Homo But School Children Will Still Be Able to Use “Gay” As an Insult, Right?
posted by January 31 at 14:43 PM
onPlaywright Tennessee Williams was gay. Poet Lord Byron had several homosexual affairs in his day. And artist Leonardo da Vinci was charged with sodomy at the age of 24.But public school students in Tennessee won’t learn that information if a bill passes barring teachers from discussing homosexuality.
Representative Stacey Campfield of Knoxville filed a bill last week that would prevent public elementary and middle schools from allowing “any instruction or materials discussing sexual orientation other than heterosexuality.”
Comments
""This is the kind of bill that you would have seen introduced back in the 1990s as a reaction to SpongeBob SquarePants or Heather Has Two Mommies," "
Is sponge-bob square pants gay?
I'm really sure it's permitted. Or even, encouraged, right?
Shocking.
They can still talk about FFM porn, right? Because to me that stuff is totally hetero.
The south sure is quirky. And by "quirky", I mean "shitty."
"Maybe if we don't talk about it it'll just go away... like global warming!"
Because maybe no one will be gay if we just don't let them know it's an option! Then again, it looks like this is not the only insane piece of legislation this...person has attempted to introduce.
:shakes head ::
@1, yes. Did you ever see the Fry Cook Games? You never saw sugh a gay cartoon.
I didn't really need another reason to stay the fuck away from Tennessee, but thanks anyway.
Eh, it's only Tennessee. Who gives a fuck about those rednecks, anyway?
This reminds me of Catholic grammar school, where one nun would not explain to me the difference between "Christian" and "Catholic." Any half-smart teacher will just mention "Heterosexuality" and the kids will say "What does that mean?" and they CANNOT ANSWER, since answering means using the very term "Homosexuality" which they're not allowed to mention. Will be much fun for all.
Well, a bill like this when I was in High School would have prevented my dumbshit "world history" teacher from telling our class that most of the Nazis were gay.
She was Japanese, so I asked her if interment were a good thing, given that all the Japanese on the west coast were spies.
I got in trouble for that one, but when I told my folks and the principal what she said, I got off the hook.
whatever at #4.
my apologies to everyone regarding the legislation.
don't hate on the south. people DO live there, ya know--and not necessarily by choice.
Goo-goo-goo-choob.
Let's do them one better and ban Seattle teachers from discussing the Civil Rights movement... or Women's rights... let's keep education to what middle-age white men want. Fuck.
Federal Way school district had a similar policy up until recently. It was so lovely going through health class and learning about the ins and outs of hetero sex, but no mention of safe sex practices for gays and lesbians.
@15 Better yet, what if we ban talking about heterosexuality in Seattle... that'll show 'em.
"You have a mom AND a dad?"
"Go to the office, you're expelled!!!"
5, 9, 10: mean, mean, mean. don't ever make fun of where someone lives/has lived. that's as bad as making fun of someone's orientation in my opinion. what if i made fun of where you all lived and/or were from? if someone was from a poor innercity neighborhood of whatever town, USA, would you make fun of them or put them down just b/c they were from there? same thing for southerners. some of the niciest (sp?), most kind people i've ever met in my life were from the south. plus many parts of the south are scenic and beautiful. okay, yeah, why don't i go back there, right? it's too long to explain. that will have to do. and i probably have done the very thing i am speaking against. to that i am very sorry and will try not to do that again.
oh yeah, and the legislature hasn't even voted on this yet! they may suprise you! people are able to rise up, move beyond their difficulties at the start of life--and their haters.
Because if you don't talk about something, that means it doesn't really exist, right?
Stupid hicks *spits on the ground in disgust*
I'm urging my rep to submit a bill making it illegal to discuss Tennessee in our schools.
Ah, my northern neighbors, how foolish ye be...
(Referring, of course, to Tennessee, not Washington...)
P.S. Don't generalize about the South, other posters. Some of us have brains, just not the idiots who try this shit.
@18
Nice spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. Place of birth is surely not grounds to insult someone...but jumblefuck English usage sure as hell is.
So, you're from the south, right?
how does leonardo being accused of sodomy have anything to do with his works as a person?
this seems like a really poor example on the consequences of such a law; i mean really Dan, are you saying that Leonardo's sodomy charge is really relevant to his works as a person, and this law is unjust because it forbids that?
i'd be more concerned about biology class implications rather than gossip about dead gay white men
Awesome.
Next, they can ban any instruction or materials discussing any races other than caucasian. That would be cool too.
Knowing that a great man was gay makes it that much harder to claim all gays are defective. Which is why they want to ban saying it.
eh...this is stupid and shouldn't be enacted but I don't understand the hoo-ha...what grade or middle school is getting that in-depth about these artists and esp. in Tennessee? They're all high school level discussions at best. (which I'm sure this asinine state rep will go after next)
Enforced heterosexuality is so gay.
You mean they won't be able to bring up John Maynard Keynes sex diary when talking about economics? that was half the fun
knowing a great man was gay is self evident. most great men were gay.
exactly voodoo. I'm not saying this law is good, it is really stupid, but Dan's examples are a really stupid application of said law. talking about the personal lives of these men lends minimal amounts of gravity to the works they produced.
BTW Tennessee Williams was also black, but used to be we couldn't mention that either.
As a former Knoxville, Tennessean, I can safely say that your preconceptions of small minded Southern values are probably right on the money. However, these bullshit values are above all AMERICAN values (have you checked out our president?), and persist even in Seattle. Just one of the many reasons are country is so, on the whole, effed.
@23,
You may not have to talk about Leonardo's sodomy charge to talk about his work, but many great works are intrinsically linked to their creator's sexuality. How do you talk about Oscar Wilde without mentioning that he was gay? Or James Baldwin? Or Boy George?
Or an essential figure like Plato, who wrote in the Symposium: "Homosexuality is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love-all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce."
Banning discussion of homosexuality in the classroom denies students exposure to a huge range of human history and art.
I live in Knoxville and I just wrote to my Representative (a different one than this asshole) asking him to fight this bill. And I encourage Big Sven and T's prejudice against the whole south, if that's what it takes to keep them away from here. Tennessee has enough self-righteous assholes as it is.
from east@18: if you think making fun of someone because of where they live is the same thing as making fun of their orientation, then you are an oversensitive ninny.
Any *choices* people make are free to be judged and/or ridiculed. Who they *are* is totally different. Shouldn't that be obvious?
We can all chose where to live. I spent my childhood in a rustbelt corner of upstate New York. If we had stayed there, my dad would have kept dealing weed and my mom would have worked at minimum wage + $.50. Thank *god* they moved to MN, where there are jobs, people are (generally) tolerant, and life has way more options.
Like it or not, the South is becoming more and more fucked. Evangelicals and anti-tax fuckheads are taking over to enforce bad social and economic policy. Infant mortality, education, obesity, infrastructure (I-35W bridge notwithstanding)- all these things are headed in the wrong direction.
These trends will just accelerate if, as we all hope, the Republicans are turned into an essentially regional, Southern party as a result of the 2008 election. The south is lost for a generation or more until things get so shitty that people rise up and throw out the Republicans and evangelicals, so if you you're smart and/or love your children you will GET OUT NOW.
And by the way- half my rust belt family moved to NC and GA when we all fled upstate NY. They're *all* tired of the shit and are *all* moving N and W.
Sorry, T just mentioned being against TN.
gurldoggie, i said that the examples dan gave were stupid.
There are a lot of good people in the south, chocotaco, but if you don't see that the region is going to hell in a hand basket than there's not much to say...
@30
I really have tried to figure out what you're trying to get across - but no luck so far.
It was a pretty big deal for me when I finally found out IN COLLEGE that Byron and da Vinci were gay. I felt like teachers throughout my life had left out something fairly important.
Something that might have helped me to feel better about myself.
Did being homosexual affect their work? Yeah - probably. Teaching that might be inappropriate.
But keeping such an important fact about their lives secret strikes me as far worse.
Wow. Reading all this makes me happy I put on Jimi Hendrix doing his 15-minute version of Message To Love from Woodstock. "Hello, this is Message To Love, but it's really a message to the universe." Yeah, he never did any drugs. But Sven, you've got me worrying about you.
@26
For *NOW* it's being banned in elementary and middle schools. The high schools are next. And maybe I was lucky, but when I was in middle school (in Kentucky, by the way), we covered several of Shakespeare's plays and poetry. Try Sonnet 20 (one of the most widely-taught) on for size: it is addressed to "the master-mistress of my passion"....tell me what half-conscious kid isn't gonna say to themselves (and the teacher), "Master-mistress? That doesn't make any sense!"
And what about history? What about that whole civil rights movement thingy? It would be a disservice to teach kids about the fight for women's rights but not the fight for gay rights.
But, then, I suppose no one is thinking of the kids.
Alan Turing had a huge impact on computing and cryptography. He broke the Enigma code, hello.
At SPU we learned about his scientific breakthroughs with a footnote that he died in 1954.
It wasn't till years later that I learned
- Turing was arrested for being gay in 1952...
- The British government revoked his security clearance due to the arrest.
- Turing's inquest returned a verdict of suicide.
More at http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/index.html
Banning discussion of homosexuality will only lead to the banning of discussions of polygamy, and discussions of men marrying dogs, as well.
No, Nappy, if you want to do dogs you have to read this week's Savage Love.
@ 22: Are you not a frequent Slog reader? Many people choose not to capitalize. With the exception of a few words that always trip me up, I actually feel that my spelling, punctuation, and grammar are on par w/ many of the other Sloggers. It is also normal to use short-hand in casual online conversations, such as Slog. And why does it matter where I'm from?
@ 35: ADULTS may be able to choose where they live, but not CHILDREN (and in fact, I even question whether adults actually do get to choose where they live, it's more like lesser of two evils or forced-choice scenario, mostly in regards to cost.).
2nd paragraph: You're right. I failed to clearly articulate that. I'm sorry.
Yeah, the issues facing Southern states are serious. Many of those same issues are also being faced by states in other regions too. There are people in the South trying to rectify these problems. It is hard to overcome long-standing narrow attitudes overnight. But there are people working hard to make a difference.
Being called a ninny hurts, but that's cyberspace, I guess. (You could have chosen worse words, though; at least you didn't.) Overall, your post is spot-on; I gotta commend you on that.
Don't remember the number--wait, I'll look--26, yeah, I would also want to agree w/ you about this being a HS discussion, but I get the feeling that kids might start asking in middle school (the natural age of inquiry--no, wait, intense interest, God forbid they ASK--about sex-related matters and other topics as well). Maybe something modified for mid-schoolers? At least this conversation is being started--albeit negatively and roundaboutly--and hey, Tennessee might as well be the one starting it!
Maybe I shouldn't have stirred the pot with my second post in this thread. I'm just generally not in a good mood today. I do need to check my emotions better though. My apologies.
Also, apologies for the long posts. Spending too much time on Slog today, need to take a break.
ayden, the fact you can relate to these guys is special. i think that there are better examples of this law being fucked up such as;
"when a fetus is gestating does the amount of estrogen being sent to the baby determine the sexual orientation of a baby?"
i care more about what is being lost from the biology and science angle, not what is being lost from the personal lives of dead white dudes. while that may be important to you, i think the imperative of open scientific discussion is the most important thing to keep intact. cause science is important, whether you're gay, straight, or asexual.
UGH. I'm moving to Norway.
@45
I like how you got all defensive about your right not to capitalize a single word (save USA) in your original entry, then proceeded to do just that.
It's nice that you are so proud of your awesome linguistic acumen.
Oh, and what's Slog? It sounds lame.
In case anybody would like to contact the esteemed representative:
http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/house/members/h18.htm
Also, I can't help but wondering if this is all related to him getting teased when he was himself a school boy. 'Stacey' isn't exactly the manliest name in the world.
I grew up in Tennessee, so this does not surprise me, but it does sadden me. Yes there are a lot of "rednecks" down there, but that's all the more reason that these laws are bad. If a few brave teachers are willing to talk about issues in a progressive way it means a lot to kids who are surrounded by ignorance and hate.
If you don't like Dan's examples, here are some from my kid's (progressive and not located in Tennessee) middle school. In the middle school there are several gay kids and one transgender kid. The class has "community discussions" where issues related to being gay and transgender sometimes arise. One reading assignment was to read a book about gay/transgender youth issues (from a list selected by teachers).
I'm sure most schools in Tennessee wouldn't dream of going this in depth into these issues, but now a kind and understanding teacher can't even mention them.
My parents still live in Tennessee, so I'm going to send them the link and hopefully they will write to this rep.
Before we get our knickers in a twist, let's remember that it hasn't been passed yet. Idiots introduce ridiculously legislation all the time-makes them feel important. Doesn't mean the bill actually goes anywhere.
see snoozn, that is much better!
I just learned that John Maynard Keynes was gay. Part of that elite and sexually uninhibited Bloomsbury Group in England in the 20's. Interesting, huh? They never mentioned that in Economics class in college, but then again they pretty much just focused on his theories and not the juicy stuff.
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