Posted on 06/26/2007 11:44:45 PM PDT by Stoat
Tuesday, June 26th 2007, 10:53 AM
Superintendent Marion A. Bolden issued an apology to the student, Andre Jackson, according to a statement released by the district on Monday.
"The decision was based, in part, on misinformation that Mr. Jackson was not one of our students and our review simply focused on the suggestive nature of the photograph," the district said.
"Superintendent Marion A. Bolden personally apologizes to Mr. Jackson and regrets any embarrassment and unwanted attention the matter has brought to him," according to the statement.
The district said it would reissue an "un-redacted version" of the 2007 yearbook to any student of East Side High School who wants one.
Bolden, through a spokeswoman, declined a request for an interview.
At a news conference organized by Garden State Equality, a gay rights group, Jackson said he was disappointed that the superintendent had not told him she was sorry face-to-face and in public.
Because of that, he said he didn't accept her apology as sincere.
"I would accept an apology - a public apology," said Jackson, who found out about the district's statement through the media.
District spokeswoman Valerie Merritt later said Bolden would meet on Tuesday with Jackson.
But Garden State Equality Chairman Steven Goldstein said Jackson had not heard from the district by 10 p.m. Monday.
"They don't have a meeting set up, it's not true," Goldstein said. "The school district hasn't contacted him. Whether they reach out to him on Tuesday remains to be seen."
Jackson said his teachers, classmates and his parents all knew he was gay and that his sexual orientation was never a problem at school.
"I've never had to deal with this before," he said. "It's shocking. It's crazy."
In addition to Garden State Equality, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey also condemned actions taken by the district last week.
"With so many challenges the Newark Public Schools face in educating their students, what a waste that they took the time to teach a lesson in discrimination and censorship instead of equality and free speech," said ACLU-NJ Executive Director Deborah Jacobs.
Previously, Bolden had described the picture, which showed Andre Jackson, 18, kissing boyfriend David Escobales, as "illicit."
"If it was either heterosexual or gay, it should have been blacked out. It's how they posed for the picture," Bolden told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Saturday's editions.
In the 4 1/2-by-5-inch photo, Jackson is seen turning his head back over his right shoulder and kissing Escobales, 19, of Allentown, Pa. It was blacked out after Russell Garris, the district's assistant superintendent who oversees the city's high schools, told Bolden he was concerned that the photo could upset parents.
The photo was among several that appeared on a special personal tribute page in the yearbook.
Jackson, who paid $150 for the page, questioned the decision to black out the photo, noting that the yearbook is filled with pictures of heterosexual couples kissing.
Newark public schools have about 42,000 students.
The district is the state's largest and is one of three in New Jersey that are under state control. It is among 31 districts in the state's neediest areas that get special financial aid.
The only answer is to not allow any kissing pictures, period.
It's a normal way of expressing affection between the sexes
It’s unnecessary for pro-creation,
True, but intense kissing is normally and naturally, considered a sexual act between a man and a woman, and often precedes intercourse.
it’s not part of any other animal’s sex act.
And not necessarily for humans. But it is a normal and natural aspect of male/female sexual relations.
It seems an entirely artificial social construct, not “natural” at all.
That seems a bit of a stretch. Regardless, same sex kissing, as in the photo, is entirely unnatural.
But that is beside my point, because I don’t think the government has a compelling interest to judge pictures based solely on the concept of “natural” vs “unnatural”. If they did, they would ban pictures of girls with hair if it is dyed an “unnatural” color. Or maybe dyed at all, since for each girl “natural” is the color they were born with.
But we're talking about an act that is loaded with significance, while the other is not. The power to, in a sense, co-create with God a new soul, is one of the greatest human powers. Homosexual acts are a grave abuse of this power. While kissing is not an essential aspect of intercourse, it is accidentally, and strongly related. And homosexual kissing is just as strongly and conversely perverse.
My high school yearbook (1982) has a photo with a football player dressed in a cheerleader uniform as a joke. I can’t describe the photo without making it sound terrible, but it’s very funny. Back then it was just considered a joke.
Today it would probably be considered insensitive to crossdressers.
I agree completely.
They should certainly be allowing pictures of Fred kissing his partner Snowball, the sheep. Or Daphne kissing Bowser the dog, a known "hottie".
Ain't nothin' unnatural here folks ! Just move along...
In elementary school there was a talent show where one fellow wanted to dress as a girl and do some silly little show. The teachers wouldn’t allow it, because they were afraid the girls might find it sexist.
Take a look at the current promwear for a real shocker.
I know - and non homeschoolers keep saying to me, don’t you want your kids to have a prom?!!
I understand much of what you’re saying. Once a school system stupidly adopts the homosexual agenda as part of their curriculum (i.e., “Heather Has Two Mommies”) they lose any standing to ban homo kissing from their yearbooks. Of course, it was a mistake to adopt the homosexual curriculum in the first place.
Likewise, Supreme Court rulings such as the Lawrence sodomy case have ramifications far beyond the immediate issue. That’s what some of us tried to tell the libertarians around here who were praising that ruling to the heavens when it came down. We tried to warn them that the ruling would be used to legitimize homosexuality in the schools, and ultimately would lead to a great loss of liberty as laws are enacted forcing landlords to rent to sodomites, restaurants are banned from restricting homo kissing, dating services are hauled into court with the demand that they provide same-sex match-ups, etc.
Those two tragic errors have placed our schools in a position where it would be very difficult to keep homo kissing out of the yearbook. I suppose they could ban all kissing, which wouldn’t be a bad idea, but even that might not work. Homos would go to court and claim the ban on all kissing was designed to keep their kisses out of the yearbook, and there are plenty of judges, including probably Anthony Kennedy based on his bizarre reasoning in Lawrence and Romer vs. Evans, who would agree and would order kissing to be reinstated.
The only way to win this battle is to get more constitutionalists on the courts, but also to never give up the argument that homosexuality is an abnormality. That latter point is where I strongly disagree with you. If we give up that argument, and concede that homosexuality is just as normal and natural as heterosexuality, all is lost. How can we even keep same-sex “marriage” from being imposed on our country if we accept homosexuality as natural? Isn’t the main argument against such “marriages” that they’re not really marriages because two people of the same sex can’t form a NATURAL sexual bond? We aren’t allowed to use the moral argument against homosexuality. “Liberals” simply dismiss it with an assertion that it violates separation of church & state. Once the argument that homosexuality is unnatural is tossed, all we’re left with is the weak argument that we can’t allow same-sex “marriage” because it isn’t traditional. How can that survive a court challenge or even a battle for public opinion?
Most people **DO** find homosexuality to be unnatural and perverted. That, along with the moral arguments, are what drove voters in state after state to pass marriage protection amendments. The fact that officials in “liberal” New Jersey no longer make the case that homosexuality is against nature is the reason this whole mess got to this point.
They should have just not shown pictures of students kissing. They didn’t in our high school year book. They showed couples, but they didn’t show pictures of couples kissing. Homosexual behavior should never be accepted as normal or natural, especially in schools. Unfortunately, the schools have dug themselves into a hole by teaching it as such with books like “Heather Has Two Mommies”. I wonder if they’ll show three girls when group marriage or a guy and two girls when polygamy become legal. It could be an interesting ride.
Agreed on all counts, except for myself at least I would tend to lean toward calling it a ‘very sad and depressing ride’ down into the abyss of corruption, which so many seem to want to force us all.
And let’s not forget about those who profess to have a ‘meaningful relationship’ with a barnyard animal. After all, that sort of ‘relationship’ has an equal level of biological relevance to the human condition as homosexuality has.
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