Posted on 06/17/2004 7:21:12 AM PDT by esryle
COVINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- When Covington schools Superintendent Jack Moreland saw an advertisement for a Chippendales show, he thought it would be a good morale booster for his female employees. So he shelled out $420 to send 20 female staff members to a Chippendales show to see buff men strip off most of their clothing.
It worked, but it also raised the ire of at least one person, who wrote an anonymous letter to the state Office of Education Accountability accusing Moreland of using school-district funds to pay for the strip show.
Moreland said he spent $420 of his own money for the show - and faxed his personal credit-card receipt to investigators.
"I did it in fun, and they went in fun, and I don't think there was any harm done," he said.
Bryan Jones, a lawyer for the Office of Education Accountability, said he couldn't confirm or deny whether his office looked into a complaint.
The women who attended the show said they enjoyed it.
"We just laughed and laughed and laughed," said Jena Meehan, the superintendent's secretary. "It was a spectacle, to be sure, and to have all of us there was even funnier."
Chippendales is a high-class male revue that became popular in the 1980s. Well-muscled young men wearing bow-ties and bare chests strip to scanty undies for female audiences.
Moreland is the former president of the Council for Better Education, the superintendents group that brought the historic lawsuit that resulted in the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 and its revolutionary reform of Kentucky's public schools.
This is about free American citizens enjoying what amounts to mild burlesque (sans nudity) on their own time, and without being funded by the government.
That's what this is about.
Not about Jews and Nazis.
You think these teachers will advocate killing Jews as a result of watching men dance while wearing Speedos?
What? I'm a mind-reader? Again, it wasn't my statement, so I don't need to answer intent when it didn't come from me.
The better question is, if you're a Dad, are there places you've visited, or that you might be tempted to visit, where it would be better were it not in the sight of neighborhood children who know you? Are there places you've gone that you'd just as soon your minor children (if you have any) should not know about?
What? You don't read? With that particular post, I was not focusing on the worldview of these educators. I was commenting directly on livianne's absolute that "outsiders" can't come in and tell the locals how to live.
Is that clear enough for you, or do I need to provide further explanation before you jump to yet another conclusion?
You expounded on it. I figured you must agree with it.
Are you, or are you not?
"If you're picking me over Barney it can only be because his body is so bad, because this guy has got the sexiest moves I've ever seen."
Livianne's Top Four Commandments (as revealed on this thread)...There are likely more, but I haven't uncorked her entire moral code yet:
(1) Thou shalt not judge (she said judgmentally).
Citation: "I could SWEAR good Christians didn't judge others." (post 251) Judging is "pretty unChristian to me." (post 217)
Comment: Actually, Jesus did tell people to judge after telling others not to judge. He told them to Judge righteously and to judge them "by their fruit." We are not to judge folks' motivations (we don't know them) and we are not to judge on surface issues like skin color. Otherwise, the Bible is full of passages about discernment.
(2) "Outsiders" shalt not judge locals' behavior.
Comment: Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat and an "outsider" to both Hungary where he was assigned and to the Nazis, did not simply oppose the Holocaust. He opposed all kinds of levels of treatment (some involved dignity issues) aimed at Jews. Wallenberg, an outsider, stood up to the Nazis on many different "fronts" involving multiple issues.
(3) "I don't want appropriate behavior for everyone defined by just one or two people." (Post 233)
Comment: Have you told Jesus about this standard of yours? Was He offended by this sovereign decision of yours that limits His role in defining appropriate behavior for everyone?
(3a) See also Post 210: "I do have an interest in keeping appropriate behavior from being defined by one or two people with particularly narrow views." So an offshoot Commandment would be: "Only those with particularly broad views should attempt to participate in defining appropriate behavior...I mean, yeah, we'll tolerate your annoying moral voice, but our subjective eval of your views as 'narrow' automatically boots you from the behavior definition committee."
(4) "You can tell people what they did is immoral all you want, so long as you let them walk away when they feel like it."
Comment: What? I'm going to handcuff & hold 'em as moral hostages otherwise?
Translation: "Let them walk away" really means two things: (1) "Letting them walk..." means establishing a pretty high bar for yielding Accountability. Accountability = only local group accountability; individuals, particularly narrow-minded individuals who live beyond the imaginary concentric circle, are excluded from attempting to yield one-on-one accountability; and (2) "Let them walk away" is another way of saying "Live and let live."
Remove the plank from your own eye my friend.
I think a teen's desire to have irresponsible sex has NOTHING whatsoever to do with any teacher, except if they are having sex with the teacher.
It is possible that a teacher could glorify premarital sex. Now, can you connect that to Chippendales? Because that's the issue here.
I will answer this for my husband. The answer is yes, and we don't tell our children about them. The problem is that Danny would be so outraged that he'd tell everyone in the neighborhood, thus damaging my children while pretending to be so holy.
Would the world be a better place if NO ONE ever did anything that isn't acceptable for children to see? (We'll excuse marital sex here). Sure! But it would be the elimination of the murders, rapes, and drugs that would be the major factor. Stopping a bunch of middle aged women from walking into a Chippendales would probably have very little effect.
In this world where children are ignored by working parents, shuttled between divorces and mom and daddy's new shack ups, exposed to alcoholism and drug abuse, you're concerned about the effect of teachers going to Chippendales. Seems silly to me.
That's exatly my point. Teachers engaging in legal activity outside of school hours/premises does not affect their suitabilty to teach, even thought some sections of the community really strongly feel it is morally improper.
You and I seem to agree on that.
But those who want their viewpoint enforced, follow the ptonciple of "What *I* approve of is OK, and gets a pass, even thought a majority disapproves as strongly as I do about private behaviour I want sanctioned"
Moreland is now mulling over an offer to become the new Athletic Director at the University of Colorado.
The question you should ask yourself is "What would Ronald Wilson Reagan do ?"
Australian. A working journalist. A moderate. And proud of all three.
No, you are not Australian. Real Australians fought with us against Fascism in WWII. You are part of The Enemy Within.
No, you are not Australian. Real Australians fought with us against Fascism in WWII. You are part of The Enemy Within.
In this world where...
...men & women look to titillation elsewhere beyond finding a partner or investing in the partner they already have;
...where folks escape into internet porn & engorge themselves on 4-7 hrs. a day of escapist, risque TV & movies;
...where some folks are introduced to eventual sex addictions by the risque "adult entertainment industry" (which includes Chippendale's, no matter how tame, funny, or burlesque-like folks want to present it)...after all, burlesque has been around for a long time dating back to wild-west days and it's always been linked to the prostitution industry;
...where we already have few role models of whole people of integrity (unlike previous generations, I might add) and the remaining few continue to opt out of wanting to present themselves as wholesome role models for the next generation;
...where wives can't compete w/airbrushed porn models & shameless acts other women are only too quick to perform before the camera, nor w/the smoky images & cheap thrills presented in strip & lap-dance bars;
...where husbands aren't Chippendale hunks who add only one further reminder to wives as to why their husbands don't measure up to a wife's ever elusive expectations;
...where educators over the past few years have made headlines for earning extra income as prostitutes or going to swing clubs in Florida or (many) having sex changes or (many more) having sex w/students, there comes a point when the headlines have been amassed enough that it tends to present a corporate reputation of a profession that is no longer flattering;
...your lack of concern over these educators' endorsement of the adult entertainment industry seems to confirm that the conscience which once made us sensitive to these things has been seared and disengaged. And such an endorsement it is. Any business we do business with is an investment in that business.
If I pay $ to a babysitter who I know is turning around & taking that very $ down the street to the Crack House then I'm investing in her known drug habit. Likewise, these educators not only invested in the adult entertainment industry, they've given a rousing endorsement of it that every kid in that school now knows.(They might as well have done a Chippendale's commercial)
This has the same effect as educators showing R-rated, expletives-not-deleted movies in the classroom (which other educators repeatedly do) and then looking foolish when these same educators try to crack down on students who then use the same exact words in the classroom. Once you sanction such words as fair game for class instruction, then a teacher has surrendered the moral high ground for cracking down on similar verbiage bantered about in the classroom.
Likewise, a sex-ed teacher at this very school can't maintain a double standard. She can't pretend that it's okay for females to be catered to by the adult entertainment industry and that males are to live by a different standard. And the adult entertainment industry has not accumulated a corporate reputation for promoting spousal faithfulness or of lowering the STD rate, etc.
Therefore any endorsement this educator makes of an industry that actually serves to (at least indirectly) increase the STD rate is irresponsible.
The bottom line: The one verse Paul repeats in 1 Cor. is "Everything is permissible" (for the Christian)--in other words, we don't live legalistic lives. The moral code is not the main driver of our ethical behavior (the relationship with Christ is). Paul, though, adds a "but" to his "everything is permissible." "But not everything is beneficial." "Everything is permissable," he then says yet again, "but not everything is constructive." (1 Cor. 10:23).
Was it permissible for these educators to go to Chippendales? Many have already made the argument here that the answer to that is "yes." Was it beneficial? I say, "no." Was it constructive? I say, "no" & especially was not constructive in the lives of the children these educators have just educated them on re: what's a proper approach to the adult entertainment industry? Lives are too short to go around doing unbeneficial, non-constructive things.
_I_ didn't say thou shalt not judge, I just said I thought you weren't sposed to. And I was corrected - I never read the New Testament, so I do admit I was incorrect about that as a point of biblical reference. However, I still stand by the fact that making an overall judgement about a person based on this one event which harmed nobody is not a very nice thing for ANYONE to do, Christian or otherwise. BUT - that isn't an absolute standard, it's a guideline - I don't judge people on one piece of information, as you obviously do, unless that one piece of information is absolutely damning, like they killed someone and hacked them to bits. This doesn't fall in that category.
(2) "Outsiders" shalt not judge locals' behavior. Comment: Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat and an "outsider" to both Hungary where he was assigned and to the Nazis, did not simply oppose the Holocaust. He opposed all kinds of levels of treatment (some involved dignity issues) aimed at Jews. Wallenberg, an outsider, stood up to the Nazis on many different "fronts" involving multiple issues.
your selective quoting is clever, but also manipulative and a clear sign of someone who is not willing to debate an issue head on. I didn't say outsiders shall not judge locals behavior, I said that people outside a community don't get to decide FOR the community if the actions of a person or persons within that community deserve censure. Now, before you get ridiculous, I do not extend this to law breaking - so theft, murder, rape, these things can be judged by everyone because they are codified into our laws. Perhaps you assign the exact same standards to all situations, but rational people do not. As for your Wallenberg point, it was idiotic the first time and it's just getting worse. I am at this point beginning to find offensive your insistence on linking the mass murder six million Jews as well as six million other people from various walks of life (Gypsy, Jehovah's Witness, Homosexual, Mentally Ill, etc) with 20 teachers going to see a burlesque show.
3) "I don't want appropriate behavior for everyone defined by just one or two people." (Post 233) Comment: Have you told Jesus about this standard of yours? Was He offended by this sovereign decision of yours that limits His role in defining appropriate behavior for everyone?
considering I think Jesus was a nice guy in his time and nothing more, no, I haven't told him about it. I'm JEWISH, and therefore your constant discussion of Jesus is not relevant to me. Besides, if you believe him to be your lord and saviour, you can't exactly define him as a "person" which means he falls outside of what I said anyway.
Translation: "Let them walk away" really means two things: (1) "Letting them walk..." means establishing a pretty high bar for yielding Accountability. Accountability = only local group accountability; individuals, particularly narrow-minded individuals who live beyond the imaginary concentric circle, are excluded from attempting to yield one-on-one accountability; and (2) "Let them walk away" is another way of saying "Live and let live."
how terrible - I want people to live and let live so long as no one is hurting anyone else, which NO ONE is here. What a bastard I am. And you can yield all the one on one accountability you want within your own community, but you still don't get to decide for other parents if these teachers are suitable to teach THEIR children. If you try to, you are saying your judgement is superior to theirs, and I don't see where you get off saying that.
Sometimes I type faster than my brain works... A middle age problem I have.
It is both. The primary job falls to the parent. But it's the parent's job to ensure that the public school teacher who is entrusted with the kid 5 days a week demonstrates good morals.
If the parent fails to do this, they are failing to ensure that the kid is taught appropriately. That is too much time away from the parent not to ensure that they have good role models during that time.
"but your activities inside the classroom (at least what you've shown here) are more reprehensible than theirs. "
Oh yes, studying the Declaration of Independence is reprehensible. Giving them all the facts and teaching them to think critically about evolution is reprehensible. I'm soooooooooo dangerous!!!!
No because what I teach my kids, is that their religion has rejected God's plan of salvation. There is NOTHING good in that religion. It doesn't matter how many of them really believe in peace. It doesn't matter how many of them give to the poor. Without God, without obedience to God and acceptance of His plan, there is NO good. It's all in vain. Everything they do that appears from human standards to be good is in vain because it is in support of a religion whose fundamental tenets are a LIE. It leads to spiritual death, whether it ever produces a suicide bomber or not.
And that is really the important lesson that I try to teach my kids. The suicide bombers help make the case, but I didn't gloss over the fact that there are many muslims who aren't suicide bombers. In fact, I pointed it out, but also pointed out that because they have rejected Jesus, they will die hoping to be judged by their works. And sadly, they will be.
That's another one of those verses that gets misinterpreted by the "don't judge me" crowd.
Jesus never said, "Don't try to remove the mote from your friend's eye." He said, "Make sure you can see clearly before you do."
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