Age 19

It’s true. I model nude. I’m also not a sex symbol, or a twig, or unfed, or in magazines, or on a runway. I model nude for art classes in the area of my hometown. Why do I do this? Well, for many reasons. I started modeling for art classes at the age of 19 y/o to pay for my college books. My mother had done it when she was in college and introduced me to the teacher she had modeled for. At 19 I was going to model for the art classes she taught at Green Mountain College in Poultney, VT. This modeling gig led to fifteen years (so far) of a modeling career (and to my meeting my partner!).

I’m not the type of person one thinks of when they hear the term “model”. I’m not stick thin, or glamorous, or sexy. I’m an over-stuffed hourglass with wide hips, large breasts, and long curly hair. (Height: 5’7″, Weight 285 lbs. Breasts 44DD) Does that sound like a model to you? Well in the Art Community - I’m more beautiful and graceful than any Size Zero in a magazine. The reason for this is because I have curves.

Age 22

Artists like drawing curves because its easier than drawing lines. When you walk into an art class to model nude you must remember that the people drawing you are not looking at you like you are a sex symbol. To them….you are a bowl of fruit. Simple as that.- No sex appeal. No personality. You are an inanimate object for them to draw.

This evening I returned to nude modeling after a year hiatus to have a child and mend a broken ankle. I model at an art gallery here in Rutland, VT. It is a small group of artists that come to the Life Drawing classes, which aren’t really classes, but more of a free drawing period with a model provided. I get paid $20/hr to sit on a platform nude in different poses that I chose in front of a group of strangers. The only person that talks to me is the person that hired me and gives me my check at the end of the gig, usually a teacher/gallery manager. (This isn’t rude, its a sign of respect to the model. After years of modeling I now speak to some of the artists that have been drawing me for years and have learned that they can actually speak to me like a person and I won’t be offended.)

I arrived 10 minutes before the gig starts because 1.) I like to be early/on time for a gig. 2.) I like to look at the art displayed (because its free!) before I have to sit still for 2-4 hours, depending. I talked to the assistant that ran the gig as I came in. I walked around the gallery, which has 2 floors and 5 rooms dedicated to displaying art. This month’s show was a collection of art done by children around the area ages K-12. As I finished my walk around I went to the bathroom and got out of my clothes.

Painting of me by Anonymous

I usually bring a bag with me because it carries my large bath towel that I wrap around myself during breaks and to walk around, and it also holds the clothing I’m wearing when I arrive (along with my cell phone, wallet, glasses, etc.). I get into my towel, grab my bag and shoes and head to the second floor. The room we use for the class is at the front of the building with the windows covered from prying eyes. It is also one of the rooms they show art in, so every time I model I get to see the latest show. The problem with this is you never know what you will be stuck staring at while people draw you and you can’t move. This evening I got the pleasure of looking at a large amount of artworks by small children. The most imposing piece was a 7 foot tall orange cyclops wearing a blue bathing suit missing one toe on his right toe. I got to look at it for 3 hours. You couldn’t miss it.

So I start the gig and I’m told by The Time Keeper (the before-mentioned gallery assistant) that I will be doing 5 minute poses and she will tell me when I have one minute left in the pose. Its a simple system that works. This evening we began with 3 artists, but ended with 5 (sometimes artists show up late or leave early). I’ve noticed that when I model for a college class that there are many students, but very few if its in a gallery class. I’ve learned to be prepared for either size, but I prefer the smaller classes.

A painting of me found in an art gallery

Posing is harder than it looks. When you see a model in a photograph that person had to stay still for as long as it took for the photographer to set up the shot and push a button. For an art model they have to sit still for 1 minute to 1 hour at a time, depending on the pose. The class I model for does a series of poses for different times. I start with simple 5 minute poses and end my gig doing a 25 minute pose. The only problem you have to look out for is body parts falling asleep. It takes a model YEARS to figure out their body enough to know what poses they can and cannot do and for how long and what will hurt or fall asleep. So you model and you learn.

This evening while only my right hand fell asleep in one pose, I was thanked 3 times for the pose I had done and thanked profusely at the end of the gig for being a good model. This is the highlight of my modeling gigs; getting praise. I’ve been told by complete strangers that I’m beautiful, stunning, gorgeous, voluptuous, curvacious, and the best female model they’ve ever seen. This is my ego boost. This happens after the gig is finished and the artists are packing their supplies up. I walk around and see what they’ve drawn. It is the best feeling for me to see how others perceive me artistically. Being an artist myself I know that everyone sees the world differently, but its only in art when you can actually see how someone else sees the world. To be a part of that is wonderful for me. I like seeing how others see me because it makes me feel better about my own image. I’m reminded that I’m not as ugly and disgusting as I feel sometimes. I’m actually rather …beautiful.

Sketch by Richard Weiss 2012

Over the years I’ve suggested to friends that they also get into nude modeling. None have taken me up on the offer. I don’t know why. It is good money for little work, you are helping artists develop their skills, and you are contributing to the world of Art. Who knows, someday you might be the next Mona Lisa.  Tonight I found out that one of the artists drawing me tonight has been drawing me for 15 years now, just sold a painting of me, and has a gallery at home that has a few framed prints of me. *BLUSH* Stuff like this just makes you feel special knowing that you are so beautiful that you are art.

Related articles

• Sensuality vs. Sexuality in the Modeling World (jasonandthegoldenpose.wordpress.com)
• 14. Life drawing class (foundobjectbeachart.wordpress.com)
• Summer Art Classes (lauradaub.com)

That, in one paragraph, is what has been wrong with “No Child Left Behind” from the very beginning. Without a national curriculum, without even state-wide curriculums, any standardized test is a trap.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have a cure for this stupidity – grant waivers from the “No Child Left Behind” requirements so that states have more flexibility to educate children instead of teaching them how to pass the tests.

Ten states have now been granted the waivers – Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. New Mexico had applied, but needs to iron out some small parts of their proposal to get the waiver. Twenty-eight other states are preparing to apply for the waiver.

“No Child Left Behind,” with its standardized tests and punishment of schools and school districts that failed to reach certain benchmarks with those tests was a bad idea. It went at the problems of education in America backwards. Without a national curriculum, without a nationalized standard of course material, national standardized tests were only going to serve to show the differences between state curricula and individual school board interpretations of those curricula.

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom and a group of educational specialists developed the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. It was a structure system for public schools, grades kindergarten through 12^th. It set out instructional objectives and goals, by saying that at such and such a grade level, children should have learned multiplication or gerunds. It was never adopted nationwide, though you will find copies of it in every college and university library with a education department. The problem became more evident as more families moved from town to town, county to county or state to state. My niece never learned to write a research paper because she moved from Florida to Georgia to Vermont in the wrong sequence, too early in Georgia, too late in Vermont. My daughter moved from Florida to Georgia, was a year behind in math and couldn’t take physics on schedule as a consequence. That happens all the time all across the country.

So, when the United States Department of Education, under the direction of Congress, created these benchmark exams for schools, no one took into consideration the idea that not every eighth grader in America had taken the same classes.

The state waivers will address the individuality of each state, and create their own benchmarks for judging how their schools are preforming. What they won’t get is a unified education system.

When the state of Georgia decided to re-write their entire K-12 curriculum over a decade ago, they published the proposed curriculums for public input. Reading the public objections was a lesson in how diverse our education systems are and how deeply some parts of the nation are entrenched in regionalized individuation of history and science. It is something we see every few years when the Texas School Board nixes scientifically accurate or historically factual textbooks for ones that reinforce Creationism or white superiority.

The inescapable fact is that the United States is not keeping up with the rest of the industrialized world in education. We keep slipping further and further down the list every year. The waivers don’t address that. The can’t. The only thing that would is the one thing we cannot do in this country – establish a national curriculum with national standards and national recognition that we really do a bad job of educating our children. That flies in the face of the conservative determination to retain local control of schools. But the waivers will allow some states to improve their schools without the pressure of improving scores on a standardized test that doesn’t match the state curriculums.

Related articles

• Oklahoma freed from some No Child Left Behind education mandates (newsok.com)
• Georgia to receive waiver from No Child Left Behind (ajc.com)
• You: 10 States Given Waivers From No Child Left Behind Law (nytimes.com)
• Massachusetts among states granted No Child Left Behind waiver (boston.com)
• Colorado Gets No Child Left Behind Waiver (denver.cbslocal.com)

Charles Dickens, 1812 - 1870

Charles Dickens was born two hundred years ago today. He only lived to be 58, not uncommon in his time. He was a brilliant observer of the human condition and wrote books that were an indictment of the top-down economics of his time. Dickens is as relevant to our culture today as he was in 1860.

That said, he is taught badly, and treating his every word as sacred text is stupid.

In the spirit of full disclosure, Dickens was responsible for my one and only disciplinary trip to the principal’s office. My class was reading Great Expectations. I got so bored with it I polished it off in one weekend. A couple of weeks later, on a pop quiz about some obscure point in the story I didn’t answer the question, but rather nastily explained why I didn’t remember that particular point. I firmly believe that teachers with average I.Q.s should never be assigned to classes of gifted students. The teachers end up being intimidated and petty. Only the gifted make good teachers of gifted students because we understand what wicked little buggers gifted kids can be.

Dickens in the raw is boring. So is Agatha Christie. A good argument can be made that Christie was boring because Dickens was. Like Dickens, Christie used way too much verbiage for things that could easily be passed over with a couple of sentences, like the tilt of some lady’s hat At Bertram’s Hotel. With Dickens considered the gold standard of fiction writing in English, Christie just followed his patterns.

I love both Dickens and Christie in filmed adaptations because the scriptwriters eliminate the unnecessary descriptive material, replacing it with visuals.

Dickens didn’t write novels. He wrote newspapers serials. He was paid by the word, so the more words he used, the more money he made. It was economics, folks, not art. He had a wife, ten children and a couple of siblings to support. Only artists who attach themselves to wealthy patrons can afford a household like that. To be successfully taught in schools, Dickens needs an editor or a truly inspired teacher who teaches it the way it was written – one chapter at a time, separated by days or weeks, reading it the way someone in San Francisco would have read it at the time, with the irregularity caused by trans-Atlantic and cross-continental transportation delays. Cliffhangers are a great literary and dramatic mechanism.

I also love the irony of Dickens in the classroom. He is one of the revered “dead white men” whose works are so beloved of conservative school boards and college deans. It is almost as though none of them have ever read him, they are so blind to how socialist, radical and anti-establishment Dickens was. Among his modern heirs is historian Caleb Carr, whose novels of New York in the late 1800s are gripping journeys into the underbelly of the city, where child prostitution and police corruption and soul-rending choices between sin and starvation. The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness belong in that same rarified space where Dickens dwells.

Where Dickens is needed today is as an exposé of where we are headed if we continue with the kind of economic policies and philosophy of his time. When Newt Gingrich talks about putting poor children to work as janitors in schools, there’s Dickens with tales of child labor and child criminals. When Mitt Romney talks about not caring about the very poor, there’s Dickens with the truth of what poverty really is without an adequate safety net. When Republicans condemn environmental and safety regulations for workers, there’s Dickens with his army of characters dying of diseases caused by environmental factors in the workplace.

Those powerful words from The Chimes stand today as a preamble to the declaration of the Occupy movement: “Give us, in mercy, better homes when we are a-lying in our cradles; give us better food when we’re a-working for our lives; give us kinder laws to bring us back when we’re going wrong; and don’t set Jail, Jail, Jail afore us, everywhere as we turn.”

Dickens combined two of the primary movements – literature and journalism – advocating for better working conditions, living wages, decent housing, child labor laws, all the things that the very rich say we don’t need. He was a newspaper writer, and he had colleagues in the world of journalism who were just as devoted to advocacy. His fiction was appearing side-by-side with news stories of squalor, disease and abuse in the lower classes.

Dickens needs to be made more accessible to people, more readable. It is not a defense of laziness that prompts this idea, but an acknowledgment that the mechanics of Dickens’ work should not stand in the way of the message of his words. He knew to the ha’penny how much each chapter was worth. We have no way to know how much he would have edited his work if he had truly been writing novels to be printed as volumes. His observations are needed today, his exposé of the abusive exploitation of the working poor is relevant.

But nothing he wrote is as relevant as these words from Martin Chuzzlewit: “A man ain’t got no right to be a public man, unless he meets the public views.”

Typical stack for college course (Creative Commons, Flickr)

The explanation for why college textbooks are so expensive is simple. The books are very big, requiring a lot of paper, and very few of them are sold at any given time. As a consequence, textbook costs for college student can quickly approach $400 a semester just for survey courses. Once a student gets into more specialized classes, textbook costs easily top $1,000.

But what if the textbooks didn’t have to be physically printed? What if they could be purchased for a Kindle or Nook or other reader? Wouldn’t they cost a lot less?

Take that idea down to public school level. I graduated from a very, very small high school in Vermont. We bought our own textbooks. To save money, we had a system for selling good used textbooks to the next grade for three of the four major subjects, math, history, science and English. One of those four was completely replaced every year. That meant that our textbooks were never more than four years old, and more up-to-date than most of the schools where the books were provided by the districts. And yes, there was a fund to assist those who could not afford the books.   One of the reasons textbooks chosen by the Texas School Board are so important is because they buy so many books, it lowers the cost for other states to buy the same books. 

Too many school systems are struggling with the cost of books. Too many students are stuck using books that are out-of-date and forced to supplement those books with outside materials. And on the other side of the world, students are being supplied with extremely cheap computers by One Laptop Per Child, founded in 2006 by Nicholas Negroponte.

The devastation in Joplin, Missouri, led that school system to replace hundreds of thousands of lost textbooks with laptops. Digital learning is being used in Florida, Idaho, Utah and California. The biggest deterrent is the lack of national broadband capacity. It is also a transition that is front-heavy for expense.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced on Wednesday that they are challenging America’s schools to transition to digital textbooks in the next five years. This comes two weeks after Apple announced it will sell electronic versions of a few standard high-school textbooks for the iPad.

The United States is lagging behind countries like South Korea in the transition to digital textbooks. Digital textbooks, on a device that can also access the internet, holds enormous potential for improving education. Chairman Genachowski explained, “When a student reads a textbook and gets to something they don’t know, they are stuck. Working with the same material on a digital textbook, when they get to something they don’t know, the device can let them explore, it can show them what a word means, how to solve a math problem that they couldn’t figure out how to solve.” A digital format also makes the material adaptable for the individual student. Some children learn best through pictures, others through words, still others through interaction. A computer makes it possible for a student to explore a subject in the method that works best for the student.

American schools spend $8 billion annually on textbooks, and that’s an amount that reflects the “cost cutting” system of keeping textbooks going in a school as long as the books hold together. Though textbook companies have been working to transform the industry, it isn’t enough. The schools aren’t ready in many cases. Few schools are wired for broadband in ways that allow every student to access the connections needed for digital learning. There is also the problem, not being addressed in this challenge, of how children will do homework in a digital mode in homes without internet access or in neighborhoods where the computer might be a target for a criminal.

Joplin, which received donations from the United Arab Emirates to supply the computers, is a perfect showcase for this type of learning. Some students have had problems making the transition, according to the district’s Assistant Superintendent, Angie Besendorfer, but they are hoping that as their eighth graders progress through the system, they will be textbook-free. What Joplin is learning from this is that not only is a mind a terrible thing to waste, but it is also a terrible thing to regiment. When a 14-year-old has trouble adapting to a new way of learning, that child has spent too many years locked in a box, limited in what he or she can learn because it must be learned in a particular manner. Hopefully, those who are advocating this transition will recognize that it is best done by changing the way children learn in kindergarten through third grade first, possible going as high as fifth grade if the students respond to it, then let the new method rise to top with the students. It would, unfortunately, take years. Educational reform is notorious for trying to change all the students at once, not acknowledging that we force children into patterns of learning that are hard to break.

Digital learning can do so much to improve America’s competitive position against countries which are pouring more money into their schools and more technology into their teaching. The only thing standing in the way, besides the money and broadband access, is a right wing resistence to any proposal that would destroy their ability to tightly control what their children learn.

Related articles

• Challenge to schools: Embracing digital textbooks (sfgate.com)
• Challenge to schools: Embracing digital textbooks (mysanantonio.com)
• Download Textbooks (college-textbooks.co)
• Digital Textbooks Go Straight From Scientists to Students (almacen13.wordpress.com)
• Apple’s e-textbooks do not look so world-changing to educators (teleread.com)
• Apple Digital Textbooks: iBooks 2 Revealed (VIDEO) (blippitt.com)
• Apple sees over 350K digital textbook downloads, report says (venturebeat.com)

Ever since Dee Brown published Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee in 1970, the battle of historical accuracy has raged. In the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant version of American history, Washington threw a silver dollar over the half-mile wide Potomac at the age of 62 and Americans put the native population in reservations for their own good. Newt Gingrich’s and Rush Limbaugh’s favorite phrase for describing any attempt to correct the historical record is “revisionist history,” meaning that historians were trying to revise history for a liberal perspective instead of correcting its errors.

Let’s get this straight right off: the Americans didn’t liberate the people of Texas or California. They conquered both those states. They wanted slavery in Texas, which was against Mexican law, and the wanted California’s access to the Pacific and resources. Zorro is an Anglo myth, not a Mexican legend. The people of California were no worse off under Spanish rule than any people in a top-down, rich-man’s control situation, and they sure as hell were better off under Mexican rule in Texas without slavery.

In Tucson, Arizona, the school board has decided that students should not have access to any facts about the WASP conquest of this continent. They sent in goons to seize books from classrooms and out of students’ hands. The majority of books seized were by Native American authors ranging from the twenty-year old text book Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years co-edited by that radical Hispanic Bill Bigelow to N. Scott Momaday’s The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee and a picture book of Mexican landscapes.

When Star Trek: Voyager premiered, there was some criticism from Native Americans of the casting of Mexican-American actor Robert Beltran as an Southwestern Native American. Beltran explained, rather emphatically and somewhat angrily, that most Mexicans are Native Americans, not Spaniards. Latin America was always racially divided. At the political and economic top were the Spaniards like my grandparents – a closed society of immigrants who were frequently the younger members of upper-class and aristocratic Spanish families and their descendants. In the middle were the mix-bloods, descendants of Spanish soldiers and lower-class immigrants who intermarried with the native population. At the bottom, the overwhelming majority of inhabitants of Mexico, the continent, the islands and the isthmus, were Native Americans. The Mexican Civil War of 1909-13 was fought along these racial lines.

At the core of the school board’s decision (which interestingly enough included banning Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but not Othello) is the personal agenda of Arizona state superintendent of public instruction John Huppenthal, who campaigned for his office on the promise to “stop la raza.” “La Raza” refers in an narrow sense to Partido Nacional de La Raza Unida, a Chicano political party that as founded in the 1970s to work for better conditions of Mexican-Americans. In Huppenthal’s usage, it means all Latin-American peoples who want equal opportunity, equal rights and preservation of their culture.

The Tucson school board has informed teachers of Mexican-American studies that they are to avoid any class units where “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes.” So, they are forbidden to teach the Trail of Tears, the genocidal Indian Wars, the reservations on land that could not support agriculture, the truth in all its uncomfortable forms?

So-called “revisionist history” seeks to correct the American mythology by providing the other side of the story – the facts about the Indian Wars and the conquest of the Southwest. It is not a liberal agenda, but an agenda of truth and fact. It is an assertion of who really built this nation and what those men and women contributed to it and who suffered for it.

I can hear the complaints now – you live in New England, so what the hell do you know about the Mexican border? What I know is that the northern border and Canadians are the same situation as the southern border and Mexicans, just less obviously because of the racial factor. The entire northern tier from the Atlantic to the Dakotas was settled by the French Canadians. They settled as far south as Colorado and all along the Mississippi Valley. They founded Louisiana before the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia. Canadians and Canadian-Americans crossed back and forth over the border as though it didn’t exist until 2001. There were hundreds of little roads that were unmonitored border crossings. My husband’s grandparents crossed the border twice a year with their entire brood of children in the back of the truck, following the seasonal work. No one questioned that practice. It was the same on the southern border. The borders didn’t exist in the minds of those who lived along them. In point of fact, our immigration laws did not initially include any reference to Mexicans and Canadians. The hysteria over 9-11 – and in this regard it was pure hysteria – damaged the cultures of both borders. It denied us the right to do what had been done since before any of these three nations existed, maintain contact with friends and relatives no matter where they lived, take jobs that shifted with the seasons. There is nothing in the Canadian-American border vocabulary that parallels the word “tejano” – the culture of the border. One Canadian explained it to me thusly: these were for the most part illiterate laborers. They couldn’t write letters to the families they left behind, but they could get in their cars or trucks and visit. Those who didn’t do that were deemed to have been swallowed up by America, lost to their families and friends. In a Québeqois family reunion, the presence of descendants of the lost ones is a big deal. It re-establishes connections thought to be gone for all time.

Arizona has a population of 6.4 million. The non-Hispanic white population is 57.8% of that. Hispanics are 29.6%. Native Americans make up only 4.6% of the population. The remaining 8% of the population is “other” or mixed race. One third of the population is Hispanic and Native American, while the non-white population is over 40%. Huppenthal wants to deny 40% of the population of his state access to anything other than the Anglo white-washed version of history and Anglo literature. He wants Arizona children to be raised to think there has never been racial prejudice, racial injustice or even a multitude of races in this country. He wants a curriculum of lies. The Tucson high school students who compared the seizing of their books to Nazi Germany had it right. The Nazis wanted an ethnically and religiously pure nation, too.

The Republican charge that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama “apologize” for America is part of this battle over historical accuracy. The United States has done some stupid things over time, especially as part of the Cold War. We supported vicious, butchering dictators because they said they were “pro-America,” including men like Saddam Hussein and Augusto Pinochet, whose body count in Chile was higher than Hussein’s in Iraq. We did this. That is historical fact. It is not an apology to acknowledge it. The acknowledgment shows that as a nation we – or at least some of us – have grown beyond the fascist nationalism of the Cold War era.

There is a minor benefit to men like Huppenthal, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. They have gotten arrogant. They believe that there is enough support in this country for their bigotry that they can drop the facade of inclusiveness. They think they are free to pursue their agendas that denigrate, demean and deny the wide range of ethnic and racial identities in America. They think that the color of my skin will make me their ally. They do not understand that even whites have been victims of discrimination over time and that there is a strong sense among Americans that oppression and repression based on ethnicity or race or culture is fundamentally wrong.

The more secure they think they are in such overt expressions of bigotry, the more they turn good Americans against their agenda.

Related articles

• Tucson school board suspends Mexican-American studies program (cnn.com)
• Tucson schools ban books by Chicano and Native American authors (moorbey.wordpress.com)
• A critical reading of Tucson’s ‘Banned Books’ list (alanlechusza.wordpress.com)
• Arizona bigotry: How it can affect us all (dailykos.com)
• Testament’s Chuck Billy Opens Up About His Native American Upbringing (noisecreep.com)
• The Ten Commandments of the Native American Indians (the2012scenario.com)
• Neo-Racism in the Southwest (moorbey.wordpress.com)
• School Suspends Mexican-American History Program To Comply With Arizona’s Ban On Ethnic Studies (thinkprogress.org)
• Tucson Unified School District Ban Rethinking Columbus (ecochildsplay.com)

Dorothy Ebersbach

My Dad had a favorite maxim: “You can take over the world with a clipboard and an air of authority.” He had two stories from World War II to illustrate that. The short one involves female pilots in the U. S. Army Air Corps.

Male pilots had a way to empty their bladders in flight, an adaptation of the method used by railroad motormen. Female pilots did not. The Corps used female pilots to move planes from base to base, among other things, and when they landed, the usually had their knees pressed together and were desperate for the nearest john. While stationed in Texas where he was teaching new recruits how to use their rifles, Dad and his buddies would meet the pilots with their clipboards, ask a bunch of dumb questions and watch the women’s eyeballs float. He though it was very funny. I hope those of who have joined him on the other side have extracted payment for that, all 775 of them.

Last month, one of those WASPs passed away at the age of 96. Dorothy Ebersbach became a nurse after the war and she combined those two loves into an endowment for a school for flight nurses at Case Western Reserve University. Her $2 million will be used to establish the Dorothy Ebersbach Academic Center for Flight Nursing at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, where Ebersbach earned her degree in 1954.

The school has an Advanced Practice Flight Nurse Program, which will be expanded through this endowment. The program’s mission is to train graduate-level nursing students to provide on-site care during emergencies and man planes and helicopters used to transport patients. The program is the only one of this type at an American nursing school. Fourteen students have graduated, eight are in the program this semester and they have provided summer school training to an additional 250.

Ebersbach’s death was unexpected. She arranged for the gift to Case Western and the school was planning to fly her from her home in Florida for the announcement. Christopher Manacci, clinical director of the program, said of Ebersbach, “Separate elements of her life have merged to continue her legacy of flight and nursing. This will help perpetuate this program for decades.”

Dorothy Ebersbach during World War II

Ebersbach, who grew up in Pomeroy, Ohio, went to work for her father’s construction company in Tampa, Florida, after graduating from Ohio University in 1936. The job required her to fly planes, so she trained at the University of Tampa. After Pearl Harbor, she applied for admission into the WASP group. The U. S. Air Force National Museum says that 25,000 women applied for flight training, 1,830 were accepted, 1,074 graduated and 900 were still in the program when it ended in December, 1944, as men started returning from the European theater. Ebersbach served doing test flights and towing targets for gunnery practice in Arizona and Texas….yes, Texas. Give my Dad hell, Dorothy.

After the war, Ebersbach wanted to continue flying, but the job market was flooded with male veterans, so she pursued a nursing degree. Ebersbach worked as a public health nurse in Hillsborough County, Florida (that’s Tampa) until her retirement in 1975. In 1977, WASPs were given military veteran status, even though they were civilians contracted to the military. In March, 2010, the 300 remaining WASPs were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor awarded to a civilian by Congress. Ebersbach received hers in Tampa in April, 2010. She never married and she lived in the house her parents had bought in 1935.

It may seem that there should be no issues with being a nurse in flight, but my mother worked for a while escorting patients between cities. She worked entirely on commercial airplanes, but even there the issues included turbulence and banking of the plane, adjustments for altitude, movement of the patient, and potential side effects of air travel, like popped ears and motion sickness. Helicopters, which are used extensively in emergency transportation, present even more problems with motion in the air and keeping the patient stabilized. It really is a specialization within nursing. A certified flight nurse would also have to be a certified trauma nurse, trained in the unique needs of treating trauma patients. The degrees received at Case Western

The endowment helps fill a need in the medical community and the school will be a permanent reminder to young women of how special the women of World War II were – how they had survived the Great Depression, how they fought for college educations, how they contributed to the war in factories and in the military. My Aunt Lydia was in the Marines stationed at Pearl Harbor. My mother and her older sister Kathy were both in Army nursing corps training when the war ended. Women’s contributions to the war effort is something I grew up with, even if it wasn’t as talked about as much as the war stories of my male relatives and their friends. You can visit the WASP, Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII webpage at www.wingsacrossamerica.us.

Thank you for your service, Dorothy Ebersbach, and for guaranteeing the future of flight nursing training.

Related articles

• Betty Haas Pfister Dies at 90; Wartime Pilot With Passion for Flight (nytimes.com)

So, why are so few women participating in college and university governments?

That’s the question being addressed by the American Association of University Women. In collaboration with Running Start, AAUW has announced the expansion of its Elect Her – Campus Women Win initiative. It will be holding sessions on 30 campuses this year to teach women how to run for office.

This move goes far beyond the simple need for greater representation of women in student government, to fight for women’s issues. Having been an officer in student government looks as good on a resume as a summer internship with a top company or your state’s senator. It shows the kind of leadership characteristics needed in management in any field.

There are a lot of reasons why women don’t participate in campus elections. At the top of the list is the simple fact that on state and community campuses, a large number of the women students are non-traditional – working mothers, working women, welfare recipients being given a leg up, young women who dropped out and earned their GEDs. Women are far more likely to have outside obligations while they earn their degrees than men. They are also more likely to take advantage of on-line college opportunities because of their life obligations. Somewhere near the bottom of the list is the social programming that says the student body president must be some frat boy with the right legacy. In between is the fear that achieving too much in academia makes a woman less desirable…you know, the “Thank God” response to Elizabeth Warren’s joke that she kept her clothes on to pay for college.

Please, check out the AAUW website. Even if you can’t squeeze in the time to run for office, it is an important organization that all college and university women should become involved with. The AAUW is 130 years old, with 100,000 members, 1,000 branches and 500 college and university partners. Its primary mission is to advance equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy and research.

Women are still suffering from salary gaps and glass ceilings in the workplace, and are coming under increasing assault in the political arena. For every woman who has risen to prominence in politics there is a law that seeks to limit our access to health care, undermine our labor rights, destroy those programs that have been helping women get out of poverty and away from abusive relationships, and limit our voting rights.

There has also been a deterioration in the gains we made in the modern women’s movement. Our girls are being subjected to even greater body image issues than we were thirty years ago, being bullied into suicide, watching the circus of conservatives mocking Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayer for their looks instead of arguing their credentials. As someone pointed out to my daughter while she was attending college, once you belong to the community, it goes with you everywhere. AAUW is a community that transcends being a graduate of one school or coming from one state.

Women and girls are making great strides in academic fields once considered off-limits for females – math and the sciences especially. Now is the time to make great strides in the politics of campuses, a training ground for the politics of the town, state and nation.

You will find the AAUW at aauw.org.

Related articles

• About Us (aauwnorthfield.wordpress.com)
• Campus Funding and Leadership Opportunities (blog-aauw.org)
• AAUW Celebrates Women’s Hall of Fame Inductees (blog-aauw.org)
• Fellowships for Women to Study in the US (economistindia.wordpress.com)
• Coming Soon to Your Mailbox, Fall Outlook (blog-aauw.org)
• Meet AAUW’s New Student Leaders (blog-aauw.org)
• 10/11/11: Annual AAUW-NYS Day at the UN (kingstonaauw.blogspot.com)
• SisterMentors: Building the Dream for 15 Years (blog-aauw.org)

States' educational rankings

And a yabba-dabba-do to that!

No Child Left Behind has been a failure from the beginning. It set national testing criteria without a national curriculum. It punished schools for failing to raise test results, forcing schools to “teach to the test” instead of teaching the students. It did not address the core problems in our school systems or do anything to deal with the differences between school systems that lead to our children having no central base of cultural literacy. And just like all educational reform since the 1950′s it isolated reading and math as the be-all-and-end-all of education. It didn’t even include science, which since Sputnik has been tied so tightly to math they practically exist as a single word “scienceandmath.”

President Obama cannot end the law. That would require the impossible – passage of a law voiding the NCLB law by both chambers of Congress. They can’t pass anything these days, so there isn’t much point in trying to follow the constitutional path on this one. Instead, President Obama is inviting states to request waivers from the provisions of the law and submit plans that would, hopefully, have built into them even higher standards for their students. At least 20 states have expressed interest in the waivers. Standardized testing would still be required as would reports to the community, but there will be far more leeway about the testing and no threat of shutting down a school if it doesn’t meet some randomly set standard of “progress” over time.

The last time a President offered a waiver program similar to this one was President Clinton, who offered waivers to states who wanted to rewrite their welfare programs. In some states, Clinton’s idea was brilliantly successful. Under Governor Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin rewrote its rules and sharply reduced welfare roles through job training and child care provisions, taking the tack that spending a little more for a short period of time resulted in spending less over time. By putting forward the money for job training, Wisconsin turned welfare recipients into taxpayers with good jobs. In other states, like Mississippi where there was a paucity of jobs, there was little that could be accomplished.

The law, signed by President George W. Bush early in 2002 in a ceremony honoring the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s vision was intended to hold schools responsible for their test scores and help reduce the achievement gaps between white students and minority students. Every child is supposed to pass the math and reading exams by 2014. Schools that don’t improve are labeld “failing” and after a few years, they can be shut down or taken over by the state. The fear of being shut down caused teachers in Atlanta (and possibly more schools) to cheat on their students’ exams.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that as many as 80% of schools risk being labeled failures in 2014. Last year alone, it was 37% of schools. The waivers would allow states to concentrate on their bottom 5% of schools. The waiver plan lets state set their own strategies for dealing with underperforming schools but still expects schools to use many of the reforms that the Obama administration believes in.

No Child Left Behind was set to be reauthorized this year, but the House of Representatives can’t come up with a single plan to tweak it and the Senate hasn’t even addressed the issue. Expectedly, Republicans are condemning the waiver plan. House Education Committee Chairman John Kline fo Minnesota called it a backdoor reauthorization of NCLB. “While I appreciate some of the policies outlined in the secretary’s [Duncan’s] waivers plan, I simply cannot support a process that grants the secretary of education sweeping authority to handpick winners and losers,” Kline told the New York Times. Bush’s Education Secretary, Margaret Spellings, told the Washington Post “I’m skeptical about states’ ability or will to do great reform or close the achievement gap. The reason this whole waiver issue is before us is they told us they were going to do something and didn’t do it. And now they want a waiver against their own promises.” And Michael Petrilli, vice president of the Fordham Institute told The Lookout that the plan amounts to rolling back NCLB. “I think it’s fair to say that this will effectively neuter No Child Left Behind.”

It’s so predictable at this point. President Obama speaks and Republican knees jerk. He could probably say the sky is blue and the Republicans would drag out fifteen “experts” to say that at such and such a time, it’s actually pink.

There are so many things wrong with our education system, starting with the fact that we don’t have an American education system but fifty separate systems each containing dozens if not hundreds of individual systems. No one law is going to fix our system and standardized testing doesn’t really prove that any child has actually learned anything other than how to take the test. We have had over fifty years of wringing our hands over our schools, studying our schools, tweaking our schools and none of it has produced an educational system for the 21^st century. Heck, it’s managed to wipe out most of the good aspects of our educational system that existed when this whole process began. A lot of what is going to happen with these waivers depends on which states are going to use them.

In educational ranking, the bottom twenty states are Texas, North Dakota, Missouri, California, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Hawaii, Iowa, Alaska, South Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Alabama, Louisiana, West Virginia and Mississippi. There isn’t really a single common factor in those twenty states, anymore than there is a single common factor in the top twenty: Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Florida, Illinois, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Vermont, Georgia and Washington. Having had my own children in three of those states, I’m dumbfounded that Florida would rank above and Georgia would rank just 0.05 points behind Vermont. A one-size-fits-all law isn’t a way to deal with fifty states that have different causes for their successor failure. Hopefully, the other 30 will also apply for the waivers so that they can have the power to deal with their own students and whatever inadequacies they may have.

Related articles

• President offers states an opt-out from NCLB – in exchange for more federal control of education (hotair.com)
• No Child Left Behind: With waivers Obama offers states flexibility (csmonitor.com)
• Will Obama’s NCLB Waiver Plan Really Diminish ‘Teaching To The Test’? (huffingtonpost.com)
• No Child Left Behind Waivers for States (nytimes.com)
• Obama Lets States Opt Out Of ‘No Child Left Behind’ (npr.org)

State Capitol, Pierre, South Dakota

Facing budget problems, over 120 school districts in 20 states have chosen to shrink the academic schedule to a four-day week. Most of the states are in the West and Mid-West, though Florida and Georgia are discussing the idea. The school day in Irene, South Dakota, will be lengthened by a half-hour, lunch and phys ed classes shortened adding about three hours of instruction time to the four days. The states where this has been implemented include Texas, Idaho, Colorado, Minnisota, Montana and New Mexico. The cost savings come primarily in busing, fuel, support staff and operational costs of the buildings. South Dakota’s Education Secretary Melody Schopp, says that schools that have switched to four days have not suffered in achievement tests. That doesn’t really say much since we have learned that the No Child Left Behind testing systems have accomplished nothing but shifting school systems to teaching to the tests.

Heaven forbid we should eliminate a few tax breaks for the rich to keep our schools competitive with the emerging world. Our disjointed, fractured school systems are already doing a lousy job of educating our children, so why not make it harder for them to compete in a global economy. If one believed in conspiracy theories, one could begin to see a pattern here – first downgrade workers’ expectations for pay and benefits, then downgrade their children’s educations so that when the rising middle classes of former third-world countries become too expensive, companies can return to America for super cheap labor. First, they ship our jobs to Nicaragua, then they turn us into Nicaragua. That is, if one believed in a vast right wing conspiracy…..

Irene, South Dakota, is going to save about $50,000 a year, which will allow them to keep a vocational education program that would have had to be scraped. Most four-day systems have classes from 8 a.m. to around 3:30 or 3:45 p.m. daily. They will retain the traditional school year with a full summer vacation. The normal 180-day school year will be reduced to 144 days.

So, how does that rack up against, say, China? The Chinese summer vacation is only six weeks, not ten, but summer vacation is spent in summer classes or studying for entrance exams for university. The school day runs from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a two hour lunch/recess break. That means a seven and a half hour day, so around the same amount of time daily, but an additional day. Class size is 21 students and computer to student ratio is 1:2. Language and math skills are tested yearly and passage is required for advancement.

How about Australia? Two hundred days per year in four terms each lasting 9 to 11 weeks with two weeks vacation between terms. School day is 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., class size is 18 and computer to student ratio is 1:3.

In South Korea, the two school terms run March to July and September to February. Each day is 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with enrichments and activities into the evening. Special classes are held on Saturdays. Beginning in third grade, students are taught English.

Japan is having an interesting problem. They used to have six-day a week school schedules, then switched to the five-day. Parents have complained ever since that kids have too much time on their hands and are wasting it watching TV or playing video games. A whole industry has arisen for activities on the weekends, craft classes and sports being the most prominent. In spite of their “shortened” school year, Japan consistently ranks higher than the United State in academic achievement.

In fact, the United States ranks #12 at 4^th grade, #28 at 8^th grade and #19 at 12^th grade. The increase between 8^th and 12^th grades has more to do with our drop-out rate than with increases in academic achievement. Singapore, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong beat us in 4^th and 8^th grade. Most of Europe outranks us in all grades.

So, when we most desperately need to improve education so that our children can compete in the global economy, we are shortening the school week and limping along without a national curriculum and only minimal national standards.

But, lastly, let’s look at the economic consequences of this switch to four-day school weeks.  Parents will have to arrange an extra day of day care, increasing their costs.  That is, if they can find day care.  Most day care facilities operate at license maximum as it is.  While someone will be making money off the babysitting, it is just as likely that the babysitting will fall to older siblings, increasing potential for accidents in the home and all the dangers to latchkey children.  Those school bus drivers and support staff are losing income, reducing consumer purchasing in those communities.   So, to save $50,000 the town of Irene will suffer an economic shrinkage and place possibly hundreds of children in jeopardy every Friday.  They alternative to not being able to find day care or leave children at home alone would be for a parent to cut their work hours.  Great trade off. 

Related articles

• South Dakota School Districts Eliminate Friday Classes To Save Money (huffingtonpost.com)
• The high cost of “austerity.” (thenewquakeragitator.wordpress.com)
• South Dakota schools cut costs with 4-day week (msnbc.msn.com)
• South Dakota schools cut costs with 4-day week (sfgate.com)

Florida's capital, Tallahassee

We have a crisis in the Federal judiciary because we have a shortage of judges. President Obama stopped nominating judges because every one he nominated was filibustered by the Republicans ain the Senate. When it became clear they were not going to all any new judges, there wasn’t any point in continuing the vetting and nominating process. We went through this before, when Bill Clinton was President. The backlog of nominations was so bad that when the Democrats regained control of the Senate, they had to fast track nominations like a runaway freight train.

It’s pointless to expect that the Republicans will suddenly acquire a sense of responsibility about the judgeships, not with the number of Federal lawsuits being filed over the laws, bills, referendums and amendments being put out by the Republican-controlled states. The latest one is in Florida.

The Florida Education Association and other plaintiffs, including groups representing mainstream churches, have filed suit to prevent a state constitutional amendment that would repeal the state ban on using public money to aid churches and religious organizations.

The basis of the lawsuit is the claim that repealing the existing law would expand the voucher system so that tax payers were paying for children to attend religious academies and taxpayer money would be used for things like the de-gaying “therapy” of the Bachmann’s clinic, which they deny they provided and other programs that are entirely religion-based. The present law says that money can go to faith-based facilities as long as they don’t use their facilities to promote their religious beliefs.

The repeal would serve just one purpose – to turn taxpayer-funded facilities into places preaching evangelical Christianity. The funny part is that the state legislature failed to recognize is that the repeal would also allow for funding of non-Christian religious schools, such as those Muslim madrassas they are so hysterical about. It’s called the “law of unintended consequences.”

Don’t you just love it when fanatics fail to think things through?

Related articles

• Florida Teachers Union Sues State Over ‘Religious Freedom’ Amendment (huffingtonpost.com)
• TN Groups File Lawsuit Against Anti-Gay Law (topix.net)

6/30/2011

I remember when I was young, going to piano classes that my mom would pay for, and enjoying it so much.  The feel of the keys beneath my fingers and the harmonious sound of the notes that filled the room as I practiced.  My instructor always told me I was a really fast learner, and playing the piano quickly became a favorite pastime of mine.  Throughout the years I have drifted away from playing, however the memories still rest deep in my mind of those wonderful days sitting in front of the worlds most beautiful instrument.

From Beethoven to Fiona Apple, many people, gay and straight, have embraced the beauty of the piano’s sound.  Thanks to British artist Luke Jerram thousands of people in NYC can join the musicians around the world by sitting at a piano and performing for the public for free.

Jerram, sponsored in New York by the non-profit arts group “Sing for Hope,” has placed 88 decorated pianos around NYC for public display and use.  Debuting in 2008, the artist’s musical project has been touring the world ever since.  The decorated street pianos have been seen, so far, in eight cities around the world, with more to come.

What is awesome about this display is that all 88 pianos have been decorated differently by well known, and not so well known, visual artists.  There are pink pianos, rainbow pianos, spatter painted pianos, abstract pianos, flower power pianos, and many more.

“A blank slate for everyone’s creativity” is what Jarram is calling his piano installments.  Which is a very true statement.  Each host city the project hits is given brand new pianos that are painted, and designed, by local students and artists, and then placed randomly around the city.  After the instillation is shut down, the pianos are donated to schools and community centers so the music never stops.

People throughout NYC were skeptical about playing the pianos at first, but not for long.  Soon enough sounds of Beethoven, Billy Joel, Bach, Elton John, Mozart, Alicia Keys, and many more pianists started to flow through the summer air through strange fingers.  These sounds will probably never leave.

The piano instillation will soon be seen in other cities such as Cincinnati, San Jose, and Grand Rapids later this year.  The NYC instillation can  be seen, and played, through July 5th.

Image via Wikipedia

June 9, 2011

By: Jamie Clark

St. Paul/Minneapolis Archbishop, John Nienstedt defends the Minnesota Catholic Conference decision to become involved in the Minnesota (un)Constitutional Marriage Amendment.  According to the Minnesota Independent, he used the old discredited claim that kids need a mom and a dad, adding that this measure is “not anti-gay, mean spirited or prejudicial,” even though it will ban Minnesota’s LGBT community from a fundamental right allowed to heterosexual citizens. This is not the first time that the St. Paul/Minneapolis Archdiocese has been in the Minnesota news this week.
On Tuesday, a federal lawsuit was filed in MN by a man alleging that former St. John’s Abbey Abbot Timothy Kelly (deceased) abused him when he was an altar boy in New York at St. Anselm’s Church between 1966-67. The man decided to come forward when he learned of his abusers death.  Kelly even  co-founded the “Interfaith Sexual Trauma Institute” (no longer operating) at St. John’s Abbey in 1993, which was created to deal with sex offenders in the Catholic Church. I can understand why St. John’s would decide it needed to step up on this issue, after all, it is known as  dumping grounds for “holy” sex offender’s .
BehindthePineCurtain.com, is a site dedicated to “more than 300 victims of sexual abuse and misconduct by monastic and other personnel” in Minnesota. St. John’s itself has faced over fifty allegations, and ten of the accused were allowed to stay under “restrictions.” I would like someone to explain exactly what a “restricted sex offender” is, because I thought children were the ones we were suppose to protect, not their abusers.

The Abbey “Policy on Sexual Abuse and Sexual Exploitation” states, “Monks of Saint John’s Abbey are vowed to a celibate way of life.” A vow is nothing more than a promise and I do not feel like a promise to not molest children should even be considered, no matter who you are. Under “Intervention with the Accused Monk” this policy states that “if a psychological evaluation recommends professional treatment” and the monk receives said treatment, he will be allowed to “live at the monastery” where they will “establish appropriate limitations.” When they say “professional treatment” do they mean the Minnesota Sex Offender Program, because I can not imagine that the church is capable of dealing with the rehabilitation of sex offenders. Honestly, the state provided rehabilitation doesn’t seem to work either, according to a November 2009 Minnesota Independent article titled “MN Sex Offender Program costs $70 million a year but rehabilitates no one.” Either way it seems, these “holy” sex offenders shouldn’t have been allowed to return to any position in the Catholic Church.
Where is the justification in this? I thought sex offenders in Minnesota were not allowed near any environment where children may be present? Why are these pedophiles so different? I know that the Catholic Church has used all of this to further stigmatize homosexuals, most specifically gay men, because most allegations involved men and young boys. I need to point out that the abuse reported is said to have happened years ago, in a day when girls were nearly nonexistent in the lives of the accused. It has nothing to do with homosexuality, and a lot to do with opportunity. Once you look at child molesters in other denominations, the number of female victims greatly increases.
The days of using the LGBT community for a scapegoat for their crimes are over, so now they have decided to attack our families by supporting what I think has been most appropriately referred to by MN DFL members as the “Bradlee Dean Amendment.” How does Archbishop Nienstedt know what is best for anyone else’s family? And why is he involving Catholic Churches across Minnesota in his agenda to help write discrimination into our state Constitution? If he wants to participate, maybe he should volunteer his personal time outside of the Church instead of labeling every Minnesota Catholic as someone who does not believe in equal rights. Though, I think an even better idea would be for him to concentrate less time on ruining the lives of kids with same sex parents, and more on protecting  children in the church that allows sex offenders to stick around on “sex offender restrictions.”

Related articles

• Nine victims of clergy abuse settle with St. John’s Abbey (reuters.com)
• NY man sues Minn. monastery, alleging clergy abuse (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Image via Wikipedia

June 5, 2011
By: Jamie Clark
Minnesota-What can two LGBT teens do when they are bullied by an entire school district that has a “don’t say gay” policy?Personally,  I suggest following the example of Desiree Shelton and Sarah Lindstrom who fought back by saying “gay” in Minnesota’s most intolerant school district.

Desiree and Sarah knew LGBT students needed their help if they were going to survive in the Anoka-Hennepin school district long enough to make it to graduation. Kids were being bullied to death  not only by other students, but also by an intolerant school district that believes ‘don’t say gay’ policies are a safe alternative to gay/straight alliances. Students were committing suicide after being endlessly bullied by peers who had spent their school years being taught that being gay is so wrong that it’s an unmentionable word. It was a tragic case of bullies creating bullies to be sent out into the world to spread intolerance and discrimination, and the outcome was heartbreaking.

Nine students killed themselves, seven within a year, in this district after being horribly bullied, four were openly gay. Families were destroyed and it was still not enough to get these school officials to see the dangers in silenced children. They simply refused to address anti-gay sentiments in their schools. Things were not improving either as the school district not only denied any responsibility in anything that transpired but they also insisted no bullying had occurred to begin with. A brave young man named Jacob Tighe  stood up at the December 2010 school board meeting to share his own experience of being bullied for his perceived sexual orientation.  He told them he had also watched a personal  friend be tormented for who she was until she took her own life only to have her bullies say she “deserved to die.” Jacob finished by stating,” You tell us to report things, but when people come forward, like some have done in this very boardroom, you say that what we say isn’t true.” He  asked the school board “Why should kids come forward if you aren’t going to believe them?” This young ally’s words couldn’t get through to them, and neither could the words Tammy Aaberg, whose son hanged himself in his closet after being endlessly harassed for being gay. The school board felt a full assault on the rights of students was better than any idea that outraged parents or distraught teens could come up with to solve the problem.

The Anoka Hennepin school district decided the best way to combat LGBT student suicide was by letting Barb Anderson, who represents The Minnesota Family Council and the Parents Action League, push her anti LGBT fears even deeper into their already stained reputation. Barb Anderson bragged that her work with these organizations  had kept the “real” threat out of the schools, and according to her the real danger is LGBT advocacy groups that promote tolerance and distribute school saftey materials that help combat gay youth bullying. Anderson said that these groups are the ones that caused the bullying in the first place because they were basically helping kids feel secure enough to come out of the closet. She specifically spoke against GLSEN (Gay Straight Lesbian Education Network) by calling them the “driving force, really the clearing house for all of the homosexual propaganda” and stated that they are a “real dangerous organization” comparable to a “child corruption organization.”

By January of this year, all of this intolerance being thrown around  was exactly why Desiree and Sarah realized something needed to be done to reach out to kids whose lives were suddenly thrown into the spot light. They felt they needed to know that their peers would give them support and a voice. The teens ran, and were elected by the student body to walk together as an “out” couple for the Champlin Park High School Snow Days coronation ceremony, which is an annual event that allows the students to elect who enters the Ball together. The school district retaliated and attempted to silence these young ladies too, by changing the student election policy after the fact and claiming it was against the rules. They thought they were pretty smart.  Desiree and Sarah proved that they were smarter by getting ahold of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the  National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR). These advocate groups informed the school district that not only were they violating the First and Fourteenth Amendment Rights of the newly elected couple, they were also violating the Minnesota Human Rights Act. They warned school officials that the girls either got their rightful place next to their peers as a couple, or they would ask a judge his opinion. Before the end of the month the school district agreed to let the LGBT couple enter together in procession with their classmates in front of an audience of peers and family, making them the first LGBT couple to ever  beat the Anoka Hennepin school district “don’t say gay” policy.

The “silencers of hate” were invited to  be special guests at the NCLS 34th Anniversary Celebration this May where they were referred to as “champions in the movement for equality and justice.” Desiree has said that they knew they had to stand up “for the kids that are closeted, the ones that are scared or feel worthless because of harassment or torment.”

The Minnesota Family Council and the Anoka Hennepin school district obviously had no idea who they were up against when they denied these girls their rights. They obviously thought Desiree and Sarah could be bullied into silence through intolerance but didn’t take into account that they were up against  two out and proud MN LGBT teens helping the silenced speak.

Remember, Silence is Acceptance when the able say nothing.

Related articles

• Minnesota Mom vs School District of Death (lezgetreal.com)
• Minnesota Family Council and NOM Promote Anti-Gay Bullying (lezgetreal.com)
• NCLR Speaks on Video about their Work Against Bullying in Minnesota (lezgetreal.com)

Image via Wikipedia

June 4, 2011

By: Jamie Clark

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and the Minnesota Family Council are merely disguising themselves as groups that think families need to be protected from homosexuals. Really, they are the ones that families need to be protected from.  Perhaps they need to add “suffer the little children”  to their motto.

National Organization for Marriage (NOM) President Brian Brown has a new “Dear Marriage Supporter”  blog letter (June 2)on their website that does nothing more than use school children by saying homosexuals are using children.  The only part of the letter that talks about these “at risk from the gay community” pupils takes about ten seconds to read. There  is however, plenty written about the typical “sanctity of marriage” delusion mixed in with other ways homosexuals are supposedly harming kids across America. The letter includes a clip from FOX News about an Oakland school  “anti-bullying and anti-discrimination focused on gender diversity” program.  Brown describes this as “weird” and “disturbing” and states that same sex marriage advocates are teaching grade school children about “multiple genders” “under the banner of preventing bullying.” Perhaps they are worried that if children learn about gender diversity to early they will have a tough time explaining the how to guide of gay discrimination.

— “Coming to a public school near you?”

My favorite part is the way he manipulates the story about the closure of the Rockford Catholic Charities adoption and foster care program making the suffering of children the fault of gay people who just want to give them a chance for life in a loving home. When it comes down to it, they would rather shut their doors and let those kids become property of the state than let them go to loving same sex parent homes. And to make it worse, property of the state gets paid for by the state, leaving me to wonder how much it will cost the tax payers to care for those “rejected by the church” pawns that decent Americans call children.

NOM’s fellow “use the kids to terrorize emotions” organization, the Minnesota Family Council, manage to really get to the gooey center of this one though. The top researcher for this gang of Constitutional mercenaries, Barb Anderson, sent ABC Newspapers a letter to the editor this week that is only a small taste of the way they are targeting children to protect their agenda. She stated,  “Under a banner of combating homophobia, GSAs become breeding grounds for hostile attitudes toward anyone who objects to homosexual behavior, including parents. This hostility extends toward traditional religions and morals, as well as school authority.” In other words she wants you to think a place where gay students find acceptance and safety (gay/straight alliances) in schools infected by their lies, are nothing more than “dangerous nonsense”

As I said, that was just a small taste of the MFC war on children.

I recently wrote about the Anoka-Hennepin school district “don’t say gay” policy that leaves LGBT students vulnerable to bullying.

“Minnesota Mom vs School District of Death”

Gay teens, such as Justin Aaberg,  are literally being bullied to death across our country. A poll conducted last year by the Public Religion Research Institute found that a majority of American’s feel that negative messages about homosexuality in “places of worship” lead to “higher rates of suicide in gay and lesbian youth.”  —– related article

I find it very enlightening to know that the Minnesota Family Council is involved in the attempt to make sure LGBT youth remain in the line of fire in this school district. Not only are they fighting to make sure the Anoka-Hennepin school district doesn’t adopt a policy that may protect youth from bullying, they think implementing “ex-gay therapy” is the more appropriate path for these schools to take. This article from the Minnesota Independent should make you feel as enlightened as I am about the truth of these “protect families and marriage” organizations. Notice it’s from last year. They have been at this for awhile.

What kind of legitimate  “family” organization would  pride itself in blocking anti-bullying policies of any kind? Whether you have an issue with same-sex marriage or homosexuals in general, there is no justification in this. Policies can’t  hurt people and really anti-gay bullying policies will not magically make little Johnny gay. These policies are meant to keep kids safe and these organizations are using them in their attempt to convince people that homosexuals will recruit children. What decent human being would use youth  tormented by other students until they feel the only escape is suicide, as a tool to push their own agenda? The answer is that decent people would not do that, and neither would organizations truly concerned about families.

The National Organization for Marriage and the Minnesota Family Council obviously see children as disposable resources in their agenda. No matter how many are bullied, or bullied to death, they will not step up and protect them in anyway. Turns out the “protect your family” organizations are the biggest bullies of all.

Related articles

• NOM pledges to give ‘resources’ in Minnesota anti-gay marriage vote (pamshouseblend.com)
• NOM showing large scale hypocrisy in Minnesota (pamshouseblend.com)
• Minnesota Mom vs School District of Death (lezgetreal.com)
• ‘Big Bullies’ report on conservatives and LGBT youth issued by People For the American Way (miamiherald.typepad.com)
• NOM’s methods of ‘defending marriage’ are unchristian (pamshouseblend.com)
• NOM playing the astroturf game against marriage equality in NC (pamshouseblend.com)
• ‘Homosexuals want your children’ – the lie that keeps on giving (pamshouseblend.com)

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May 30, 2011
By: Jamie Clark
Minnesota-This is the story of a school district, nine dead teenagers and a grieving mother who is fighting for every child in America. Recently, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) were hard at work in Minnesota. The result was the letter that the U.S. Dept of Education sent to every school district in the country demanding students be protected from bullying and the victory for all of us was sweet. Since news in my great state rarely goes further than our borders though, I assume many of you do not know exactly why something like this would come from Minnesota. I feel, due to recent events here, that this needs to change.

On July 9, 2010 Tammy Aaberg found her fifteen year old son Justin hanging in his closet. During an interview with Minnesota Public Radio, she said “I touched him- because I just couldn’t believe it. I thought I was in a nightmare and he was so cold.” She didn’t understand. Why did her handsome, musically talented son kill himself just a year after coming out of the closet? He seemed so happy. The dots connected when Justin’s friends told her that he had been endlessly bullied in school ever since, a fact she was oblivious to. Justin however, was not the only one.

Altogether, nine students in the Anoka-Hennepin school district had committed suicide after being bullied…. Seven of them had done so in one year. Four of them were openly gay. The phone lines exploded with complaints and demands  that the school district remove a  “don’t say gay” policy from its “Equal Education Opportunity Declaration.” The school district thought that this measure was not necessary because, after all, they had never tolerated bullying of any kind and their long running “neutrality policy“ was left intact. Instead, to silence concerns they added vague language to their already existing bullying policy.

Parents, teachers and concerned citizens still wanted to know, how could school officials protect LGBT students when they couldn’t address LGBT issues? The school district responded by telling two lesbians that they couldn’t join their classmates in a traditional dance entrance together in January of this year. The girls hired a lawyer and the school district eventually allowed them to attend together, but the damage was done and the message was clear. It would take a lot to change their intolerant message.

Tammy Aaberg’s plan for change was already well under way, in fact it started soon after her son’s death. She was the ring leader in the confrontation over this issue with the school district. She spoke to Congress in support of the “Safe Schools Act” and teamed up with SPLC and the NCLR resulting in the letter demanding schools keep America’s children safe. On May 24th this team sent the Anoka-Hennepin school district a letter demanding that they remove the “don’t say gay” policy or face a lawsuit for allowing LGBT students to remain in jeopardy.

The Minnesota super mom is changing things. She is angry that the school district denies any responsibility for the deaths of nine students that were victims of relentless and cruel bullying while under their supervision and there is no policy to silence her. She has told the Minnesota Independent she thinks,“ Gay kids believe that they deserved to be treated this way  because they were gay. I honestly believe this is what Justin thought, which is why he tried not to make a huge deal of what happened to him. I don’t know why they (school district) are doing this. This is outrageous. They are bullying students into silence.“

I think we can all agree on that.

I know we lay claim to Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann and the school district of death but maybe Minnesota really will be the state that changes everything. After all, we also have people like Tammy Aaberg.

Related articles

• NCLR and SPLC demand Anoka-Hennepin School District Immediately repeal Gag in discussing LGBT people (pinkbananaworld.com)
• NCLR & SPLC demand Anoka-Hennepin School District Immediately repeal Gag in discussing LGBT people (lezgetreal.com)

Karlton O. Johnson, a principal at Blanche Ely High school in Pompano Beach, Florida has been accused of “outing” two lesbian students both on campus and to their parents.

Later it was revealed, that this wasn’t the principal’s first attempt to distance the two students.  After several measures -

Karlton Johnson via South Florida Times

akin to bullying, that Johnson took to stop the two students from holding hands, one of the students emailed school officials about the situation.

“There has been a situation in my upcoming (sic) school, Blanche Ely High, dealing with discrimination against the gay/lesbian community,” the student wrote in her e-mail. “Our principal here has tried to suspend me and my friend for holding hands. And I would like to know if such actions are necessary for something so fragile.”

The email was sent to all School board members with North Area Superintendent, Sharon Airaghi responding:

“However, let me take this opportunity to share with you that our District operates under what is termed as ‘site-based/school-based’ management system. This means that the principal, within the guidelines of District’s policies, has jurisdiction to create in-house measures that impact the entire school. These measures fall under the principal’s purview as site-based manager.

It is my understanding that the holding of hands on campus is not an acceptable practice at Blanche Ely High School. This practice is applicable to all students, regardless of age, race, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, national origin, religious sects, as identified in School Board’s Nondiscrimination Policy.”

If that is truly the case, than why is Johnson not tracking down all the straight couples that he comes across at the school? It is hard to believe, that in such a hormone fueled environment – there would be no girl/boy couples holding hands – if not worse.

Johnson’s actions have enraged several members of the Pompano Beach society, one being Broward County Commissioner Kristen Jacobs, who is outraged by the course the principal has taken.

“I am outraged. Holding hands is the one thing that is completely acceptable in our society.”

Johnson’s allowing his homophobia to cloud his lack of thinking has not only put his job in a form of limbo but may have exposed the two students to some type of potential danger.

Michael Rajner, a community activist that serves on the school’s diversity committee is questioning Johnson’s morals and calling for his suspension.

“His actions were reckless and potentially dangerous, without any understanding of the potential harm he may have caused by outing these students. Many gay youth become suicidal after being outed and the school district must intervene and link these families to counseling services,” Rajner told the South Florida Times.

Johnson and tactics are going to be investigated due to how focused he seemed to be on the gay students, even going so far as to out the students to their parents with one of the families’ having no prior knowledge. Nice way to put your students rights and safety first.

Johnson has not responded to any type of communication for comment.

Image via Wikipedia

05/18/2011 – by Cynthia S. Wright

Money can’t buy you everything, boys. CNN has reported that months after the YouTube videos of members of the Yale University fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon went viral – the fraternity has been suspended. College Dean, Mary Miller also stated that several fraternity members were doled out punishments – even though, he wouldn’t specify what the punishments entailed.

The suspension was issued out over email on Tuesday to the students and faculty of the school. In the letter, DKE is also prohibited from communicating with Yale students on campus or via email; the fraternity also has to limits its use of the Yale name in connection with their organization.

It only took videos displaying several of the fraternity members engaging in chants advocating rape, such as “No means YES, YES means Anal!” for the school to spring into action regarding the matter. This disciplinary action comes after officials confirming that the acclaimed “Ivy” league university is being investigated for a Title IX violation.

DKE has been operational at Yale since 1844, former members have included presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. This will be the first time it has gone inactive and was the only fraternity – up until Tuesday – that hadn’t.

This has been a long time for this acclaimed university. It is about time someone shows that no matter your “pedigree” or how much money your family has – that doesn’t give you the right to treat people you deem lesser than as chattel.

Image via Wikipedia

05/13/2011 – by Cynthia S. Wright

Legendary Queen front man, Freddie Mercury is still causing a ruckus, even though he’s been dead for close to 20 years. Principal Dwight Probasco of Wasilla High School in Alaska decided that after hearing from a graduating seniors’ parents that Mercury was gay, decided to pull the jazz choir‘s rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody” for senior graduation. Not sure who originally chose the song but at least it shows a great taste in music.

Perhaps the parents felt that the gay would rub off during the course of the performance, either way, Probasco was quick to ban the song in order to appease the parents.

Unfortunately, several of the choir’s students didn’t like that idea and decided to not take the banning lying down. One particular choir member, Casey Hight was so outraged by Probasco’s decision because she felt “…like the school was discriminating for sexual orientation,” which is not allowed in her book.  Hight decided to contact a prominent LGBT group in Anchorage, they urged her to contact an attorney within the American Civil Liberties Union that would be able to tell her some more options regarding this matter.

However, once Probasco received word of possible involvement by the ACLU – he quickly changed his tune and allowed the song back in. Even still, he plans to omit a portion of the lyrics where Mercury refers to “killing a man.”

Well, as Mercury so eloquently put it, “The show must go on.” And for the jazz choir at Wasilla High School, they plan to do exactly that.

Related articles

• Wasilla High School Bans Jazz Choir’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ Performance Because Freddie Mercury Was Gay (towleroad.com)
• Wasilla High School Bans Freddie Mercury Song (bilerico.com)
• Wasilla High School Principal Bans Bohemian Rhapsody Because Freddie Mercury Was Gay [Controversy] (gawker.com)

Liberty University Logo

You know how conservatives hate government programs and want to dismantle all of them? Apparently, that doesn’t include student financial aid.

Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University is processing around $445 million in federal financial aid for its students for 2011-12, making it the top money-taker in Virginia, according to U.S. Department of Education data. The extraordinary figure was aided by Liberty’s on-line program which enrolled 52,000 students last year, compared to their 12,000 resident students. Liberty’s federal student aid jumped from $277 million in 2008-09 to $432 million in 2009-10, a 56% increase. President Obama’s boost to the Pell program, which the Ryan budget would take away, was responsible for much of the increase. Liberty expects to have 154 employees in its financial aid office by July. Liberty University was founded in 1971 by Southern Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell, who died in 2007. It is now run by his son, Jerry Falwell, Jr.

Robert Ritz, Liberty’s executive director of financial aid, said there was no conflict between the school’s very conservative positions and being one of the top schools in federal financial aid. He said that the school does not get the money, the students do. “These funds are authorized by Congress and Congress is elected by voters. I’ve always been in the position where I believe I’m a steward of those federal funds. I’m a steward of tax-payer money..” Ritz also said that some students refuse to take federal funds for their education, and Liberty honors that.

In March, for at least one day, Liberty administrators blocked access from campus computers to the Lynchburg News and Advocate, which ran a critical story about the school’s use of federal funds. Falwell told the paper that the school’s policies allow administrators to “block a number of sites at will” (I’ll bet we’re on their list) “We’re a private organization and we don’t have to give a reason and we’re not.” Access to the newspaper was later unblocked, but the incident raises questions about the “liberty” at Liberty. By blocking access to sites that aren’t within the para meters of acceptable Liberty thought, they are effectively limiting the students’ education and limiting their ability to compete in the job market.

Related articles

• Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University Got $445M In Public Money Last Year (joemygod.blogspot.com)
• Liberty at ‘Liberty University’? Not So Fast, Budget Watcher (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Evangelical Liberty University received half a billion dollars in federal aid money (salon.com)
• Falwell’s Liberty University received half a billion dollars in federal aid money (pinkbananaworld.com)
• LU: Taking liberties with credible information, taking fed $$ with glee (pinkbananaworld.com)
• Here’s One Way for the Federal Government to Save a Half a Billion Dollars (slog.thestranger.com)
• Fundamentalist Liberty University Gets More Federal Money Than NPR (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• Liberty University blocks newspaper website for reporting on its federal financial aid haul (salon.com)

Darwen Vale School, Lancashire, England

Teachers at the Darwen Vale School in Lancashire, England, are planning to strike on Thursday because they feel that the administration has not done enough to protect them or support them in dealing with violent students. There are 1,150 students at the school, the majority of whom, according to Headteacher Hilary Torpey, are well behaved.

Then, there are the other ones….the teachers allegations include challenging teachers to fights, pushing and shoving staff, malicious allegations about teachers by student, using cell phones to record lessons and posting them on-line, cyber-bullying and pornography on the students’ cell phones. When teachers have confiscated the phones, the administration has returned them without involving parents, thereby undermining the teachers’ authority.

The strike is being supported by the National Association of Schoolteachers/Union of Women Teachers and the National Union of Teachers. Avis Gilmore, secretary of the Lancashire NUT said, “There is obviouly a problem. It is the last resort for teachers to go on strike. It is necessary to make the management understand the problem.”

Simon Huggill, one of the school’s governors, responded that he doesn’t “think behavior is particularly bad. My regret is that this has come out into the public domain. The majority are good, hard-working pupils.” Headteacher Torpey added “The vast majority of pupils at Darwen Vale behave well and take their education seriously.”

Darwen Vale is currently holding classes in a temporary facility built to hold 800 students while their new school is being built. Overcrowding is sometimes cited as a cause of disruptive behavior in students.

This comes at the same time that a problem has emerged in Colorado concerning a violent tantrum by an 8 year old who was subdued by the police using pepper spray. The child is somewhat large for his age. He was throwing desks, screaming and yelling, flinging things around the room, and threatening his teacher with death. He did not respond to the presence of the police, or any attempts to calm him. Since the incident, he has been transferred to a school for students with behavior problems, but he and his mother are now making the rounds on television news shows accusing the police of over-reacting.

Frequently, in America, parental response to problem students involves lawsuits and accusations against the school and the teachers, putting the school in the position of not being able to deal with violent students or bullies because of these lawsuits. “Malicious accusations” such as racism have cost American teachers their jobs. We have all witnessed the effects of cyber bullying and physical bullying in our schools with the rate of teen suicides. A child who cannot be dealt with at the age of 8 turns into a 12 year old who tips a smaller kid into a trash can or holds his head in a toilet, or worse. A ten-year-old wielding a pair of 8″ library shears is just as dangerous as a street thug. No one does exit interviews on the thousands of young teachers who each year decide to leave the field. Violent students and the lack of administrative support are part of the problem in retaining teachers.

Striking for protection for teachers….what an interesting idea. How about starting in the school district I taught in for three years, where all of the above and more happened?

Related articles

• Lancashire school’s teachers set to walk out over pupil misbehaviour (dailymail.co.uk)
• School on the verge of a nervous breakdown: Teachers set to walk out over pupil misbehaviour (dailymail.co.uk)
• Schools face surprise raids to tackle rise in pupils’ bad behaviour (dailymail.co.uk)
• Heads Given Powers To Prosecute Lying Pupils (news.sky.com)
• Labour put mediocrity ahead of bright children, GCSE result analysis reveals (dailymail.co.uk)
• Teachers Can Search Children for Mobiles and Erase Their Texts (terryolgin.wordpress.com)

GOP Rep. Pat Garofalo has come under fire due to his recent comments regarding his idea to scrap state funding used for a school integration program that doesn’t work. Being that the GOP currently hold the majority in the Minnesota Legislature, if they get their way, The Education Finance Committee will finalize a funding bill that change how Minnesota handles desegregation of public schools.

Sending the state back into the days prior to Brown v. Board of Education. Although, with all the bills the local GOP has been putting out this session involving doing away with pay equities for women, limiting welfare recipients to $20 in cash withdrawals, and requiring welfare recipients to submit to random drug tests – in reality, they aren’t too far off from that anyway.

Garofalo, despite that, feels that “Desegregation is an important goal, but a more important goal is reading, writing, and arithmetic,” Candidly, I think it’s somewhat insulting to say that in order for a black child to be learning he needs to be sitting next to a white child.”

What he failed to mention was that the districts that were awarded the most money had the fewest amount of minority students. If more money was given to the more urban school districts of Minnesota, the problem on whether integration efforts were a hindrance or not wouldn’t be an issue. Simply, because the schools would have the financial resources to better the curriculum, which in turn would cause it to perform, better as an educational resource.

Garofalo then rationalizes his statement by pointing out that Minnesota hasn’t been doing well with the concept of “integrated” schools for the past couple of decades, so why keep supporting an idea that isn’t going to work.

So instead of trying to figure out different alternate resources, the best solution is to scrap an idea entirely because it is of no importance to you. What a great example to set for today’s youth.

Although, It is no secret that in America, schools are typically associated with class and racial compositions doesn’t make integration funding a lost cause. Yes, schools should focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic but Garofalo comes across as only wanting to extend a hand to only the educational sources that he deems appropriate, thus leaving the urban districts out in the cold.

“We’ve been spending this money for a long time, and Minnesota has one of the worst achievement gaps in the nation… We have to come up with better ways to spend these dollars,” Garofalo laments.

Mindy Greiling, a Roseville Rep that has come out against eliminating the integration funding sharing believes that even though current bill needs to be worked on not abandoned entirely. Mainly, due to the fact that the urban districts (who also have the highest problems with the achievement) gap would end up feeling it the most.

At the same time, Garofalo, who happens to be chair of The Education Finance Committee happens to be the representative for Farmington, a largely residential town, which was further shown in the 2000 census. The census shows:

The racial makeup of the city was 95.62% Caucasian. 0.74% African American, 0.28% Native American, 1.46% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.59% from other races, and 1.28% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race was 1.88% of the population.

Yet, Garofalo still remains the leader involving the best way to handle state-funded integration efforts.

The bill is expected to make it to a vote on the House floor by the end of next week.

Related articles

• Public education: still separate and unequal (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

On March 23^rd, the first hearing for Senate Bill 48 (the FAIR Education Act) will go before the California Senate. The bill, which was proposed by gay Senator Mark Leno, outlines the need for public school textbooks to be rewritten to include historical information about the LGBT movement and its place in history. The FAIR Education Act would add LGBT to the existing list of underrepresented cultural ethnic groups, which is currently covered by law. Under S.B. 48, textbooks will be rewritten to highlight key LGBT figures that contributed to the history of the United States and California, as well as discuss details about the LGBT movement.

Currently, right wing supporters are up in arms about the recent turn of events. One of the voices against this bill is Dr. Scott Lively, president of Defend the Family International, who is sending out a battle cry for Christians to come together and voice their concerns.

He states:

“This isn’t about tolerance. This isn’t even about acceptance… This is about celebration and even goes further than that — the next step after that is forced acceptance; you’re coerced into being pro-gay.”

When did learning about other topics outside of white, heterosexual history harm public school students? What is wrong with getting to know the whole story not just watered down snippets passed off as 100% truth? In James W Loewen’s book, “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong“, details how textbooks have constantly played down or eliminated key facts in order promote a history, where predominately white historical figures are held up to higher esteem compared to others.

Concerning education, it always seems that the conservatives (which seems to be largely mad up of the religious right) are always concerned about the “gay agenda”. Never stopping to think that LGBT figures helped to shape and mold American history, instead they choose to see it as a vehicle that LGBT activists will use to bully those who happened to support Proposition 8.

Which dismisses the fact that SB 48 is actually being introduced to reduce bullying and promote a level of safety and respect in California public schools.

“Most textbooks don’t include any historical information about the LGBT movement, which has great significance to both California and U.S. history… Our collective silence on this issue perpetuates negative stereotypes of LGBT people and leads to increased bullying of young people. We can’t simultaneously tell youth that it’s OK to be yourself and live an honest, open life when we aren’t even teaching students about historical LGBT figures or the LGBT equal rights movement,” states Senator Leno.

The hesitation of conservatives isn’t new when it comes to the writing of this nation’s history.  It wasn’t until the late 1960′s that public school curriculum’s started to discuss the revising of texts to start including facts pertaining to African-Americans throughout the course of history.  Even with that, the historical facts available are still viewed as lacking, showcasing how textbook writers are still reserved (or unwillingly) to document history from multiple viewpoints (or ones that don’t stem from White European history).

With the introduction of the bill, the historical movement of the United States is moving forward to exhibit the true makeup of this nation, which deserves to be told because all underrepresented ethnic and minority groups had a hand in developing this country and all the facts should be shared, not just a select few.

Currently, about 20 Senators in Assembly members have agreed to co-author the legislation.

Related articles

• Exclusive: Memorial to LGBT People Dedicated by Barcelona Mayor (towleroad.com)
• President Obama first lady Michelle Obama address LGBT bullying in Facebook video (miamiherald.typepad.com)
• Religious right scared that California youth will learn about gays in history (pinkbananaworld.com)

Melanie Nathan March 15-2011

National Organizations Join GroundSpark’s  Outreach Campaign for Straightlaced—How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up

— On the heels of the White House conference on bullying, GroundSpark, the national film, education, and advocacy organization, announced its national partners for the distribution campaign for Straightlaced—How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up, the organization’s award-winning documentary film about the pressures teens face today because of gender role expectations.

Partners are publicizing the value of Straightlaced as a critical tool to help improve school social climates, particularly when it comes to addressing stigma and social pressures connected to gender roles, sexuality, and sexual orientation.

“Making the film and playing the film festival circuit were just the first steps in our campaign to open up dialogue about pressures to conform to gender stereotypes,” says the film’s director, Debra Chasnoff. “Working with these valued national partners to reach their millions of members and supporters will help ensure that Straightlaced has a significant impact in supporting youth to flourish, free from bias and harm.”

GroundSpark’s partners are equally determined to expand Straightlaced’s reach. “It’s a must see for anyone who has a young person in their lives,” says Whitney Smith, the founder and CEO of Girls For A Change, who signed on to the campaign “because this dialogue should be part of every curriculum in school.”

Maureen Costello, director of Teaching Tolerance agrees. “Every high school student in America should see it.”

Straightlaced—How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up has been in increasingly high demand as the national media has focused more attention on bias-related bullying and harassment. The film profiles an extremely diverse crossection of teenagers who examine the way that gender-based expectations impact their lives—pressures that lead to bullying, low academic performance, risky sexual behavior, drug abuse, and most seriously, suicide attempts and violence. The film is starting to be used in high schools across the country and teacher education programs to help open up much needed dialogue about gender norms and stigma based on actual or perceived sexual orientation.

www.groundspark.org/straightlaced.

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
Facebook Melanie
twitter @oblogdeeoblogda

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Related articles

• Obama, Activists Launch Initiative To Prevent Bullying (lezgetreal.com)
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Melanie Nathan- Jan 03, 2011- Applications are now available for the 2011 Matthew Shepard Scholarship Program, which honors openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Iowa high school seniors.

In October, 1998, the world was stunned by the brutal murder of a 21-year-old college student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Matthew Shepard was kidnapped, savagely beaten and left to die tied to a fence, because he was gay.

Matthew clung to life for five days while the world held vigil and prayed for his recovery. His death invigorated thousand of events and millions of people across the planet to protest anti-gay rhetoric, violence and bigotry.

The Eychaner Foundation established the Matthew Shepard Scholarship Program in 2000 to honor Matthew, to promote tolerance and non-discrimination in Iowa schools and to assist lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Iowa high school students with college financial aid.

To date, the Matthew Shepard Scholarship Program has committed over $1,000,000 in honoring ninety-four Iowans from across the state.

Matthew Shepard Scholars are working to build a diverse and more tolerant Iowa for future generations.

Silver Eagle Awards

Iowa’s Silver Matthew Shepard Scholarship is an award of up to $9,000 over 4 years that may be used for tuition, books or fees at any college or university in the United States.

Gold Eagle Awards

Iowa’s Gold Matthew Shepard Scholarship is an award of up to $40,000 over 4 years that may be used for tuition, books and fees at one of Iowa’s three state universities.

Who Should Apply

Iowa’s Matthew Shepard Scholarship Program works with highly motivated students who are interested in advice and assistance from adult mentors to accelerate their academic experience and performance, improve their adjustment to professional standards of behavior, goals, ethics and success and out-perform their age group in transitioning to adult leadership roles. Scholarship awards are based on academic aptitude, academic achievement, community service and financial need.

Applicants should have a high school GPA of 3.0 or better on a 4.0 scale, an ACT score of 22 or better, demonstrable LGBT activism and community service and a history of high moral and ethical standards and conduct.

Code of Conduct

Matthew Shepard Scholarships are awarded to students with a reputation for honesty, integrity and community service, who respect themselves and others and who conduct themselves in such a way as to demonstrate moral and ethical leadership in their own lives and inspire others in kind.

The application is available at eychanerfoundation.org.

The program is underwritten and awarded by the Rich Eychaner Charitable Foundation.

Melanie Nathan Dec 23, 2010- The Texas Civil Rights Project filed a lawsuit on behalf of a women football player, a teen from Kilgore High School.

The lawsuit alleges that  the student suffered severe mental and emotion anguish, social isolation  and that she  lost the “freedom to deal with her sexuality privately. ” The student was apparently locked in a locker room with two coaches who grilled her about her sexuality. The same suit reveals another case of bullying of a  gay studentat the hands of a softball coach.

One coach so accused is Kilgore’s head coach Cassie Newell is  a “certified personal trainer, regional and state gymnastics champion, licensed professional counselor and certified in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator,” a method of psychological testing.  Paul Knight reports in the Houston Press. ( Dec. 23/2010 Houston Press.)

The student in question — identified only as S.W. in the suit — was a “happpy, athletic high school sophomore.” She attended schools in Kilgore for twelve years and started playing sports in the eighth grade. She was on the high school softball team for two years and was an “enthusiastic and well-liked player.” And, according to the lawsuit, she is gay. On March 2 of last year, according to the lawsuit, S.W. showed up at the softball field for a team meeting, and after it was over, Newell and another coach told the girls to go home. S.W. was told to stay.   The coaches took S.W. in a locker room and locked the door and “violated S.W.’s privacy and personal autonomy in the worst possible way.”

The lawsuit says Rhonda Fletcher, the other coach named as a defendant asked S.W. if she was gay, accused her of having a sexual relationship with another girl. She also claimed that S.W. was spreading gossip about this other girl being “Coach Newell’s girlfriend.”

Fletcher and Newell then threatened S.W. that they were going to tell her mother that she was gay and having a sexual relationship with another girl. They warned S.W. that she could not play in the softball game that night until they told her mother this information. Finally, they allowed S.W. to leave the locker room.

After the locker room incident, the coaches called S.W.’s mother and told her to come to the softball field. The coaches told the mother that S.W. was a lesbian and in a relationship with an 18-year-old girl. “Newell offered her the contact information for this “girlfriend,” the lawsuit says. “She retrieved the phone number from her cell phone.”

According to the lawsuit, S.W. was later kicked off the softball team and her academic performance nose-dived: “…her long-held ambition of attending college to study kinesiology and sports medicine, in emulation of her one-time role models, was destroyed,” the lawsuit says.

The Texas Civil Rights Project, which is also taking on the state in a baby’s blood lawsuit, filed this suit after S.W.’s mother couldn’t resolve the issue with the Kilgore school district. She filed complaints with the high school principal, the superintendent and the district’s Board of Trustees. Each step, the lawsuit says, “offered no remedy to S.W. for the injury she had suffered.” Says the Knight Report.

Source http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2010/12/kilgore_softball_lesbian.php

Melanie Nathan Dec 17-2010- –Cpl. Evelyn Thomas, a veteran honorable discharged under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell after serving four years with in the United States Army and the Marine Corp has come forward to disclose that, as an educator, she has been a victim of bullying and harassment while working with the Oceanside Unified School District and San Diego Public Schools.

Nearly three years ago, Evelyn Thomas, an educator with the Oceanside Unified School District, in San Diego County, California eagerly accepted the honorable and prestige role as the advisor for Oceanside High School’s first Gay Straight Alliance.

Shortly after accepting this advisor role she experienced what she describes as ‘horrendous harassment and discrimination’ from her fellow teachers, staff, administrators, and students.  Verbal and physical bullying and harassment began immediately, her car was egged in a secured staff parking lot, rocks were thrown into her window and notes were left on her desk that said “Ur Gay”.

“It became an emotional, mental, and physical battle for my life”, says Cpl. Evelyn Thomas.

The bullying and harassment Cpl. Thomas endured continued in San Diego County with the Collaborative Learning Study Group. After voicing concern to officials and standing up after a colleague use the term “fags eat poop” she was determined ineligible to continue with the program.

“The classroom and other educational venues are not safe environments for LGBT people”, says Cpl. Evelyn Thomas.

Cpl. Evelyn Thomas is presenting her story,  nationally,  to bring attention to bullying and harassment in schools for students and educators. As a result of her experience, Thomas has become a national activist in the fight for equality for LGBT people.

Thomas  believes that by sharing her story, the  The San Diego County of Education and the Oceanside Unified School District may be forced to look into and address the issue of their ‘tacit approval of homophobia’ in the learning environment for openly LGBT students, teachers, and administrators.

Cpl. Evelyn Thomas is an educator, veteran, and activist advocating for equality; She is the founder and Executive Director of The Sanctuary Project www.sanctuaryproject.org. It is an activist outreach ministry that advocates for service members, veteran, and their families impacted by Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law.

The Story cane be read in more detail at http://education.change.org/blog/view/dont_ask_dont_tell_activist_i_was_harassed_after_starting_a_gay_straight_alliance

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• Exclusive: White House DADT Arrests:- Lesbian Activist Challenges Congressional Black Caucus (lezgetreal.com)
• Thirteen Anti-DADT Activists Arrested At White House (lezgetreal.com)
• Week Of Anti-DADT Protests Begins With A Vigil (lezgetreal.com)

Melanie Nathan – 11-14-10.  WARNING – This is not for the faint of heart. The verbal descriptions in the Video contain explicit language.

It is a stunning and ironic testament to continued discrimination- to  ignorance. The  failure to educate a populace in the most progressive and westernized of all the  African Countries, casts an ironic shadow over the one Country that promises to protect lesbian, gay and gender equality in its Constitution.

When Nelson Mandela was released back in 1990 and Apartheid became a tear-drenched grave, a new explosion of lawlessness began and it’s legacy of unbridled hate may find a place in history that over shadows the horrors of apartheid.

South Africa has earned its title as ” The rape capital of the World,”  with an estimated 500,000 rapes per year;   tantamount to a shameful and preventable disaster of enormous  proportion.

The men in the video who speak their hate with conviction and pompous entitlement,  will be crowned coward; while the survivor women reflect the courage of true warriors and their bravery will sit in the hearts of many of us here in our  privileged nests.

At the same time for as long as our own Government here in the USA continues to ignore our own desperate call for equality, and for as long as US Evangelical demons are set loose on African soil to spew their garbage indictments negating the right to love, we as a Nation are complicit in the crimes against humanity, for if we are no longer leaders qualified to call for an end to the hate, nor are we credible to impress upon ZUMA and MUGABE and the rest of Africa the  Perils of such  hate.

WARNING – This is not for the faint of heart. The verbal descriptions in the Video contain explicit language.

READ MORE:             http://lezgetreal.com/2010/11/lesbian-corrective-rape-victim-has-her-day-in-court/

Support Lulekiizwe

Support Millicent Gaika about to testify at her rape trial

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Millicent-Gaika-Support-Page/159448417423659?ref=ts&v=wall#!/pages/Millicent-Gaika-Support-Page/159448417423659?v=wall

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
@oblogdeeoblogda

]]> http://lezgetreal.com/2010/11/the-shocking-truth-of-corrective-rape-survivors-speak-from-south-africa/feed/ 1 http://lezgetreal.com/2010/10/israels-dancing-with-the-stars-to-feature-same-sex-couple/ http://lezgetreal.com/2010/10/israels-dancing-with-the-stars-to-feature-same-sex-couple/#comments Fri, 22 Oct 2010 01:28:07 +0000 Lez Get Real http://lezgetreal.com/?p=49012 Dancing With The Stars to feature same-sex couple- of course not in America – it will be in ISRAEL

Israel’s version of Dancing With The Stars, Rokdim Im Kokhavim- is to include the show’s first same-sex couple in the new series. The winner of the show will be revealed in January.

Contestant Gili Shem Tov, a TV presenter has a female partner in real life, said dancing with another woman is “natural” for her.  Her partner is a straight professional dancer, Dorit Milman.

The couple will take it in turns to take on the traditional male role of leading the dances.

“The challenge to dance with a woman in a public contest interested me because it’s unique and has never been done before.  “Because I share my life with a woman and have a family with her, to me this is the most natural thing to do.”

As it happens Pamela Anderson will be a guest on the Show.

Kol Hakavod Israel!

Melanie Nathan- Nathan@privatecourts.com (@oblogdeeoblogda)  www.visualcv.com/melnathan

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Melanie Nathan, 3-14-10.   Annie Lennox went to South Africa and found that there is hope -Amidst a need so great – and what makes it so awful is that we tend to forget – forget because it is so invisible.  On CNN today Annie Lennox said the killer is worse – and what is is so bad is that its target is women and children.  On her website she shows a video of a child near death, who with diet and medication, survived sure death, – the result a normal healthy seven year old. You need to see it to believe it.

The stigma of HIV is so high that people are afraid to talk openly about the issue, or  is close their status. South Africa has a tradition of activist songs and singing, as a way to create solidarity and communicate messages

After personally witnessing Nelson Mandela describe the African HIV pandemic as a genocide, with women and children becoming the frontline victims, Annie Lennox set out to try and do something about it. That is how the SING campaign started. To raise funds and awareness to bring about support and change. The money raised by SING helps prevent the spread of HIV in South Africa, and also supports those currently living with HIV. The awareness it raises is just as valuable – education is a powerful tool.

Comic Relief manages the SING fund, and assists in coordinating the SING campaign.

When people get together to sing, they become encouraged and inspired. In the words of Nelson Mandela: “Let us use the universal language of music, to sing out our message around the world.”

As one of the world’s most renowned singer songwriters, Annie Lennox decided to write an anthem that could be used as a symbol of unity and empowerment, and help spread the message to the world.

In the spring of 2007, she invited 23 of the most internationally acclaimed female artists to record their voices on “SING”. The recording incorporates the South African activist song, JIKELELE, which means global treatment. JIKELELE was written and recorded by The Generics, who are all members of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the main beneficiary of SING funds. JIKELE calls for the implementation of the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission programme across South Africa.

Watch the SING video here

Annie was first invited to Cape Town in 2003, to take part in the inaugural concert of Nelson Mandela’s 46664 HIV campaign. It was there that she witnessed first hand the plight of people struggling to cope with the situation – in clinics, orphanages, hospitals and townships.

After years of fighting and winning the struggle against apartheid, the South African people are being devastated by a pandemic which has wiped out a generation of men, women and children.

The country has one of the world’s highest HIV prevalence rates, and a third of all pregnant women are HIV positive. Many still do not have access to the medication and support that can prevent mothers passing the virus to their unborn babies.

Whilst in South Africa, Annie had the opportunity to meet Zackie Achmat, the founder of TAC, an exceptional grassroots network working across the entire nation. Eighty per cent of TAC members are women.

WHAT IS THE MONEY SPENT ON?

All the money generated by Annie Lennox and the Sing campaign goes to projects that fight HIV in South Africa. Here are some examples of how that money is spent:

Funding for a £300,000 grant  to TAC over three years has come from the SING fund, underwritten by Comic Relief. TAC’s work includes programmes that:

• help people get access to testing and treatment
• educate South Africans about HIV
• prevent further transmission

TAC is also a strong advocate for women’s rights, and lobbies pharmaceutical companies and the government about treatment costs and policies.

More money has been pledged to TAC via the SING campaign in the coming
months. Read more about TAC here.

Annie’s performance at the television charity event Spendenmarathon in Germany in November 2008 raised hundreds of thousands of euros for the Vrygrond Community Development Trust , which in conjunction with the Elton John Aids Foundation will use the money to build a community day care centre in Capetown. The centre will provide care and support for those affected by HIV, vulnerable children and caregivers.

HOW MUCH HAS BEEN RAISED SO FAR?

Here are some further examples of the sums of money raised by Annie and the SING campaign.

Sales of the SING record and associated merchandise have raised over £100,000 so far.

At the 20th anniversary of Elle magazine in Berlin in July 2008, an auction raised UR20,000 for the SING campaign.

After Annie appeared on Idol Gives Back, the charity spin-off of American Idol in the United States, they made a donation of $500,000 directly to TAC.

All this adds up to hundreds of thousands of pounds – money generated by Annie personally, and by the SING campaign. Every penny lessens the grip that HIV has on South Africa.

LEZGETREAL IS CALLING on you our readers, in business, in politics, individuals to please go to Annie’s page and donate generously.     http://www.annielennoxsing.com/

CLICK HER TO DONATE NOW THANK YOU

Related articles by Zemanta

• Annie Lennox Named Nobel Laureates’ Woman Of Peace (huffingtonpost.com)
• Annie Lennox trying to get world to see changing face of AIDS (cnn.com)
• UN project launches campaign focusing on women (cnn.com)
• Annie Lennox: Positive About HIV (advocate.com)
• South Africa to treat all HIV-positive babies (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Melanie Nathan

Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com

www.privatecourts.com
www.visualcv.com.melnathan

IN PUBLIC AWARENESS CAMPAIGN TO ENCOURAGE WOMEN OVER THE AGE OF 40 TO RECEIVE MAMMOGRAMS, GILLIBRAND URGES FED TO CLARIFY NEW RECOMMENDATIONS

New Guidelines Released This Week Claim Only Women Over 50 Need Routine Mammograms As Part Of Breast Cancer Screening Many Doctors, Experts Object To Recommendations, Giving Women Conflicting Messages on How to Protect Themselves -

Washington, DC – After having participated in a public awareness campaign to encourage women over the age of 40 to receive mammograms, U.S. Senator Kristen Gillibrand today called on the federal government to clarify new recommendations for women on how to prevent breast cancer. New guidelines released this week by the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force suggested that only women over 50 need to get routine mammograms as part of breast cancer screening. Many doctors and experts objected to these recommendations, sending conflicting messages to women about how they can prevent breast cancer.

“I am concerned that women are being given differing messages about how to prevent breast cancer,” Senator Gillibrand said. “In addition to getting my own mammogram each year, I have been involved in public awareness campaigns to encourage other women my age to do so. I understand that there were many independent scientists involved in making this decision, but that there are also many respected medical experts that are disagreeing with the recommendations. I plan to seek some answers here so that women are getting a uniform message about how to protect themselves.”

Doctors, medical experts, and news reports from around New York have raised concerns about the new recommendations.

“I think this would be a huge mistake,” said Dr. Paul Fisher, a radiologist at the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Care Center at Stony Brook University Medical Center. “There’s almost unanimity that mammography saves lives.”

Dr. Jane Carleton, an attending physician specializing in breast cancer at the Don Monti Cancer Center at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, said cutting back on mammograms could allow some small breast cancers to become larger, more lethal growths. “We continue to see tragedies in women who present with much larger breast cancers because they have not had mammograms,” Carleton said.

At Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, Dr. Victor Scarmato, chairman of radiology, questioned the new recommendations. “Their conclusions are against the conclusions of the American Cancer Society and other cancer and screening advocacy groups,” Scarmato said.”There are many in that population whose lives are saved because of the procedures [mammograms] even if the yield is not as great as in older women,” Scarmato said.

“We are very concerned that the insurance companies will use this to restrict coverage for screening, taking away the option for what women and their doctors feel is best for them,” said Hillary Rutter, LCSW, Director of the Adelphi NY Statewide Breast Cancer Hotline & Support Program.

Dr. Derek ten Hoopen of West Ridge Obstetrics and Gynecology said that his colleagues would continue to recommend screening for 40- to 49-year-olds until the data used by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force was better analyzed.

Holly Anderson, executive director of the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester, said that screening guidelines trigger anxiety. “We’ve been dealt a breast cancer diagnosis. It sounds very scary to hear these guidelines and the recommendation is to not be screened in the 40 to 49 window.”

Full text of the letter is below.

Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201

Dear Secretary Sebelius:

Earlier this week, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) came out with new recommendations that suggest that women ages 40-49 no longer need routine mammogram screenings. As I’m sure you’re aware, this has caused mass confusion among women who, like myself, have long been told that every woman over 40 should receive a mammogram every year. As a 42-year-old woman and Senator, I volunteered my time to speak in Public Service Announcements to remind women my age that they need to get screened. Therefore, I share my constituent’s confusion over this new message coming from the government.

I understand that these new recommendations were developed by independent scientists, however many respected medical experts and advocacy organizations such as the American Cancer Society, disagree with the recommendations. I, therefore, implore you to work with these respected patient advocacy groups, radiologists and oncologists across the nation to come up with a clear message to women about how best to protect themselves.

I would also encourage you to consider the weight that recommendations have across the medical and insurance industry. When the government changes their recommendations for screening, insurance companies will often choose to change their reimbursement policies as a result. I do not want women that are a high risk for breast cancer, because of their genes or family history, to be denied screenings because insurance companies refuse to reimburse the doctors.

I would encourage you to convene a meeting of interested parties so that this confusing message can be resolved and so that women can receive the best medical care that science can provide. Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter.

Note from Melanie Nathan, your blogger: I started my regular mamograms when I turned 40 and continued to have them each year thereafter. I used my birthday as a reminder of when the next one was due. No one in my family had ever had breast cancer, although there had been other types of cancer causing extended family and grandparents. Each year my Mamogram was clear and that did not deter me. In 2003 I went for my regular mammogram and the readiologist noticed a tiny calcification. Stating it was probably nothing I had a biopsy to be safe. Long story short it was VERY early stage Ductoral carcinoma in situ. After radical surgery, they found a little more than anticipated or more than had shown on the mammogram. I did not need Chemotherapy or radiation. That in itself was a huge relief. They had caught it so early. Seven years later, I have since married and we have a four year old together. I will see my 12 year old Batmitvah next year. I am alive. Had I not been diagnosed then and had they not had earlier base grams to diagnose from, I do not think I would be writing this piece today. The way I see this recommendation -? Well its tantamount to saying Melanie your life is worth nothing. Its okay if you would have died – because 1299 others would have lived – or whatever number they attribut to it. In fact I bet my fellow breast bearers out there will agree that their ten minute anxiety to save my life was worth every moment of said anxiety.

GALS- lets fight – this is not okay. Thank you Senator Gillibrand for your keeping a stern stand on this issue.

BY: Melanie Nathan

One of the commission members is paraplegic and discussed the issue with regards to his own physical limitations and the difficulty of his own wife has had helping him find proper accommodations. Commission Executive Director Robert Appel mentioned this. “One of our commission members is a parapalegic who uses a wheelchair and he talked about his challenge with his wife trying to find a bathroom that is available to him because the person who assists him in this biological function is his wife,” stated Appel.
Robert Appel also stated: “I would say that the commissioners were favorably impressed. I think it personalized the issue and brought some deeper understanding of the concerns of students whose identity is not consistent with biogolical sex.”

Kyle currently goes to Burlington High School which has gender-neutral bathrooms, but he is not just speaking on his own behalf. At a Queer Youth Summit earlier this year the issue of gender-neutral bathrooms was deemed as being one of the more important issues facing LGBT teens.

When I was attending Coastal Georgia Community College in Brunswick, Georgia, I was lucky enough that they had a single gender-neutral bathroom on campus. While it often meant that my brakes between classes meant dashing across campus to use the facilities it not only made my life easier, but made life easier for those who are uncomfortable with transpeople. It prevented harassment of myself while on campus.

What follows is the video from that report. With luck it should be working. If it does not work, here is the link to the story. Teen pushes for gender-neutral bathrooms

This is a busy time for many families, including those with LGBT parents, and the resources are flowing everywhere we look with deals, steals, and bargains for back to school. If you are an LGBT parent with children getting ready to go back to school, you might feel a little added pressure to get things done perfectly for your school age child(ren).

Luckily Mombian Dana Rudolph has gathered the resources you need to get you through in one place and put them on her blog on Bay Windows:

Back-to-school resources for LGBT parents

Back-to-school time can be fraught with tension for many parents as we realize our children’s shoes are too small, they need new knapsacks, and for reasons that surpass understanding, a perfectly working locker padlock somehow isn’t cool enough to be acceptable this year.

For LGBT parents, there is an additional concern about how our children’s new teachers and classmates will react to knowing our kids have LGBT moms or dads. Do you approach teachers and school administrators beforehand to inform them about your family and detect any potential problems?

…Regardless of the approach you take, it never hurts to be prepared, either to help allies eager to be inclusive or to take action against bias and bullies. Here are some useful resources. (Note that there is an overlap between resources that help children of LGBT parents and those that help LGBT youth. Many of the issues each of these groups face are the same-not to mention that some children of LGBT parents are LGBT themselves.)

I encourage you to visit her article for resources such as Safe Classrooms by COLAGE, links to organizations with resources for administrators and more.

According to MEC, many educators have been participating in LGBT education qualification courses, “but some of them abandon the course because they can’t deal with the subject”, says Claudilene Santos, a psychologist and one of the instructors.

Beto de Jesus, an educator and a representative of ILGA in Latin America, says that ‘teachers often don’t notice that learning is far beyond books, it’s in everyday life. When a teenagers is discriminated, either because he’s gay or because of his skin color, the teacher doesn’t stop teaching his class to discuss the problem because he thinks his syllabus is more important.” Beto believes the qualification program is a big step, but must grow bigger and be strengthened.

Maine’s opposition to marriage equality are prepared to take this to the voters. They are beginning the process of getting the roughly fifty-five thousand signatures that they need in order to put the recently signed bill before the voters. When it goes to the voters will depend upon when the list is submitted.

Outside groups are already looking into ways to help, and could make this into a California style Proposition 8 battle. Marriage opponents are planning on canvassing in malls, churches, and neighborhoods. The people who are driving this are, indeed, hoping for national interests to come along and help them out.

“There ain’t no way we’ll lose it, this is our life..”

In 2008, the attempt to veto civil unions failed when these same groups failed to raise more than fifteen thousand signatures. In 2005, a voter driven veto attempt to remove sexual orientation from Maine’s Human Rights Act failed at the polls. However, despite these victories, the marriage equality groups are vowing not to be complacent about this issue and are preparing their own counter-campaign to get people to not sign these petitions.

Funding such an effort will be an issue. With the economy in trouble, it could prove difficult for these groups to raise money in order to counter the expected rush of big out of state money coming into the anti-same-sex marriage groups. “Now that it is the law of the state of Maine, we will protect that law,” said Betsy Smith of EqualityMaine. “It’s disappointing we would need to raise a lot of money to protect a law in Maine.”

“We’re not gonna take it anymore.”

The biggest question for those looking at the petitions will be, how much of a fight do you want playing on your airwaves. How many ads like those which ran in California calling your friends, your neighbors, your relatives nasty, derogatory things do you want to wade through each and every day until the election?

http://equalitymaine.org/

http://www.freedomtomarry.org/states/maine.php

Quoted Lyrics are from the Twisted Sister song “We’re Not Gonna Take It” written by Dee Snider.

Bridgette “Sei” LaVictoire is a trans-lesbian who lives in Vermont and has a strong passion for LGBTI rights. She has a BA in History and her hobbies include sci-fi, anime, fantasy, action movies, video games, and more. Currently, she is working on her MA in Individualized Studies at Goddard College. Her specialization is in cultural history and cultural comparison.

KnowThyNeighbor is a site online which posts information about anti-gay petitions and the people who sign them.

KTN was started in 2005 in response to an initiative petition to ban same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.

Recently, the website launched a searchable database of those who signed a petition to ban gay adoption and foster care rights in the state of Arkansas as well.

KnowThyNeighbor.org publishes the names of petition signers to “alter the dynamic of the petition process in several important ways”:

1. Anti-gay marriage activists and supporters have now lost their veil of anonymity. KnowThyNeighbor.org believes that citizens who sponsor an amendment to take people’s rights should never be allowed to do so under the cover of darkness.
2. Gay citizens are inspired to speak out in defense of their equal rights. Finding the names of friends, neighbors, family, co-workers, etc… has helped trigger many into a state of activism. Uncomfortable but desperately needed conversations continue to take place every day as a result.

3. Putting the names online has led to the discovery of rampant fraud in the signature collection process. Both civil and criminal investigators have been assigned to further investigate.

On April 28, 2009, KTN Arkansas was launched and the names of over 83,000 anti-gay adoption and foster care petition signers were put online.

The information was a matter of the public record provided by the Arkansas Secretary of State’s office, and KnowThyNeighbor.org scanned the paper petitions then transcribed them into pdf versions of the actual documents.

In 2008, Arkansas voters approved a ballot measure (sponsored by the Family Council Action Committee) making it illegal for same-sex couples to be adoptive or foster parents.

“This is about responsibility and dialogue,” said Tom Lang, KnowThyNeighbor.org’s director. “These petition signers need to stand behind their signatures and be responsible for this dehumanizing attack on the gay community. It’s disgraceful that they have chosen to exercise their prejudice at the expense of children who are now being denied access to loving adoptive and foster parents. Such activity must be challenged and cannot be allowed to pass under the cover of darkness.”

Those who signed the petition to place this measure on the ballot are listed here.

It looks like someone has finally noticed that bullying in schools is a serious problem. After the two suicides of young boys caused by bullying there have been a lot of people calling for something to be done. The Safe Schools Improvement Act (SSIA) that was introduced today would amend the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act. Schools and districts receiving federal funds would be required to adopt codes of conduct specifically prohibiting bullying and harassment. This would also include bullying on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. States would also be required to report data on bullying and harassment to the Department of Education.

The Human Rights Campaign released this statement:

Human Rights Campaign Applauds Re-Introduction of Safe Schools Improvement Act
Legislation would mandate that schools adopt policies to meaningfully address bullying and harassment, including of LGBT students

WASHINGTON – The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, applauded the reintroduction of the Safe Schools Improvement Act in the U.S. House of Representatives today by Representatives Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY). The Safe Schools Improvement Act (SSIA) would amend the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act (part of the No Child Left Behind Act) to require schools and districts receiving federal funds to adopt codes of conduct specifically prohibiting bullying and harassment, including on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Act would also require that states report data on bullying and harassment to the Department of Education.

“Tragically, last month alone, two eleven-year-old boys, Carl Joseph Walker Hoover and Jaheem Herrera, took their own lives after suffering bullying by classmates who perceived them to be gay. Their deaths remind us of the true costs of anti-LGBT school bullying and harassment to our families and communities,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “We place our children in grave danger when we fail to adequately help school administrators and teachers create safe learning environments for all students, including those who are, or are perceived to be, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. We stand with the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network in calling upon Congress to quickly pass the Safe Schools Improvement Act.”

Bullying and harassment of students who are, or are perceived to be, LGBT is widespread. While current federal law provides important support to promote school safety, it does not comprehensively and expressly focus on issues of bullying or harassment, and in no way addresses the challenges faced by LGBT youth in our nation’s schools.

In the 2007 National School Climate Survey conducted by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), nearly three-fifths of students reported feeling unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, and more than a third felt unsafe because of their gender expression. In addition, 44% of LGBT students surveyed reported experiencing physical harassment and 22.1% reported being physically assaulted at school in the last year.

Numerous education, health, law enforcement and youth development organizations support federal legislation to combat bullying and harassment, including the American Association of School Administrators, American Federation of Teachers, American School Health Association, National Association of School Psychologists, National Education Association and National Parent Teacher Association.

In the 110th Congress, SSIA was introduced by Representative Linda Sanchez (D-CA) and had 80 co-sponsors in the House.

I hope we can get strong support for this piece of legislation. As a parent I worry about my kids everyday. As a martial arts instructor I am constantly seeing the results of bullying and helping kids overcome it. This is an important issue and something that deserve the attention of the federal government.

Lezzymom has two kids and a wonderful partner. Her political commentary has appeared on C-Span and CSPAN.org. Visit her Lezzymom blog for more of her insights.

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• Being Bullied Linked to Future Psychiatric Problems (health.usnews.com)
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One such student is Nikki Heiskil, a student who planned to attend the prom as part of a same-sex couple with girlfriend Ashley Beaty. Initially the couple were asked not to attend their school’s prom, by Principal Sharon Vaughn and told to return their tickets because it was not a “girl-girl” prom.

Vaughn told Ashley Beaty the prom was advertised as “boy-girl”, and she encouraged Beaty to still attend the prom claiming that she does not discourage homosexuals from attending prom, as long as they do not enter the prom as a couple because this can trigger “unwanted media attention”.

She added that prom attendees should dress “gender-appropriate” and that the Ringgold High prom is in fact a “boy-girl event at Ringgold High School.”

After the story was reported by Beaty and Heiskill to the local media, Principal Sharon Vaugh reversed her decision and decided to let the girls attend the prom. Vaughn told the local media that the couple’s sexual preference had nothing to do with her decision to ask the girls to return their tickets, and said Heiskell was prohibited from the prom because she quit school earlier this year and was in poor standing when she quit.
However, when Principal Sharon Vaughn did make contact with the teen lesbian couple to notify them of her reversed decision, the principal assured that Heiskell was not initially banned from the prom because of her sexual preference and that she did not want to ruin Beaty’s prom night; but that Heiskell would have to wear a dress.

The school’s dress code doesn’t mention their policy on prom attire.

The school held their prom on Saturday, though the young couple has not been reached for comment. We were also unable to obtain a picture of the couple, or the dress in question. If you would like to ask Principal Vaughn why she chose to enforce a non-existent dress code policy after reversing her decision to bar the same-sex couple from prom, the school’s phone number where she can be reached for comment is (706) 935-2254.

Photo gallery: Iowa begins issuing same-sex marriage licenses. (Des Moines Register)

Marriage licenses have been issued to same-sex couples across the state of Iowa today, when the ruling overturning the ban on gay marriage took affect. Many couples that have begun the process by applying for marriage licenses, are now preparing for the passage of a three-day waiting period before they can officially tie the knot.

Some couples however, under certain circumstances, did in fact tie the knot today, making today the day they will celebrate their wedding anniversary from now on.

The Des Moines Register reports that Shelley Wolfe, 38, and Melisa Keeton, 31, were the first gay couple in Polk County to marry under the new ruling.

They applied for their marriage license this morning then immediately got a judge to waive the standard three-day waiting period. They wanted to get married quickly, because Keeton is 25 weeks pregnant. They’ve been together nearly three years.

“For us, while I’m only 25 weeks pregnant, already into the third trimester, I’ve had a lot of medical issues,” said Keeton, who was waiting in line to have their marriage license notarized. “To me it’ll be a lot less stressful because we’ll have legal rights. Really, today is about making it legal.”

Some couples were not so lucky:

Although some magistrates have recently spoken out about opting out of performing marriages overall (possibly to avoid participation in a same-sex wedding in their background), it is not clear whether same-sex couples expecting to get married on Thursday will have any trouble finding someone to marry them.

If the marriage events in California in 2008  are any indication, it could be expected for gay friendly officials and small businesses with marriage related services to come out of the woodwork. It is also a time for anti-gay initiatives to come out of the woodwork as well.

According to the Des Moines Register Jefferson County Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution this morning asking lawmakers to take action against same-sex marriage.

“We expect the Iowa legislature to resolve the issue,” said Stephen Burgmeier, chairman of the three-member, all Republican board. “We hope it either leads to a public vote or to a constitutional amendment.”

Also, petitions opposing same-sex marriage have been dropped off to county clerk’s offices around the state.

Many petitions have only a handful of signatures, yet the number of petitions dropped off seem to outweigh the number of couples who applied for licenses at this time.

A group of residents delivered a petition that asks County Recorder Charlotte Fleig to deny the licenses today.

She said she will issue the licenses but, as of 9 a.m., no same-sex couples had requested a license, although there was at least one same-sex couple who called to inquire about the process.

La Figa called the creator of Buzzfree Prom, Liza Orchard, who claimed “The poster doesn’t foster a fear of being homosexual but a fear of going to jail.” Orchard added that if you are the weakest person in the cell “you will appear to be the queen in the group”.

Since La Figa ran the story, the ad campaign has been removed from the Buzz Free Prom site, and this statement can be found on their homepage:

We have received complaints from individuals regarding a BuzzFree Prom poster. It has been removed from the BuzzFree Prom website and product line. We apologize if this poster offended anyone, for certainly that was not the intent; BuzzFree Prom strives to direct teens’ attention to messaging which encourages them NOT to drink or use other drugs on prom night or any other night. BuzzFree is solely responsible for its content.

Good job to La Figa and also to Buzz Free Prom for staying accountable to our kids!!

However, websites that claim to “cure homosexuality” are not being filtered out. Unlike the recent “computer glitch” excuse used by online book retail website Amazon.com when gay and lesbian titles were filtered out of their sales rankings, that is not the case here.

The Knox County and Metro Nashville Public Schools are claiming the existence of the filter yet blaming their filtering service for the blockage of the websites in question, while the school district’s internet filtering service, Education Networks of America, says that schools using their service choose which websites to block.

The American Civil Liberties Union has asked public school officials in Tennessee to stop blocking students’ access to websites designated as “LGBT” or they plan to file suit.

“Students at Knox County and Metro Nashville schools are being denied access to content that is protected speech under the First Amendment as well as the Tennessee state constitution,” Staff Attorney Tricia Herzfield of the ACLU for the Tennessee district said.

The ACLU claims that the Tennessee school districts in question used a blanket approach to all things relating to LGBT issues on the internet, but continue to give access to websites promoting “gay-cures” that some health professionals have found to be dangerous.

The filter also restricts websites for same-sex marriage, including faith based sites that find same-sex marriage acceptable, yet does not block sites such as the American Family Association who actively campaign against same-sex marriage. The ACLU says that this gives students only one side of the story, and in so doing may harm a child’s education, potentially violating the duty of the school district to give all children a chance at a complete education.

The ACLU’s statement included a comment from a student at one of the school districts in question, Andrew Emmit of Central High School in Knoxville, aged 17:  “When I found out about this web filtering software, I wasn’t looking for anything sexual or inappropriate – I was looking for information about scholarships for LGBT students, and I couldn’t get to it because of this.”

In its letter, the ACLU gives the districts and the Tennessee Schools Cooperative until April 29 to come up with a plan to restore access to  non-sexual websites advocating the fair treatment of LGBT people by the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year.

“The decisions on whether to block certain websites are made solely by the school districts. ENA does not participate in these decisions in any way and is instead simply told which websites to block,” ENA attorney Jason Callen said in response to the request by the ACLU.

Tennessee state law only requires schools to use filtering software to restrict information that is obscene or harmful to minors.

HRC Foundation announced today it will award three $2000 scholarships to student activists committed to achieving LGBT equality. The following is a press release from HRC:

WASHINGTON – The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy organization, today launched the “Generation Equality Scholarships” for LGBT and allied students who have demonstrated exceptional commitment to the fight for queer equality. The scholarships are part of HRC Foundation’s Youth and Campus Outreach Program, which aims to provide tools, facilitate connections and empower young people to fight for LGBT equality on campus and beyond. To apply for the Generation Equality Scholarships, visit: www.hrc.org/geneqscholarship.

“All too often, LGBT students face obstacles in the pursuit of education, whether it be from a lack of family support or negative experiences in the classroom or on campus. The Generation Equality Scholarships are aimed at providing exceptional students with the funding that they need and deserve,” said Candace Gingrich, Senior Manager for the HRC Foundation’s Youth and Campus Outreach Program. “In these challenging economic times, it’s important that current and prospective students have these resources available to them.”

The HRC Foundation will award three $2,000 scholarships to LGBT and allied students who have demonstrated exceptional commitment to the fight for queer equality. Priority will be given to applicants who:

• Self identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or an ally
• Have applied to or are enrolled in an accredited institution of higher education
• Have demonstrated a commitment or contribution to the LGBT community
• Are in good academic standing
• Have demonstrated need for financial assistance

The application deadline for academic year 2009-2010 is June 1, 2009. Finalists will be asked to submit additional materials. Scholarship recipients will be announced in July.

In addition to these new scholarships, the Youth and Campus Outreach Program also provides a comprehensive online database of more than 200 other scholarships available to LGBT and allied students. The list, which includes national, statewide and school-specific scholarships, was created to ensure that students committed to the fight for LGBT equality can reach and benefit from institutions of higher education. To view the online database visit: www.hrc.org/scholarships.

Generation Equality, the current group of high school and college-aged young people, is more supportive of LGBT equality than any other generation in our country’s history. As young people work to attain the goals of the queer community on their campuses, it is the aim of the Youth and Campus Outreach Program to provide tools and help facilitate connections with other LGBT student activists across the country.

Yet, this invitation is causing an uproar in large part because of how many Catholics disagree with President Obama’s politics. While the largest uproar is over his recent rescinding of the Bush era ban on embryonic stem cell research, a wide range of other issues including his opposition to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act are also contributing to a decided call by some to have his invitation revoked. Another factor is his decision to, once again, provide funding for international groups which provide abortions or educate about the procedure.

Given the recent uproar over Pope Benedict’s comments concerning condom use in Africa, it may seem odd that many in the Catholic Church are not rethinking their stances, at least when it comes to being upset about someone coming to speak to them at their graduation. Some are seeing it as an honor. While they disagree with Obama’s policies, they are, none the less, honored to have him speak.

Others are not so happy. Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted has called the invitation a mistake and a public act of disobedience. Bishop John D’Arcy has stated his intentions to not attend the events. Olmsted represents the Phoenix diocese, and D’Arcy represents the Fort-Wayne-South Bend diocese. Notre Dame is part of D’Arcy’s docese.

Reverend John Jenkins, President of Notre Dame, does not agree with many of President Obama’s policies, but feels that it is important to engage in a dialogue, and refuses to rescind the invitation. The majority of seniors at Notre Dame support having President Obama speak, even if the majority of the alum disagree and do not want him there.

President Obama is speaking at only three universities this year. Notre Dame has been honored by being one of those three.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090327/ap_on_re_us/obama_notre_dame

Bridget “Sei” McBride is a trans-lesbian who lives in Vermont and has a strong passion for LGBTI rights. She has a BA in History and her hobbies include sci-fi, anime, fantasy, action movies, video games, and more. Currently, she is working on her MA in Individualized Studies at Goddard College. Her specialization is in cultural history and cultural comparison.

According to Americans For Truth About Homosexuality’s repost of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) press release, Wright State University in Dayton, OH, has banned the Campus Bible Fellowship for not following the non-discrimination policies of the university regarding gays and lesbians. Americans For Truth About Homosexuality is saying, according to two people from CBF, they were denied their registration for two reasons. Per the FIRE press release:

“CBF refused to adopt university-mandated nondiscrimination language in its membership requirements that would have stripped the group of the right to require voting members to adhere to religious and behavioral standards. (Nonvoting members did not have to meet these standards.) Second, Wright State objected to the requirement in CBF’s constitution that voting members ‘accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior’ and subscribe to the group’s articles of faith.”

FIRE claims that they have tried to get in touch with WSU several times and no one has responded in writing to their complaints. It may be that they have not been contacted in writing about their complaints because those complaints were long ago resolved. It might also be that those at WSU knew that FIRE was attempting to cause a fight and have chosen not to fight with them.

The problem is, CBF was not denied their registration. In fact, we found the folks at Wright State very responsive when LGR’s Paula Brooks contacted them and according to a Wright State University spokeswoman, the CBF people were actually given an extension on their deadline to file their re-registration.

WSU requires that all university groups register for the year. CBF’s registration ran late, and they were unable to get theirs in on time. There was, according to the information provided by WSU, confusion about the policies. This required that the deadline for their application be extended.

No group has been required to alter their individual constitutions for this year, and they are weighing certain unspecified changes to the campus organizations. However, forcing a religious group to allow those who do not follow their beliefs does not appear to be on the agenda.

At Armstrong Atlantic State University, the Baptist Student Union was allowed to form, but, in order to avoid having to admit those outside their faith, the BSU had to use space off of campus for its meetings. AASU, which is in Savannah, GA, rented them space in a commercial building owned by the college. The fee was minimal, but allowed the group to operate on campus without compromising their faith. Universities, especially state run institutions, are required to allow such groups, and must make accommodation for them if there is a conflict between the group’s faith an the policies of the campus.

AFTAH and FIRE are most likely to be pushing their own agenda to create a controversy with the university.

WSU has made it clear that they support diversity, and that they attempted to resolve this conflict long before this became a problem.

Americans For Truth About Homosexuality even went after Bob Schwartz of the Gay Liberation Network for supposedly supporting the alleged ban on CBF by WSU, a ban LGR has found out does not seem to actually exist in the first place and never has. Unfortunately, the Americans For Truth About Homosexuality do not seem to have a link to where he makes any statements about this, and does not seem to have included any actual letters regarding this issue.

It would seem the Americans For Truth About Homosexuality and FIRE both believe that pushing this argument forward is a good idea even though it appears that the issue was long ago resolved for some reason.  Even if there is not much “Truth” in their allegations.

For the reprint of the press release:
http://americansfortruth.com/news/wright-state-university-bans-christian-group-from-campus.html

http://americansfortruth.com/news/gay-liberation-network-applauds-wright-state-universitys-ban-on-christian-bible-group.html

Picture is from WSU via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BURT-WSU.jpg

The editor of the good schools guide Janette Wallis never expected to get these type of results back. Researchers started by looking at there CVA scores between 2005-2007 they looked at over 71,000 girls and than looked at 647,000 in normal high school.

The results showed that same sex-schools perform better and normal high schools did worse on the test.

Girls who started in mixed schools in primary were put into same sex-schools are doing remarkably better than they would have done if they had stayed in mixed.

Is there any explanation for all this? According to Sue Dunford head teacher of Southfield School for Girls in Kettering she says that “It’s a question of confidence in the way girls develop” “Girls who lack confidence can thrive in girls only schools” She goes on to say that they don’t have boys so theirs no competing or any distractions (what happens if your gay? is the school still a distraction? haha)

Kayla Tate is a 19 year old high school graduate looking to attend Winnipeg Technical for Carpentry. She loves sports,being out doors and is happily dating. Kayla had a 19 year old mid-life crisis and decided that her voice needs to be heard, so she writes to help the LGBT community.

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The student in question, Timothy Morrison, claims that he was harmed by this policy. However, the courts decided that he failed to show how he was harmed by not being allowed to express his views on homosexuality. Morrison, a devout Christian, claims that his religion demands that he speak out against what he sees as being immoral to his particular brand of Christian morality.

The school, at the time, had a policy where by people who used hate speech were required to undergo anti-harassment training. Morrison was never punished. The policy was changed soon after he made a federal case out of it. An exception for speech protected outside of the school was added.

Thus, Morrison, who was never punished under this policy, stated that he felt harmed by the fact that the policy even existed. Morrison, a senior at Boyd County (Kentucky) High School, was represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Conservative legal group. The policy dates back to a lawsuit filed by the BCHS Gay-Straight Alliance.

For additional reading: http://www.365gay.com/news/supreme-court-declines-anti-gay-student-case/

Sei is a trans-lesbian who lives in Vermont and has a strong passion for LGBTI rights. She has a BA in History and her hobbies include sci-fi, anime, fantasy, action movies, video games, and more.”

The girls claimed that they were discriminated against when expelled because of an alleged lesbian relationship after they admitted they had strong feelings for each other. The girls’ lawyers refuse to say if they are practicing homosexuals. In the end, the courts upheld the Christian high school’s right as a private, religious organization to exclude students based on their sexual orientation. John McKay, attorney for California Lutheran, says the school’s goal is to educate based on Christian principles.

The recent findings reflect what comes across as legal discrimination, and you can bet that many in the LGBT community are outraged by this ruling.

LGBTs in religious schools have an organization called HeartStrong which has been following this story since the beginning. This organization has asked the public for help in sending letters to the school since the incident arose back in 2005 and others are now joining in the appeal to the public. The girls, who are now in college, could not be reached for comment. You can read the entire story at L.A. Times online here.

Julie Phineas is a work at home mom of 2 who lives in Southern California. You can find out more about her online by visiting her website at www.juliephineas.com.
]]> http://lezgetreal.com/2009/01/california-christian-school-is-ok-to-expel-lesbians/feed/ 3 http://lezgetreal.com/2008/12/is-your-public-school-too-gay/ http://lezgetreal.com/2008/12/is-your-public-school-too-gay/#comments Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Lez Get Real http://lezgetreal.com/?p=495

“E. Ray Moore is the director of Exodus Mandate, based in Columbia, South Carolina, an organization that urges Christian parents to pull their children out of public schools. Exodus Mandate has spent the past few years trying to win over the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), a Christian denomination with more than 16 million members. Each year the SBC holds a convention at which members vote on various resolutions. Last year, Exodus Mandate introduced a resolution asking SBC parents to conduct a “homosexual school risk audit” of their local public school, a survey to “make Christian parents and pastors more aware of the aggressive homosexual activism being sponsored by many public schools”. The resolution was passed. The “risk audit” claims, among other things, that being homosexual “reduces life expectancy at age 20 by at least 8 to 20 years” or “substantially increases the risk of contracting breast cancer”.” - New Scientist.com

Moore’s bigger goal is to, get this: Destroy Public Education.

Literally, I’m not kidding or twisting his intentions. This is literally what would make him happy. His mission is to get 30% of children to leave the public school system, which he believes will crash it. This is his idea of a “renewal” for society. Liberty University is on board, offering online classes for home schooling parents for grades 3-12. Then they can go on to Patrick Henry or Liberty, and then on to the US Government.

Here in California, the exodus is about to be huge if Moore gets his way.

Senate Bill 777, which requires only positive portrayals of homosexual, bisexual, transgendered, and other alternative lifestyle choices has possibly opened the floodgates. California Exodus, run by the pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Yorba Linda, Ron Gleason has the goal of withdrawing 600,000 students in CA alone. Check out their video of “homosexual brainwashing” Here. An estimated 166,000 students are homeschooled in California already, and almost a million CA kids might end up being taught by people who have never even seen a teaching degree. There’s no check in some states to see if the parents themselves even made it out of High School. Six Hundred Thousand more. That’s about 10% of the entire student population here. That’s a lot of homeschooled courses to sell, huh? Evangelicals leaders sure know how to pump money out of their constituents.

Remember this poor kid from Jesus camp?

Patrick Henry, about 60 kilometers north-west of Washington DC, is the type of school these children are being groomed for.

From there, they are funneled into Washington, where they are expected to realign America to their “Christian” values. This is why the state needs educated citizens, because they vote and help make policy regarding others. Democracy only dies choking on ignorance. Outrageous textbooks being used at home like Science of the Physical Creation which think: “Evolution is a concept that attempts to free man from God and his responsibility to his Creator.” are not the equivalent of a fair education to a child.

It’s a form of abuse to refuse education to children in my book, and isn’t that why we have laws saying kids must attend?

This is why unregulated Homeschooling used to be essentially illegal. That is until 1983, when two evangelical attorneys, Michael Farris and Mike Smith, fought to remove laws that parents be certified to teach their own children. With a lot of Reagan Republican friends in high places their political lobbying managed to make home-schooling legal in all 50 states within 10 years.

The National Home Education Research Institute estimates that between 1.9 million and 2.4 million children were educated at home during the 2005–2006 school year.

In 1990, that number was 300,000 in this country. This is not me bashing religion. This is me calling out a political organization hiding behind the mask of religion. Tax exempt status for these kinds of depraved teachings isn’t something we offer to the skinheads white power beliefs, so why give it to right wing fanatics hell bent on destroying the lives of LGBT families? You wanna get involved in politics and change this country, fine, go ahead and try. But do not ask for a hand out from the Government you so despise. Why would you want our dirty, pink money anyway?

Oh right, its because you’re a fraud. A greedy, hypocritical, and actually godless (unless you count the almighty dollar) fraud.

There needs to be strict regulations and requirements for parents who want to teach at home immediately. If not, remove the tax credits given in some states to parents who are supposed to be using that money to “educate” their children. Remove the tax exemption status of any religion that ceases to be a place of worship, and instead becomes a factory pumping out a generation brainwashed children to mold America to the rich Evangelical Leader’s ideals. If you thought eight years under George W. Bush (who was only pretending to be an Evangelical) was bad, try living the rest of your life under an actual Evangelical regime.

Jenime is an artist living in the SF bay area. You can watch her musings and ravings any time by visiting her channel on YouTube.

Colleges like Patrick Henry are the next phase of a decade old conservative homeschooling movement called Exodus Mandate.

The goal is to withdraw mass amounts of children from the public school system and have them raised on a strict Christian world view.

The graduate page of Liberty University (originally Lynchburg Baptist College) claims they have over 50,000 students around the world.

On several occasions, the late Jerry Falwell said his school was “Bible Boot Camp.”

He also instructed Liberty’s students to burn it down if it “ever turned liberal.” You may remember him as the guy who said in 2001, that the September 11 terrorist attack was the fault of: “pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America.”

Remember this stuff when people cry that boycotting is wrong. Remember this stuff when no one is motivating you to do something about what’s happening to our community. These guys are playing a game with our lives every day. They dedicate not only their lives, but the lives of their children to creating an Evangelical America. They are training a generation with the mission of finding ways to use the legal system to take away our rights. They have a very real goal of training tomorrow’s supreme court justices. What are we doing? Waiting for a leader to pop up and tell us what to do?

Do we really need a singular face and voice in order to save our families from oppression? Do you need people telling you what to do, like these Liberty students? There is something you can do every day. You can send a million postcards, and light a million blue lights, but we all need to do more. We need to stand up in our communities, in our businesses, and in the political arena and let people see that we’re everywhere. On December 10th the next big protest will be “A Day Without A Gay”. I know the economy is tough, and missing a day of work will cost something to each of us, but it is so important that America realizes that we are a part of everyone’s lives. We do the jobs that need to get done. We are your doctors, your cops, your fire fighters, your teachers, your customers, and your equal in every way.

And I know it’s the crazy holiday shopping season, but try not to buy anything. Our economic contribution to this country is huge, and it’s being taken for granted. Why not buy something from an LGBT business on the 10th? That sounds good to me. Don’t buy your newspaper that morning, don’t go to Starbucks, make your coffee at home and spend the morning off with your partner warm under the covers. See? Protesting doesn’t have to be no fun.

They think that 50,000 students is an unbeatable force.

Let them see us by the millions.

Millions of people they need in order for this country to thrive, the same as every other citizen.

Let’s wake them up!

They can’t see us for who we are, but we can’t allow them to hide behind ignorance.

Let’s create an undeniable wave, “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore!”

Start emailing people now please! Text everyone you know, gay or straight, whether you think they’ll do anything or not. December 10th, we step away from our cogs in the American economy and say enough is enough. You can’t ask us to work this hard to be treated this poorly. This is the land of opportunity and freedom because the people have always stood up and demanded it would be. Not should, Would. We do not take no for an answer, and we do not stop until real change happens.

These forces are here. They are not going to disappear because the democrats won in 2008. In fall 2008, 445 graduate students were enrolled on campus, and 992 graduate students were enrolled through the Distance Learning Program at Jerry Falwell’s college. These students have one goal in life: to redefine America as an Evangelical Christian nation.

This isn’t game over for them, it’s “one game in a playoff”.

Complacency is death. Don’t sit back and wait for the supreme court to save you. These kids may one day fill it. They have tons of money and power to propel them.

I’ll leave you with a creepy-scary Liberty U promo with flames everywhere at the end.

It’s almost surreal that this is really going on, and it’s easy to push it out of your mind. It’s almost too much to take. It’s crazy. Really, and truly crazy. And though we didn’t ask to be born into times like this, we have a responsibility to be the ones who stand up and stop it.

History shows us all to well what happens if we don’t stop a fascist movement from hijacking our country.

Jenime is an artist living in the SF bay area. You can watch her musings and ravings any time by visiting her channel on YouTube.

Would you say that being able to send your child to school without fear of his persecution an inalienable right?

When you see your child’s face driving away on the school bus, does your heart flutter with anxiety? Would you be able to live that way? Would the kid, for that matter?

This story is sadly similar to what’s happening to lot’s of children who’s parents are of the same sex. De-humanize the parent, and of course the rest of the family will suffer.

A young boy at Dolores Elementary, in CA was jumped and beaten by two other boys. These young kids had found out that he had two Moms, and let him know what they thought about it with their fists. The teacher’s of the school, well aware of the situation, sent the three boys to the principal’s office.

Now what would you want your Principal to do here?

I know! You would want her to: not call you, not punish the boys who attacked your son, not call their parents either, and not do anything but wave them back to class and out of her hair.

No parent would want that, on either side I would hope, but that’s exactly what she did. Principal Barraza, with a work record that reads like a rap sheet if bad teaching were a crime, was not surprised when one of the two Moms showed up with some serious concerns. Unfortunately, the concern for one of her students was not shared.

In an exclusive LGR interview with one of the parents, I received this account of what followed:

“The principal, Anna Barraza, told my wife that she didn’t contact the other parents because they were “working parents”, insinuating that we’re not. She gave no excuse as to why I wasn’t contacted, but said that she would look into the situation.”

I personally have never heard the phrase “working parents” come out of any serious educator’s mouth in my life. Nothing was done to protect her son in the future, and nothing was done to educate those young boys about violence. The school year was almost out, and it’s heartbreaking to hear how the family had to cope.

“We told our son basically, if that happens again just RUN. Isn’t that sad!? It was almost the end of the school year, and he would be in a new class soon, we simply braced ourselves and prayed nothing else would happen. It pains me as a parent to know that my son handled the situation in the right way, and so did my wife; but in the end the principal did nothing to protect my son from this happening again. What kind of message is that sending to my son? It makes me feel like I failed to protect him, but what can I do? If I could I would go to his school every day to be there when he needed help – but wait – that’s Anna Barraza’s job. Basically, all we can do is teach our son how to weather the storm.”

Apparently, the teachers at Dolores Elementary were having problems with Anna Barraza as well. That May the teachers themselves began a campaign to have Principal Barraza removed. They handed out a petition citing grievances such as:

- speaks to students in a demoralizing manner

- causes stress to the parents, students, teachers, and staff

- does not work as a team player to help problem solve to the benefit of the children

There was even an incident where children went missing, a teacher had to twist Barrazza’s arm to call the cops, and school police thankfully found them and told the Principal to contact their parents. Barazza ignored that duty, and while waiting for the parents to pick up their children, did not inform them of the incident that day. At first, some parents were too afraid of the Principal to sign the petition, in fear of retaliation against their children. The situation was so stressful on everyone associated with the school, that the teacher’s went an extra step to hold a rally at a nearby park to inform the parents. Stories began coming to light, not only were the teacher’s suffering under Barraza, but so were the kids. Stories usually reserved for nightmares about school were happening at their school. Attendance was huge, and our two Mom’s found some insight into the psychology of their principal:

“In regards to assaults on campus, one parent mentioned Principal Barraza stated that there were too many to keep track of which is why she just sends the kids back to class without calling the parents or documenting the incident. Come to find out this happened at two other schools. She was ousted in a matter of days. At this point I could see the gravity of the entire situation, and what was at stake… Principal Barraza is a danger to our students.”

Fired up and ready for change, the parents orchestrated a sit-in outside the school. Protests disrupted summer school again and again. The parents and teachers held weekly protests outside their district’s office and protested at the main building downtown. When the media showed the Principal on tv it was all about insinuating that the teacher’s whiners stating they didn’t want to follow her rules, forget that the parents were involved at all.

It became apparent, that when a school board tolerates this kind of mess, that it is not simply the policies of the Principal at work here.

“I saw one person ask the district supervisor a question after the meeting, and she responded ‘are you a parent or a teacher?’ the woman said ‘ I am both’ and the supervisor (rolling her eyes) responded ‘okay thank you for your time we will be in touch’ and then proceeded to leave the room. The message that night was that in the two former cases [where Barazza was fired] there were parent petitions, and in this case there wasn’t so no big deal. They completely overlooked the point that there was no parent only petition because in most cases parents have not been notified if something has happened to their child. They mentioned that they were looking into the situation, but a student was shot at Washington high school so that had priority. They completely overlooked that fact that this is what we are trying to PREVENT from happening at our school. One parent stood up and said he felt like this situation was a ticking time bomb. “

The principal started a new year at the school despite everyone’s efforts. When she did, she made sure to flex her dominance over the people at Dolores Elementary. Retaliation against teachers who have spoken out against her has been noted. The kids were not left out of the tantrum either, and have also been the focus of her anger. It started with canceling recess on the kids often with no reason or notice. Then she canceled the school bake sale, citing the economy.

Let me say that again: She canceled a fundraiser for the school on account of the economy. Of course this sparked further outrage, and the protests continued. People were not going to let this woman continue to push them or their children around. The teachers, union reps and parents sat in the main office after school as another peaceful way to protest against the principal. Instead of dealing with it, she cried to the police, and had a security guard posted outside her office. I’d like to know how much that cost the taxpayers. One of our Mom’s said something that sums it all up pretty well:

“All I could think of was she called them faster than she did for the kids who were missing!”

We have seen so many kids hurt because of homophobia. Every educator worth their salt knows about the little boy who was shot in Oxnard on Valentine’s day. We all remember Leticia Green, the boy who was shot at school because he liked to dress like a girl. Violence is up, and it is the negligence of the highest paid and lowest qualified administrators in our system that is to blame. Is there is anywhere safe for our children but our own homes?

FOX 11 News Video Clip: Principal Protest
There will be if we stop taking the short end of the stick. I’m not talking just about our community. I’m speaking to all parents, and all the great teachers busting their ass for half of what this loony principal makes. It’s a disgrace. The educational system is the backbone of our society. To turn it into a breeding ground for discrimination, violence, and stress is a disgrace. We need to start weeding these people out of the system for the sake of our kids, and their poor teachers. People like this are sucking out funds, wasting them, and impairing our ability to succeed in the future.

All I know is, the parents and teachers will win this fight in the end. Just keep an eye out that Anna Barazza doesn’t end up in your school next. The real threat to our school children is unprofessional, passionless educators like her. I encourage any and all parents to stand up in their community for their childrens education. And if anyone is giving you any crap, make sure to let us know here on LezGetReal. We got your back Mom’s and Mom’s, Dad’s and Dad’s, and every other kind of family out there. Families need to stick together to finally stand up and demand the education system we all deserve.

Jenime is an artist living in the SF bay area. You can watch her musings and ravings any time by visiting her channel on YouTube.