My Word: Click heels twice to go back to Alameda
By Allan Mann
Excerpt from San Jose Mercury News: Opinion
I’M BEGINNING TO feel like Dorothy when she and Toto landed in Oz. I don’t think I’m in Alameda any more.
No, it feels more like Kansas”… or Texas, or any of the other states where the religious right tried to take over school boards in the 1990s. Then, they didn’t want their children taught that Darwin was right. Substitute “homosexuality” for “evolution” and you understand their current obsession.
Two well-funded conservative political action groups — the Capitol Resource Institute and the Pacific Justice Institute — have decided to make Alameda the next beachhead in their culture war by bankrolling the recall and the lawsuit. Pacific Justice Institute has already extorted money from the Castro Valley schools by making them settle a bogus lawsuit to avoid an expensive and time-consuming legal defense.
Behind the smoke-screen of other arguments, the primary thrust of their agenda is clear: preventing the schools from portraying homosexuality as a normal human condition. Their position is based on an outmoded and broadly discredited religious belief that homosexuality is a choice and that behavior associated with it is sinful.
If homophobia is allowed to flourish under the protection of religious freedom, then any form of bigotry can be justified. Full story.
Filed under: Anti-bullying
I don’t think it’s fair to call this a “bullying” of homosexuals. The curriculum in question is meant for Kindergartners. There would be similar objections if schools were teaching these kids about proper condom-use in a heterosexual context.