Replies

Individual citizenship, color-blind citizenship, equal before a law that is blind to your personal circumstances, once you stray from this principle anything becomes possible.

We all count ourselves as members of one group or another, but the law must be blind to this. Our citizenship must be independent of this, or liberty as we know it erodes, corrodes, crumbles. And is gone.

Individual citizenship, color-blind citizenship, equal before a law that is blind to your personal circumstances, once you stray from this principle anything becomes possible.

I tend to agree with you on that, but we've never really tried too hard to honor that "principle" when it comes to public education. Every state has made a commitment to provide public education to all kids, but by organizing and providing that education through small, local school districts, states have been able to usually provide greater than average levels of resources to students in wealthy school districts. "Personal circumstances" (at least in the form of where a student's parents happen to live) can play a major role in what kind of public education a state affords to a student.

Here's an interesting email I got:

Ms. Crawford,

Lady, you're too deluded for words.

Look, I'm a gay man who adhores the bitter, self-absorbed and unsatisfiable radicals on the gay left. I'm leery of the creation of the Harvey Milk school, because it fosters and perpetuates this kind of identity politics in youngsters who really need to understand that there's a whole big world out there beyond their genitals. So there we agree. But when you start in with that preposterous canard about how being gay is a "lifestyle choice", and then compare it to choosing to your wear different colored socks in high school, I have to conclude that I'm dealing with a genuinely stunted mind.

I knew my sexual orientation when I was 15. Nobody coerced me, nobody propagandized me, (this was in 1970, please note) and nobody molested and in so doing "recruited" me. I was well aware of society's and my peers' view of homosexuality, and believe me, if I could have changed my sexuality as easily as you changed your socks (Mother of God, what a thimble-witted comparison!!) I would have: Anything to get away from the torment. Please understand, what I went through was no great trial in the annals of human suffering. That's one reason why I don't care for the self-dramatizing of the professional faggots. We all have our crosses to bear, and mine wasn't all that big. But seeing you trot out that hoary, nonesensical charge that gayness is a just a lifestyle choice make me conclude that your skills as a public thinker are not nearly as well developed as you imagine.

Carlton Casey