Post a Comment On: Vigilance

You see this and you wanna say N-o-o-o-o-o!!!! Don't go there!!!!! From Massachusetts, reported in the Boston Globe:
LEXINGTON -- Parents upset with the way Lexington schools address homosexuality spoke out before and during a School Committee meeting last night, criticizing a recent program at the high school and a book given to kindergartners that depicts same-sex couples.

But school officials and other parents backed the school system, saying that tolerance is being taught. About 20 people from a new group called Lexington Parents for Respect attended a press conference outside Jonas Clarke Middle School before the School Committee meeting. About a dozen held signs, including "Education Yes, Indoctrination No."

"We want respect for our kids and respect for our family borders," said Gerry Wambolt, a parent and spokesman for the group.

The School Committee took no action on the complaints, some of which were made during the public comment period. At issue are two high-profile events last month that revealed deep divisions in town over sexuality education.Sex orientation curriculum debated: Parents, officials spar in Lexington
OK, listen, here's a little advice to you Lexington parents, from me to you. First of all, support that curriculum with all you've got. Speak up at every chance, don't let people take it for granted, or these guys'll whisk it out from under you, using any trick they can come up with.

Second of all, you school board people up there (and my family went to Lexington last summer, cool town), listen to my advice: your lawyers need to start, right now, looking at that curriculum. Look at every detail with the most ... malevolent ... eye you can muster. Look at it to find anything wrong with it. Doesn't matter if the kids will ever see it -- it doesn't matter if it matters. Cuz when the fighting gets dirty, they're gonna have to defend every word of it in the press, in the courtroom. They need to know what's in there.

Here in Montgomery County, we're a few months into this. It's a tough fight, but it's got to be fought and won. For my part, I'm glad to hear that the good people of Lexington are willing to stand up for what's right. Let 'em wave their signs, you've got to just keep talking sense until sense wins.
Superintendent Bill Hurley, during a brief press conference before last night's School Committee meeting, said critics of the kindergarten book have misrepresented it as being about sexuality.

"It's about children and the households from which they come," Hurley said.

Meg Soens, who has two children in second grade and two in fifth grade at Estabrook, said at the meeting that hers is one of the families in Lexington headed by same-sex couples.

"You would not exclude a multiracial family or a book dealing with multiracial families because of sincere religious opposition to it," Soens said.
Hang in there, people, we're with you. Don't give up.