Calif. Senate committee OKs bill to add gays, lesbians to textbooks

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 5/4/6 | Greg Lucas

[newzjunkey]

"I care about their accomplishments. I don't care who they slept with," England told the committee.

Must never have studied the history of western civilizations. Often times who was sleeping with whom determined whether a nation was an ally or an enemy.

[newzjunkey]

How do they know that one person or another person was actually gay?

Therein lay a great problem with this mandate.

[moog]

Reminds me of the articles about some of the drug lords I've seen--they do "nice" things with the drug money at times.

[thoughtomator]

I doubt shoplifting brought anyone glory (except perhaps for Winona Ryder), but the thieves and murderers have most of the starring roles already...

[Das Outsider]

If the state expects religion to stay out of the state, then the state should stay out of religion.

They would like for us to view it as fact versus cherished superstition.

[Das Outsider]

The bill would bar textbooks from discriminating against gays. It also orders school boards to use instructional material that reflects the "sexual diversity" of society and include the contributions of people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

One could say I've read some fairly gay books, but I don't know if the authors were homosexuals. Why must they emphasize sexual diversity in literature? Can a lesbian write something that isn't about being a lesbian? One has to wonder.

The inclusion of "transgender" is even stranger. Is there a classification of works by people who believe that they are a glass of orange juice?

Why do they not hold to an attitude of psychological diversity and promote material from schizophrenics? Perhaps Wesley Willis in the Music department, for example.

[WOSG]

With idiocy like this, they dont have time to teach about stuff like - say, Franklin, Edison, Washington, Jefferson, Ford, JP Morgan, Cotton Mather, TR, etc.

Find any group of 3% or more of Americans - Polish-Americans, Electrical engineers, people under 5' - and insist we cover them in history and textbooks and tell people

... wouldnt it be viewed as an absurd act of pandering or no educational value?!?

[WOSG]

THAT explains it!

[cspackler]

Missouri's a pretty nice place.

Really? Where?

Just kidding, I love going down to LOTO...

[cspackler]

Every day, I'm a little happier that we decided to enroll our daughter in a Christian school next year.

[abigailsmybaby]

hehe We lived in Auxvasse from '96 to '00. Not too far from the lake.

I grew up in Illinois, married a feller from Iowa and live in California. I just can't handle the humidity of the midwest anymore and I don't do cold, ucky winter weather at all. Gettin' old sucks.

[Neoliberalnot]

I am worried. Where does Michael Jackson fit in all of this? Will the pederastic community be excluded from consideration? Shame on these california bigots.

[KeyLargo]

Here is a story on a Dept. of Ed employee busy at work:

City employee accused of surfing Web at work fired
Updated 5/6/2006 7:23 AM ET
NEW YORK (AP) — Despite a judge's recommendation that he only receive a reprimand, a Department of Education employee accused of failing to heed warnings to stay off the Internet at work has been fired.

"The penalty of termination is appropriate and not shocking to one's sense of fairness," schools Chancellor Joel Klein wrote of the employee, Toquir Choudhri.

In his decision last month, Administrative Law Judge John Spooner said that surfing the Web at work is equivalent to reading a newspaper or talking on the phone.

Choudhri, a 14-year veteran of the Department of Education, had been accused of ignoring supervisors who told him to stop browsing the Internet at work.

Choudhri's "abuse of the Internet at the time he is supposed to be performing his job demonstrates his disinterest in the job," Klein wrote.

Choudhri's lawyer, Martin Druyan, called the firing a "political decision."

"It's unfair, it's shocking to the conscience and it's contrary to the facts and the law," he said.
The Associated Press.