeth, dug up by slaves on a South Carolina plantation in 1725; all but seven states have an official state fossil; and, most adorably, “Fossils tell us about our past.”
…
Sen. Kevin Bryant, a pharmacist and self-described born-again Christian who has compared President Obama with Osama bin Laden, voted to sustain a veto by Governor Nikki Haley of funding for a rape crisis center, and called climate change a “hoax,” proposed amending the bill to include three verses from the Book of Genesis detailing God’s creation of the Earth and its living inhabitants—including mammoths.
The Lt. Governor ruled Bryant's proposed amendment out of order.
In response to the lieutenant governor’s ruling, Sen. Mike Fair, a colleague of Bryant’s whose district includes the fundamentalist Bob Jones University, placed an objection on the bill. ….
Previously, Fair—whose Twitter feed is largely him trolling advocates for science education — blocked South Carolina from adopting new education standards regarding evolution because he preferred teaching the purported controversy. “To teach that natural selection is the answer to origins is wrong.”
I am really sick of this American Taliban crap.
I guess these two can't read the First Amendment. Or they can read and they just don't care, because they get off on forcing their extremism on everyone.