They took his money, and never told him the picture was inappropriate.
Then, after printing the book, they decided the picture was offensive, and MARKED IT OUT WITH A MAGIC MARKER.
Meanwhile, they allowed male/female kissing pictures to remain.
Sorry. I think Homosexual activity is wrong. But the government can’t really be regulating between kisses from different people based on their gender.
And even if they could, they can’t do it after the fact, with no stated policy, when they took his money.
Further, once they had actually PRINTED the picture, what was the point of blacking it out? Suppose there were people offended by the picture. Couldn’t those people have just blacked out the picture themselves?
Of course, those people would say “why should we have to deface our yearbook to keep from being offended?” But since the school had to deface the yearbook anyway, the argument would be a moot argument.
If some parent said they were offended by the picture of a heterosexual couple kissing, because they believed all physical contact was “sex” and was inappropriate until marriage, would the school be OK to use magic marker over all the pictures?
What if there was a mixed-race couple, and some found it offensive to see THEM kissing? Can the school black THAT out?
what if there was a student who had a much older partner? The image of an 18-year-old girl kissing some grissly old man might be offensive. Ban that too?
Then there are the weird hairdos, the funny clothing, the mocking facial expressions. Can we have the school take a pen to anything anybody would be offended by?
Why?
This is the same argument used by television producers. “Just turn off the set.” Instead of Hollywood acting responsibly, it becomes the responsibility of tens of millions of people to turn off the set in order to stop moral waste from being spewed into their living rooms. It’s far more efficient to get at the source of the waste. There is a time and place for individual freedom, but we must also attempt to safeguard public morality, whatever is left of it. We’ve seen a trickle of immorality become a deluge by focusing on individual rights and ignoring the community.
By blacking out the photo, the school sent the message to students that school authorities do not approve of it. By caving in to gay rights activists, they then sent the message that they are spineless when confronted with gay activists. This is not how to fight the gay rights movement. They become stronger by the day while traditional society is asked to back down and step aside.
I have to agree — if the school really had a problem with the picture, they shouldn’t have taken the kid’s money in the first place.
Stop making sense.