The Rude Pundit has an interesting story to report out of Lafayette, Louisiana. It seems that the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has added an LGBT studies minor, making it the first public university in that state to do so. Though things of that sort are completely commonplace in higher education around the country, we are dealing with Louisiana, which recently approved a voucher program that supports shools that essentially tell students that Jesus rode a dinosaur up to the top of the mountain before giving that famous sermon. In other words, Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana is increasingly becoming the state where critical thinking and knowledge die the quickest of all deaths.

Here’s The Rude One with the set-up:

So you might have seen that Republican (and teabagger) Rep. Jeff Landry from Lafayette, Louisiana, is in a bit of a snit over a program at University of Louisiana at, well, Lafayette. It’s a school of roughly 18,000 students, and, in fact, is the Rude Pundit’s alma mater. In what was at the time an uncontroversial move a month ago, the sociology department added a minor in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender studies. ULL became the first university in the state to offer LGBT studies, major or minor. And, just to be clear, “the LGBT minor did not require budgetary allocations or divert resources from other areas.”

Landry, who is locked in a reelection battle with a much-better financed and slightly less-crazed Republican, wrote a letter to the president of ULL, telling him to get rid of the minor because “it fails to provide an economic benefit to the participants or financial sense for the taxpayer.” What the economic benefit of religious studies, another program at ULL, might be is not addressed by Landry.

Heh. He reports that, predictably, there are morons writing letters to the editor about how we dun need yer gay book learnin’ in Loo-siana and whatnot, but that’s not the fun part. We often forget that many, many unhinged bigots in our midst actually do have experience with gay people, in that they have gay siblings and family members who they’ve chosen to reject. They believe they are doing this out of “love,” but as we have learned, fundamentalist Christian love is not love. Jeff Landry’s brother is named Nicholas, and Nicholas is openly gay. Here’s what Nicholas had to say on big brother Rep. Bigot’s Facebook page:

“Taking a moment from my vacation to send a message to my brother, Jeffrey M Landry/Congressman Jeff Landry: In reference to your recent quest to remove the LGBT minor from the UL curriculum, I want to state my opposition publicly. Ignorance is not education. Your constituents, heterosexual and homosexual alike, have made huge inroads in working towards equality in our community. By embracing diversity and acknowledging our differences, we gain understanding. Understanding is education.”

“Ignorance is not education,” big brother.

Indeed. How sad that their family is obviously marred by the bigotry exhibited by Rep. Landry, that he would be so pig-ignorant and unfeeling that he would fight against LGBT people in the public square without even taking a minute to try to understand his brother.

Here’s how Bigot Brother replied:

“To my brother. I am sorry we disagree, but we still love and pray for you.”

Gross. If I were Nicholas, I would delete Jeff’s phone number and forget he ever existed.

This is the point in this post where I take a moment to thank my own straight brother for not being an idiot, and for also very often knowing about gay rights issues before even I do.

Here’s how The Rude One finishes his post on the topic:

And thus Nicholas Landry, an event planner in New Orleans, demonstrated that he is the far worthier sibling to be in Congress.

Indeed.