"So Gay" Phrase Lands Santa Rosa Schools In Court

[Hanna]

<p>Yep, I’d say so. But apparently that wasn’t alleged to be the problem in the federal case.</p>

<p>What are the definitions given for those vocabulary words?</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>We have already linked the history, the lawsuit, the ruling, and the anti-bias curriculum for kindergarten/first grade.</p>

[citygirlsmom]

<p>wow, you judge my Ds…hmmmm…I have never judged yours nor mentioned them at that…</p>

<p>My kids are kind, funny, smart, charming, worldly, traveled, have an amazing circle of friends, they are brave, and they have always stood up for what was right</p>

<p>And they have risked scorn for standing up for what is right…</p>

<p>I am exceedingly proud of them, they have dignity, purpose, class, and intelligence</p>

<p>I never said your kids were anything at all one way or the other, and if you feel you have to say yours are better than mine, well, than that is what you have to do</p>

<p>Interesting</p>

[kluge]

<p>Since Hereshoping proffered this website as a source of information regarding the “gay agenda”, as well as for reliable information regarding the Massachusetts lawsuit, it’s worth noting what the website authors have to say about things:

This is the book that came home in the “Diversity Book Bag” with the Parkers’ 5-year-old son in January. As the elementary school’s web site described this book:
“Shows the various combinations of individuals that can make up a family, emphasizing the positive aspects of different family structures, including grand-parent headed, single-parent, adopted, gay-headed, and mother-father families. Uses examples from the animal kingdom to illustrate how family groupings can differ.”
Text: “A family can be made up in many different ways.”

[Website comment] <a href=“Note%20how%20they%20place%20the%20same-sex%20partners%20among%20the%20regular%20families,%20interracial%20family,%20to%20reinforce%20in%20the%20child’s%20mind%20that%20homosexual%20relationships%20are%20no%20different.”>quote</a>

[/quote]

“The Parkers were shocked and outraged.”

</p>

<p>Here’s the infamous “gay agenda”

Kindergarten/First Grade
The following are areas that the children are exposed to and guided to work towards an understanding of:

• Gain basic understanding of anti-bias terms including stereotype, minority, majority, ally, bully, equity, equality, inclusion, exclusion, put-up, put-down.
  [all the way down to]:
• Participate in community service projects benefiting local organizations
• Make connections with and develop understand of older and younger people Recognize and respect various family structures
• Begin to define and use vocabulary including gay, lesbian, and straight.
• Continue to care and take steps to respect and understand all people of the world by learning about their culture, religion, core beliefs, and history.

</p>

<p>Website Comment:

This is just the Kindergarten/First Grade version! There were similar curricula going up to Fourth/Fifth grade distributed also. They get progressively more radical. For example, one of the Fourth/Fifth grade goals is “Understand and define the terms heterosexual, homophobia, heterosexism.”

</p>

<p>The website was equally outraged about this, for some reason:

The teacher then reads The Day Gogo Went To Vote, by Eleanor Betezat Sisulu, about the day that Gogo, grandmother of the story’s narrator, was first allowed to vote in South Africa. A history lesson follows and many children are outraged that this is a true story. The class talks about who can and can not vote in South Africa and are just as shocked to learn the history of voting in the United States.

</p>

[Hanna]

<p>Let’s assume that teaching this vocabulary to 5- and 6-year-olds is, indeed, unnecessary. It is very unusual for parents to pull their kids out of school because they are introduced to an unnecessary vocabulary word. I mean, I had to memorize the vocabulary word “prolix,” which I never used again between seventh grade and today, and it was a long way from being necessary to my education in any way. In fact, I’d call it a waste of my time.</p>

<p>No, you don’t pull your kids out of school, much less sue public schools, because a lesson is unnecessary. You do that because you believe it to be dangerous. And the danger posed by the materials is what’s lost on me.</p>

<p>If a book with a picture of two moms washing a poodle is really a “lesson in human sexuality” within the meaning of the Massachusetts statute, I can’t think of many picture books that are NOT lessons in human sexuality. Every time you show a mother and a father together, isn’t that an equivalent message about the normalness of heterosexuality? What about the single mother in “Peter Rabbit”? Should the schools be notifying parents before every reading of “Pat the Bunny,” since it depicts a mother and a father in the same home?</p>

[Princedog]

<p>

Children are shown washing a poodle with their two moms, and the reader is told that you need 4 pairs of hands to do that job.

</p>

<p>Haha that’s great. I want to read this book. </p>

<p>It doesn’t really sound much like anyone has to introduce anything they’re uncomfortable with for this book. If their point is the larger curriculum then bringing this book into it IMO probably isn’t helping their case to those not inclined to agree or who might be on the fence. The book part of the issue really just isn’t cutting it for making any sort of case when it went home for THEM to read and doesn’t even show or say anything they couldn’t just brush off with another explanation if they chose. Maybe the issue of what’s being defined or not defined in 1st grade is a problem but then when you start adding the book in, many people are initially going to see this and say, what’s the problem, there’s no problem here. </p>

<p>Now we may be getting versions of the case that make the book issue seem more important than it is, but that’s still an issue for their case. It just doesn’t make it seem very legitimate to people who could go one way or another with support. If we’re going to keep going into civil rights, those landmark cases were very carefully crafted because they knew they had one shot and screwing it up could well set them back another decade. Rosa Parks was not supposed to be the landmark case. The NAACP was set to proceed with the case of a younger woman. She got pregnant out of wedlock. They dropped that case and proceeded with Parks because they knew that an out of wedlock pregnancy at that point in time would call in all sorts of character questioning and scrutiny that would distract from the issue. Basically, she wouldn’t ‘victimize’ well enough. </p>

<p>Anyway I don’t see why people are randomly insulting kids they don’t even know and who haven’t even ever seen this discussion to make a point about tolerance? This is probably not the best way to make it but I suppose to each their own. Everyone’s kids are probably as lovely or not lovely as any other teenager out there and probably most of them have ideas very distinct from yours and do all sorts of things you don’t even know about, or even want to know about. Maybe some of you here ARE the magical unicorn-rare exceptions to this but that’s beyond the scope of the information we have here so it doesn’t even matter.</p>