Will California Governor Jerry Brown side with fanatics or fact in gay history fight?
California legislatures recently passed the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act, legislation that requires schools include LGBT contributions in their social studies courses.
Even though over a week has passed since the state’s Assembly signed off on the bill, California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, still hasn’t signed the landmark legislation, giving both left and right plenty of room to plead their case.
LGBT group Equality California has called on its allies to flood Brown’s office with support for the legislation. “This critical law would ensure that students in public schools learn about the LGBT civil rights movement and the contributions of LGBT people to other movements and to society,” wrote the group’s executive director, Roland Palencia, in an email to supporters.
“With this bill, we will have the opportunity to define who we are, instead of being defined by harmful messages filled with bigotry that dehumanize us.”
Conservative opponents aren’t as measured in their alarmist messaging: the right wing California Family Council claims “blatant pro-homosexual history curricula on innocent young children,” and the alarmingly-named Save California calls the history legislation “sexual brainwashing,” and claims that the bill “prohibits teachers from providing students with the facts about these lifestyles.”
Said the group’s president, Randy Thomasson, “This sexual brainwashing bill would mandate that children as young as 6 years-old be told falsehoods — that homosexuality is biological, when it isn’t, or healthy, when it’s not.” His evidence? Some gay people, like every other human who doesn’t practice safe sex, contract HIV/AIDS.
Education has become a hot battlefield for culture wars as of late, largely from the conservative end of the political spectrum: Tea Partiers are hoping to enlist the Mormon Church to launch a constitutionalist crusade in our nation’s schools, and the Texas Board of Education last year approved text books that push a social conservative slant.
And, yes, California’s FAIR Education Act was just the same: political groups, in this case Democratic lawmakers and their liberal constituents, pushing a curriculum that helps their cause. Unlike the Texas and Tea Party examples, however, the FAIR Education Act wants to broaden education’s scope, not restrict it.
As Carolyn Laub, executive director of California’s Gay-Straight Alliance Network, said, “[The bill] is a victory not only for the LGBT youth in California who have been fighting to be heard in Sacramento and represented in their history classes, but also for all California youth who deserve to learn a fair and accurate account of California and U.S. history.”
Governor Brown now has six days to make a decision on the bill; inaction will render it null and void. Brown has supported LGBT rights in the past, including working against Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in California, and one can only hope he’ll do so again.
If not, then he’s siding with a group of discriminatory fundamentalists and will find his own history forever tarnished.
July 13, 2011 at 9:10 pm, Joe said:
the black-and-white nature in which this article presents the issue comes off as, well, hella ignorant. there are many other, frankly more important pieces of history that aren’t studied in public schools either, such as countless genocides, thorough examinations of the horrors of imperialism in latin america, the ties of the JFK assassination to today’s military industrial complex, etc. (the list goes on).
yes, LGBT history should be taught in schools. yes, the groups opposing it on account of some moral prejudice against homosexuality are in the wrong. but once you start legislating what is and isn’t taught in schools, where do you draw the line? is the gay rights movement really 1st on the list of important historical facts that public school students in california are missing out on?
July 13, 2011 at 10:42 pm, Jake Weinraub said:
I definitely agree that the way most students are taught American history is super problematic, and it’s unfortunate that most students never learned how fucked up the US really is until they seek out that education on their own or are lucky enough to learn more in college. That’s a HUGE issue to tackle.
Andrew is presenting here a call for accountability to Gov. Brown to cut the crap and sign the legislation already. Teaching some form of LGBT history could have an immeasurable effect on the way countless queer students understand their history… and the arguments against it are a joke.
My only hope is that the history is taught inclusively…. that students won’t just be learning the whitewashed Stonewall –> Milk –> AIDS –> gay marriage narrative and are introduced to more complicated histories and figures.
July 17, 2011 at 2:34 pm, Davis238 said:
I am glad I made a choice to not send my children to the public school system. People who are homosexual and those who endorse them both know how terribly wrong and immoral it is but throw it to the wind. Glad I won’t bend or bow to this law and my children will know what is right and wrong.
July 17, 2011 at 2:34 pm, Davis238 said:
I am glad I made a choice to not send my children to the public school system. People who are homosexual and those who endorse them both know how terribly wrong and immoral it is but throw it to the wind. Glad I won’t bend or bow to this law and my children will know what is right and wrong.
July 13, 2011 at 10:21 pm, Amalgamate77 said:
Joe-discuss teh article, not what isnt in it. No one states that including black history in schools shoudl somehow take second par alongside otehr matters. If you feel its important, then contact your legislators. The truth is, millions of gays are persecuted because peopel dont know gays, dont respect them or are only sppn fed lies by the far right religious kooks. This is a great step in teh right direction. I mean, who can argue that teachign kids about Mark Bingham, a gay man, was a hero on 9/11? of that Alann Turning, a gay man, invente dteh computer or Alexander teh great, a bisexual man, ruled most of teh known world centuries ago? Every step counts-get on board
July 17, 2011 at 2:40 pm, Davis238 said:
I am not getting on board and millions are persecuted? I was persecuted when I was growing up and I am from the side that the homosexuals hate. In fact in history 60 million of us was killed, mutulated and wasted. But the true ones are still here. It was said a few years ago by the gay movement that they wanted to change history and cancel out all other forms of living. I am not endorsing your lifestyle nor your marriages or unions. God he sure has not and when the fire falls it will be crispys critters like sodom and gomorrah and the cities around felt.
July 14, 2011 at 2:13 am, Julie said:
Like Children need to know adults sexual habits to be taught history. Completely RIDICULOUS!! Save it for when they are adults.
July 14, 2011 at 6:52 am, Stanley J said:
Why are you so hung on sex. its about gays contributions to societies. We might well have lost wwII to the nazis except for a codebreaker who was an English gay man, forget the name, maybe Turing.
His reward in that time was to be chemically castrated and he ultimately committed suicide.
All caused by hate filled religion. Thats the kind of thing kids need to learn about.
Again – what is your OCD issue re sex? Or are you just an unthinking parrott or a rigth wing church. Like the kind of people who in the past gave us slavery, the KKK and segregation.
July 15, 2011 at 4:50 am, Jake Bauer said:
Why lose to the nazi we just conform to it anyways TSA, patriot act we are the New nazi germany.
July 14, 2011 at 6:48 am, Stanley J said:
Its important that gay history be taught in the schools. Gays are the most demonized group in America, and not teaching about their plight and their contribution is just another version of hiding these people, sort of a form of segregation.
And its important to break the back of the relgiious right’s evil comments about brainwashing etc. If anyone is a brainwasher, it is the right wing christian churches who always have needed someone to demonize to make them selves feel better.
Jews, Blacks , and in the west Asians have been victims of thier hatred based on the bible. Its been the gays turn to be victimized, maybe we really need to explain to the kids how prejudice and evil in the name of God have hurt this minority.
Which includes 3000 gay kids in the USA being driven to self murder in the name of God. A repeating 9-11.
There is a good reason these false christians are called talibangelicals.
July 15, 2011 at 4:48 am, Jake Bauer said:
I just emailed him this:
Hello to whom it may concern;
I have just read an article that Jerry Brown has signed a bill forcing schools to teach gay history.First off, I would like to say this is wrong, homosexualality is a sickness and needs to be treated like one.
The natural order of life is Male + Female = Child. It has been proven time and time again that homosexuality is a mental illness. I will be pulling my child from the public school system if he is forced to learn about gay history. That should be a choice, sort of like learning IBONICS, not a required learning. I will urge all my friends and their friends do the same. You have just harmed the educational system, instead of helping it. Do our children not have enough history to learn about the country itself? Are there not heroes to recognize? Wars to learn about?
Each day the US becomes more like Rome and we see how that went.
Necrophilia, psychotics, psychos are part of history. Maybe we can have a Jeffery Dahlmer day or Jim Jones koolaid day. Wait I know, we can have Julius Ceasar day (666). Why not have Black Church day and celebrate Satan day. All these helped shape history, although not in a positive way. Salem Witch hunts caused by the Catholic church, or celebrate how the Christian and Catholic church have committed more murders (not to mention molesting our children) in history than all the wars combined. Just because you want to be popular with the “specific” type of individual, you force our children to learn about gay history which is very, very sad. Perhaps you should step back a second and think about what your school days were like. Would you really have appreciated learning about gay history? Would that help you with a job or would it have wasted your time? We shy away from sexual education because it is too graphic………..so I ask how do we explain a gay relationship? Do our children really NEED this education to make it in life, or the work force? Does this indeed help us keep up with the other countries as their school learning surpasses ours? They go to class 6 days a week, learn multiple languages and constantly come to the US as specialized employees, while our US citizens, lack the experience required for many jobs. Adding gay history to an already short school day, low test scores, single language families and lazy educational staff is a horrible idea. Let’s put that hour a day into learning a 2nd language instead of wasting it on gay history. Let us think about our children and their futures, not just try and win the “gay” communities votes now, shall we???
July 18, 2011 at 4:49 am, jesus said:
we hate in others what we hate in ourselves
January 05, 2013 at 3:40 pm, April Martin-Reed said:
Great, People who sexuality that can't even make children is supposed to be taught to in schools? Why don't they teach which corner brings in more tricks.
January 12, 2013 at 10:36 pm, Amanda Peace said:
Your comment doesn't even make sense. How about you focus on your lacking of an education, instead of spreading hate?
February 17, 2013 at 3:56 pm, Jin Loadholt said:
Her comment makes plenty of sense. Teaching the history of 'streetwalkers' would be no less salacious and gratuitous than teaching gay history. The gay agenda must respect boundaries just as they would have mainstream society do. Can't even get decent sex-ed in schools and some would have them teach depraved sexual habits? What is the point?
February 17, 2013 at 3:59 pm, Jin Loadholt said:
..And NOT promoting depraved sexual habits is NOT promoting hate!!
First, they want to be equal. NOW they want to be distinguished!! On what merit??? Their deformity[to put it kindly] or depravity[to keep it real]?
February 17, 2013 at 4:13 pm, Jin Loadholt said:
Amanda Peace Her comment makes plenty of sense. Teaching the history of 'streetwalkers' would be no less salacious and gratuitous than teaching gay history. The gay agenda must respect boundaries just as they would have mainstream society do. Can't even get decent sex-ed in schools and some would have them teach depraved sexual habits? What is the point?
February 17, 2013 at 4:14 pm, Jin Loadholt said:
Amanda Peace ..And NOT promoting depraved sexual habits is NOT promoting hate!!
First, they want to be equal. NOW they want to be distinguished!! On what merit??? Their deformity[to put it kindly] or depravity[to keep it real]?