Notes from the Culture Wars. The school board in Torrance, California, has voted to ban a gay rights group for speaking at an annual high school event intended to promote understanding and fight bigotry. As reported in the local Daily Breeze, the board voted 3-2 to ban Gays and Lesbians Initiating Dialogue for Equality (GLIDE) from, well, initiating dialogue for equality, at least at the annual North High Human Relations Convention. A staff attorney for the Anti-Defamation League called the decision an "abomination" and said she would urge the ADL not participate in order to protest the gay group's exclusion. To which one anti-gay school board member, Joseph Bonano, responded, "If they [the ADL] want to pull out and make one less presenter, that's fine. They showed their true colors." Sounds like this will be some anti-bigotry lesson for the kids.
The article reports that an anti-gay group called Parents United to Stop Homosexual Education on our Schools (PUSHES) has been agitating against gay inclusion. Please note this is not a parody. Another interesting tidbit: the gay group, GLIDE, is a Beverly Hills-based nonprofit that makes 200 presentations each year on homophobia. It says the school board's decision has denied them their rights. But I wonder if a local gay group might not have been able to make its case more effectively than professional activists visiting from Beverly Hills.
An alternative conference may be held by organizers in a facility not under the jurisdiction of the Torrance school board.
Say What? The
Washington Post ran a feature last week about a deaf lesbian
couple that is hoping their newly born baby will also be deaf. One
of the lesbians was inseminated with the sperm of a deaf male
friend to make this outcome more likely. According to the article,
the two mothers
"see deafness as an identity, not a medical affliction that needs to be fixed. Their effort -- to have a baby who belongs to what they see as their minority group -- is a natural outcome of the pride and self-acceptance the Deaf movement has brought to so many."
Reading this, you begin to understand why so many Americans are in backlash against anything that smacks of identity politics. But having said that, there is something fascinating about the radical deaf subculture that's emerged in recent years, and the parallels between deaf culture and gay culture as responses to alienation would be interesting to explore.