@farmerman,
I remember when homeschooling was a left-wing movement, whose chief impetus was to improve education, at least on the family level, and not to insert religion into the curriculum and/or decry evolution.
I do know people for whom home-schooling is still a means to a better education for their children. For example, in the town of Waltham, MA, there is a home-schooling group where the parents team-teach. There are MIT professors to teach science, Boston Globe journalists to teach writing, etc.
I witnessed an unpleasant home schooling parent. I had gone to a pottery school, called Mudville, which holds sales on alternate years during the Christmas season. It is about half a mile from another pottery school, Mudflat. I had taken a class at Mudflat, simply because it had offered a half-session one summer, which was as much tuition as I could afford.
This homeschooling mother had her 16 year-old daughter in tow, who she kept referring to as a "singer," "an operatic soprano." She told the potters and me several times that her daughter was home schooled. She said she taught her daughter American history through Broadway musicals. Then she asked whether they had classes for teens and decided on the spot that her daughter had to take a workshop.
Then she turned to me and asked me whether I had ever done any potting. I said that I took a summer class down the street. She said she didn't know there was another pottery school. The potters told her it was a larger place with more kilns and wheels. She asked whether I had enjoyed it. I told her yes except that because the class was short, we only worked on cylinders (the instructor said beginners start either with a cylinder or a bowl-shape).
Although the mother herself had never potted, she became angry at the other school, declaring it worked against creativity. She continued to snort and repeat the word cylinder, alternating with snorts. Then she began declaring how much she hated the other school.
When she finally left, I asked the potters about their relationship with Mudflat. They told me it was friendly, not competitive.
I told this story in detail because, to me, the woman epitomized the sort of prejudice that drives the homeschooler of the religious right.
In fact, the attitude reminds me of some of our posters!