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May 05, 2006

Advice to CA parents

If SB1437 passes

A California Senate committee has approved a bill requiring "gay history" to be included in public school textbooks. The bill now moves to the full Senate, where a vote may come next week.

Not requiring textbooks to include homosexuals' and transgenders' contributions to California history amounts to "enforced invisibility," said Sen. Sheila Kuehl, the Democrat lesbian who introduced the bill.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the bill has attracted national attention because California accounts for about 12 percent of the nation's textbook market.

SB 1437 reads in part, "No textbook or other instructional materials shall be adopted by the state board or by any governing board for use in the public schools that contains any matter reflecting adversely upon persons because of their race or ethnicity, gender, disability, nationality, sexual orientation, or religion."

CA public schools won't be teaching history anymore.

Time for private or home schooling.

Anyone seriously want to hold that the public schools are NOT about political indoctrination with a few side dishes of math and science?

Posted by Darleen at May 5, 2006 01:14 PM

Comments

The "gay history" vs. "parents' rights" angle does not concern me as much as the overall trend of packing politics (liberal AND conservative) into school textbooks. That practice tends to dilute the overall value of an American education. Diane Ravitch's work points this up rather well.

--|PW|--

Posted by: pennywit at May 5, 2006 03:30 PM

How is "gay" history any different from plain old ordinary history? If a gay man or woman did something noteworthy, why can't they just be presented as someone who did something great? Why make their sexuality the most important thing about them?

Posted by: TalkinKamel at May 5, 2006 04:19 PM

Both TalkinKamel and Pennywit make valid points. The only way someone's skin color, ethnicity, sexuality matters to me within this historical context is if it somehow was releveant - I think it's important to know that the man who invented the traffic light was black because he did so in a time when blacks weren't given a lot of opportunity. Byt as T.K. said can't a person just be a person.

Posted by: Mieke at May 5, 2006 08:01 PM

But then it's not a surprise that those in the gay/lesbian communities are looking to legislate protections - that part of 1437 I have ZERO problem with.

In other gay news, the religious head of Iraq's Shiite population, Ayatollah Sistani, recently issued an edict calling for the brutal murder of all gay people in Iraq. "The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing," this spiritual leader declared. And they have been doing so (burning gays alive in the town square, shooting them in the back of the head). The Bush admin has said nothing of course because they need him so much.

Posted by: Mieke at May 5, 2006 08:50 PM

Or there is the recent case of the Dept. of Defense spending time and human resources not fighting terrorism but spying on gay and lesbian law students at NYU law school.

Posted by: Mieke at May 5, 2006 08:59 PM

SB 1437 seems like good legislation to me.

If I had kids I wouldn't want textbooks saying bad things about people because of the characteristics mentioned in that bill.

Anyway it's a diverse state.

Posted by: Carl W. Goss at May 6, 2006 02:26 AM

"Diverse" being the anti-social lefts code word for normalization of all things perverse to the religious based community. I don't think the species scientific classification of Humans as "homoerectus" was ment to convey one homo having his erectus up another homo's ass. We're on the slippery slope of all things acceptable at this point. How long before Uncles marry nieces, or farmers wed their goats and sheep. there will come a day of intense blowback if the push to visit everything distasteful on the public doesn't abate pretty soon. Another case of 5% of the country forcing its political and sexual views on the rest of the country through palor tricks like legislating from the bench, advancement of asocial proclivities in the school system, and incestial manueverings in a state thats the laughing stock of America, in an effort to increase their ranks. Why can't they be content to screw each other in the privacy of their own bedrooms and leave the rest of america alone? Well, history has shown that those that won't listen always end up paying a price.

Posted by: Big Bang Hunter at May 6, 2006 08:58 AM

The bill in question Big, doesn't deal with anyone's personal behavior.

It just says that textbooks have to meet certain criteria.

Personally I don't think the forms of sexual behavior you mention is a problem in this society. Or will be a problem anytime in the future.

Posted by: Carl W. Goss at May 6, 2006 09:32 AM

PW

As you may notice, my particular beef isn't with the gay history part, per se (as echoed in TalkinKamel's comment)...but with the bolded part.

How the heck would a history teacher present what happened on 9/11 if they are forbidden from putting ANY ethnic/religious group in a manner that may "adversely reflect" on said group? Or the event of Pearl Harbor?

STUDENT: What happened on 9/11/01?

TEACHER: Well, some people flew some jets into buildings in New York and Washington.

STUDENT: Which people

TEACHER: just some people.

STUDENT: Why?

TEACHER: Because they were upset.

STUDENT: Were the jets theirs?

TEACHER: No.

STUDENT: How did they get them.

TEACHER: ... Now that we've covered 9/11, let's move on to something else ...

----

Posted by: Darleen at May 6, 2006 09:34 AM

Carl

You're missing the point of the bill. It is really a prepublication historical revisionist plan... Any event that will "adversely reflect" will be either skipped over or so diluted as to be meaningless.

You think CAIR will EVER support an honest telling of 9/11, or the Israeli/"Palestinian" conflict??

Posted by: Darleen at May 6, 2006 09:41 AM

- Goss I think you miss-undertsand my protestasions against this sort of thing. I'm not against kinks. Kinks are great. What I'm against is this stupidity of rubbing it in the publics face. Thats the problem with most "causes". They have an inirtia of thier own and they never know when to stop. The gay community has won a lot of acceptance and "rights". At this point whats the payoff for continuing to aggrivate and annoy the public. Nada. Just the very distinct possibility that it all may backfire. Besides what the hells the point of having a kink if it gets mainstreamed to the point where everyones doing it. Thats just stupid. Takes the whole edge off of things.

Posted by: Big Bang Hunter at May 6, 2006 09:47 AM