California Governor Signs Landmark Bill Requiring Teaching of Gay History

[Ektar]

fuck it. we stole it from the troll and turned it into an actual engaging, intellectual discussion.

[Ektar]

troll - go back to rnf. off-topic forum is for REAL BA TALKERS! and we commandeered that shit.

[Harrison]

In the spirit of that, I'll respond.

It's disgusting to force equality. It accomplishes the opposite of its intention and breeds distaste at an absolute minimum.

This is another waste of government time and resources that is worsening the joke that is public education.

[Shrubwise]

I think the troll just got reverse trolled into participating in a meaningless troll thread.

Heads exploding? Yes

[Feachie]

Originally Posted by Harrison [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

In the spirit of that, I'll respond.

It's disgusting to force equality. It accomplishes the opposite of its intention and breeds distaste at an absolute minimum.

This is another waste of government time and resources that is worsening the joke that is public education.

never mind the fact that California is forced to educate our youth on women, native americans, mexican americans, and several other minority groups... but this, at this point and at this point only, is a waste of government time and money? yeah, all the rest of that is good money spent, but screw the gays amirite?

how about we as a society move the fuck on from 1950's and prior mentality, leave others the hell alone and let them live, and we wouldn't have to force equality, and thus waste government resources.

[Comapavik]

Originally Posted by Ektar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I've got nothing against gay anything and everything, but to force gay history means throwing out something more important to the grand scheme of history. It's not like current history curricula purposely leave out gay contributions. If a gay person contributes something to history, he goes in; if a straight person contributes something to history, he goes in.



idk to what extent this whole thread is trolling or whatever the fuck you people like to do, but this also recently came up elsewhere in my life recently about forcing women studies into the curriculum and it's the same exact thing.

This is a bullshit argument. History, by definition, is always expanding as time passes. As we go from decade to decade, should we ignore the most recent events in history, because if we taught them, we would have to throw out something more important?

You sound like that racist dad from American History X. I'm pretty sure anything they decide to teach will be of historical significance.

[Polixenes]

Richard the Lionheart was gay and he went and beat up the Muslims in the Crusades.
Muslims have hated us ever since, therefore 9/11 is the fault of gays.

Let's get this troll thread back on track.

[Ektar]

Originally Posted by Comapavik [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is a bullshit argument. History, by definition, is always expanding as time passes. As we go from decade to decade, should we ignore the most recent events in history, because if we taught them, we would have to throw out something more important?

You sound like that racist dad from American History X. I'm pretty sure anything they decide to teach will be of historical significance.

they aren't proposing teaching the legalization of gay marriage, or anything recent. they are proposing that they pick and choose specific events from the past that have a special little flag in the bio that it involves a gay person. so, if we assume that a history curriculum is at 100% efficiency, it teaches the most important parts of history in the time allotted. By forcing in, by our definition, less important parts of history, you must force out more important parts.

Learn to read the issue before arguing on it, and respect your fellow arguer from the get-go. Insulting me just makes you look even more ridiculous when you argue the wrong point.

[Messianic]

Originally Posted by Feachie [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

never mind the fact that California is forced to educate our youth on women, native americans, mexican americans, and several other minority groups... but this, at this point and at this point only, is a waste of government time and money? yeah, all the rest of that is good money spent, but screw the gays amirite?

As a preface, this bill is fairly broad and leaves wiggle room so it doesn't affect curriculum decisions or what students will actually learn that much at all. But the principle is still wrong.

If it's wrong to highlight native americans, mexican americans, etc only, it's also wrong to merely add homosexuals to that list and stop there. We don't need an "in-list" of groups that deserve mandates - that's cronyish.

Should the legislation include mandates on exactly how much mexican, african, hispanic, japanese, chinese, korean, russian, white, gay, straight, transgender, monogamous, polyandrous, polygamous history we should include? Doesn't that get redundant after a while and come full circle to just trying to teach a balanced view of history? And that's accomplished by better curriculum - not legislative mandates.

I don't know how Cali's curriculum is set - maybe it is set by their state house/senate, although I don't think so based on the states I am familiar with. It's usually set by the bureaucracy as led by the governor/Ed department director, which is probably more fair than the changing winds of electoral politics.

Again, this bill is relatively benign, but the principle is that this kind of a decision should be handled at the level of those who are setting curriculum, not necessarily whichever hacks are in the state house at the time and want to brush up their GLBT credentials. It just seems out of order from a policy perspective, especially if there is no actual discrimination (i.e. public schools intentionally excluding people from history because they are gay, etc) occurring.

John Maynard Keynes was gay, and didn't really try that hard to keep it a secret - but it's not commonly taught that he was specifically because he was an economist, and it's more apropos for an economics class to just talk about his economics and the fact that he's really the father of modern macro rather than who he chose to have sex with.

Originally Posted by Feachie [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

leave others the hell alone and let them live

I agree with the sentiment, but freedom is a broad concept - and most people only believe in certain segments of it - i.e. economic, religious, sexual, etc etc. Taxing rich individuals at a much higher % level than someone else isn't really an example of leaving others the hell alone and letting them live, but there's a lot of overlap between that and people who support more GLBT legislation.

But I don't think this particular bill has anything to do with letting people live - it's just a backwards and, quite honestly, a stupid way of setting curriculum or changing what kids are learning in public schools. But i don't know california's system, so maybe I'm applying a different policy/administrative model to california.

Originally Posted by Feachie [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

we wouldn't have to force equality

I don't really think this can be forced. What's actually happening is government is shuffling around policy to make things look more equal by trying to highlight certain aspects of what is being taught (since GLBT's weren't excluded from history before), when in reality you're no closer to equality by that legislation.

You can prevent and penalize certain kinds of discrimination, and that's relatively effective and lawful - but equality isn't the result of legislation like this - it's equal application of the law which allows equality, and things like civil rights legislation which try to prevent the deprivation of certain rights (not try to set quotas on those rights) do that. I don't think elected officials know how much GLBT history should be included - hopefully, those who have been placed in those positions do.

I don't think this legislation *at all* supports or increases the equal application of the law. It just smacks of pandering to the GLBT community :/

[Polixenes]

They are adding a review of homosexuality to sociology classes, not to history classes. So they might not be pushing aside anything important from history.

My dim 30 year old recollection of sociology was learning about Netsilik eskimos and women's suffrage. (It's nice to know those eskimos finally got the vote). Learing about gays in society would fit ok in there without necessarily displacing much of importance.