Ed Brayton notes that the school board of Clovis, New Mexico, couldn’t stand by and let a picture of an actual gay couple get published in the yearbook.
Here’s your bigoted overreaction of the day: the Clovis school board in New Mexico is taking control of the yearbook to make sure that they don’t repeat the horrible crime of include lesbian couples in a section of the yearbook on couples at the school:
The Clovis board of education will have final say on content in student publications under a new policy adopted about four months after the high school yearbook published pictures of lesbian couples.
The board voted 3-2 to pass the new publications code Tuesday. The code also gives school principals authority to review students’ work before publication…
Photos of two lesbian couples, along with narratives describing their relationships, were included in a features section titled “Do you want to go out?” Also pictured on the two-page spread were nine heterosexual couples.
Well obviously they can’t allow pictures of actual lesbians in the yearbook. That might send the improper message that lesbians are human beings and deserve to be a part of society with equal rights and stuff. That just will not do.
The yearbook supervisor noted that:
While school staff check content for obscenity, libel and other matters of legal concern, yearbook supervisor Carol Singletary told the News Journal that featuring gay couples “didn’t violate privacy, it wasn’t obscene, it wasn’t libelous … it didn’t violate any of the district policies.”
I am continually amazed at the lengths people will go to disenfranchise any private relationship they disapprove of.
Any thoughts on what would happen in a similar situation cropped up in your community?
I don’t have an answer to your question, but I can say with some confidence that the people concerned with scratching lesbian couples from yearbooks, or the ones who want the right to fire me because I’m gay, are religious conservatives and not true republicans. True republicans are for freedom. John McCain is not a true republican. Sarah Palin is not a true republican. They are either religious conservatives or political hacks willing to play by the rules of religious conservatives. The difference is mere semantics. Here are some real republicans:
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p>Well actually, on second thought, I do have an answer to your main question after all. Something similar happened here last year. Ken Hurcherson, a local religious homobigot, was asked to speak at his daughter’s high school on MLK day. The community was incredulous. He is a well known bigot, and is most recently known for being part of the hate group Watchmen on the Walls, a consortium of western american and eastern european “christian” thugs. one of their members recently murdered a gay man.
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p>Anyway, when Hutcherson stood to speak at the school assembly, a few brave teachers confronted him then and there. I have never been so proud of teachers in my life. It is hard to describe what a gift they gave to all the LGBT and other minority kids by standing up and not letting this bigot’s presence go unchallenged. Angry school board meetings ensued, and Hutcherson campaigned hard to get the teachers fired. But parents also united behind their kids and teachers, as did the school superintendent who was unequivocal in his support of LGBT dignity. Hutcherson hasn’t gone away by any means, but he’s held a very low profile since, and has been concentrating on making contacts with rural preachers in Montana and the Dakotas and on fundraising to buy a permanent home for his church.
… for the anecdote. It’s just a shame that it took organized parents to defend against calls for firing in the context of an ‘angry school board’. I have no problem with Hutcherson’s freedom of speech, but I have huge problems with ‘freedom from criticism’.
They’re Republicans all right. They’re just not conservatives.
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p>I respect conservatism. I pity what the Republicans have become. And that includes this part of suckering local school boards into lengthy, expensive legal battles that they are destined to lose.
… often hide behind the standard of ‘cultural’ conservatism?