Posted on 11/28/2004 12:21:56 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Sunday, November 28, 2004
If administrators of Kentucky's Boyd County school district can't find a way to force all students to attend sexual orientation and gender identity "tolerance training," the American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to take them to court – again.
Ten months ago, the district settled a lawsuit with the ACLU over the right of a student group, the Gay-Straight Alliance, to meet on campus. The year-long litigation strained relations in the conservative northeast portion of the state. In addition to allowing the group to meet on campus after school, district officials agreed that all students, staff and teachers would be required to receive "tolerance training."
The agreement stipulated all would attend "mandatory anti-harassment workshops," including the viewing of an hour-long "training" video covering sexual orientation and gender identity issues for middle and high school students.
But ten months on, one-third of Boyd County students have failed to see the video, and that has the ACLU threatening court action.
"It sounds like the training can't possibly be done," James Esseks, litigation director for the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, tells the Louisville Courier-Journal.
District figures show 105 of 730 middle school students opted out of the training video and 145 of 971 high school students did likewise. On the day scheduled for training, 324 students didn't show up for school.
The current legal snag arises from the fact the original consent decree had no provision for parents exempting their children.
"The schools have great latitude in what they want to teach, including what's in training programs, and the training is now part of the school curriculum," Esseks says. "Parents don't get to say I don't want you to teach evolution or this, that or whatever else. If parents don't like it they can homeschool, they can go to a private school, they can go to a religious school."
"Where are the parental rights in this whole thing?" asks Rev. Tim York, president of the Boyd County Ministerial Alliance and head of Defenders Voice, a community group formed to contest the decree.
According to the group's website, Defenders Voice "incorporated due to the need for protection of both the physical and mental health of our students and citizens." Its members place blame for their current distress squarely on the ACLU:
"We have seen an onslaught of aggressive homosexual activism sweep across our country. In many cases, these activists are supported by the ACLU in their attempts. ... Defenders Voice believes that an organization like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) should not be allowed to tell parents what their children must learn."
The Alliance Defense Fund, a religious-liberties public-interest legal group, has signed on to help Defenders Voice, pledging to sue the school district unless it adopts an opt-out policy for parents this week. Alliance was formed in 1993 with the guidance of several well-known Christian conservatives, including the late Dr. Bill Bright, the late Larry Burkett, Dr. James Dobson, Dr. D. James Kennedy, and the late Marlin Maddoux.
Joe Platt, a Cincinnati attorney representing Alliance, says mandatory training on tolerance for homosexuals violates the right of conscience of parents and students who believe such behavior immoral.
But school district attorney, Winter Huff, insists to the Courier-Journal the decree does not violate parental rights: "Students certainly have the right to believe in what they want to believe, but they don't have the right to act out in inappropriate ways. The point is you don't treat people disrespectfully, you don't pick on people, you don't bully them, you don't make them afraid to come to school."
Meanwhile, only one of the seven plaintiffs in the 2003 lawsuit still remain in school. Six have graduated, and the teacher-adviser for the Gay-Straight Alliance club asked to transfer to another campus.
The ACLU's Esseks is now questioning whether the mandatory video meets the decree's required hour of anti-harassment training. Like one-third of the students in Boyd County schools, he has yet to view it.
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Yeah, they're probably still wrapped around his neck.
One good thing to do is to study some of the Left's own texts. Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky is very good. Some points from his book:
Saul D. Alinsky (1909 - 1967) is the father of modern American radicalism. He developed strategies and tactics that convert the enormous emotional energy of grassroots groups into effective anti-government, anti-institutional, and anti-corporate activism. His ideas are widely taught today as a set of model behaviors and actions, and used with an emotional commitment to victory that goes well beyond those who become his targets.
Grassroots pressure on large organizations will grow. Studying Alinsky's rules and developing empathetic counteractive strategies can level the playing field, especially during high-profile public debate and decision making.
Here are eight of Alinsky's 13 Rules for Radicals. They take advantage of the patterns of weakness, arrogance, repeated mistakes, and miscalculations large organizations and their leadership make:
- Power is not only what you have, but what the target thinks you have.
- Never go outside the expertise of your people. Feeling secure stiffens the backbone.
- Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the target. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety, and uncertainty.
- Make the target live up to its own book of rules. If the rule is that every letter or E-mail gets a reply, send thousands.
- Ridicule, especially against organizational leaders, is a potent weapon. There's no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force concessions.
- A good tactic is one your people enjoy. They'll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They'll even suggest better ones.
- Keep the pressure on. Never let up. Keep trying new tactics to keep the opposition off balance. As the target masters one approach, hit them with something new.
- Pick the target. Target an individual, personalize the attack, polarize and demoralize his/her supporters. Go after people, not institutions. Hurting, harassing, and humiliating individuals, especially leaders, causes more rapid organizational change.
This sampling of Alinsky's rules illustrates why opposition groups enjoy opposing and why corporations and institutions fail to win. Simply put, large organizations are never as committed to victory as their opposition is committed to defeating them. There are few surprises here, just unprepared organizations.
* Adapted from Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky, copyright 1971, revised edition 1989, Vintage Books, New York
The deception and the clever misuse of words and wording is what I placed the emphasis on.
"Tolerance" and/or to "tolerate" lays on the onus on those who do not believe that homosexuality is a normality. In other words, it implies that we are the ones at fault is we refuse to accept homosexuality as a normality.
An "imposition" on the other hand, or to "impose" their beliefs on society lays the burden on those who do the imposing. In other words, "to bring about by force" because we are an unwilling party to an agenda to have a deviancy recognized and accepted as a normality.
It is a clever and cunning misuse of the wording meant to further the homosexual agenda. To make homosexuals the victims in this case.
A few years back, homosexuals asked to be left alone. Fine then. Do what you want to do in the privacy of your own home. No one cares and no one wants to know.
How far will we allow society to take this? If someone wants to sit in their own house and drink their own urine and eat their own poop I could care less. If someone wants to do it in front of you or do it at the office cafeteria would you object? Don't they have a right to do it? If you object does that mean you are intolerant? Maybe you have a "poopaphobia"?
The other example I gave was the intentional misuse of the word and term "phobia" to imply that the problem lies with those opposed for whatever reasons to homosexuality.
I don't and I don't know anyone who truly suffers from "homophobia" - and yet this word is commonly used to describe anyone who may be opposed to homosexuality for whatever the reason may be. The implication because of the wording implies that anyone opposed to homosexuality then suffers from a psychosis or irrational fear.
There are those who practice many deviant sexual practices and they need to be accepted and recognized as a deviancy.
There are those who have sex with animals and I like many others find it disgusting and perverted. I am unwilling to accept it as a normality so does that make me intolerant? Does it make me a "beastaphobe".
I am surely not "afraid" of someone screwing the pooch. Nor do I fear two butt pirates who have an overwhelming desire to impale each other in the unholiest of holes
If I am unwilling to accept these things as a normality, that is my right and the case is closed. If homosexuals or their supporters continue to try to force my acceptance of their behaviour as a normality on either myself or society through whatever means then it becomes an clearly an imposition.
Here are eight of Alinsky's 13 Rules for Radicals. They take advantage of the patterns of weakness, arrogance, repeated mistakes, and miscalculations large organizations and their leadership make: 1 Power is not only what you have, but what the target thinks you have. 2 Never go outside the expertise of your people. Feeling secure stiffens the backbone. 3 Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the target. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety, and uncertainty. 4 Make the target live up to its own book of rules. If the rule is that every letter or E-mail gets a reply, send thousands. 5 Ridicule, especially against organizational leaders, is a potent weapon. There's no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force concessions. 6 A good tactic is one your people enjoy. They'll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They'll even suggest better ones. 7 Keep the pressure on. Never let up. Keep trying new tactics to keep the opposition off balance. As the target masters one approach, hit them with something new. 8 Pick the target. Target an individual, personalize the attack, polarize and demoralize his/her supporters. Go after people, not institutions. Hurting, harassing, and humiliating individuals, especially leaders, causes more rapid organizational change.
The Rainbow Revolution? Is the Orange Revolution in Ukraine a part of this rainbow?
Or one of his lover's necks!
"Cindy you want to lose a public debate with these people just start quoting scripture."
===
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Thank you for your feedback sinanju.
I am a CHRISTian.
A CHRISTian is a follower of CHRIST.
I don't debate CHRISTianity.
I am never embarrassed to be a Christian
or when quoting scripture.
Smiling...I may never be popular, but that's
the way it goes.
God bless you.
Using statistics for gay life expectancy, the gay lifestyle is far more lethal than a four-pack-a-day cigarette habit
Consider the possibility that the officials are on the ACLU side, and deliberately "took a dive" in the suit, to accomplish via the courts something they could not accomplish otherwise
Great post, and great profile page, Cindy.
Check this out from Defenders Voice:
http://www.defendersvoice.net/facts.htm
"If a parent objects to a student’s participation in a particular student activity, any disagreement between the parent and the student shall be resolved by the parent and the student without the involvement of the school district or its employees. The school district shall neither encourage nor discourage a student from participating in the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) based on parental opposition. Note that Kentucky Revised Statue Chapter 530.070 states that , “A person is guilty of unlawful transaction with a minor in the third degree when he persistently and knowingly induces, assists or causes a minor to disobey his parent or guardian."
So if a parent tells his kid not to go to the training session, and the state law backs him up, why are these kids being forced to do so?
I'd be interesting to be a fly on the wall of the Kentucky shop class that had to watch that. O_o
Sick to my stomach...
They might have simply lacked the resources to fight something like this. The ACLUs multimillions and flesh-eating lawers would be a sledgehammer compared to the fly of a defense that a school district in a poor rural area could put up.
Tort reform needs to extend to halting these ACLU legal extortion suits. They only serve to intimidate via "how deep are your pockets."
Exactly right, conservative judges are the way to fight the ACLU and the only reaon to vote GOP. Let's hope the GOP does not back stab us (again) on the issues of appointing conservative judges.
bttt
If the tape is not appropriate, I don't see how it can specifically be required watching. This is not the government mandating its schools to meet particular guidelines but some legal stick-up!
In theory, a level of "tolerance training" is appropriate in any good faith effort to prevent hazings and so forth of certain groups of students. But this tape may not be the best way of doing it. I'm at a loss to understand how the ACLU can demand a particular tape be shown. Can we sue to have "Silent Scream" shown in public school's sex ed?
This is a troubling case.
Bump to the top a few times for the morning crew.
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