Meet the Pensacola English teacher waging war on books

If they’re watching it at home parents can control it, that’s kind of the point. At school they don’t know what a kid might check out at the school library.
And I’m not defending the woman’s POV. Only that every discussion on things like this from any side start with someone raising it. If there’s anyone to be mad at, it’s the school board for siding with her. People on all sides have strident points of view and that debate is often healthy, it’s up to officials to stand up to them.
Anyway, I’ve made my point, if you disagree that’s cool.

 

You seem to be deliberately missing the point.

I am not comparing same sex relationships to rape.

No, I think certain issues are not appropriate for children. They should either be exposed to these issues at home or when they are older. I don't want to pretend gay couples don't exist anymore than I want to pretend single parent strippers don't exist.

You brought up John Tyler as an example of a person who should be book banned under my logic because he had a wife 40 years younger than him. To which I responded by highlighting that all sorts of historical acts are censored to be child appropriate, and the direct examples I used happened to be criminal.

This should be obvious, but I'm not saying homosexual relationships are unethical in the same context as rape. I'm saying certain things that "exist" are censored dramatically for children because children aren't ready for them and I used rape as an example. And elementary school history classes teach about historical figures who raped people on a daily basis.

 

But you are, and have explicitly said in this thread, that it's immoral and should not even be mentioned in a neutral way. Most people don't see it that way, though. Marriage is marriage. If you are going allow book that feature hetrosexual marriage/dating to be in schools, then it's discrimination to ban reference to same sex couples, or interracial marriage, or people with big age differences, or to cave to whatever else the bigots want.

You keep trying to compare gay marriage to stripping, but your argument is like someone claiming that information about male strippers should be banned ... but what about female strippers? ... no, I like those, those books can stay...

 

And Christianity isn't the only culture that traditionally opposes gay marriage. It just happens to be the one that inspired the vast majority of cultural values in this particular country. All sorts of religions and cultures oppose(d) gay marriage.

I haven't read the book. Are the two male penguins framed as this gay couple or are they just adoptive parents kind of like "Full House," for lack of a better example? Is the book advertised as LGBTQ+?

You keep using this word "hate?" I don't hate gay people. Most Christians I know don't hate gay people. Most social conservatives don't hate gay people. They morally disapprove of the choice to engage in homosexual activity and engage in homosexual relationships. And they don't want such things forcefed to their kids.

Frankly, I'm not even in that category. I'm pretty liberal when it comes to gay couples wanting to get married, being able to adopt children, etc. I just have enough respect for traditional values and people who still subscribe to those values more strictly than myself that I don't want public schools crapping all over those values in the form of tacitly telling children that these sorts of relationships are normal, amoral, or morally acceptable. That would be the school being out of line.

True or false, both strippers and gay couples were censored from children in schools 20 years ago in light of traditional values?

You just want to characterize those "traditional values" as ancient, exclusively religious, and/or abhorrent... all of these characterizations being unfair and incorrect. These days we generally see a secular line between people who support gay marriage and people who oppose it, but considering the history of this country and the world for that matter, almost all of our values today are derived from religion in some shape or form. The question is which ones are we going to (once again) draw the line as a breach of the Establishment Clause.

No, you know what, it's not on me to defend the status quo that has been the basis for culture and civilization for the last several thousand years. It's on you to justify why we should change it.

Irrelevant distinction for the purposes of elementary school libraries. Kids have trouble drawing distinctions between right and wrong on their own. A figure of authority gives them access to something, it has the potential to mold their opinion regarding highly controversial issues. In essence, children are malleable and vulnerable to indoctrination because they're taught to listen to authority frankly more than people in any other age group. Bringing moral controversies like gay marriage into schools, is preying on the most vulnerable of our populations because you have zero respect for people who hold those traditional values to raise their own kids under those values because you hate those values.

If that's the game we're going to be playing, it's unfortunate but schools will continue to become these political battlegrounds and kids are going to be caught in the middle of it.

Good faith and respect for your neighbor who disagrees with you religiously and politically seems to be a complete thing of the past. Either you conform to the New World Order, or we'll shame you, ostracize you, and we'll raise your children under our values in direct opposition to yours. It's really one of the ugliest parts of American politics that we see today.

 

Would never happen in a Florida zoo. Just sayin

 

True or false, can public schools offer the Bible in their libraries?

Would you accept public schools offering the Bible in their libraries?

 

Yes and Yes. Why do you ask?

Edit: It's funny, though, some parents challenged the "appropriateness" of the Bible in school libraries since under DeSantis's new law, since it's got all sorts of violence and depraved sex in it, but it appears most (all?) school districts didn't see it that way are more concerned with an actually true account of two male penguins that hatched an egg together.

 

I can see books at school becoming digital as many are now. So I have to somewhat agree with you.

Serious question
Is there any book that should be banned from a school library or are you ok with all of them?

 

Well because some liberals on here may find that to be a breach of the Establishment Clause.

But hey, if you want to be a free speech absolutist in public elementary schools I can respect that. It's not practical to have that mindset on children, but at least you're consistent.

 

I know that supposed to be some sort of gotcha, but you realize Bibles are already available in public school libraries, right?

Do you think Bibles should be available in public schools? I mean ... orgies and drunkenness?

(You're going to be hypocritical, here, right?)

 

I never said gay marriage is immoral, though I can see why you would think I implied it.

Under traditional standards it is immoral, and I think such standards regarding sexuality are reasonable.

My opinion regarding same sex representation in public elementary schools has more to do with respect with religious contemporaries than it does with how I would want to raise my own children for example. If a couple is represented as gay to my child, "meh." I'll have that conversation with him, what Christianity says, etc.

But I just don't feel as strongly about traditional sexual values as other Christians, but that doesn't mean I don't respect them or their right to raise their kids as they see fit. Although public schools cannot endorse religion, this country could use our educational system not working actively against religion for a change.

 

Yes, I do, especially if they also have a Quran as well as other religious texts. Even better.

"Oh... but 715, what about all of the adult themes in those texts."

Okay, get children's adaptations of those books. They exist, as well. Luckily, they wouldn't even have to do that because WarDamnGator has their back.

 

I genuinely did not know that. Thank you.

 

Is there any way, in your opinion, for someone to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and isn't a homophobe?

You seem to view elementary school libraries as an outlet for this liberal education where kids are just supposed to develop their own conclusions about the world. As though elementary schools don't offer a dumbed down version of everything so children can understand. They rightfully demonize Jim Crow, slavery, and the Holocaust because there are certain basic premises that children need to understand to contextualize more complex materials they will read down the road. I'm saying political issues like gay marriage are one of those issues that should be pushed down the road. For God's sakes, reasonable adults can't even make up their mind on that one.

Availability of things like that to children is a form of tacit endorsement. Now, availability of religious texts in public school libraries genuinely makes things interesting to me and makes me rethink that opinion. Maybe kids are mature enough to gather what religious texts to pick based on their parents, but not mature enough to pick between books with politically charged issues. It certainly makes the issue even more nuanced than I initially anticipated, but the core of my position is that elementary schools are not liberal arts colleges, they're not made so kids can just explore everything and find themselves in the world. They're supposed to structurally guide children and teach them the absolute basics to contextualize everything they read and learn later.

The most ridiculous thing you said is that it's the status quo to have LGBTQ+ books in children's libraries. If we've made THAT much progress where it's now supposed to be considered fringe to even question that, maybe we should reconsider LGBTQ+ status as minorities. It sounds like traditional Christians are more ostracized these days than LGBTQ+ people if that's the case.

I get that you are a trained "zealous advocate." But good Lord man, it shouldn't be difficult to say what you're going to say with a straight face. If that's the case, you're not persuading anybody. Sometimes you hit the nail on the head and get even a stubborn guy like me to question myself, sometimes you just make me roll my eyes and chuckle, this is one of those cases.