Homosexual activists, GOProud attack Jim DeMint: "Trying His Best to Make Alvin Greene Look Sane"

That is certainly true. My point only is that I think the over-the-top attacks on those conservatives who don’t agree about this issue may be out of line — of course I feel that way about a lot of how we argue things; it bothers me that we can’t actually discuss an issue so much as having each side call each other names.

But it also points out to a lot of people who don’t know it (I certainly didn’t before DeMint’s statement) that a state actually tried this decades ago, and failed, partly because of bipartisan opposition across the political spectrum.

And I guess while the gay political agenda is more obvious these days, the acceptance of gays is much higher today than in 1978. So in my opinion, if you couldn’t pass a law like this in 1978, your chances of doing this today are nil.

I don’t think that negates expressing the desire for it to be so, just the practical implications of that desire.

I think if you want your children raised in such an environment, you will have to find a private school that holds to your philosophy (that’s the universal “you”, not you personally).

I think that those who strongly push ideas like this should recognize a political reality. Look at how most of us here find Phelps and his “Westboro Baptist” church pronouncements repulsive. Well, for a vast majority of the country, a push to ban gay teachers from public schools would be viewed in that same manner. The message may not be the same, but it will be perceived as the same.

We can win on practical matters such as gay marriage, because marriage stands on it’s own, and opposition to gay marriage is based on logic and common sense, not on any revulsion against gays or a desire to discriminate against a lifestyle we find repugnant.

If you go much beyond that, you will lose the majority support, because most people do not want to discriminate against people they find offensive, so long as their offensiveness is kept out of the public square. Smoking is bad, but most people don’t care if someone smokes so long as they do it in private, and wouldn’t push to ban smokers from teaching, even though we don’t want kids to smoke.

Still, I am more disturbed by the support some conservatives give to the idea that we should ban single mothers from teaching, while allowing them to keep their jobs if they quietly abort their children.

Which is an important distinction. I may well wish that teachers were of good moral character, without looking for a law to enforce my idea of morality.

I certainly wish teachers would keep quiet about their sexuality, and I’d rather women and men only have sex when married, so children have a biological mother and father. But that doesn’t mean I would support firing a teacher if she got pregnant ou of wedlock, or had decided to live with a man without getting married. Bad choices, but not something I’d want a law about.

Yes, sometimes discrimination is good. It’s unfortunate that there isn’t another word that means the same thing with less negative baggage. I would support requiring teachers to remain silent about their personal lives, at least elementary school teachers. They are there to teach kids subjects using curricula provided by the school system, not to talk about their own private lives.

I don’t remember knowing anything about my teachers from when I was in school, and I wouldn’t have wanted to know.

By high school, I think the kids are at least to the point where they are going to figure things out in any case.

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