The latest "Yes on 1" ad, just released by supporters of the Maine initiative revoking same-sex marriage, strikes me as so misleading, and so tangential to marriage per se, as to amount to little more than a naked pitch that gays will recruit your kids-the anti-gay "blood libel."
In a Sept. 18 memo, Maine public officials and law professors responded effectively to the substance of such ads (which, of course, really have not much substance to respond to): Marriage is not taught in the Maine curriculum and won't be soon; Maine has good religious-liberty protections in existing law; the cases misleadingly cited by SSM opponents have nothing to do with marriage per se (they're anti-discrimination cases). It's a fine letter. Everyone should read it.
But here's the political problem we face in Maine and California and, we can be confident, elsewhere. We are asking for full legal equality and, where education is concerned, we still have not figured out how to defend it. As the new ad makes pretty brazenly clear, what our opponents are really saying in their ads is: "Gay marriage will make it legally and morally harder for schools to condemn or ignore same-sex marriage, to teach that straight families are superior to gay ones, and to ignore and stigmatize homosexuality generally."
There's no denying that measures advancing gay equality in law, culture, and society will, other things being equal, advance gay equality in schools. If we cannot figure out how to defend that core proposition to voters, we're going to lose.
So what's my bright idea? I'm working on it. But I suspect the answer will be in the nature of a positive, forthright, non-defensive message about the value of teaching kids that discrimination is wrong and that everyone deserves a family. "Liar liar pants on fire" looks to voters like an evasion.
2 Comments for “Grabbing the Education Nettle”
posted by Jorge on
I agree with that.
As long as conservatives can credibly suggest that “Heather Has Two Mommies” is leading to showing videos in public schools of boys experimenting with cross-dressing, perhaps even to the dreaded instruction on masturbation for kindergarteners, they’ll have a lot of control over the issue.
It’s not like there isn’t an affirmative way to communicate gay equality and respect for diversity to young people and so on. But I don’t think the powers that be in the progressive and gay communities all care about that. The general lack of unity leads to everyone trying their own methods, some of them the absurd outrageous stuff.
I suppose it doesn’t really matter. The middle class and rich pulled their students out of public schools in my city a long time ago.
posted by Pauliji on
Perhaps the best method is to approach it as an equal rights issue, which it is.
Something along the lines of, “Well, shouldn’t the school system treat all citizens fairly? Why do you want them to stigmatize a whole group of people? If fairness and equality don’t meet the needs of your children, then perhaps your kids should be home-schooled.”