One ray of sunshine among a litany of depressing political news this week was the announcement by Kentucky’s Tourism Arts & Heritage Cabinet Secretary Bob Stewart that Ken Ham's Noah's Ark theme park would NOT get 18 million dollars in tax payer subsidies from the state of Kentucky. For details on the announcement, you can look here and here. To be honest, I am surprised that this decision was taken, but it reconfirms my deep faith in the cynicism of politicians, especially Governor Beshear.
As some may recall, the state tourism department gave the OK for taxpayer subsidies for Ken Ham's Ark Park in 2011. Coincidently, Beshear was running for reelection that same year. Clearly, this was a panderfest to the fundamentalist voters in KY who make up a significant portion of the electorate.
However, Beshear denied that he was wooing fundamentalist voters. Instead, he stressed that this was jobs program. In fact, he is still pushing that load of BS to this very day. And you can still read that same party line in Stewart's announcement.
But lo an behold, after Beshear's reelection, the tourism department discovers that Ken Ham plans to discriminate in his hiring for all those jobs his Ark theme park is going to generate. Seems that Ham and his Answers in Genesis group (AiG) are religious fanatics, and they only want to hire good christians.
Why who could have ever predicted that?
So now we have, perhaps, the end to this political/religious farce. I say perhaps because Ham is threatening to sue the state to get that money. Don't ask me how, but the state is now discriminating against AiG by not handing over taxpayer subsidies. In a rational world, Ham would have no legal case. But given how right wing the courts are, I would not be surprised if this doesn't make it all the way to the Supreme Court.
Until then, fundamentalist can mourn the loss of the Noah's Ark theme park.