Anti-gay bigots accuse LGBT people of “indoctrinating” kids when we simply work to educate society on the reality of who we are, and when we try to fight for all kids. Anti-gay bigots simply want to be free to indoctrinate their children into medieval, backwards, hateful views of minorities, like they’ve always done before, because it’s “tradition.”
Yeah, we still have the moral high ground here.
Andy brings us the story of Diversity Role Models, a group which works to educate kids about LGBT people in the UK. Here’s a description of the following video:
“The final lesson of a unit on stereotyping, homophobic bullying and different families. This is a year 6 class in a multi-cultural, typical inner-city London school.”
Bigots are running out of anti-gay smears. They know that normal people laugh at them when they try to conflate us with pedophiles. They know that normal people make fun of them when they try to compare us to Nazis. They know that normal people recoil in disgust when they compare us to murderers or whatever else is in one of their lists o’ sins. So…zombies? Eh, why not, let’s give it a go! Randy Thomasson of Save California:
“Any day of the week starting in January, children as young as kindergarten will be told that a homosexual, a bisexual, or even a cross-dresser or someone who has had healthy body parts in a sex-change operation cut off – that this is a positive role model. They’re not going to be told that it’s unhealthy; they’re not going to be told, well is this natural or is this a matter of environment. They won’t be told it. So, there’s no critical thinking.
“This is basically the gay activists kidnapping the brains of the kids, and the parents have no say whatsoever.”
Okay. Here is the video of the weird socially awkward man calling us zombies [skip to 1:45 or so to get the full train of stupid]:
In California, thanks to a pioneering bill introduced by state senator Mark Leno, students will now learn, in an age appropriate way, about the contributions of all kinds of minorities to society, including LGBT people. I cannot imagine how art was taught before without including the contributions of gay people, but I suppose the difference now is that it’s okay to point out obvious things like “such and such was a gay person.”
Anyway, the usual suspects are having a conniption. Randy Thomasson of the Religious Right group Annoy California [I think that's what it's called]:
“Social engineering of homosexual, bisexual and transsexual lifestyles is being done behind parents’ backs. Most parents say no to this,” he told ABC’s News 10. In April, Thomasson speculated to TPM that the law would result in textbooks that would teach about Elton John and his husband, or might ask: “Did you know President Abraham Lincoln was gay? How do we know that? He slept in a bed with a man when he was younger.” Thomasson said: “Abraham Lincoln was not homosexual. He was a Christian man who loved his family.”
Homosexual Lifestyle Engineering is big business, you see. Also, there definitely are scholars who believe that Lincoln slept with dudes. I don’t understand how Elton John factors into this discussion, as “Honky Cat” wasn’t part of any class I ever took.
Bryan Fischer, the anti-gay, anti-bear “Director Of Issues Analysis” for the American Family Association also thinks the law goes too far. “Ladies and gentleman, by definition, somebody who engages in sexually aberrant behavior is not and cannot be a role model, period, end of story,” he said on his radio show Monday.
That knocks out a lot of Republican Senators. Damn.
Also, there is some complain-y group called Stop SB 48 that is trying to collect enough signatures to put an initiative to repeal the law on the ballot. Same story, different day.
The Pentagon has been moving slowly in recent months to ensure that gay and lesbian servicemembers will be treated as equals by their peers — not bullied or denied their constitutional freedoms, including the freedom of religion.
Meanwhile, relatively liberal states such as California are struggling to protect gay and lesbian students from violence and defamation and to halt antigay censorship in history courses.
Those changes have alarmed Focus on the Family, which today equated minority religious freedom, non-censorship in education, and opposition to harassment with “indoctrination.”
Focus on the Family and its partner the Pacific Justice Institute imply that it may be OK to suppress historical persons on the basis of ideology and sexuality, or to misinform students about these persons’ families. In short, these organizations project their own desire for quotas onto a state educational system.
“It seems a bit like a quota system,” said Ron Prentice, executive director of the California Family Council. “It’s based less on the level of contribution and more on one’s sexual orientation.”
Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, said: “Our Legislature just doesn’t get it — with thousands of teachers getting pink slips, this is not the time to place more expensive, politically correct mandates on our schools. This bill also undermines parental rights and is insensitive to those whose cultures and belief systems are at odds with the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) agenda.”
In fact, Focus on the Family and its affiliates already enjoy an antigay quota system in many school systems across the United States:
Heterosexual Christians: 100 Everybody else: 0
On the armed-services front, it’s clear that Focus on the Family and antigay activist Elaine Donnelly wish to bury efforts toward servicemember equality in red tape by reopening issues of housing, chain of command, religious liberty, and dress code that were settled amicably among most military leaders long ago.
In the battle to push gays out of the armed services, Christian Right activists will argue that their own rights to housing, religion, and heterosexual-only bathrooms require that everyone else lose those same rights.
Guest post by Bruce Wilson, cross-posted at Talk To Action.
Government funded missionaries in public schools? The idea would flabbergast many of America’s founders, most certainly the architects of the United States Constitution. Here’s the background: As a February 23rd, 2011 story from the Florida Independent, by Andy Kopsa, describes, the American leader of the Florida-based abstinence-only education program Project SOS endorses Martin Ssempa, a leading Uganda backer of the so-called “Kill the gays” bill that may soon come up for a vote in Uganda’s parliament. Project SOS has received over six and a half million dollars in federal funding, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services since 2002, to teach abstinence education in Florida public schools. The funding continues into the present – in September SOS received over $450,000 from HHS.
But the Uganda tie is far from the most controversial aspect–the founder and head of SOS says the program was inspired by God, and her church identifies the Project SOS program as one of the “ministries” it supports, with SOS head Pam Mullarkey as a “missionary”…federally funded, that is.
To begin with, should federal funding still be flowing to a sex ed approach proven to be largely or wholly ineffective, according to a 2007 federally commissioned large scale study by Mathematica Research?
And, what if the program founder says plans for Project SOS came directly from God, advocates child-beating, and suggests that Catholics aren’t truly saved? What if SOS is actually a stealth ministry backed by a right wing church that teaches both anti-labor union ideology and Young-Earth Creationism, and whose longtime pastor is promoting antigay doctrines in Florida prisons?
You probably remember the story of Lisa Howe, who turned the women’s soccer program around at uber-Christian Belmont University, in Nashville. She was essentially terminated when the school found out she was a lesbian and that moreover, she and her partner were having a baby. Belmont is trying to walk a fine line between being a respected institution of higher learning, while also finding a way to preserve the Christian value of irrational, uneducated bigotry. It’s so hard to do both these days in a first world nation.
Anyway, Lisa and some of her players talked to ESPN about it, and what I love about this video is that her girls seem to be universally supportive of her. Enjoy this glimpse of your present and your future, fundamentalists. These are students at a conservative Christian college, and they’re all pissed off at their administration for discriminating against a person they know, love and respect who happens to be a lesbian.
In the wake of increased media reporting of suicides caused by antigay bullying, Focus on the Family has retaliated against concern for the bullied by portraying itself as the victim of efforts by “homosexual activists” to “promote homosexuality” and the “homoseexual agenda” in public schools.
Focus only infrequently details these supposed sex promotions, and unfortunately the news media almost never demand that Focus on the Family document these promotions.
In an August 12 statement to OneNewsNow, Focus on the Family defined the three conditions that it considers “promotion”:
Acknowledgement in federally recommended antiviolence programs that antigay violence is not, unfortunately, excluded from the definition of “bullying”
Schools’ acknowledgement to elementary-school students that same-sex couples exist — an acknowledgement driven by the simple fact that these youngsters are seeing same-sex couples in their neighborhoods and meeting classmates who have same-sex parents
Diversity training for high school teachers and students, acknowledging that non-heterosexual colleagues and classmates deserve the same respect and treatment as everyone else
Focus’ full disclosure is, frankly, a disappointment. I was hoping for revolting accounts of lurid pictures, sex toys, and adult-child solicitations. The reality seems hardly worth the self-pitying and paranoid anger and hate that Focus has unleashed upon the victims of antigay bullying.
Add this one to the pile of studies that confirms what we on the side of fairness, equality and love have been saying forever: Kids do best when raised by two committed parents, regardless of sexual orientation, which is completely different from the constant Religious Right Lying Machine, where they pit children of married heterosexuals against kids from single parents homes, and then use that as “evidence” against gay couples having children. From Stanford’s website:
In a study published this month in the journal Demography, [Stanford sociologist Michael] Rosenfeld concludes that children being raised by same-sex couples have nearly the same educational achievement as children raised by married heterosexual couples.
By mining data from the 2000 Census, Rosenfeld was able to figure out the rates at which children in all types of families repeated a grade during elementary or middle school. According to his findings, nearly 7 percent of children raised by heterosexual married couples were held back a year, while about 9.5 percent of children living with adults identifying themselves as same-sex partners repeated a grade.
The difference between the groups pretty much vanishes when taking into account that the heterosexual couples were slightly more educated and wealthier than most gay parents, Rosenfeld said.
“The census data show that having parents who are the same gender is not in itself any disadvantage to children,” he said. “Parents’ income and education are the biggest indicators of a child’s success. Family structure is a minor determinant.”
Duh. The sample size involved in this study is significant:
Because gays and lesbians make up such a tiny sliver of the American population – only 1 percent – it has been difficult for researchers to conduct a representative study of how their children perform in the classroom. And gay marriage opponents have criticized earlier studies for having sample sizes that are too small.
“Sample size is power,” Rosenfeld said. “And the census is the biggest sample we have. This study is based on a sample of thousands and thousands of kids.”
Most personal decisions about gay marriage are based on gut feelings, religious beliefs and individual experiences. Rosenfeld knows his research isn’t going to change the minds of most people opposed to same-sex unions. But he has added new data to the debate that helps debunk assertions – whether based on a lack of knowledge or some unfounded fear – that children raised by gay couples cannot thrive.
It’s good to see that, more and more, it’s being pointed out that opposition to gay marriage is rooted in absolutely nothing of any factual or rational merit, but rather unfounded fear and prejudice.
Here’s your Tuesday “Oh my god” video, of a “science teacher” (I use the term loosely) in Dayton, Tennessee, explaining how he gives a “fair shake” to both Creationism and evolution (AKA “science”) in his classroom, spliced in with classroom comments from his students. My favorite one is the guy at the end who says:
How can like an African-American person evolve from a white person? We’re different skin.
We’re different skeeeeeeeeeeinn. Wow. I can’t even begin to unpack the utter disregard for education shown by everyone in this video who isn’t the narrator, and I don’t have time, so I won’t try.
What does this have to do with gay rights or the Religious Right? Nothing except, oh, the obvious link between this sort of third world quality education and adults who vote to take away LGBT rights.
Minnesota Republican candidate for governor Tom Emmer apparently violated campaign finance laws when his campaign donated twice the legal limit to a Christian punk-rock group which teaches public-school students that it’s “moral” to kill homosexuals.
The Minnesota Independent made the disclosure in twostories today.
Like Exodus International, this band — named You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Intl., and led by self-styled minister Bradlee Dean — claims to be bringing the “message of Christ” to youth: In this case, a message of righteous murder. According to the Independent:
“Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America,” Dean said on YCR’ May 15 radio show on AM 1280 the Patriot. “This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.”
Dean endorses efforts by foreign antigay terrorists to attack the United States if the nation does not voluntarily adopt antigay genocide laws:
“If America won’t enforce the laws, God will raise up a foreign enemy to do just that,” Dean continued. “That is what you are seeing in America.”
Rep. Tom Emmer has appeared on the kill-the-gays rock band’s talk show, posed for pictures, visited Dean’s home, and attended a non-profit band fund-raiser. Fellow Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann has twice endorsed the murderous band.
Despite protests by the Minnesota Log Cabin Republicans, the state party has become more cozy with the band, not less. Emmer has refused to comment on the band’s appeals for antigay bloodshed. Instead, Emmer’s campaign released a statement to the Independent saying “Tom’ position on social issues has been very clear and consistent. He is a supporter of traditional marriage, and he strongly opposes any kind of violence or unfair discrimination against any group.” Unless, apparently, the violence is politically and musically expedient or the discrimination is “fair.”
As for the tax-free, non-profit group’s partisan political activity, watchdogs said they’ve seen worse.
Abby Levine of the Alliance for Justice wouldn’t comment on the specifics of YCR’ involvement in Republican politics, but did offer general guidelines for nonprofit organizations.
“A 501(c)3 can’t support or oppose a candidate. They can’t indicate support for candidates,” said Levine. “If it looks like an organization is supporting a candidate, that would be problematic.”
She added, “There could be legitimate reasons for a nonprofit organization to attend events like you’ve described.”
Donald Tobin, a professor of election law at Ohio State University’ Moritz College of Law, said, “In light of how blatant some nonprofits have been, this seems like it’ the lesser of the blatant.”
Minnesota Republican candidate for governor Tom Emmer apparently violated campaign finance laws when his campaign donated twice the legal limit to a Christian punk-rock group which teaches public-school students that it’s “moral” to kill homosexuals.
