NBCNews.com: A Texas teacher faces losing her job after fighting for gay pride symbols in school

[Fergasun]

NBCNews.com:  A Texas teacher faces losing her job after fighting for gay pride symbols in school...

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The school year at MacArthur High in Irving,Texas, began last fall with the administration scraping off rainbow stickers that had been posted on campus, prompting hundreds of students to walk out in protest. Seven months later, LGBTQ students say things have  deteriorated further. 

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One faculty sponsor of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance is facing having her contract terminated, another is preparing to resign, and a third has been removed from the classroom. The alliance’s weekly meetings became monthly, and attendance dropped from about 40 students to fewer than 10. The student newspaper has functionally shut down. Two teachers said that the school’s principal asked teachers to take down gay pride flags in their classrooms and offices.

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Several students said that either they or their classmates have been called homophobic slurs and bullied, and school staff members have failed to intervene. Some said they’re discouraged by the Irving Independent School District’s response to the concerns they’ve raised through the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) and school board meetings, and they feel less safe at school than they did a year ago.

This is where all the over-amplification about transgender athletes, faux pedophilic grooming, and other compliants will lead to.  Continued persecutuon of the LGBT+ community.  It is wrong to treat other human beings this way.  Texas doesn't even have an "anti-gay" bill. 

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“Labeling certain classrooms as safe havens for certain groups could communicate to students who do not see themselves reflected in that classroom’s decorations that they are unwanted or unsafe in those rooms.” The district has not cited any examples of students reporting that the rainbow stickers made them uncomfortable.

I can see Ktodays  Kwhite Ksupremacists using the same argument.  How is a gay pride sticker hurting kids?  

[dfitzo53]

7 hours ago, Fergasun said:

NBCNews.com:  A Texas teacher faces losing her job after fighting for gay pride symbols in school...

I can see Ktodays  Kwhite Ksupremacists using the same argument.  How is a gay pride sticker hurting kids?  

Let's be honest. It's about two things:

 

1) Many "straight" people often find queerness icky and/or are deeply insecure about their own sexuality and are afraid to confront that. It's emotionally easier to shun, mock and bully.

 

2) The idea that maybe, just maybe, chunks of the Bible are fallible and open to interpretation does not compute for large swaths of this country. Specifically the Pentateuch, Paul's letters and Revelation. Christians by and large are pretty blissfully ignorant of the rest of the Bible and its implications in my experience.

[Ball Security]

1 hour ago, dfitzo53 said:

Let's be honest. It's about two things:

 

1) Many "straight" people often find queerness icky and/or are deeply insecure about their own sexuality and are afraid to confront that. It's emotionally easier to shun, mock and bully.

 

2) The idea that maybe, just maybe, chunks of the Bible are fallible and open to interpretation does not compute for large swaths of this country. Specifically the Pentateuch, Paul's letters and Revelation. Christians by and large are pretty blissfully ignorant of the rest of the Bible and its implications in my experience.

Third thing: goal is to make public school so awful that qualified teachers and potential teachers choose different career paths.  The decline of public schools accelerates.  In comes the De Vos family and other charter school proponents to the “rescue”.

[gbear]

My family would have to move if we were in TX.  I can only offer my sympathies to all those out there.  May you find acceptance. 

 

The "you" here is for all the people in states and places where acceptance is denied.  The denial to accept the humanity of all types hurts people on both sides of the refusal.  To my mind, there is no greater Christian teaching than that simple truth.

 

"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me"  

 

Granted, I say this as an ever questing agnostic.

[Destino]

3 hours ago, dfitzo53 said:

Let's be honest. It's about two things:

You’re missing a political angle.  It’s a waste of time to assume republicans are arguing anything sincerely.  Forget the harm aspect of their argument and look at the strategy, because they clearly see this issue as a winner for them.  I think they’re counting on Democrats over reacting and making arguments that seem to advocate for a wildly over politicized classroom.  They know democrats won’t just calmly affirm that schools must teach mutual respect and maybe allow kids to decorate their own spaces.  They’ll argue for outright advocacy in classrooms to rightously affirm their support of lgbtq issues.  They’re counting on this scaring parents or just worrying some parents.  
 

It’s not hard to understand what they’re seeing.
 

Imagine if you were interviewing accountants to do your taxes and one of them spent their entire time talking about gay rights, about how if you chose them they’d make sure you understood the fight and took lessons on this on going struggle before she gave you back your taxes.  What if they told you to ignore the protests outside and ignore the news claiming that this particular accountant spared too little attention for their tax work and were obviously distracted by their advocacy efforts?  Be honest, how likely are you to choose that accountant over one that focused entirely on getting your taxes done right?
 

you don’t need to agree with the above, and it’s ok to see the problems with that argument because I see them too.  What I’m asking is about effectiveness of the political argument, for republicans.  How do you think that situation would effect customers shopping for an accountant?  That’s what republicans are doing here, that’s why they’ve gone all in on this issue.  They dominate the male vote and they only need to make slight inroads with women (moms in this instance) and maybe increase their share of the Hispanic vote.  
 

All they have to do is argue democrats are forcing subjects into the classroom that aren’t the basic essentials, maybe spread examples of teachers that might be taking it too far, and then let democrats howl at the moon.  They dominate the news cycle and alarm a few moms… and that’s really all they need from this.  
 

 

[gbear]

They may win over some of the parents who either don't see the need for teachers to model behavior as well as teach facts and ways of thinking.  The sad truth is much of what our kids learn in school is not facts, figures and theorems.  They learn how to behave and how to treat others.  Ironically, I think this is the greater teaching that happens in schools.  Maybe I am alone in this and think it from atop my tower where I graduated college and never stopped trying to learn more.  I still tell my kids, "I don't care how fast you learn so long as you never stop trying to learn more."  The first thing to learn though is how to treat others.  Then it is where/how do I fit in this group.  These are the two biggest things our schools teach whether they are aware of it or not.  I maintain the ability to teach these things go a long long way towards our kids ability to lead lives they find fulfilling. 

 

No, those two things are not taught in school alone.  It starts at home.  However, there is only so much of these social skills to be learned at one's parents apron strings.  Schools are the first place our kids go to learn about the rest of the world and different perspectives.

 

Yes, these issues are probably winning political issues.  Alas, I view that as a failure of others like me to be able to reach them and teach them.  I was lucky enough to have teacher parents and great role model teachers (some in school and some out of it).   

[CousinsCowgirl84]

A real problem is that people don’t understand why this is a free speech issue and banning Trump on Twitter isn’t.

[gbear]

True, people do not understand the difference between a private company/organization and a government owned/run institution.  There are many things a company can do that the government is forbidden to do.

 

[Dan T.]

 

[China]

Cape Coral art teacher fired for discussing LGBTQ topics

 

She says her art students then drew flag pictures expressing their own sexuality.

 

Mrs. Casey Scott said school leaders made her remove the drawings and throw them out.

 

\However, the Lee County School District claims she was fired for not following the mandated curriculum.

“

A discussion happened in class and because of that, now I’m fired,” Scott said.

 

That discussion centered on student sexuality. She pointed to flags she said were created by students, some of whom identified as non-binary, bisexual, and gay.

 

“I like anyone despite male, female, non-binary, transgender,” Scott said.

 

She is married to a man and she claims some students asked her if they could create art expressing their sexuality.

 

She hung the pictures on her classroom door and that’s when school personnel contacted her.

 

“They said it would be in the best interest if I got rid of them now,” she said.

 

She snapped pictures showing how she got rid of them by placing them in a recycle bin.

 

“I went over to the recycling bin. I grabbed all their flags and all the kids were staring at me. And I crumbled their flags in front of them,” she explained.

 

She was sent home and then received a call from school administrators who informed her that she was being released from her contract.

 

She showed us social media posts from students upset over her firing.

 

However, the Lee School District showed us complaints from parents who were concerned about the conversation and the artwork.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[PeterMP]

On 4/15/2022 at 12:32 PM, Destino said:

you don’t need to agree with the above, and it’s ok to see the problems with that argument because I see them too.  What I’m asking is about effectiveness of the political argument, for republicans.  How do you think that situation would effect customers shopping for an accountant?  That’s what republicans are doing here, that’s why they’ve gone all in on this issue.  They dominate the male vote and they only need to make slight inroads with women (moms in this instance) and maybe increase their share of the Hispanic vote.  
 

All they have to do is argue democrats are forcing subjects into the classroom that aren’t the basic essentials, maybe spread examples of teachers that might be taking it too far, and then let democrats howl at the moon.  They dominate the news cycle and alarm a few moms… and that’s really all they need from this.

 

It is also a powerful distracting tool.

 

I believe in the Presidential debates in 2016 and 2020, climate change has been discussed for a like a total of 5 minutes.  Health care costs I think were talked about just a little bit more.

 

From there what you talk and read about is what you think about is what becomes important to you (if you think sports are really important, take 3 weeks and don't read or watch sports and their importance to you will decline substantially).  By driving these types of conservations in this manner, Republicans drive what is in the discussions and in the news.  That causes them to become more important to people (pro and con) and lead to greater division that helps Republicans.  vs. allowing issues like climate change and controlling health care costs rise to the top of the discussion and the news rise in people's importance where they are more likely to lose on those issues.

 

I believe a lot of what the Republicans do is to distract and control the narrative.  In a debate, Trump would rather discuss his history of treating women poorly than trying to intelligently discuss climate change or how to control health costs (two things he really had no logical/ reasonable response to).  While I understand these are important things (especially for the people going through them and being affected), I think we might in totality be better off if people just ignored it.

[Renegade7]

I don't support putting gay pride stickers all over a public school, but scrapping them off and feeding into the toxic culture that lead to the need to do that in the first place is tone deaf.

 

Schools already have a bullying problem, and bringing gay to that making it worse is nothing new.  Refusing to help any efforts to defuse that and even directly attacking those efforts is wrong is dead ass wrong.

 

How is this not a civil rights violation with the body of evidence that is being presented here alone?

[China]

In related news...

 

Texas's top lawman floats recriminalising sex between men in the state

 

The attorney-general of Texas has said he will seek to recriminalise sex between men if the Supreme Court overturns a previous ruling declaring it a constitutional right.

A 2003 ruling by the Supreme Court found that laws banning sodomy in the United States were unconstitutional.

But after overturning Roe v Wade to allow abortion to be criminalised, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas flagged the 2003 ruling Lawrence v Texas could also be overturned.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Texas AG willing to spearhead Supreme Court case to criminalize sodomy again

 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said that he would be willing to defend a state law that would challenge Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court decision that said that states couldn’t ban people from having gay sex. In the early 2000’s, Paxton was a vocal supporter of putting gay people in jail for what was then the crime of having sex, something he believed was necessary for “public health” and to “discourage sexual activity outside of marriage.”

 

“Would you, as attorney general, be comfortable defending a law that once again outlawed sodomy?” NewsNation host Leland Vittert asked Paxton  this past weekend.

 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said that he would be willing to defend a state law that would challenge Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court decision that said that states couldn’t ban people from having gay sex. In the early 2000’s, Paxton was a vocal supporter of putting gay people in jail for what was then the crime of having sex, something he believed was necessary for “public health” and to “discourage sexual activity outside of marriage.”

 

“Would you, as attorney general, be comfortable defending a law that once again outlawed sodomy?” NewsNation host Leland Vittert asked Paxton  this past weekend.

 

The host brought up the possibility of overturning the 2003 Supreme Court decision – and allowing states to throw gay people in jail for private, consensual sex between adults – because of the Court’s decision this past Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade, which throws other decisions based on the right to privacy and substantive due process into question.

 

In his concurring opinion, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas even suggested that the Court should “correct the error” made in decisions like Lawrence and allow the states more power to control people’s lives.

 

And Paxton said he was willing to go along with that plan.

 

“Yeah, I mean, there’s all kinds of issues here, but certainly the Supreme Court has stepped into issues that I don’t think there was any constitutional provision dealing with,” Paxton responded. “They were legislative issues, and this is one of those issues and there may be more.”

 

Paxton started to ramble, so Vittert asked: “Just for the sake of time here, you wouldn’t rule out that if the state legislature passed the exact same law that Lawrence overturned on sodomy, you wouldn’t have any problem then defending that and taking that case back to the Supreme Court?”

 

“Yeah look, my job is to defend the state law and I’ll continue to do that,” Paxton responded.

 

Click on the link for the full article