Have you heard about the ACLU’s latest antics? Their most recent victory is so outrageous, so outlandish, and so ridiculous that words actually fail in trying to describe it. Not surprisingly, this legal theater of the absurd is being played out in Rhode Island.
Last year, a high school in Cranston, Rhode Island attracted national attention when it removed a “prayer banner” that had been displayed in the school for 20 years. (This was the text of the terribly dangerous, offensive prayer: “Our Heavenly Father. Grant us each day the desire to do our best. To grow mentally and morally as well as physically. To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers. To be honest with ourselves as well as with others. Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship. Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West. Amen.”)
Now, in 2012, with the help of the ACLU, Cranston, Rhode Island is back in the news. According to NBC News, “The school system in Cranston, R.I., announced it is banning traditional father-daughter and mother-son activities, saying they are a violation of the state’s gender discrimination law, the Providence Journal reported late Monday.”
Care to read that again? A father-daughter (or mother-son) dance or related activity constitute a “violation of the state’s gender discrimination law”? Is someone making this up? Not a chance.
“Superintendent Judith Lundsten told the newspaper the decision was in response to a complaint from the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a single mother who said her daughter was not able to attend a father-daughter dance.”
But of course! Normal life and normal society must be upended because one person is offended. Everyone’s freedoms and liberties and privileges must be removed because one person is left out. That’s the American way, according to the ACLU, and the truth be told, it has little to do with compassion for this girl who is living without her father.
But it gets worse. According to Steven Brown of the Rhode Island ACLU, “This is 2012 and they [public schools] should not be in the business of fostering blatant gender stereotypes.”
Blatant gender stereotypes? Like moms and dads and daughters and sons? Like husbands and wives and boys and girls? Like male and female? Is that what he means by “blatant gender stereotypes”? Is that what public schools should not be fostering?
It must be a constant source of frustration to people like Steven Brown that every day, expectant parents are told by their doctors that, “It’s a girl (or, a boy),” based on the physical form of the child, or that every day, wedding ceremonies culminate with the words, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
Perish the thought that public schools should be complicit in such blatant stereotyping. This, after all, is 2012, a time in which elementary school children are taught terms like genderqueer, a time in which girls kissing girls is the fad in middle school and high school, a time in which a mother in rural Georgia can have a baby girl, then undergo sex-change surgery and become the girl’s “father,” then claim that her/his child identified as a boy at 18 months, and then sue his/her daughter’s elementary school to force them to allow her/his daughter (now, allegedly son) to use the boy’s bathroom. Oh yes, this is 2012.
According to local station WPRO, Superintendent Lundsten sent out a letter in August stating, “I acknowledge that many of these events have long traditions and for many parents, these types of gender-based events are not an issue, however, this is a public school system and under no circumstances should we be isolating any student from full participation in school activities and events based on gender.” (For the record, “Lundsten said that while federal law banning gender discrimination gives an exemption for such gender-specific events, Rhode Island law does not.”)
As the host of a daily talk radio show, as well as a preacher, professor, columnist, and author, it’s not often that words fail me, but this report literally leaves me speechless. What has become of moral sanity? What has become of common sense?
This, however, is not the end of the story. The Associated Press reports that “School Committee member Janice Ruggieri said the school system can begin hosting ‘family dances’ to accommodate all kinds of parenting situations.” I’m sure the polyamorous families will be thrilled to hear this latest piece of news.
Thankfully, not everyone has lost their gender compass. The article I have been citing, carried by NBC News online, closed with this question: “Do you think father-daughter dances are inherently discriminatory?” As of this writing, 49,888 readers had responded. 88.3 percent said No; 11.7 percent said Yes.
Are you listening, Steven Brown and the ACLU? All hope is not lost in 2012.
Some courageous American leaders are trying to prevent another California budget disaster.
But if Big Labor gets its way, the preventative measures will be abandoned.
So numerous are the examples of true statesmanship outside of Washington, that I can’t name all the individuals involved. But here are three state-wide elected leaders you should know about, whose efforts to save their states – and our nation – are absolutely not going unpunished.
The most high-profile among them is Scott Walker, the Republican Governor of Wisconsin. After taking office in January of 2011, Governor Walker proposed the “Wisconsin Budget Repair bill” to begin addressing his state’s projected $4 billion deficit.
As part of his efforts, Governor Walker sought to require unionized government employees to pay for portions of their own healthcare coverage and retirement pensions (standard fare for those of us employed in the private sector), and to bring the salaries of unionized government employees more in line with the salaries of private sector workers.
The chaos that labor unions created in Madison last year was widely covered in the national media. Today, because of his grave sins of trying to save his state from California-styled budget crises and creating more parity between government and private sector employment, Governor Walker may be on his way to making history.
Big Labor has successfully forced a recall election on June 5th of this year (costing Wisconsin taxpayers in excess of $15 million). If Wisconsin voters side with the unions on Election Day, Scott Walker will become the third Governor in U.S. history to be removed from office by recall.
Next there’s Democrat Gina Raimondo, the current Treasurer of Rhode Island. Raimondo campaigned in 2010 with the message that, as the smallest state in the union, Rhode Island nonetheless had a very big financial mess on its hands. If things didn’t change, she warned, the Ocean State would eventually end up like Athens.
Raimondo took office in January of 2011 (the same time Governor Scott Walker did). Soon after, she began working on legislative proposals that sought to better manage the state’s liquid assets, provide more financial transparency with how Rhode Island manages state retirement pensions, and – once again – to bring government employment benefits slightly more in-line with the private sector.
Now, less than seven months after the Rhode Island legislature and Governor Lincoln Chafee approved the government pension overhaul measures, Big Labor has successfully pressured enough members of the state’s General Assembly to legislatively threaten a repeal of much of what Treasurer Raimondo proposed in the first place. The unions have not yet been as inclined to publicly smear and attack Democrat Raimondo as they have been with elected Republicans, but Raimando nonetheless remains the target of vilification as she seeks to save her native state from falling off a fiscal cliff.
And then there is Idaho’s Republican State Superintendent of Education, Tom Luna. After his re-election in November of 2010, Luna proposed a series of three legislative reforms of the state’s public schools in January of 2011, entitled the “Students Come First” laws.
One of the Students Come First laws was to provide for more technology and online educational access in classrooms (rural Idaho has some of the worst internet infrastructure in the nation); another was to require transparency in how local school districts spend taxpayer funds and negotiate union contracts; and another was to allow teachers to earn merit-based bonus pay. After the proposals were introduced in the legislature, Idaho’s capitol city of Boise quickly erupted into a “mini-Wisconsin” type of uprising, and the reforms were almost scuttled.
Students and teachers skipped school and traveled to the capitol to protest. The teacher’s union and the state’s newspaper of record nicknamed “Students Come First” the “Luna Laws,” as a targeted smear campaign on the Superintendent unfolded. Luna’s personal vehicle was vandalized; his elderly mother was harassed at her home; and high school students marched at the capitol holding laptop computers chanting “this is not my teacher” (in response to the union’s spin that “Luna wants to replace teachers with laptops”).
In the spring of 2011 the Students Come First legislation narrowly passed in the legislature, and Idaho Governor Butch Otter signed the bills into law. Yet shortly thereafter, Big Labor sent enough petition signature gatherers in to Idaho from around the country and collected enough signatures to force a referendum on the reform laws.
Now Big Labor has hired Dave Williams, a political operative who has won government union victories in legislatures and at ballot boxes in Ohio, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin. The AFL CIO appears ready to spend upwards of a million dollars to repeal the three education reform laws, activists are attempting their third effort to recall Superintendent Luna, and the state Republican Party has thus far refused to weigh-in on any of it.
Can America move in the right direction and save itself from the death spiral of debt? We don’t lack for statesmen and women who are willing to make the hard decisions, but voters must see through unions’ charade of selfishness.
I would love to take a break from writing about gay-related issues, but it’s hard to keep silent in light of some of the things taking place here in America and in the UK.
Consider this brazen case of censorship in London, coming straight from Boris Johnson, the mayor. In 2007, gay activists in England launched a campaign “to tackle homophobic bullying in schools” with a simple message: “Some people are gay. Get over it!”
According to the Stonewall.org website, “After the launch, 600 billboard panels, kindly donated by Titan Outdoor Advertising Ltd, depicted this legend in giant, tabloid-style capital letters, on a bright red background at sights in England, Scotland and Wales. In September 2009 the simple, striking poster campaign appeared on 20 major railway stations advertising screens and on 3,500 interior bus panels in November 2009 for Anti-Bullying week.”
In response, an ad campaign was recently launched by Core Issues, which describes itself as “a non-profit Christian initiative seeking to support men and women with homosexual issues who voluntarily seek change in sexual preference and expression. It respects the rights of individuals who identify as ‘gay’ who do not seek change.” The Core Issues group purchased ads to be carried on a number of buses reading, “Not gay! Ex-gay, post-gay and proud. Get over it!”
This was too much for Mayor Johnson, who explained, “London is one of the most tolerant cities in the world and intolerant of intolerance. It is clearly offensive to suggest that being gay is an illness that someone recovers from and I am not prepared to have that suggestion driven around London on our buses.” What a remarkable statement.
Aside from the fact that the ads did not say that “being gay is an illness that someone recovers from,” it is absolutely outrageous that the mayor of London – “one of the most tolerant cities in the world” – would deny the right of free expression to those who identify as “not gay, ex-gay, or post-gay,” especially in light of the ubiquitous “Some people are gay. Get over it!” campaign.
Some observers suggested that Johnson had ulterior motives in his actions, specifically, his own campaign for reelection, and his main rival in the upcoming election, Ken Livingstone, criticized Johnson for even allowing the ads to be booked: “London is going backwards under a Tory leadership that should have made these advertisements impossible. They promote a falsehood, the homophobic idea of ‘therapy’ to change the sexual orientation of lesbians and gay men.” Yes, censorship is alive, well, and being fully justified in “most tolerant” London.
To add insult to injury, after Alexander Boot, a regular opinion columnist for the Daily Mail, published an article entitled, “So attack on free speech is a sign of tolerance,” there was an outcry from the gay community, branding it a “startlingly homophobic column.” The Daily Mail responded by pulling the article.
It appears then that even criticism of censorship is to be censored, with one Facebook comment asking, “Actually isn’t the article a crime or against the law? Because of laws against homophobia or incitement to hatred?"
Turning now to Rhode Island, we move from the outrageous to the absurd, from censorship to moral insanity.
Two weeks ago, a 17 year-old student-artist at Pilgrim High School painted a mural depicting the stages of a boy’s life, from childhood, to teen years, to graduation in cap and gown, to marriage and family. The last image showed the boy, now a man, standing with his wife and son, with wedding rings over the couple’s heads.
This was too much for the school, and the administration decided to paint over the last image, since “some of the members of the Pilgrim High School community suggested that the depiction of a young man’s development from boyhood through adulthood as displayed may not represent the life experiences of many of the students at Pilgrim High School.” I kid you not!
How dare this young artist depict an image of a traditional family, since this “may not represent the life experiences of many of the students.”
Do you see why I call this moral insanity?
The artist, Liz Bierendy, herself raised in a single-parent home, explained, “I felt bad because I didn’t want to offend anyone. I was scared that maybe it would go out to our homosexual community and I didn’t want them to get in an uprise because I was not trying to preach that’s the right thing to do at all.”
Can you imagine this? She “didn’t want to offend anyone” and she was “scared” that it would provoke a negative reaction from “our homosexual community.” And all this over an image of a married couple with their child. What has become of America?
The school ultimately let Liz decide how to complete her mural, and she stood by her initial decision. But as long as incidents like these continue to happen – here and in other parts of the world – I’m going to continue to write about them.
The best way to combat censorship is to speak out more loudly and clearly, while the best way to combat moral insanity is to expose it.
Have you heard about the ACLU’s latest antics? Their most recent victory is so outrageous, so outlandish, and so ridiculous that words actually fail in trying to describe it. Not surprisingly, this legal theater of the absurd is being played out in Rhode Island.
