Gay Teachers

[Fade]

We are strange creatures. Often, we require tragedy, or great loss to understand and accept others.

A friend of mine works as a Psychology, Speech, and Debate teacher at a local highschool. He is well respected among the community, and known as quite possibly the best high school level debate teacher in the state.

He is also openly gay.

One day a student decided that he wanted to start a Gay/Straight Student Alliance, in order to promote greater tolerance in the school. As progressive as Washington is, outside of Seattle-proper, it's often social suicide to be openly gay as a teenager. This student was barred, twice, from starting this organization, even after fulfilling every single requirement.

Time passes.

A well respected student within the school, I believe their student body president, goes home one day and comes out of the closet to his parents. His father all but kicks him out on the street.

Later that day, he dies by his own hand.

The following week, my aforementioned teacher friend is approached and asked if he could help start up a gay/straight student alliance.

I suppose sometimes we require cruelty to see love, and need pain to find acceptance. A more foul trick nature has never devised.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

Gay teachers get fired in my province. Especially if they are teaching in a catholic school...even if the teacher never told anyone and never talked about it in the school. He just gets found out and fired. The courts uphold the decision, and the teacher has to go look for work.

At the same time a guy smokes dope on the City Hall steps to promote the legalization of marijuana and noone bats an eye.

The papers fill up with letters to the editor saying it was great the teacher was fired, and gays are evil and it's a bad choice to be gay. A preacher who works with 'troubled youth' condemns the gay agenda and writes that the war against the gay agenda is on.

Sigh. I hate my city and my province.

 

[Fade]

Do you live in Alberta?

 

[Eos of the Eons]

Gee, how did you guess

 

[Fade]

From now on let us simply refer to it as Texlberta.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

Hmm, I didn't know texans had some of the same policies. It's the guns instead of the legalized pot though, right?

Okay, found the anti-gay stuff on homosexual marriages...

The Texas Triangle, a Dallas-based gay newspaper, reported on some of the tactics used by an anti-gay group during the debate on DOMA. Members of the Constitution Party of Texas, formerly known as the American Taxpayer Party, brandished signs in public that read “No Homo Marriage.”

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=3550

When an amendment defining marriage as only between a man and a woman was added to a bill governing marriage and property rights, openly gay Rep. Glen Maxey called it “reprehensible” and “a poke in the eye to gays and lesbians.” Maxey said that the amendment sponsor wanted a roll call rather than voice vote simply to use as political fodder. He claimed that the amendment was an attempt by the Religious Right to generate a party-line vote that could be used in 2002 campaign literature against Democrats. Maxey urged his fellow Democrats to vote for the amendment, which then passed unanimously.

“These amendments have no real legislative impact and were simply desperate attempts to ensure some level of anti-gay marriage language,” the executive director of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Lobby of Texas said. “This was an indication of the level of frustration on the part of extreme right-wing groups at not being able to pass a full Defense of Marriage Act.”

Yep, Texlberta sounds just about perfect.

 

[Fade]

Texas is against civil rights, unless you're talking about guns or hate speech.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

Yep, Alberta is against civil rights, unless you're talking about marijuana or hate speech. They call it 'freedom of speech' here though.

 

[Tony]

Texas is against civil rights, unless you're talking about guns or hate speech.

You dont have a fukkin clue. Do you live here? have you spent a lot of time here?

On what do you base your opinion?

 

[Tony]

Yep, Alberta is against civil rights, unless you're talking about marijuana or hate speech. They call it 'freedom of speech' here though.

"Hate speech" is free speech.

 

[Jon_in_london]

"Hate speech" is free speech.

You are a nasty arsehole and I would encourage people to kill you for the good of all mankind.

 

[reprise]

Thanks for posting that Fade.

It makes me appreciate all the more that my children have been taught by openly gay teachers at public schools since kindergarten. Their choice of music has been far more of an issue with their students than their sexuality.

 

[Tony]

You are a nasty arsehole

Just the way you like it.


..and I would encourage people to kill you for the good of all mankind.

Be careful, you're engaging in hate speech.

 

[Fade]

Oh, sorry Tony, I forgot about all those times when Texans and their lawmakers took up the banner of equal rights in favour of women, minorities, and homosexuals.


Hate Speech is "free speech," I suppose. I certainly don't wish to limit what a person can say. I just find it a little ... off, that the only rights I hear Texans screeching about are their rights to keep guns, and say hateful things.

Not that I think they are wrong to want those things, just odd that little else is of major concern.

 

[Jon_in_london]

Just the way you like it.


..and I would encourage people to kill you for the good of all mankind.

Be careful, you're engaging in hate speech.

free speach according to you.

KILL TONY
KILL TONY!!
KILL TONY!!!!!

 

[Tony]

Oh, sorry Tony, I forgot about all those times when Texans and their lawmakers took up the banner of equal rights in favour of women, minorities, and homosexuals.

That has no bearing what-so-ever on how those particulaur individuals are treated. (in houston at least)

FYI-Houston has one of the largest gay populations in the country

 

[Eos of the Eons]

"Hate speech" is free speech.

If you note my sarcasm, I already said that.

 

[Tony]

If you note my sarcasm, I already said that.

Noted.

 

[Fade]

That has no bearing what-so-ever on how those particulaur individuals are treated. (in houston at least)

FYI-Houston has one of the largest gay populations in the country

What does this have to do with what I have said? Texas law has been fiscally anti-progress, and downright draconian in it's law enforcement. Texas is an embarassement to the union, and the only people that don't see this are the people that live there.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

Yes, and Texas still fines gay people for having sex...I have to find that story...

200 Dollar Fine

The case concerns a pair of homosexuals in Houston, condemned to a fine in 1998, in the wake of a denunciation. An informant told the police that he had "an armed man going crazy" in his apartment. When the police arrived, they found nothing in the place except that they took by surprise a pair of men making love. John Lawrence and Tyron Garner paid a fine of 200 dollars each for having violated the anti-sodomy law of Texas. (1) At the same time, gay rights groups found here an ideal case to take to the Supreme court. They hope that the Court will finally place the right to privacy for adults above states' rights to autonomy.

http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu/hyper-lists/clas_lgb/2003/0035.html


Have any other states fined gay people for having sex in the last 20 years?