Sunday, October 11, 2009

Protecting Children from Heterosexuality

Safe Schools . . . safe for what? . . .

Protecting our children from the conspiracy to promote heterosexuality. One simply cannot parody things that are this self-parodying. As was once said of Richard Nixon, there are two questions: how stupid does he think we are? and how stupid our we?

Obama’s ‘Safe Schools Czar’ Criticizes Schools for Promoting Heterosexuality

Meet Kevin Jennings, the man now in charge of safety for America’s government-run schools.

3 comments:

Doughlas Remy said...

Gil, I was unable to understand Kevin Jennings’ words because of poor sound quality, so I will just respond to the general drift of your post.

I just spent most of my weekend attending a conference organized by the Ernest Becker Foundation at Seattle University (a Catholic university, for those of you who don’t know). Most of the presenters were sociologists and psychologists, and most of those were either school counselors or experts on violence issues in the schools. Lorna Blumen, an educational consultant and trainer in Toronto, presented on “Bullying.” She is author of “Bystanders to Children’s Bullying” and other titles. At several moments during her talk, I thought of your recent comment (in the “Obama Czar...” post of 10/9/09) to the effect that protecting students from being shunned and shamed in middle school and high school is an “impossible fool’s errand.” Blumen reports that one of the main problems in preventing bullying is adult “excuses,” as in, “Why bother? The real world is full of exclusion.”

I wish you and she could sit down together for about an hour and talk about this. I will try to contact her, and maybe she will be willing to offer a comment or two about your post. I have already contacted some folks at COV&R and hope to get their input.

Like health care and climate change, this is obviously a topic about which you are not very well-informed. Your earlier claim that “a mountain of undeniable social science has shown [the homosexual lifestyle to] lead to high rates of depression, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, ...” was nothing but a bluff. There is no such mountain, and it was irresponsible of you to suggest that there is. Again, if there were such a mountain, the American Sociological Association and the American Psychological Association would certainly have sighted it by now, and they have not.
Anti-gay slurs can be very harmful to a child’s self-esteem, whether or not the child is actually gay, and continued shunning and bullying can lead to depression and the other problems that you claim are "caused" by homosexuality. Considering the way that gay youth are often treated in the schools, it is a wonder that every one of them is not suicidal.

What can you do about this? You, Gil Bailie? What will your contribution be? Will you continue to broadcast the message that homosexuality is a degenerate lifestyle that leads to depression? Or can you recognize that your message itself may be responsible for the depression and hurt that so many young people feel? I don’t know if you have children, but I do have a son who is now 21, and so this is an issue that is especially close to my heart.

Let’s hear some constructive suggestions from you about how to deal with school bullying problems. I hope you will think for a while about a quote that Lorna Blumen brought to her talk: “Aggression is hard-wired, but hate is taught.”

Doughlas Remy said...

I would like to add that the title of your post “Protecting Children from Heterosexuality” has vast comic potential, and I would love to see a really good comedian develop it. To explain why children have to be protected from heterosexuality, the routine would call out high divorce rates, spousal abuse, abortions, marital infidelity, female genital mutilation, forced marriages, drug and alcohol abuse, depression, suicide, patriarchal religion, obesity, bulemia, anorexia, child abuse (including 95% of pedophilia), sado-masochism (95%), road-rage, bad hair, religious intolerance, homophobia, wars of aggression, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, mean atheism, cruelty to animals, school bullying, halitosis, graffiti, loud rock music, rain forest destruction, terrorism, corporate greed, creationism, conservatism, melting polar ice caps, Mardi Gras, Communism, Fascism, Maoism, the Inquisition, violent video games, the “Left Behind” series, Focus on the Family, Fred Phelps, Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santorum, Glenn Beck, and bad taste in general.

Furthermore, our comedian continues, these causal linkages to heterosexuality are supported by a mountain of undeniable social science. (Hmmm... yeah, right.)

Of course, this comedic rant would evoke only laughter because everyone in his or her right mind would immediately recognize that heterosexuality causes only a few of these problems. (I’ll leave it to you to decide which ones.) This would immediately occur to everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation.

Exactly.

But you, Gil Bailie, are finding a causal link between homosexuality and depression, and you expect us not to laugh?

As the Lord High Executioner said (in The Mikado): "I've got a little list." And you have clearly got yours.

Is the scapegoating in your posts becoming any clearer to you now? Hello?

Mike O'Malley said...

“Aggression is hard-wired, but hate is taught.”

Really now!