The same week that Gov. Schwarzenegger signed Harvey Milk Day into being, the LA Times, inexplicably, time-warps back to the 70s:
By taking a grown-up political fight to schoolchildren, Leno’s bill will only add to the hysteria surrounding gay rights, proving to conservatives that proponents really are eager to teach homosexuality in the schools. Schools have an obligation to teach history, but they shouldn’t be used as a platform for a political agenda. Although Milk deserves recognition as a gay-rights pioneer, there are more appropriate ways to honor him. At times like this, we miss the days when Schwarzenegger lacked a backbone.
This is bizarre. And Equality California echoes the sentiment and has responded on its website:
With all due respect, members of the editorial board, we are not the ones trying to politicize classrooms. We are not the ones waging our battles on the backs of vulnerable youth. Harvey Milk Day, as well as a number of nondiscrimination and safe schools bills that EQCA has helped to pass, make sure that LGBT students are safe to learn, grow and be themselves and that other students learn the value of diversity and the cost of violence.
Send a letter to the editor, and let them know how much this sucks.
14. October 2009 at 3:16 pm
I’ve never written a letter to an editor. So I struggled with removing a few F-bombs and at least one “bitch, please!” But if the LA FUCKING TIMES is printing stupid shit like this, I figured I might as well get started…
The notion of “teaching homosexuality” to schoolchildren is completely inflammatory. People who know that homosexuality exists are not doomed to ‘catch it.’ Educating young people about the history of a civil rights struggle that is still going on today has nothing to do with furthering a gay political agenda. Just like teaching kids about the genocide in Darfur isn’t about pushing an anti-Sudanese agenda. It’s about education. You and the rest of the conservatives who are so desperate to prove that information and tolerance somehow corrupt the educational process really have a lot to learn.