harmonicminer

6 Responses to “Debunking anti-Prop 8 Lies”

1. dave says:
   October 27th, 2008 8:40 pm

   That was a clear argument against Prop 8? Really?

   I especially liked how he used an anecdotal example of one workshop at a conference as proof that “Teen fiction, elementary school reading books, and history are all fair game.”

   Nice.
2. harmonicminer says:
   October 27th, 2008 9:24 pm

   You missed the central point.

   To quote:

   It is the choice of school districts whether or not they teach sex education. This is why the Anti- Proposition 8 campaign and Jack O’Connell say there is no requirement to teach about marriage.

   What Jack O’Connell knows but doesn’t say is that 96% of school districts teach comprehensive sex education. Those numbers are from O’Connell’s California Department of Education. 96% must teach respect for marriage.

   The only way out is to end sex education programs in all these school districts. That is something that just won’t happen. Look at the outcry that takes place when boards try to emphasize more abstinence. The same groups against Proposition 8 strongly support sex education in our schools. As does O’Connell. They along with the education establishment that created sex education will fight anyone that tries to abolish it.

   And:

   The opt-out provision is very narrow in California and is limited to “sexually explicit content” that describes the functions of reproductive organs. That’s it. Some have pointed out that two children from the infamous first grade class field trip to a same-sex marriage didn’t go. They didn’t go because it was an off-campus trip and permission is needed to leave campus. Had the marriage been done on the school campus, parents would not need to be notified nor allowed to opt-out.

   You don’t have to believe me. Believe the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR). NCLR has given $300,000 to the No on Prop 8 campaign and its Executive Director is on the No on 8 Steering Committee. Their legal analysis, LGBT Legal Issues for School Attorneys, says:

   “State law explicitly provides that ‘instruction or materials that discuss gender, sexual orientation, or family life and do not discuss human reproductive organs and their functions’ is not subject to the parental notice and opt-out laws. California Education Code § 51932(b).”

   Did you read carefully?

   And your sneer at an “anecdotal example” is unwarranted. When something has been denied as a possibility by proponents of something, and that something can be shown to exist, a true anecdote is all that’s needed to prove it IS possible. It’s a mathematical, logical thing. Only a single case disproves a “rule”. OK?

   But the point is that it won’t be just a “single case”. All the GLBT organizations fighting Prop 8 have in their own documents and wording the intent to penetrate the schools, using lawsuits, lobbying the legislature, etc.
3. dave says:
   October 28th, 2008 4:56 am

   When something has been denied as a possibility by proponents of something

   Workshops at professional conferences were denied as a possibility?
4. harmonicminer says:
   October 28th, 2008 9:56 am

   Dave, are you playing dumb?

   Do you really not understand that “workshops at professional conferences” aren’t the issue, it’s what those workshops mean for what goes on the classroom that matters, and those workshops are just the tip of the iceberg, according to the stated intent of pro-gay marriage organizations and their willing accomplices in the teachers’ union?

   C’mon, Dave… they could hold workshops all year long, every day, if that was where it stopped. You don’t believe that, and I don’t believe that, and pretending that’s the issue, or that that is what we’re really talking about, is just a bit beneath you, don’t you think?
5. Hello says:
   October 28th, 2008 12:58 pm

   You are right (harmonicminer) about the school system. The No on 8 ads are technically telling the truth, but they are a bit deceiving. But schools in general are meant to reflect the ‘public general knowledge’ that society expects its members to have. This sometimes gets controversial, like a couple years ago when there was a push to have ‘Bible as Literature’ curriculum in high school because of the great impact it has had on this society (for better or for worse). Some opposed it, but at the end of the day I believe it was approved at least to some extent because it’s a reflection of the society.

   If Prop. 8 fails and gay marriage is allowed to stay, it can and should be taught because it will become a state-sanction norm. This is fine as long as it is merely describing a reality, not pushing an agenda. For example, I was not taught about sex as a moral issue in high school, only what it was and what would happen when I did it. If gay marriage is presented as “this exists, this is what it is” (which is how marriage is taught now), then I don’t see what the big deal is.

   The problem is that we all know that teachers are not objective entities, and will probably push their own agenda (positive or negative) regarding gay marriage. So, as long as gay marriage is merely described as a societal reality, I don’t see the harm in it. It is a societal reality, just like teen pregnancy and regular marriage, to name a couple examples, are currently described as societal realities.
6. harmonicminer says:
   October 28th, 2008 1:09 pm

   Hello Hello, I don’t know your age, so this may or may not apply. Things have changed in the schools. You said:

   I was not taught about sex as a moral issue in high school, only what it was and what would happen when I did it.

   When I was in high school in the late 1960s, no one explicitly taught “morals” as such in the schools, in the sense that there was a class where it was part of the curriculum as such.

   But it was taught because we read literature by and about people who believed or didn’t believe in various moral perspectives and positions, and the only way that literature could be understood was to deal with the moral implications. Can you read the Scarlet Letter and not discuss sexual morality?

   It was taught in history and civics courses, where we learned of “sex scandals” of the past as they affected politics, and again, some morality is inevitably “caught” even if not “taught”.

   There were chaperones at dances, and it was clear why they were there.

   The point is that gay marriage is going to penetrate very far into ALL of these arenas, not just in the area of specific instruction in a sex ed class, and that the gay marriage lobby has stated their intent, by lawsuit, to force schools into a numbing and difference masking tolerance that will make it impossible for students to even understand the cultures of their parents, let alone previous times.

   And I’d make this observation. Society has not been well served, not even a little tiny bit, by the fact that schools so self-consciously avoid making moral pronouncements about sex. It has seriously harmed us, and whether that aspect of modern school life was a cause or an effect in the first place, it is surely NOW a contributing cause to our ongoing problems in society.

   The moral vacuity of the Left is made clear from this: they are more concerned by the difference between rich and poor than the difference between the fatherless and those who have a father in the home. Abortion is the single biggest “social justice” issue in the USA. The next biggest is the epidemic of fatherless homes, out of wedlock birth, etc. And both of those things are directly traceable to the lack of moral instruction, seriously undertaken, that used to be provided in both home AND school AND church, and now may be provided at none of those places.

   So, I read your comment this way: It was pretty bad when I was in school, so why not make it worse now?