http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/02/AR2005050201388.htmlOkay, people. I have got to stop reading the news, and I must focus on reading professional responsibility, so I know that if I'm ever conscripted to represent one of these nutjobs, I have to do it, regardless of whether I endorse the opinion.
Parents are complaining about sex-ed that doesn't teach abstinence only, but has the audacity to teach proper condom use. They're also flipping out because 8th graders are being taught about homosexuality.
Guess what? Your kids are gonna fuck each other. Sorry. You did it when you were their age, and your kids are gonna do it. Now, that presents you with two choices:
You can keep your kids in the dark, telling them "abstinence only!!!" so they won't know how to use a condom properly, thereby opening them up to sexually transmitted diseases, and unwanted pregnancies, which you, as a crazy moralist fundamentalist wacko, will not let your child abort. Guess who's gonna get stuck raising another kid, grandma? You, while lil' Tanya works for $5.10 an hour at the Chik-Fil-A in the Mall. She'll dye her dark hair blonde (badly), get some piercings and a nasty attitude, gain about 60 pounds, smoke a pack of Kools a day and end up dating a guy named...well...whatever. They'll go out and get crunk on 40s behind a pool hall on Route 40, and then screw each other in the back of his Taurus. After a while, she'll get an itch "down there," and what do you know? Little Rondelle Anthony's diaper money is gonna have to go towards buyin' mama some Penicillin. Now repeat that, about 30 times per grade...I think that's how many kids got pregnant in my grade between 8th grade and 12th grade - the ones that had, and didn't abort the babies. That's choice A, not teaching proper condom use in schools.
Choice B, is you shut the hell up, and let your kids learn what they need to learn. Believe it or not, your kids know what condoms are. If you didn't want that to happen, then you should have home-schooled them, or sent them to a religious school for all their lives, where they'd get the fear of g-d burned into them, and the fiery pits of hell would be all the abstinence lesson they'd need. By sending your kids to public school, by the time they're in 8th grade, they have a
very extensive knowledge of sex and sex education, as taught to them by their other 13-year-old cohorts. They don't tell you, while you unmold your Jell-O salad, what they know about, but because they went to public schools, by golly, they're gonna learn about that smut! If they're going to learn it, wouldn't you rather they learned it from a system that's going to teach them factually correct materials, instead of them learning it while snickering over TastyKake powdered donuts, Eskimo Pies and punch in the cafeteria?
The Prince George's County School System doesn't need another baby in it's "High School Daycare" class, and your fostering ignorance is gonna mean another lil' angel for Miss Tammy to take care of while Tanya's smoking behind the gym, and you're crying in your cubicle. Your kids may not know when they need to use condoms, AND they may not know how to use them, but they know they exist. So let the gym teacher show them how to use it on a cucumber. It'll get the message across clear enough that maybe, just maybe you won't become a grandma at age 43, and maybe, just maybe, Tanya won't come home one day with bumps on her ugly...or worse.
There's also outcry that they're only teaching tolerance of homosexuality in 8th grade, and not letting ex-gays tell their side of the story.
1) There's no such thing as an ex-gay. All an ex-gay is, is a sad, chubby little man, with wire-rimmed glasses, a ratty moustache, a tacky sweater vest and a tyrannical wife. He spends his days lying to himself about who he is and praising G-d for his deliverance. He spends his nights crying in the bathroom after everyone else in his family has gone to sleep, pleading with G-d to change him -- begging the Lord make him enjoy screwing his battle-axe wench once a month, and to rid his mind of naughty thoughts about the gardener on Desperate Housewives. He also has aluminum siding on his house and drives a Pontiac. He probably goes to church three or four times a week (mainly support groups), and works as a high-school English teacher or some mid-level manager at Innitech. He has two little tow-headed boys, who he will teach to hate themselves, just as much as he hates himself. One day, while driving his Pontiac to an office in Laurel for a meeting with the "Laurel Contract," he will briefly bare his soul to the summer intern riding next to him in his car, about just how miserable his life is, and how his wife is cheating on him with a firefighter, and she wants a divorce, and is going to take the kids. The intern will shrink down in his seat, unsure of what to say to his boss's revelation, but utterly depressed for him, his moustache and the vinyl interior of the Pontiac. The ex-gay will probably commit suicide eventually.
So there we have it. So such thing as an ex-gay.
2) By 8th grade, the homos who aren't completely oblivious to the fact that it's raining outside or the fact that they have a dribble of snot running down their upper lip, know that there's something different about them. They was gay when they was conceived, and ain't nothin' gonna change that. So why not throw these poor suffering kids a bone, and let them know that there are other kids going through what they're going through and that they're not alone? You don't have to say you agree with it, but you'd be wise to shut up about your own opinions on the subject, unless you'd prefer to be "of the correct biblical opinion" while never speaking to your kid again. Ugh. Ex-gay. There is simply no counterpoint to homosexuality. End of story. If you think there is, and you think your kid is gay just to piss you off, or just because "she always goes against the norm," you're a selfish fuck for thinking that your child would choose a life of discrimination, uphill battles and proving herself, just to get even with you for something you think you did. It's not all about you - it's about everyone finding their own happiness however they can find it, and, in the case of middle school, and early high-school, starting to figure out who you are and form the person you're going to be in the future. Happy and well adjusted, or paranoid, confused and self-hating.
And like I said before, if you don't want your kids learning about these things in school, home school them or shell out for parochial school. You can be responsible for your own little ignorant hate-monger. Can't afford those two options? Doesn't G-d provide the necessities of life?
