Again wearing the Devil’s Advocate chapeau:
I propose non-sectarian, generic prayers being offered in school. If a student or a parent objects to the content of the prayer or the practice of prayer, that student should be given a substitute activity.
Obviously such a proposal would not be greeted with open arms.
As beagledave pointed out in the post immediately above yours, they did have such a recourse. As always, the straight supremacists were unwilling to accept any compromise that might mean some child, somewhere, might not learn how to hate fags.
After SOCUS weighs in on the suitability of “The Misfits” for use in school…I’ll consider them comparable. 
I’m more of a baseball cap kinda guy myself…the chapeau is so…so…so “French”.
When I was in elementary school, we would have Christmas concerts during which religiously themed Christmas songs would be sung by students, with faculty providing musical accompaniment.
We had students who objected to this for religious reasons, and they were permitted not to participate. In that time and place, this wasn’t a problem.
It sure seems to be a problem now, however, for quite obvious reasons.
Now, if certain groups have the right to petition that religious songs not be sung in school, shouldn’t other groups have the right to question classroom reading materials?
Personally, I wish none of this was so heavily politicized. That Pandora’s Box has already been opened, though. It was opened a long time back.
No, the parent may not legitimately reason in that fashion, any more than they could use this reasoning against Just So Stories* because it depicts Hinduism as a non-negative trait when it is in fact a negative trait.
We live in a pluralist society, and you don’t get to remove books from a classroom because the books acknowledge this fact.
If the parent really wants to be a jackass, they can take their kid out of the classroom. But they may not use this reasoning to take the book out of the classroom.
The problem is with the proposition that being gay is, in fact, a negative trait. That is, in fact, not true, so their reasoning is faulty.
Daniel
Do these prayers in violation of the Constitution?
Is reading this book in violation of the Constitution?
Give us your legal opinion, and then tell me how the two cases are comparable.
Daniel
I don’t really have an argument for this, but on the other hand I fail to see how this couldn’t conceivably be used for everything taught.
Do you think telling how the Native Americans were ill-abused is unduly negative?
Do you think teaching about the Civil Rights Movoment and the things that led to it is unduly negative?
I dunno, maybe there’s something I’m not seeing…why is intolerance OK? Fact is, people are gay…is it right to treat this as negative??? And what will that lead to?
I don’t know the answer. On the same token, if I had a kiddie in school and he was studying, say how to be a good Christian in a public school, I would most definitely have a BIG MAJOR problem with it as I am not Christian. …But then if Christianity was the persecuted one (yeah right, in this country) I would hope I wouldn’t have a problem with acceptance being taught.
You assume wrong. The book was chosen by Ms. Goetz to address name calling and bullying. There is not one shred of evidence that it was chosen to provide a positive view of homosexuality. beagledave has pointed out that there is a remedy for those parents that wish to shield their kids from acknowledging the existence of alternative lifestyles–they can sit it out just like the kids who aren’t allowed to learn about penises and vaginas.
I could be swayed if there was evidence that the average gay on the street is more likely to be a social deviate than the average hetero, or that the average gay is more of a threat to our children than say, a priest.
Yes, but it’s already been established that the rules in the Constitution can be bent and even broken in schools. “It’s all for the children”, yes, and it’s definitely OK to make fun of that god-awful phrase, but sometimes it’s the truth. There are some things that must be OK to limit from our children.
I just don’t think acceptance of gayness - not even gayness itself - should be one of them. But I can’t decide what this school did wrong in its laws, except not allow the committee that was specifically designed to pick which books were to be used do its job, and take over that job.
Oh yeah.
The fact is, gay people are everywhere in our society. It’s apparently OK to just say flat out, “I don’t want my kids learning about gay people - one of whom may be his friend”, but not Ok to say it about black people or immigrants or anything else.
All because of whom they want to have sex with…
Not exactly. It’s been established that certain Constitutional rights work differently in a school from how they work in other places. The idea is that there are subsets of the rules.
In this case, the subsets of rules are pretty specific; I was asking Bricker to comment on these subsets of rules, as pertains to his analogy.
Daniel
Thank you for the correction.
(/hijack) When I was scrolling earlier while responding, you had two posts. I could only see part of one, so it looked like these people had posted:
Dorkness
Left Hand of Dorkness
I actually thought: who the hell called themselves Dorkness? Did they copy LHOD? /hijack)
Sure… but let’s examine the reasoning used by the SCOTUS. Among other things, they acknowledge that there is a coercive aspect to permitting the school to do something from which the objecting child is specially excused; there is a stigma associated with the special excuse and removal.
So I (or the Devil’s A version of me, anyway) argue that it’s just as true in this case: it’s not sufficent to claim a remedy that consists in removing the child from the activity: if the activity is wrong, the activity itself should not be permitted.
But is IS true, according to them. Is this an objective fact, or a subjective one?
No.
I assume you were looking for a yes-no answer to that question, as if you’d asked, “Is a Krispy Kreme doughnut flavored with chiles, or with basil?”
It’s not a fact at all. It’s an opinion. And while they’re entitled to their opinion (just as a white supremacist would be entitled to the opinion that Black is Beautiful teaches a harmful lesson), they’re NOT entitled to enforce that opinion on other children.
Daniel
Er… let me try this again… the DA hat isn’t fitting as well as it might.
Being gay is a negative trait.
This is an opinion, a subjective determination.
Stealing is a negative trait.
Is this entitled to be treated as an objective determination?
It’s opinion (although poorly phrased: stealing isn’t a trait, but is an act. Being a thief is a trait). Robin Hood is a hero to millions, and stealing is integral to his hero-schtick.
You might rephrase your question: “Stealing is an illegal act.” I’ll agree with that one.
But if you rephrase it in other fashions–“Pedophilia is a negative trait,” “Poop tastes bad”–I’ll still call it an opinion. The controversial nature of a statement doesn’t determine whether it’s an opinion.
I’m also wondering something. You’re equating a teacher advancing a nonreligious value with a school’s advancing an (admittedly bland) religious value. Do you think this equation is supported by the Constitution or its SCOTUS interpretation? It seems to me that religion is specifically singled out by the first amendment as an area for no government interference; nonreligious values (i.e., values that exist independent of religion) operate under no such scrutiny.
Schools teach values all the time, and I’ve never heard of a challenge to non-religious values programs. A school might teach integrity, compassion, and responsibility; while I might support the right of a parent to pull their kids from such a program (maybe dad doesn’t want the school to dilute the lessons the Skilling family teaches at home), I wouldn’t support an effort by a parent to forbid such programs in the school.
This teacher was teaching a values program about tolerance, and it was equally acceptable as one about compassion, integrity, and responsibility, as far as I can tell. A parent who objects to teaching tolerance may have a right to pull their kid out of the lesson, but doesn’t have a right to forbid the lesson altogether.
Daniel
I apologize if this has been said before, I’m working off of 3 hours sleep right now so if I missed this somewhere, forgive me.
But doesn’t this just reek of irony? A book that teaches tolerance is not being tolerated. 
::sigh::
I am keeping faith that when the Baby Boomers are either all gone or too senile to be in authority positions, this contry will be a much better place.
:rolleyes:
It’s a sad sign of the times, PinkMarabou. When it comes to gays, the choice to be tolerant or not has actually been turned into a controversial decision.
Like when that church had the audacity to welcome gays into its congregation, their own decision to let gays into their own organzation was considered so contraversial that major networks refused to run their ad.
(Discussed here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=289360)
It’s only getting worse. I used to think that someday I’d look back on these years the same way we look back on the times when inter-racial marriages were against the law. Now I doubt it’s even possible I’ll live long enough do so.
I don’t think there’s any Biblical support for discrimination against other races (I’m sure some folks have found some some in a stretch though), but there’s pretty straightforward text against male homosexual behaviour (but not lesbian; I guess God, like me, digs the girl-on-girl stuff). Because people will insist on taking these 4000 year old writings from the other side of the planet as something that literally applies to them today (while ignoring things in the same chapter like not sowing a field with two different grains), tolerance of gays will be a LONG time coming.
Romans 1:26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
Romans 1:27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
OK, let’s get away from religion, as it does have a special place in government-sponsored activity.
Let’s imagine a school program that taught compassion for the homeless, and required students to write an assignment imagining themselves as homeless, to consider how much money the government should give to the homeless, to write letters as a class project to local officials urging them to fund homeless shelters.
Or one that taught compassion for drug addicts, and required students to imagine what their lives would be like as drug addicts, to consider how much money the government should spend on detox centers, and to write to local officials as a class project urging them to fund needle-exchange programs.
Might a parent take the position that homelessness is caused by poor work ethic, and drug use by poor moral grounding, and thus object to the curriculum on the grounds that it was - in essence - TOO compassionate towards problems caused by moral failings?