Textbooks to include contributions by gays

[deadparrot]

SACRAMENTO, May 4 (UPI) -- A California state Senate committee has approved a bill requiring textbooks to include the contributions of gays and lesbians.

Supporters said all students should be aware of the role that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people have made, but that the state curriculum has no such requirement, reportsTthe San Francisco Chronicle. Opponents maintained discussion of sexual orientation should be in homes and not mandated in schools.

Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Los Angeles told the Senate Education Committee that her bill addresses the "enforced invisibility that so many minority groups have gone through in terms of their contributions to California history." The bill now goes to the full Senate.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken no position on the bill, the Chronicle reported.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060504-011555-1028r

[Book Lover]

1. Well, if it makes the kids actually read the damn thing....

[Atman]

2. Personally, I think this is silly.

It just further points out that there is a difference between gays and "normal" people. If a person makes a contribution to society, what the hell difference does it makes whether or not he/she is gay? I understand it may be well-intentioned, but I think it sends the opposite message than what the bill's authors probably intended.

[Sub Atomic]

5. Thanks for the slander.

I always enjoy it when I'm referred to as not "normal."

[Atman]

6. Oh for Christ sake, will you please read in CONTEXT please!

Jesus, I hate when people do that. I put the goddam word in quotes for a reason. Get a grip, search through my 9000 posts before you pull that shit on me. You obviously know nothing about me.

Thanks for the knee jerk.

[Sub Atomic]

7. They're your words, not mine.

Get a grip yourself.

[Atman]

8. You're absolutely right, they ARE my words, thus, I know what they say!

Why don't you read ALL of them...what do you suppose I am trying to say in this sentence, huh?

If a person makes a contribution to society, what the hell difference does it makes whether or not he/she is gay?

Context is important, and you're deliberately ignoring it because you'd prefer to pick a fight.

[Sub Atomic]

10. " there is a difference between gays and "normal" people"

Care to state your definition of "normal"?

[brentspeak]

12. Methinks you have a comprehension/sarcasm problem

[Sub Atomic]

13. I don't think so.

Bigotry is bigotry.

I, for one, am getting tired of slander against gays.

Call it sarcasm, call it a joke, call it what you want.

When someone compares me to what they think is "normal" then I'm going to call them on it.

[onenote]

14. not what atman was trying to say

The way I read atman's post (and atman is free to weigh in if I'm getting it wrong) is that he was suggesting that by singling out gay authors the legislation furthers agenda of those people who perceive gay individuals as fundamentally different from straight individuals. It is those people (the ones with the agenda focused on treating gay and straight people differently) who think that they are "normal" and gays are not. Not that atman thinks that. Maybe it could've been written more clearly, but given the context, I think you're off base in suggesting that its atman that is drawing the normal/gay distinction. My immediate sense of his post was that he was referring to the fact that others make that distinction and that its not a good thing.


onenote

[Atman]

17. That is EXACTLY what I was saying.

Thank you. I thought it was pretty clear. Although you did manage to make my point better than I did.

:hi:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

20. I knew what you were saying.

And I'm gay. Then again, I'm highly skilled in :sarcasm:

[Igel]

25. Look up what scare quotes are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes is safe in this regard.

"The effect of using scare quotes is similar to inserting so-called to modify a word: in both cases, the object is to express disagreement with the word, but only by calling attention to the word without actually explaining why the author disagrees with it."

The poster used scare quotes the first time he used the word, which show disagreement with the word. There's no mismatch between between that usage, what the context clearly shows he meant, and what he said later.

There's just a lack of comprehension of what he said.

[phylny]

21. I agree with you. Do we really need to categorize people by sexual

orientation?

"Famous Heterosexuals." :eyes:

People are people are people.

[mondo joe]

23. If you were a gay kid who didn't know anyone else you could

talk to about it, didn't know any gay people, and all you heard was how bad gays are... you might need to know.

[phylny]

31. You may be right. n/t

[superconnected]

22. wow, If the way that was done, with the " "'s and all was slander

I suppose everything is in your eyes.

[mondo joe]

18. I'd ask you to consider the following:

Unless identified, gays are typically assumed to be heterosexual.

There are young gays in schools who live invisibly, without knowing anyone else who they know to be gay, and without much information about what it means. Unlike a racial minority group,gay kids are often out their on their own with no one to turn to for role models or a sense of a greater community.

For kids who fit that description, this is a pretty big deal.

And it's not bad for other kids to know as well.

[Atman]

27. I grew up in an artsy coastal town in Florida

I guess maybe I don't have the perspective you're talking about...I've had gay friends my whole life, starting in school. When I turned 18, the first bar I started hanging out at was owned by a gay couple. It wasn't exactly a gay bar, per se, but it was gay friendly. The owners came to my wedding, even. My first corporate job was in the womens fashion industry, home office of Casual Corner. I used to get all the free hockey tickets the sales reps were handing out because I was the only straight male in the office! One of my best friends now does drag shows in PTown. On top of that, my cousin and her partner were among the very first to get civilly-unioned in Massachusetts when that law was passed. I guess I'm just so used to hanging out with gay and lesbian friends and family members, I didn't really consider the perceived invisibility, mondo.

But maybe you can see why I was so offended at the poster calling me bigotted towards gays. I don't suppose for a minute to know all the people on this board, and I don't like it when they think they know me based upon one word in one post out of 9000!

Thanks for your post. More insight can never be a bad thing!

[mondo joe]

29. It's not exactly my experience either - but I know it's out there for

a LOT of gay youth.

I didn't think you were (or are!) a bigot.

[tomg]

26. Actually, I don't think it is silly, and from

an academic standpoint, it is invaluable. For example, take the case of Walt Whitman. For years, he has been America's bardic voice. At the same time, until recently, that he was gay was absolutely denied. As a result, many of the "Calamus" poems simply were not taught, nor was a work like "As I walked through the streets of my city" as beautiful and haunting a love lyric as possible ( well, I've always liked it), allowed entry into the canon. We read Plato and his dialogues, and without an understanding of how the Greeks viewed the construct of love, things are difficult to understand at best. Michelangelo and Caravaggio, and much of the Renaissance? There is such a celebration of heterosexual love in the "official" celebration of all of our art, that such a denial of gay, and lesbian artists presentations of love ( I wonder what art transgendered love will create)is beyond ludicrous.

What has this to do with high schools? I mean I can hear people saying it is appropriate on a college level, but high schools or elementary schools, is it needed. All people need a history and participants in that history and art tells their story. Learning the story of who you are, who your forebearers are, who are those who have gone before you is essential to understanding who you are. And that is one of the central things art does and one of the obligations of a school system. I have four sons, and I don't know their sexual orientation, but whatever it is, from their earliest ages, I want them, no matter what it is, to have their ( and other choices/ orientations) celebrated in art, history, politics, and to know that they are an essential part of the picture. I do understand that there is the possibility of relegating Gay and Lesbian and Transgendered people to "Gay Week," and as a teacher, I know that twentyfive years ago, I sometimes fell into that ( did I have a "gay" or "Lesbian" writer in my course - oh shit, they just knocked out the straight Asian-American dude - I finally started teaching contemporary novel courses that had no straight white males in them), but even that is preferrable to the working assumption - the default version of reality - that says "everyone is straight." I do sympathize with your point, but we are nowhere near there yet.

[XemaSab]

3. There's a fine line between celebrating achievements

and calling people out.

How is "the gay congressman Barney Frank" different than "the Jewish senator Diane Feinstein?"

[coffeenap]

4. Watch out, it is from UPI--they have their own agenda, you know. nt

[One_Life_To_Give]

9. Not included Now?

Are they saying that people with significant accomplishments are omitted? Or are we to include lesser accomplishments by people from oppressed groups?

[geniph]

11. You know, there's a difference

between mandating the inclusion of all peoples and beliefs, and not permitting the banning of views representative of all people.

It's patently absurd, in my mind, to say that textbooks must require the contributions of people with green eyes, people of Latvian descent, Zoroastrians, gays, straights, males, females, tall people, short people, disabled people...

On the other hand, it IS legitimate to say that textbooks SHOULD STRIVE to include contributions representative of all persons and beliefs.

The text of this particular bill smells of "quota" - "this particular group represents .01% of the population, so we must make sure that .01% of textbook contributions are by persons of this group." That's going to drive people nuts. Conversely, saying, "it is not permitted to ban contributions by persons representative of this belief, as they are a legitimate part of society" is a perfectly acceptable way to put it.

But subtlety apparently escapes a lot of people.

Someday, it's my hope that we'll get beyond having to categorize people into neat little pigeonholes of "gay, straight, white, black" etc., anymore than we categorize them and determine their worth by their eye color, or their shoe sizes.

[FreeState]

15. Gowing up gay

Gowing up gay in the public schools I thought I was the only gay person in the world. (This was in the late 80's). I never heard one positive comment about a gay person, yet alone thought they could contribute anything but disease and child abuse to society. It is this, I believe, that they are trying to address. Education breaks the stigma that many of us have had to endure and still endure on a day to day basis.

[libnnc]

16. Bingo. That's why this isn't "silly".

Gay teenagers DO think they're totally alone in the world. I know. I thought that way too. I thought I was the only lesbian around. Thank god I discovered Rita Mae Brown's "Rubyfruit Jungle" when I was 16.

[LostinVA]

28. You hit the nail on the head

I was coming back here to post this very thing... when I was growing up, all I heard about gay people were bad things -- and I was gay. This quite literally made me afraid to tell anyone about my sexual orientation until I was well into my 20's... and it made me not want to accept that part of me. I think this is great, just like black kids learning about Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, MLK, etc.

on edit: many, many teenage suicides are gay kids.

[sutz12]

19. This is stated backwards...

The purpose should not be to 'include GLBT contributions.' It should be to stop excluding anyone's contributions due to sexual orientation, or any other label.

I suspect that someone has found some gaps in the history, and that the gaps are probably there because of the sexual orientation of the subject. That would be wrong, and should be corrected.

[geniph]

24. That was what I was trying to say

You stated it better than I did.

I was brought up by lesbians in the early 1960s. Believe me, there were no examples of families like mine in anything I saw. I knew we were "different" and "weird." It would have been nice to see positive examples of families with same-sex parents, single parents, multiple generations, etc. But the point is that, rather than forcing inclusion, we must work to stop exclusion.

[Sabriel]

30. 40 years ago, to say "an African American doctor" or

"a Latina author" would have been deemed bizarre and unusual. But we don't feel that way now, after incorporating it into our ways of thinking for so long. In time, perhaps a phrase like "a lesbian shuttle pilot" or "a gay politician" will not elicit the slightest reaction either.

I hope it happens in my kids' lifetime, for their sake.