California State Sen. Sheila Kuehl knows the pitfalls of being young and gay firsthand. At 17, she was a television star, playing the role of Zelda Gilroy, in the weekly television sitcom, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. She was good enough that CBS filmed four episodes of a spin-off titled Zelda, only to be shelved when network executives began… return to article
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Reader Comments (12)Page 1 of 1 pagesDear Ms. Kuehl,
My deepest gratitude for all of your efforts pertaining to healthcare and curricula in California.
Posted by 14Justice on Jun 21, 2006 at 11:53 AM What are the options here? Should everyone have to embrace gayness, or can we have it both ways? Perhaps text books that offer the various opinions on whether being gay is good or bad. Many mainstream Christians believe that gay sexual behaviour is bad, should we merely censor that point of view? If so, what other voices are we allowed to muzzle (for our own good, of course)?
Posted by wolf on Jun 21, 2006 at 12:26 PM No one’s advocating mandatory fellatio, Woof.
On the other hand, giving Bush a blowjob might conceivably persuade a Republican dominated Congress to impeach him.
Posted by Major Major on Jun 22, 2006 at 10:35 AM I sympathize with any kids who feel endangered in their schools. However, I do not think that mandating gay inclusion in every subject and every grade (as I understand the bill) is a government matter, or even an educational matter.
We have seen what such mandates mean in Mass., where a book about 2 princes who marry was trotted out immediately to be read to kindergartners. Parents who protested were told they had no right to do so.
Do parents retain the right to mold their children’s character, or do schools now have a mandate to indoctrinate according to the liberal view?
Posted by jchh on Jun 23, 2006 at 7:29 AM The people who currently oppose the inclusion of gays among the American mainstream population are the sons and daughters of the people who opposed the inclusion of minorities among the American mainstream, who were themselves the sons and daughters of the people who opposed the inclusion of immigrants and women among the American mainstream, and all of them - children, parents, grandparents and great-grandparents - were opposed to the social dislocations created by the Industrial Revolution, which required an educated (indoctrinated), industrial workforce. The public education system was created to educate a rural agricultural workforce and transform it into an urban industrial workforce. When the industrial system required wage laborers, a civil war was waged and slavery was abolished, immigrants were imported from Europe and educated for factory employment, women were emancipated from their household farms and employed in the health and education industries, minority labor was required to counter the unionization of white labor and gays were increasingly accepted among a labor force which recognized the economic industrial necessity of population control, which was preferable to the more traditional forms, such as wars, famines, epidemics and revolution.
Posted by Major Major on Jun 23, 2006 at 11:10 AM Oh, so people who do not embrace “gayness” are both (generational?) bigots and warmongers (at best, some are probably pro-famine or pro-disease). Thanks for clearing *that* up. Perhaps we should require all teens to experience “gayness” so that they will be properly educated?
Thanks for the sage words and “history’ lesson!
Posted by wolf on Jun 23, 2006 at 11:36 AM No one’s forcing you or your children to become gay. What the conservatives object to is that no one’s forcing anyone to be straight either. Sexuality, in an urban, capital-intensive industrial society, is a personal choice. The two principal precursors to modernization are a rising literacy rate and the emergence of a wider variety of birth control. People are no longer compelled, biologically or socially, to produce large extended families, which were necessary to maintain rural, labor-intensive agricultural societies, which required a large peasant or slave workforce to feed them, standing armies to defend them, and a religious or secular priesthood to indoctrinate them. In other words, a rigid class system was developed to optimize the survival of agricultural societies. The transition to an industrial society destroyed the nobility, peasantry and priesthood and replaced them with a less rigid class system of industrial owners and workers, and a mediating middle class of professional administrators. Doctors, lawyers, educators, engineers all administer the social institutions which mediate the conflicts that occur between the people who own the capital and the people who employ it to produce the product. An expanding middle class, relative to the size of the workforce, tends to produce a more liberal society. A contracting middle class tends to produce a more conservative society. A public education system is the primary means of expanding the middle class.
Posted by Major Major on Jun 23, 2006 at 4:36 PM Major Major -
I admire your grasp of economic history, but I don’t think that’s what this is all about. I think if you polled the middle class in this country you would find a strong bent toward conservatism. It is the elite who push the social boundaries of society - not the middle class. That would mean, given your argument, that the schools are not strengthening the middle class but weakening it.
For example, that same middle class has voted down gay marriage in state after state. I don’t think those votes mean they want gays run down and beaten up, but parents want to have a choice about what is taught to their children. That choice includes things like math, English, history, etc. Throwing in mandated references to every ethnic and social group in every instance threatens to make school books even more boring than they already are, what with all the dodging and weaving done to avoid offending anyone and push multiple group agendas.
JCHH
Posted by jchh on Jun 23, 2006 at 5:47 PM “Gay marriage” is a Republican oxymoron, intended to galvanize its conservative Christian fundamentalist base into voting for an administration which continues to blame the liberals for its own neoconservative economic incompetence. Capital flight has impoverished everyone in this country, from the people who lose their jobs and benefits to outsourced production, to the people who lose their retirement benefits to mergers and bankruptcy, to the people who can no longer afford to send their children to college, or obtain adequate medical care for themselves and their families, to the middle-class professionals who can no longer rely upon an expanding pool of clients who can afford their services. The only people not rendered more destitute by Republican neglect are the apolitical corporate elite, who enjoy the overwhelming majority of benefits provided by tax cuts and government contracts. Most gay couples would be satisfied with legislation which guarantees their rights under a civil union, and most of the middle class couldn’t care less, until they’re confronted by Republican propaganda which, like a resurrected horse, claims that the “liberal elite” is demonically determined to destroy one more sacred American institution.
Personally, I believe that the institution of marraige will be strengthened by the inclusion of more couples who are openly committed to one another, as it has been by the social acceptance of miscegenation, and who, from biological necessity, are more inclined to adopt children who would otherwise be relegated to a pathogenic succession of foster care and institutional abuse.
Posted by Major Major on Jun 23, 2006 at 7:32 PM >> We have seen what such mandates mean in Mass., where a book about 2 princes who marry was trotted out immediately to be read to kindergartners. Parents who protested were told they had no right to do so.
Someone wrote that this happened in Mass.; I don’t know if it’s true or not, but here’s the interesting part: What if some of those parents were liberal, or, indeed, queer themselves?! We like to think that only the Republicans have a party line that they push each other into like sheep, but the truth is, we do too, and gay rights is a, well, flaming example of it.
To hear party-line people talk, it’s “Scientifically Established” that all gay people want to get married if only we could; that gayness has always been defined the same way forever (and for that matter, that marriage is a timeless “human right” that has never changed); that all queer people “were born that way” and “can’t help it” (implication: we would if we could). It seems to me that it is nothing if not a fantasy by barely-tolerant liberal straight couples that they are “supportive of gays” and “not prejudiced” because they support and accept the gays who most effectively mimic them.
Polls show that lesbians in particular disagree with the statement “I was born this way” (although some queer men also disagree); many alternative sexuality people are also non-monogamous, and in fact the majority of gay-male couples may be non-monogamous according to some studies. Those of us who do have one or fewer partners may still not be jumping to say “I do”; living alone, living with friends, and even choosing not to have sex at all are options. We aren’t all hornier than you, despite what you may have heard. What does all this mean? Well, it means that if you only Support Gays who want to get married, you’re still prejudiced. That’s what it means.
When teaching history, party-line queer rights activists take particular liberties with fact; they would have you believe that anybody from Abe Lincoln to Shakespeare to Emily Dickinson who ever held hands with a same-sex friend was gay. They won’t tell you that MOST people of those times were more affectionate with same-sex friends than we are taught to be (and they might get beaten up as “gay” on the streets of Birmingham or Atlanta); that, in fact, it is we who are the “weird” ones for thinking that affection is some kind of sexual foreplay.
Why won’t they tell you this? Not because there isn’t enough history of people who did have gay sex-- it was after very popular in ancient Greece, for example. Actually they avoid ancient Greek sexuality too, or at least the most interesting part of it (the popularity of bisexuality among the men) for the same reason that they avoid the changing definitions of nonsexual friendship; both of these pieces of evidence point to the changeability of sexual and affectionate categories over time, and that scares the bejeesus out of the barely-tolerant-straight-liberals who are the gay-party-line-people’s bread and butter.
So, to high schoolers everywhere, here’s my curriculum: Homosexuality is a minority preference (most places, Ancient Greece excluded) that has never hurt anybody and can even be useful birth control when population reaches carrying capacity (remember that?). But same-sex love is universal, and in most times, unlike now, people expressed it openly; your great-great-great grandfather kissed his same-sex friends and your great grandchildren will too, because irrational fear can only last so long. Since even “progressives” obviously disagree about what the curriculum should be, why not (ahem) let parents and family friends decide what to teach kids?
As for the kindergarten curriculum, I humbly submit that preschoolers, who in my experience are the most flexible about treating anybody who cares about them as family, should be paid to teach the rest of us how it’s done.
Dave
Posted by davelwhite on Jun 25, 2006 at 11:26 PM Well....personally I have no problem with this provision....Curriculum in public schools needs to be overhauled....culturally centered....gender based curriculum have proven too be helpful in the educational process...Subjects such as Mathematics and Physics appear to be universal in concept ; but , the evolution of such disiplines is far from that fact....The contributions made by people of diverse origins...is the missing link in getting young folks a better more comprehensive and inclusive educational experience....
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