Farewell To The King

In a controversy with a familiar ring, parents of a Lexington second-grader are protesting that their son’s teacher read a fairy tale about gay marriage to the class without warning parents first.

The teacher at Joseph Estabrook Elementary School used the children’s book, “King & King,” as part of a lesson about different types of weddings. A prince marries another prince instead of a princess in the book, which was on the American Library Association’s list of the 10 most challenged books in 2004 because of its homosexual theme.

“My son is only 7 years old,” said Lexington parent Robin Wirthlin, who complained to the school system last month and will meet with the superintendent next week. “By presenting this kind of issue at such a young age, they’re trying to indoctrinate our children. They’re intentionally presenting this as a norm, and it’s not a value that our family supports.” [...]

Lexington Superintendent of Schools Paul Ash said Estabrook has no legal obligation to notify parents about the book. “We couldn’t run a public school system if every parent who feels some topic is objectionable to them for moral or religious reasons decides their child should be removed,” he said. “Lexington is committed to teaching children about the world they live in, and in Massachusetts same-sex marriage is legal.” (source)

We really need to get beyond this idea that people choose to be gay and that we are trying to “indoctrinate” children into being gay. That thinking is moronic.

Three points on this...

1) The superintendent is absolutely correct in his point when he mentioned that it would be impossible to notify parents on every single issue that would be talked about to children that could possibly be offensive in any way to any student or parent. If they had to do that, the school district would constantly be sending out notifications of one sort or another to the parents. They would get nothing else done.

2) It’s quite disingenuous for these parents to claim that they don’t want their children to be exposed to sexuality at such an early age. The truth of the matter is, practically every single fable or story these children are taught deal with sexuality in one form or another. The difference is, the sexuality spoken of is always heterosexual. It is taught to be “normal” at the exclusion of any discussion of anything else. In other words, if you don’t speak of any other type of relationship, the children would never know to ask about it. If I were being cynical (I would never do that!), I would say that they were trying to “indoctrinate” our children into heterosexuality!

3) Perhaps this is the most important point, and one that the superintendent was trying to address. How do you think it makes children who are living in households being run by same-sex married couples feel when their family is completely excluded from any discussion what so ever?

Schools are for learning - not only about how to read and write, but also to start the thinking process. Yes, even as early as second grade. There is a way to present this material and from what I’ve seen, it was presented in a professional manner.

Cutting through all the crap, these parents hate the fact that our relationships are being presented as anything other than sick and perverted. The fact is, this is the world that these kids live in. The parents can accept that, or they can move to a bigoted less progressive state, or they can put them into a private Baptist school who hates gay students, or they can home school them.