Subscribe to Breaking NewsRuby-Sachs: Proposition 8 and the battle for the California classroom
The Proposition 8 battle has shifted focus to California classrooms.
An ad released by those who support the ban features a young girl who learns in school that, “a prince married a prince and I can marry a princess.” It then charges that a failed Prop 8 will lead to classroom instruction about gay marriage.
Those opposed to the ban are rushing to correct the misconception. The Superintendent of Public Instruction in California reassured parents that the ban does not affect in any way the content of school instruction.
So those parents who think that gay marriage equals gay sex can rest easy at night. Their children will not have images of girls making out in their head.
Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture?
I understand that so close to an election, principles fall by the wayside in an attempt to reassure those middle of the road voters who don’t hate us enough to actively oppose our rights, but would rather we didn’t exist.
I understand that in California the race is close and people are panicking.
But why would we teach children that they must grow up and marry royalty ONLY of the opposite sex when the law says something completely different?
If we can teach children that marriage between a man and a woman exists without filling their heads with images of bedroom exploits, we can, just as easily, teach them that marriage between a man and a man and a woman and a woman exists without talking about sex.
The idea that those in support of gay marriage would also buy into the misconception that discussions about love between members of the same sex automatically includes discussions about sex is appalling.
We should view this battle in California (with its successes and potential failures) as one part of a larger, national, campaign to integrate gay relationships into the same category as straight ones.
That requires educating the younger generation about all the different kinds of healthy relationships that exist.
Our campaign should not include pretending that gay loving relationships are somehow PG-13 just because they don’t fit the Cinderella stereotype.
Shouldn’t parents be more worried about their kids being able to marry losers than being able to marry someone of the same gender?
I mean, we don’t choose our sexual orientation, but we do choose the quality of our mates.
i think kids don’t need to be taught about same-sex marriage in class, they already know of it from TV or maybe from hearing about someone known to them whose parents are a same-sex couple. There is no need to have bunches of parents raising irate shouts at a school of “you are indoctrinating my kids in this loathsome, degenrate lifestyle” blah, blah, blah all kinds of nonsense, etc. Best to leave all marriage straight or gay discussion out of the classroom and let the parents tell the kids themselves the info flawed however that might be.
That might save the school system from lawsuits and from crazed parents screaming about their parental rights to tell the kids stuff in their way according to their own values. And in an awful way, the parents might be right. It’s their right to raise the family accrding to their own values however warped. The kids may be warped by what the parents tell them but when they are finally off on their own and in college, then out into independent life, the outside world may have a way of showing them that maybe their parents were not quite so well informed after all about “certain things” like the right of all people to contentment and happiness married to the adult of their own choice and not of what some state would prefer for them.
School can avoid teaching things like that, because, eegads.. it’s in the newspaper, on TV, people in the stores will be saying one day, “Oh, did you know Johnny married Jimmy at last, and aren’t they a lovely couple!”
“So those parents who think that gay marriage equals gay sex can rest easy at night.”
That’s not what the parents’ fear is. The fear is clearly expressed in the ad when the child says “I can marry a princess” and the mother responds with a look of deep concern. The fear is that the child can become gay. The ad targets the fears of the many people who believe that being gay is a choice and a perversion that children can be lured into.
If you’re not convinced of what I’m saying and if the ad itself doesn’t convince you, then go to non-gay sites where articles about Prop 8 are posted and browse the reader comments. Sooner or later, in the midst of the discussions, those who support Prop 8 express their fears openly, and their fears are what I stated above.
The people who designed the ad knew exactly what they were doing and what audience they were targeting.
Here in Mass, and I presume across Canada too, where Same sex marriage has been legal for sometime, schools have been shown to be much better at educating the children than in California, perhaps one could extrapolate that allowing Same sex marriage statistically equals better schools. This analogy of course is probably false, but equally false is the analogy that Same sex marriage equals teaching same sex practices in the schools too!