Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to Campfire Soapbox. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Bill Introduced In CA Senate On Gay History; Is sexual historically relevant?
Topic Started: May 14 2006, 09:07 PM (189 Views)
tomdrobin
Member
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/us/14gay...r=1&oref=slogin

quote from link:
"Ms. Kuehl says she traces her quest to include material on gay figures in textbooks to her days as a student in Los Angeles public schools in the late 1940's and early 50's.

"When I was a kid, there were no women in the textbooks, no black people, no Latinos," she said. "As far as I knew, the only people who ever did anything worthwhile were white men."

Ms. Kuehl said the practical applications of the law would be limited to including the accomplishments of gay figures in textbooks and class studies alongside those of other social and ethnic groups. For example, a teacher talking about Langston Hughes would not only mention the fact that he was a black poet, but also mention his sexuality, Ms. Kuehl said."

I don't agree that sexual orientation is in the same catagory as race, gender and ethnicity with regards to promoting knowledge of their accomplishments. And, were I a member one of the aforementioned minority groups, it would concern me regarding the erosion of certain minority preferences and protections.

What next? Full minority status, with preferential treatment in University admissions etc. for gays, with the intent of diversity?


What do you think?

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
cmoehle
Member Avatar
Chris - San Antonio TX
Equal opportunity, OK, fine. Equal results via preferential treatment is discrimination.
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
teryt
Member Avatar
Missing in Action Member
Ditto!
My Boast is Christ :pray:
Soon to have MBA (I'll perhaps be smart then)
Recovering Perfectionist
Christian Hedonist

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
abradf2519
Member
tomdrobin
May 14 2006, 09:07 PM
"Ms. Kuehl says she traces her quest to include material on gay figures in textbooks to her days as a student in Los Angeles public schools in the late 1940's and early 50's.

"When I was a kid, there were no women in the textbooks, no black people, no Latinos," she said. "As far as I knew, the only people who ever did anything worthwhile were white men."

:redcard:

What about Dolly Madison, Betsy Ross, Marie Antonette, Sacagawea to name a few? How about George Washington Carver, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Mott, to name a few? How about General Santa Anna, and Emperor Maximillion? As for homosexuals, since the closet was the accepted place, we only know about Voltare.

These people did have a place in history, and were in the history books when I was a kid. Wasn't she paying attention in history class?
Alan
Milan, New York, USA
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
tomdrobin
Member
abradf2519
May 15 2006, 04:56 PM
What about Dolly Madison, Betsy Ross, Marie Antonette, Sacagawea to name a few? How about George Washington Carver, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Mott, to name a few? How about General Santa Anna, and Emperor Maximillion? As for homosexuals, since the closet was the accepted place, we only know about Voltare.

These people did have a place in history, and were in the history books when I was a kid. Wasn't she paying attention in history class?

Apparently not!

This is just another attempt to politicize sexual preference. With the attempt at getting "abnormal" behavior and preferences accepted as normal. Those outside of "normal" hetrosexuality seem to have this need to not only be accepted and not be discriminated against. But, also be accepted as a normal. I don't think most are ready for that. Any more than they are willing to call a whole lot of other wierd sexual preferences normal.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
cmoehle
Member Avatar
Chris - San Antonio TX
Isn't that a personal judgment on your part, Tom, that gays are abnormal? Are the minority that writes left-handed abnormal too? Is popularity the determinant of truth?


My take on the problem with education is the problem in large part is special interest groups. Here's a perfect illustration of that: PC textbooks full of skewed history
Quote:
 
TWENTY YEARS AGO, I was invited by then-State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig to join a committee to revise California's history curriculum. Over 18 months, we produced a document that added more time for the study of American and world history and called for the teaching of the dramatic controversies that make historical study engaging and honest.

Immediately, however, a wide variety of religious, racial and ethnic groups demanded changes in the document to recognize and honor their history. Blacks, Jews, Native Americans, conservative Christians, Arabs, atheists, Armenians, Poles and others lined up to complain at public hearings about references to their groups.

What made their complaints powerful is that California, unlike any other state, has mandated by law since 1976 that instructional materials used in the schools must provide positive portrayals of specified groups.

When it comes to males and females, for instance, the Legislature decreed that "equal portrayal must be applied in every instance." That means, among other things, that an equal number of male and female characters must be depicted in "roles in which they are mentally and physically active, being creative, solving problems … " and that male and female characters in textbooks must show a "range of emotions (e.g. fear, anger, tenderness.)"....


Well, it goes on with more, but you get the point.

Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Newarts
Member
I dislike mandating inclusion of irrelevant material in any instructional context.

It is entirely reasonable to include the homosexuality of Alan Turing and Oscar Wilde into a discussion of their lives and impact on the world because it played an important public and private role. It is relevance that's important.

Alan Turing's homosexuality was certainly secondary to the breaking of the Enigma code; it is reasonable to mention that had he been outed earlier we might all be eating sauerkraut rather than Big Macs, but that has little to do with computational theory itself.

Pathagoras' impact on mathematics was independent of gender. Maybe he was a flaming Queer, maybe not; I have no idea. That detail might have been relavent to his life in some social context but it has damn little to do with the distance between two points.

Dave
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
tomdrobin
Member
cmoehle
May 16 2006, 01:06 PM
Isn't that a personal judgment on your part, Tom, that gays are abnormal? Are the minority that writes left-handed abnormal too? Is popularity the determinant of truth?

Chris
Lefties are still using their hand to write etc., even though their hand preference is in a minority. What if for the sake of illustration of my point we hypothetically say there could be someone who writes and throws a ball with their foot. Now, wouldn't that be abnormal? Wouldn't someone born without legs be abnormal? So, it's not a question of popular choice. But, a case of significant deviation from the majority.

Another point on the left handers comparison. Other than perhaps sports, where it would be relevant. Why would left handers want to have all the significant contributions of lefties be mentioned in chorus with their dominant hand preference. Sounds silly to me, and so does the tagging of the sexual orientation of historically significant people, unless their contribution had someting directly related to that orientation.

It is IMO, just another attempt to gain minority status, on par with race, ethnicity etc. and I don't think there is enough of a parrallel to warrant that.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
bikemanb
Member Avatar
Liberal Conservative
To include or exclude a historical figure because of their sexual orientation is foolish, equally foolish is to emphasize that orientation unless it is germane to their historical impact in some way.
Bill, Rita and Chloe the Terror Cat

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

Benjamin Franklin
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
DocInBird
Member
Gender should not matter. It does not matter to me whether someone brilliant has whatever chomosone -- only their ideas. Do I care of what gender Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was when she wrote the book on grief that is now the standard?

Do I care that when Eleanor Rosevelt had such an impact on the lives of children, that she was a woman, a Democrat, or a repubican? of course not. Do I care whether Gandhi, Mother Theresa, or anyone else is male or female? It is just a chomosone, after all. What they did was extraordinary and amazing. Why would I care about their gender?
--doc
Just Doc and Orson (German Shepherd) wandering around North America.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
cmoehle
Member Avatar
Chris - San Antonio TX
Tom "Lefties are still using their hand to write etc., even though their hand preference is in a minority. "

Gays are still living, breathing human beings, even though their sexual orientation is in a minority.

"What if for the sake of illustration of my point we hypothetically say there could be someone who writes and throws a ball with their foot. Now, wouldn't that be abnormal? Wouldn't someone born without legs be abnormal?"

One is different. One is handicapped. Neither "abnormal". I don't think the analogy carries from physical normas to social norms.
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
tomdrobin
Member
cmoehle
May 18 2006, 05:50 PM
Gays are still living, breathing human beings, even though their sexual orientation is in a minority.

I just have a real problem classifying someone as a "minority" in the generally accepted definition on the basis of their sexual orientation. What about someone who is asexual? I believe that is someone who has no interest in sex with anyone or anything. They certainly would be a minority when speaking about sex. But, would it be noteworthy in text books to identify those historical figures that were asexual?
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
cmoehle
Member Avatar
Chris - San Antonio TX
No argument that you can isolate some attributes and classify people as in the minority. No argument that they should then get special treatment.

Equal access, not equal results.

A handicapped person is in a minority. A crippled war vetaran is as well. I think we should do things that give them equal access to the choices we in the majority have, but, again, not equal results.

Let's just say I'm hung up on the word abnormal and its connotations of wrongness.
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
tomdrobin
Member
cmoehle
May 19 2006, 11:04 AM
Let's just say I'm hung up on the word abnormal and its connotations of wrongness.

I think we can agree that abnormal does not necessarily mean wrongness. That is a moral judgement based on current local social mores, not an absolute. The current trend for most is to view homosexual activity as morally wrong from some religous perspectives, and accepatable by secular law. That doesn't alter the fact that it isn't normal, from a physical perspective. My point is even acceptable abnormality shouldn't automatically qualify for minority status.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
DocInBird
Member
It is interesting that roughly the same percentage of humans are born gay as are born left-handed. It is interesting that we focus on the "handedness" of these folks. That is actually a minor issue. Everything in the way their brains are configured is different. This is serious stuff. Left-brain, right-brain stuff is reversed.

I don't really care whether someone is gay, left-handed, or whatever. I don't really care if they are black, white, pink, or blue. When I was born, I could not control whether I was to be male or female. Could you? I wasn't given the choice of whether I was to be gay or straight.

Gender, at birth, is an interesting topic these days. It seems that what we thought we knew might not be a given. You won't need to look far to find interesting things to make you say, "hmmmmm".
--doc
Just Doc and Orson (German Shepherd) wandering around North America.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Fully Featured & Customizable Free Forums
Go to Next Page
« Previous Topic · Soapbox · Next Topic »
Add Reply