‘Real Time’: Lauren Boebert & James Talarico Lock Horns Over Ten Commandments in Schools

A political debate played out in real time — or on Real Time With Bill Maher, rather — as U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert and Texas Representative James Talarico appeared on the February 20 episode of the HBO current-affairs talk show.

During the panel discussion moderated by Real Time host Bill Maher, Boebert and Talarico argued over the placement of the Ten Commandments in public schools.

Boebert, a Republican politician representing Colorado’s 4th congressional district, claimed comprehensive sexual education was both sexualizing and forcing gender identity conversations on Colorado’s youth.

“So, you’re battling legislation to have the Ten Commandments in school and certain biblical stories taught as fact,” she said to Talarico. “Well, when I went to school, there was Greek mythology that we were required to learn and study about. Now, in Colorado, we have comprehensive sex ed where, as young as kindergarten, children are taught all of these things. You can be whatever gender you want to be, and that is being forced down their throats, the sexualization of our children. I would much rather my children see the Ten Commandments, that basically just gives a moral standard, rather than saying you can pleasure yourself and here’s how.”

(The Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment website says Comprehensive Human Sexuality Education is “a research-based strategy that equips youth with promoting instruction that is rooted in and consistent with scientific evidence” “and “corresponds content to the age level and development of young people,” including the topics of anatomy, puberty, healthy relationships and consent, sexual orientation and gender identity, reproduction and STIs, and safety.)

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Talarico, a Democrat currently running for U.S. Senate and the subject of an interview recently cut from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, said he disagreed with Boebert.

“I don’t want indoctrination of any form, whether it comes from the left or the right, in our schools,” he said. “I want education, not indoctrination. My problem is seeing politicians in Texas force everybody to put up a poster of the Ten Commandments when they don’t even follow the Ten Commandments themselves.”

He went on: “As people of faith, we should be trying to follow those Ten Commandments rather than trying to force people to put up a poster. To me, that indicates a dead religion. If you have to force people to put up a poster to prove your legitimacy, that means we don’t have a living faith anymore.”

Boebert and Talarico’s debate came the same day that a federal appeals court cleared the way for a Louisiana law mandating that all public schools and universities in the state display the Ten Commandments, as Reuters reported.

And to Talarico, such legislation is a threat to democracy and a threat to the church. “That separation doesn’t just protect the state, it protects the church,” he said. “Because when the church gets too cozy with political power, it loses its prophetic voice, its ability to speak truth to power. And that’s what that separation is, it’s what it protects, and it’s why Christians, including many Protestant Christians, fought for that separation, because they believed it benefited them. We got to get back to that in this era.”

Real Time With Bill Maher, Fridays, 10/9c, HBO