Posted on 02/08/2002 3:05:41 PM PST by anniegetyourgun
WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation's largest teachers union will ask school districts to protect homosexual students and staff by adopting policies that punish harassment and discrimination.
Under a plan adopted Friday by the National Education Association's board of directors, schools also will be encouraged to develop factual materials for classroom discussions on homosexuality. All staff and students will be encouraged to speak up when they see or experience discrimination based on sexual orientation.
"I think it's a pretty clear signal that the organization recognizes there are some pretty serious needs for gay and lesbian children in school - and employees," said Penny Kotterman, president of the Arizona Education Association. She chairs the NEA's Task Force on Sexual Orientation, which was created last fall to develop the plan.
Kotterman, a middle school special education teacher in the Kyrene School District in suburban Phoenix, said the plan will help schools with difficult issues of student sexuality.
"Staff do need help," she said. "They need professional development, they need good, factual data that helps them deal with these issues."
The union said it could provide "accurate, objective and up-to-date information" on the needs and problems of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students and staff.
A statement by the NEA said the information schools provide should be age-appropriate, nonjudgmental and relevant to subject matter being studied.
Studies indicate that homosexual students have higher dropout and suicide rates and sometimes are treated with hostility by fellow students. NEA President Bob Chase has said gay and lesbian teachers in some states face losing their jobs because of their sexual orientation.
"It is clear that, in too many places, students and education employees who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered face a hostile environment," Chase said Friday in the statement.
A study last year by the University of North Carolina estimated that 5 percent to 6 percent of students 17 or younger, or more than 2 million students, are gay, lesbian or bisexual.
The NEA represents 2.6 million teachers and other school employees.
This is what I never understood about the quiet, maybe even insidious, incursion of "homosexuality" teaching that seems to have come into the schools in the last 10 years.
Even despite the overwhelming evidence that homosexuality is not a "genetic" thing, rather a choice, it's become blindly accepted as a valid instruction of sexuality. I can remember when I was in school, I was taught that homosexuality was not only a choice, but it was defined as a perversion!
It's amazing how much things have changed in the last 10 years, and again, all with no scientific evidence whatsoever!
You are most accurate in your description. "Sex" only occurs with penile/vaginal intercourse. The rest is purely human perversions of reproductive biology and anatomy...
Factual? Did the man say factual? Does that mean it will include the increased likelihood that people with Same-sex Attraction Disorder (SADs) are more likely to molest children, more likely to be violent criminals, and much more likely to catch the always fatal HIV virus than non-SADs.
Will it discuss the fact that SAD has generally been seen to be destructive for individuals and society for all of recorded history? Do you think they will mention how every culture that has moved to accept SADs has fallen within a very short time? Do you think they will discuss the long-term studies of how children do best when raised by both a mom and a dad (as opposed to two moms or two dads or a mom and a dog or whatever)? Will it discuss how the SAD experiment is new and untested while the heterosexual monagomous model is millennia old and well proven?
I won't hold my breath on factual materials.
The union said it could provide "accurate, objective and up-to-date information" on the needs and problems of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students and staff.
Objective, eh? Think they will let in the research that shows the dangers of SAD?
A statement by the NEA said the information schools provide should be age-appropriate, nonjudgmental and relevant to subject matter being studied.
Is it non-judgemental to say that harassing SADs is wrong? Well, I will say it even if it is judgemental. Harassing SADs is wrong. But it is just as wrong to declare they are normal.
Studies indicate that homosexual students have higher dropout and suicide rates and sometimes are treated with hostility by fellow students.
Case in point. I was harassed a lot in school - primarily for getting more good grades than dates. It was pretty merciless, but had nothing to do with SAD. If SADs are more likely to commit suicide, doesn't that indicate that they suffer from a mental disorder?
Shalom.
bttt
Shalom.
Impersonation is a crime.
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