But don't you see that if we are to ever be treated equally it CAN'T be optional? Gay kids don't like being forced to sit through heterosexually centered sex education classes, but thats exactly what happens every school year. And when homosexuality is left out completely to cater to straight kids it reinforces the stigma attached to gay sex and the GLBT community as a whole. FabulouslyGhetto is so dead on here. The backlash from including gay sex in a sex ed class will look like a sneeze in comparison to desegregation, but to millions of gay kids who feel like freaks, it would mean a world of difference.
How can you as a gay person empathize with straight kids comfort level, but not the gay kid in the same class?
Some good stuff there.
"Optional" material in a government-run school always amuses me anyway -- here we are mandating that kids be there, mandating a curriculum, even attempting to mandate graduation, which makes it plain that the idea is to mandate some conformity to a desired image, and yet we're going to waste time playing with having things "optional"?
The point of optionality is at having your own school.
If that were the case we'd still be racially segregated because people were deathly afraid of and angry towards integration. Thank God their fears weren't used as an excuse to keep things the way they were.
That's called progression babe.
Progress.
I remember when as a student taking theology courses, and also managing the swimming pool and rec area at a large apartment complex, the apartment director/manager came to me, as someone who Ought To Know, to ask if it was moral to rent to a "mixed couple" -- a black fellow (half, actually), and a white gal (very mixed European). She was actually trembling as she held the rental contract!
It seemed laughable, but to her it was a very serious moral dilemma. Since she was a good (conservative, rural) Lutheran, I took it from the "two kingdoms" angle: from the kingdom of this world, God has ordained government, and our government -- i.e. the Constitution -- says that all men are created equal, and we even had a bit of a war to get the meaning of that settled, so from one side, God's saying they're okay. From the other side, I just asked her if Jesus had died for both of them; of course she said "Yes", so I said that as Jesus himself said, they're free -- so yes, it's okay for them to be married (it turned out they'd gotten married a couple of states over -- in a Lutheran church yet!), so it's okay to rent to them.
The tension level in that room went down palpably as she worked through it and finally took the rental contract in her hand instead of barely clamping it between two fingertips.
Of course the couple figured out why she'd delayed, but I took care of that the first day they showed up at the pool, by explaining where she was coming from, and pointing out that after she'd reasoned through it, she did the right thing (I didn't mention she'd asked me about it). Once they'd put themselves in her shoes, they accepted it, and everything was fine.
The reason I relate that is to say that it would be nice if all such matters of irrational discrimination could be dealt with so reasonably. Unfortunately, it wasn't just reason in her case; as someone with theology studies (at a Lutheran school, yay), I was an authority figure, and I've always wondered if my words would have carried the issue without the 'argument from authority' behind them.
And I have met people who were rabidly anti-gay, who have been persuaded by the same arguments I gave her about racially mixed marriage. They haven't been necessarily thrilled about it (I still communicate with a guy who tells me, "Damn you, I was happier as an ignorant bigot!"), and their emotions get the better of them sometimes, but once convinced they've stuck with reason instead of fear.
Unfortunately, I know more who have their own responses to the two lines of argument: "Then the government is wrong!", and "I don't care what the Bible means, I know what it says!" (yes, they're actual quotes). And for those who aren't religiously opposed, some reject the argument from equality of individual worth and self-ownership, with things like, "Yeah, well nature fucks things up all the time" (to which I would love to say, "Yep --she made you").
The bearing this has on the classroom is this:
Some of the bigoted will indeed be persuaded by reason, and reason requires knowledge, and knowledge in this begins with the sciences and with natural philosophy regarding all people being equal. It doesn't matter what discussion you have about issues of any kind unless you start with knowledge.
So get it into the science, and the history, or you'll just be having a class in "I already have my mind made up 101".
](/images/smilies/bang.gif "Brick wall ](*,)")
mojoe54