Rejecting Proposition 8 Doesn’t Mean Teachers Would Have To Endorse Gay Marriage
(posted by Barry Deutsch)
According to Lindsay:
if prop 8 fails:
1. public school teachers will be required to teach that same-sex marriage is normal and acceptable. parents will be denied the option to opt-out their children from this discussion. this has already happened in massachusetts.
Lindsay isn’t alone in believing this — it’s one of the primary arguments made by those who favor Prop. 8. From protectmarraige.com:
For example, because public schools are already required to teach the role of marriage in society as part of the curriculum, schools will now be required to teach students that gay marriage is the same as traditional marriage, starting with kindergarteners.
This just isn’t true.
Don’t take my word for it — take the word of California’s superintendent of schools:
Hilary McLean, spokeswoman for California’s superintendent of schools, Jack O’Connell, said the ad’s claims are false.
“There’s nothing in the Education Code that requires schools to teach about marriage,” McLean said. In schools that do provide instruction about marriage, locally elected school boards determine the content, she said.
Think the superintendent of schools doesn’t know the law? Well, then, how about Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley, who as part of a lawsuit examined this issue:
Judge Frawley further rejected the assertion that marriage by same sex couples would be required in the California school curriculum, saying, “…children cannot be required to attend any health-related instruction, including instruction on the subject of marriage, against their parents’ will [Cal. Ed. Code §51240.]. Petitioner therefore has failed to show that the opponents’ arguments [stating that no such mandate would occur] are objectively false or misleading.”
According to curriculum experts with the state Department of Education, Section 51890 of the Education Code — the section cited by the Proposition 9 camp because it calls for teaching children about the legal and financial responsibilities of marriage — is not a requirement for schools. It’s an expected part of instruction for school districts that want a state-funded health curriculum.
Things fall apart more when you get to the kindergarten thing. There is nothing in the Education Code about the age at which children should learn about marriage. The grades at which students should be taught certain subjects is contained on the content standards, and the standards for health education don’t mention marriage until high school, at which point students are supposed to learn about the differences between just-plain dating, committed relationships and marriage. The curriculum standards, by the way, aren’t mandated either. They are, as the Pirates of the Caribbean put it, more sort of guidelines.
I imagine that as part of this, high schoolers might indeed learn that same-sex marriage is legal in the state of California. And, call me crazy, but I think they can handle it.
This is how they’ll take marriage away from same-sex couples, and from the children being raised by same-sex couples; they’ll lie. They’ll say “protect the children.” But the children being endangered in this fight are those who would benefit from having married parents, but whose parents will be legally forbidden from marrying — or whose already-existing marriages might be forcibly annulled — if proposition 8 passes.
Please visit No on 8, and if you can, donate some money.
October 13th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Just as a thought: While I would not personally care if same-sex marriages were legally recognized, just as I would not care if the incestuous marriages of Appalachians or Mormon or Hindu polygamy were “legalized”, I don’t get why some people think this is such an important objective.
Whatever happened to the days when radicals denounced marriage as a “bourgeiosie” institution, burned their marriage certificate and proclaimed themselves to be devotees of “free love”?
http://www.takimag.com/site/article/gay_marriage_sucks/
October 13th, 2008 at 8:07 am
The nos keep saying that Prop 8 won’t effect the children, won’t be taught in school - but it has already happened… read it, see it for yourself
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/11/MNFG13F1VG.DTL
While I’m glad these ladies had their day and I hope it was wonderful for them - they took these children out of school to observe and celebrate this event. Could have held it on a Saturday and let them come by invitation of their own choice, not take a day of school to do it - proof positive… don’t think it will happen? It already has! Vote your conscience, vote YES on 8!
October 13th, 2008 at 8:42 am
“Vote your conscience, vote YES on 8!”
You can’t tell me what my conscience is. On a purely semantic level that last line amounts to a bunch of bullshit.
Vote YOUR conscience really can’t be followed with a suggestive prompt of WHAT my conscience is.
I don’t think missing one day of school will hurt anyone.
Here is a link to the dangers of heterosexual marriage. Not exclusively, of course, but just to show you how diverse both hetero and homo sexuals groups can be:
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/17209/suffering-children-and-the-christian-science-church
Faith healing kills children. Same sex marriage doesn’t.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:46 am
As the economy grows worse, more and more people will look for scapegoats rather than solutions.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Scapegoating is fine so long as you identify the correct targets to be attacked. One thing the militia movement in the 90s got right was making “government” itself into a scapegoat.
Who is responsible for the present economic debacle? The federal government, the Federal Reserve, and the corporatist ruling class. I say scapegoat all of that to the max. Time for some good old-fashioned class warfare.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
If they’re the correct target then, by definition, they’re not scapegoats. These idiots going gaga at the thought of TEH GAYZ possibly getting married really think that they’re solving an actual problem by pushing for these laws.
October 13th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
TEH GAYZ here. Merrill Lynch must want me. After all, most GAYZ typically have few to no childrenz and therefore have more investment money. We like to travel and go clubbing. We support the economy. Go GAYZ.
October 13th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Alix, I’m still trying to figure out how my life will improve if you became hetero. Here in Connecticut, the courts recently ruled that gay marriages are to be allowed, and for all the shrieking done by organizations with the word “family” in their titles, I have yet to see how anyone’s life is made worse by this.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
So, why are public school teachers “teaching” about marriage in the first place? I don’t remember the subject coming up, even in my high school “health” class. Unless the question comes up of ‘why are those two men playing doggie?’ Which strangely enough, I seem to recall it coming up in health class;-)
October 13th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Jennifer. It wouldn’t. I would steal your menz.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I’ve always found it amusing that religious nuts cling so fervently to a concept that — as we know it now — is state crafted. After all, if their gawd sees their love then who gives a fuck what the government thinks?
As for school subjects: this touches on a feature of gov’t run education that I’ve long felt terrible from day one & a root of other problems within it. Every time a new culture war controversy w/r/t schools comes up I wonder why no one is questioning why the schools are dealing with that kind of crap instead of the parents in the first place.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
In all seriousness, if anybody is “threatening traditional marriage” it’s people like me and my boyfriend, who have lived together nearly eight years now without getting married. Two men or two women shacking up do NOT offer an alternative to so-called traditional marriage; people like me and my boyfriend do.
October 13th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Well, I wish I was a lesbian. But I cannot change the objects of my erotic attraction any more than they can. I am hopelessly, tragically straight.
Otherwise, I’d be right in there contributing to the “destruction of marriage.” Cuz god knows mine was hell, and I finally realized I am attracted to men who are toxic for me. (That isn’t an anti-male screed; most men are not vile. There is just something off in my taste for them. So I wish I preferred women.)
October 14th, 2008 at 3:02 am
Whatever happened to the days when radicals denounced marriage as a “bourgeiosie” institution, burned their marriage certificate and proclaimed themselves to be devotees of “free love”?
Key difference: these (unnamed, uncited, probably filthy hippie) radicals weren’t calling for marriage to be made illegal, were they?
October 14th, 2008 at 7:11 am
Ajay,
I’m not quite sure I follow your point, but proponents of “free love” advocated abolition of marriage as an institution altogether. And, no, it wasn’t just “filthy hippies” who held such views. They were common at least a century, probably longer, before there was ever a such thing as hippies. Go back and read what socialists, anarchists, communists and other radicals from the 19th century had to say about this.
It wasn’t just stereotypical “bohemian” types who were into this, either. There was plenty of old-style Fabians, Marxists and others who were into “free love”.
October 14th, 2008 at 8:29 am
hat school policies are locally determined is no more true than that paying income tax is “voluntary” - local determination is a legal formality, not an actual reality.
In practice, government schools are used to impose a culture determined at the center and imposed on the masses, by an elite that visualizes itself as wise and enlightened, and the masses as hateful ignorant stupid nasty rednecks - they hate parents in the same way and for the same reasons as they hate Sarah Palin.
Children, very young children, are required to be taught that homosexuality is normal and healthy. Google for Silo and Roy.
October 14th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Mona says:
# Mona Says:
#
# “Well, I wish I was a lesbian. … I am attracted to men who are toxic for me.”
Most women are. The seduction community teaches men “Here is how to pretend to be the sort of no good nasty hurtful scum that women are attracted to, rather than the nice guy that you really are. Here is how to treat women badly enough that they keep coming back for more mistreatment.”
However, the idea that lesbian relationships are healthier does not appear to be true. Everyone is screwed up. As they say on the deviant board: “We are all sad pitiful deviants.”
Male homosexuals more than most.
October 14th, 2008 at 10:23 am
“In practice, government schools are used to impose a culture determined at the center and imposed on the masses, by an elite that visualizes itself as wise and enlightened, and the masses as hateful ignorant stupid nasty rednecks - they hate parents in the same way and for the same reasons as they hate Sarah Palin.”
Absolutely correct. Understanding this principle is essential to understanding the ideological superstructure of the present ruling class, an ideology I have referred to as “totalitarian humanism.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/preston1.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/preston2.html
What we have in the present day US is a situation where the two dominant ruling class factions both represent branches of leftwing totalitarianism.
One is the neo-Jacobin Republicans, whose agenda is aggressive nationalism, a unitary dictatorial state, militarism and empire building under the cover of liberal, democratic, humanist or Enlightenment ideology or rhetoric. Not much different than Napoleon, really.
The other is the cultural Marxist Democrats, who regard Western civilization as a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic conspiracy, in need of correction through the creation of a totalitarian state that imposes a hegemonic ideology on any competing center of power like regions, communities, the private sector, the independent sector, etc.
October 14th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
You mean the penguins? What school requires that book?
October 14th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Children, very young children, are required to be taught that homosexuality is normal and healthy.
Required by whom, and what is the precise method by which homosexuality is taught to young children as “normal and healthy?” (I, btw, think it is far more normal and healthy for gay men and lesbians to accept their orientation than to enter heterosexual marriages where hesllishness for all concerned usually follows.)
October 14th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
I’m still trying to figure out if a “Creative Charter School” is actually a PUBLIC school….it kind of sounds like the kind you’d pay tuition and be on a waiting list to get your kid into.
AND, for those worrying that IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED, did you skim the article and skip the part which noted that two families opted out of the field trip?
Oh my goodness. I remember some of church-going kids having to skip the magic show we had in the gym at my public elementary school.I wonder if people worried about the damage that was caused by them missing an event at school…
I wonder if their SAT scores will be affected by this….
Does anybody have any panties-debuncher?
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:50 pm
If Prop 8 has nothing to do with education, as O’Connell says, why does the teachers’ union have to donate to the no on 8 campaign. Either way you look at it, the CTA is being dishonest. On one hand, let’s say their right and prop 8 has nothing to do with education. If that’s the case, their contract with the teachers they support forbids them from donating to non-educational issues. The more likely scenario is that they’re lying. Prop 8 really is about indoctrination. The liberal nuts at the head of my union want to teach children that homosexuality is a great and wonderful thing. And the worst thing about it is that they’re stealing my money to do it.
October 26th, 2008 at 12:05 am
If we don’t have to worry about CA schools teaching homosexuality=normal, then why oh why is the school district my sister teaches for already talking about working homosexual issues into the next years lesson plans. I guess they never got the memo that legalizing same sex marriage doesn’t mean schools will teach it.
Schools aside, is it really OK for a state to overrule the voice of the people (prop 22 anyone?) and line themselves up to dictate morallity? Just a questioin.
October 26th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Here’s another question: Why are relationships any of the business of the State at ANY level?
The entire reason this issue exists is because government crossed a line it never should have. Both sides are wrong on this in a way:
-People opposing gay marriage say it’s undermining the institution. Marriage has actually been constantly changing throughout history & us straight folk cheapen it plenty ourselves. In reality, the reason for opposition is that they interpret it as government endorsement of a lifestyle they personally don’t like.
-People SUPPORTING it act as if it’s somehow natural for the government to be sanctioning relationships. They’re claiming a civil right to an artificial legal construct.
If it were up to me, then rather than expand or withhold government-sanctioned marriage to gays, the concept itself would be split. The “marriage” would be solely between the consenting adults involved and whatever the hell they believe, and the legal stuff would be optional & more like a contract.
October 31st, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Proponents of Proposition 8 who say it will preserve ‘traditional’ marriage probably are the same type of people that said years ago preserve ‘tradtional’ voting by not allowing blacks or women to vote…. as that was ‘traditional’ for scores of years. Wake up you homophobes…this is sthe 21st century!