December 25, 2011
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SCHOOL TRIES TO BAN HOMOSEXUALITY
The Huffington Post reports:“A Tennessee private school’s decision to ban any mention of homosexuality among its student body is raising more than a few eyebrows among parents.
“Tennessee’s WREG News has an extensive report on the new ban at Rossville Christian Academy. A letter which was sent home to parents reportedly reads as follows:
‘A staff member or student who promotes, engages in, or identifies himself/herself with such activity through any word or action shall be in violation of this policy. Should the administration determine a violation of this policy, the person involved will be subject to disciplinary action with the possibility of permanent dismissal. Any applicant who is not in compliance with this policy will not be admitted.’“Still, one parent, whose name was not disclosed, said they believed the ban at Rossville, a private school with about 300 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, is illegally aimed at one gay student. ‘My initial reaction is that it was specifically aimed at one person, and I felt very sad about that,” the parent said. ‘If my daughter spoke about someone who was gay is she going to be expelled for that or is she going to be put in detention?’
“Though school officials have not commented on the policy, University of Memphis law professor Steve Mulroy said that, with no state or federal law preventing anti-gay discrimination, the stance is legal, and given that the academy is a Christian-based school, there may be even more protections in place.
“Interestingly, as The New Civil Rights Movement points out, Rossville Christian Academy’s website notes that the school ‘exists to challenge a diverse student body through high academic standards, seeking to instill and inspire Christian virtues in a safe and nurturing environment.’
“Last month, Shorter University, a Christian Baptist school located in Rome, Ga., mandated that its 200 employees sign a ‘personal lifestyle pledge’ declaring that they reject homosexuality, premarital sex and adultery.”
Rossville Christian Academy, private Tennessee school, bans homosexuality among students, staff – what are your thought/comments?
Comments (47)
Sad. I hope students transfer from the school to a more open, accepting school in the area.
I think that in a free country, people should be allowed to believe whatever they want. If they want to start a private school and teach it to their kids, whether I agree with what they are teaching them or not, as long as they are not affecting the rights of others, they are supposed to be allowed to do so. If they are not allowed to try to make you think like them, you are not allowed to make them think like you.
And yet there are people who will say, “I don’t agree with the policy but since they are a private institution they can make whatever rules they want.” Yeah, except they still can’t break the law and last time I checked institutionalized discrimination of all forms was against the law. If I were the parents of that gay student I would be suing someone’s butt off.
Considering it is a Christian school & Christianity has a stance opposed to homosexuality, I see no issue with the rule here. I only see issue with it if it is taken to ridiculous extremes.
I completely agree with @mtngirlsouth - I also feel that if people are opposed to religion shoving their beliefs down the throats of others, then they should stop trying to shove their philosophies down the throats of religion.
I think it is pretty sad that is perfectly legal to discriminate against gay people. You can be fired for being gay, kicked out of school for being gay, etc. We really need an Equal Rights Amendment that includes preventing discrimination of all genders/orientations, etc.
@Murphy_Rants - Actually no. Discrimination against gays on a federal level is perfectly legal. (states vary)
This is why I’m glad to be San Franciscan. There was a Gertrude Stein exhibit at the museum and she was known as a historical figure who as openly lesbian. There was a lesbian couple who held hands at the exhibit and the security guard told them that just because the exhibit was about a gay woman, that it didn’t mean that they could openly display their sexuality.
The guard was fired and the museum made a “Hand Holding Day”.
I thought the whole practice of religion was to show love, tolerance and acceptance. But people who call themselves of that faith never seem to actually display those qualities.
@mtngirlsouth - “I think that in a free country, people should be allowed to believe whatever they want.”
Belief, yeah. No one is charging the school, its teachers, or its administrators with any thought crime. The issue is with their conduct: discrimination on little more than base prejudice.
“If they want to start a private school and teach it to their kids, whether I agree with what they are teaching them or not, as long as they are not affecting the rights of others, they are supposed to be allowed to do so.”
It only so happens that in TN, there are little to no anti-gay discrimination laws on the books. In many other states, such a private school policy would be illegal. Any school or buisness can’t run afoul of state or federal laws for merely being private.
Any private school, for instance, wouldn’t be able to ignore the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and bar children on the basis of their skin color.
@Celestial_Teapot - Why should they be forced to allow people they do not want in? If your rights end when they infringe on mine, and vice versa, then who has the right to force themselves on people who do not want them?
@ShimmerBodyCream - Huh, well color me uninformed. I guess I’m inclined to assume that treating people like crap is illegal. Sometimes you’re living in your own world and when something is a law in your state you mistake it to be federal.
@Murphy_Rants - I was surprised too. I only knew that because I took a Social Policy course. With most universities, employers, etc they include they don’t discriminate against orientation, but it’s definitely not federally protected.
@MyTwoCentss - ”Considering it is a Christian school & Christianity has a stance opposed to homosexuality.”
Not really.
If the core mission or substanitive curriculum of the Christian school was prejudice and discrimination against gays and lesbians– you would be on point. I’ve never attended the school, but my guess is that it has a broader mission statement towards education and Christianity in general. Religious institution can’t sieze on obscure biblical passages as cover for running afloul state or federal statutes.
Some Christians (rightfully or not), have taken passages in Matthew as a warrent for anti-seimitism. This excsues “Christian buisnesses” from racial anti-discirmination laws, right?
“I also feel that if people are opposed to religion shoving their beliefs down the throats of others, then they should stop trying to shove their philosophies down the throats of religion.”
We all deserve the freedom of speech. It isn’t speech, however, when a buisness discriminates an individual from a school, hotel, bus stop, or restaurant.
@mtngirlsouth - “Why should they be forced to allow people they do not want in?”
Why should the owner of the local Motel 6 admit blacks and Jews when he’s racist? Since he’s a private buisness owner, the anti-discrimination statutes of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 shouldn’t apply to him!
“If your rights end when they infringe on mine, and vice versa, then who has the right to force themselves on people who do not want them?”
Because many states have rightfully passed laws barring discrimination along certain lines. These state and federal statutes reflect a public realization about the public good and the negative concenquences of prejudicial discrimination.
@Murphy_Rants - “Sometimes you’re living in your own world and when something is a law in your state you mistake it to be federal.”
It would be too unpopular for any Republican to support a federal anti-gay discrimination statute. (Though, I’m sure some of them would filabuster the fuck out of such a bill even if they had political cover to vote yes.)
Why is it okay for the state of California to force all public school students to study the sexual orientation of gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals and transgendered people in history classes but it isn’t okay for a PRIVATE school to omit any mention of 3% of the population whose lifestyle they deem offensive?
@hectoramemnon - “Why is it okay for the state of California to force all public school students to study the sexual orientation of gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals and transgendered people in history classes …”
Sure. Just as it was okay for California students to study French woman Noble Prize winners, Black Civil Rights leaders, and Latino labor organizers.
I don’t think important figures in modern culture or history should be excluded just for being non-heterosexual. Do you?
“…but it isn’t okay for a PRIVATE school to omit any mention of 3% of the population whose lifestyle they deem offensive?”
Discrimination is harmful. Perhaps, if you taught history instead of Math in the LAUSD you would be keen on the effects of Jim Crow and the issues of the American Civil War
@Celestial_Teapot - Which just goes to show that those laws are actually unconstitutional, if one’s rights end when they infringe on the rights of another. You have yet to answer why it is that one person has the right to force their way in on another person. One;s rights are supposed to end when they affect the rights of another.
@laytexduckie - I think that’s the idea – to get rid of them.
@Murphy_Rants - Unfortunately either way the kid is probably screwed.
@agnophilo - I’d imagine. I wouldn’t want my kid to attend a school that even had that kind of attitude.
Businesses are private entities, and should be able to discriminate against whomever they please. Full stop.
@Celestial_Teapot - I see it this way. If you are personally opposed to cursing & have young children, are you going to allow someone in your home who will openly cuss? Probably not. Why? Well, first you don’t want that kind of behavior around an impressionable child. Second, you don’t want to promote that type of behavior to your child by having it in your home. Not to mention, what if the person sees nothing wrong with cursing & tries telling your child it is perfectly fine & their parents are just judgmental fuddy duddies? That would further be undermining authority.
Furthermore, they aren’t kicking the student out. They are simply wanting the child to keep their supposed sexual preference out of the school. Seriously now, is it supposed to be perfectly acceptable to teachers & staff members to allow children to discuss their sexual desires during school? That is not the right place or time for that sort of thing.
@MyTwoCentss - Except people can control the words that come out of their mouth.
@Murphy_Rants - Exactly. So that is all this school is expecting – for students to watch the words that come out of their mouth while on school grounds and on school time. What is so wrong with that?
Did you all know that there are PUBLIC schools in Canada that are banning English even spoken on the playground?! Simply because of a pride thing where they want the students to do better at French than English. They don’t care if English is the child’s native tongue or if French is the child’s native tongue & they are simply practicing for an English test. So there are plenty of things in the world that aren’t quite okay with everyone. We all need to be careful with things like this.
@Murphy_Rants - I hope you’re not insinuating that someone who’s gay can’t help being gay… that dog don’t hunt. If it were true, there’d be no people who once lived the gay lifestyle, and now renounce it. It’s no different. You can control the words that come out of your mouth, and you can control the sexual organs you allow into your mouth.
@AgainstTheWind1 - Maybe in your mind but I think scientific literature would state otherwise and I don’t feel like wasting my time.
@Murphy_Rants - Good, because literature doesn’t trump actual humans willing to tell you otherwise, so you would be wasting your time. Keep reading your books, and believing them. I’ll keep talking to people who actually lived the life and now renounce it.
Maybe that’s the problem… I believe truth, you believe words on paper.
Your posts are awesome and food for thought. I wish I could walk around in the nude.
@mtngirlsouth - “Which just goes to show that those laws are actually unconstitutional…”
Are you fucking kidding me? I really hope you’re not bullshitting this “unconstitutional” label flippantly for any law you disagree with. Which part of the Constitution do anti-discrimination laws, in general, breach?
The Supreme Court, as a matter of fact, had upheld the anti-discrimination aspect of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S.) Furthermore, the Supreme Court had gone as far as to declare unconstitutional state attempts to take away anti-discrimination protections for gays and lesbians. (Romer v. Evans)
“…You have yet to answer why it is that one person has the right to force their way in on another person. One;s rights are supposed to end when they affect the rights of another. “
Come on, this is a weak argument. It is ludicriously generic. Any single law is the “forcing” of a viewpoint on “another person.” Any law, in enforcing or prohobiting conduct, work towards ends that some people are bound to disagree with.
@AgainstTheWind1 - “I hope you’re [Murphy_Rants] not insinuating that someone who’s gay can’t help being gay… that dog don’t hunt. If it were true, there’d be no people who once lived the gay lifestyle, and now renounce it…”
Your position is disgustingly and ridiculously incorrect. Real lives have been ruined and even ended by wrong-headed gay repairative therapy. Gays and lesbians no more choose their orientation than you’ve chosen your (persumed) heterosexuality.
But all of this is besides the fucking point: Even if homosexuality were a choice, it should no more be a basis of invidious discrimination than race, creed, nationality, or gender.
@Celestial_Teapot - How does one person discriminating on another affect the other’s rights? Why does one have the right to force themselves on another?
On another blog I was told that if I did not agree with the way public schools did things, I had the right to go start a private one. Well, these people have. And even that is not enough.
@mtngirlsouth - Why don’t you work your fingers and put this as an actual argument or statement. I’m not going to entertain your rhetorical questions and teach you social contract theory or the democratic basis for laws.
as long as it’s a truly private enterprise. but if they’re getting any form of assistance from the government, they’re subject to the law.
i do think it says a lot, though, that the only way conservatives can preserve their homophobia is by removing all references to homosexuality. yet more proof an anti-gay stance is founded on ignorance.
@Celestial_Teapot - History has never required that sexual orientation be a requirement. Not in all the history of civilization, ancient or modern. Feminism, black history and latino organized labor are all a sham and so are not okay as required subjects for public school student. Grouping them with the sham of gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals and transgendered in history classes is appropriate, however.
Such bullshit. Sad.
@Celestial_Teapot - Good dodge there. I’m just saying that if we are free and our rights end when they infringe on the rights of another, then no one has the right to demand that others allow them in any private organization where they are not wanted. If the way the law works is that one’s rights end when they infringe on another’s, I am just trying to understand how that means that one has the right to force themselves on others in private organizations. I understand that you have no answer though, because there is none.
@Celestial_Teapot - The California school system is discriminating against 97% of the population and tyrannizing them with a political agenda. That is what is harmful.
Wow…
@hectoramemnon - “The California school system is discriminating against 97% of the population …”
How, Curtis? It’s not as if the California school board mandated LGBT history at the absolute exclusion of all other history lessons.
@mtngirlsouth - “Good dodge there.”
Merry Christmas to you too, Sam!
“I’m just saying that if we are free and our rights end when they infringe on the rights of another, then no one has the right to demand that others allow them in any private organization where they are not wanted”
You’re ignoring my earlier arguments. Of how such anti-discrimination was legal and correct in the case of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I mentioned how laws were democratically passed. And how such anti-discrimination legieslation had been Constitutionally upheld by the Supreme court.
It’s pretty lame and fairly mypoic of you to ignore all of this to repose the same shallow questions.
“If the way the law works is that one’s rights end when they infringe on another’s, I am just trying to understand how that means that one has the right to force themselves on others in private organizations.”
Because we live in a democratic society where we empower to the majority to pass laws for the common good. Buisness aren’t immune to oversight, regulation, and laws by sole fucking virtue of being private.
“I understand that you have no answer though, because there is none.”
I gave several. Direct and counter-examples. If you were more careful in your reading of my various replies you would have caught them.
@Celestial_Teapot - I still contest that the purpose of government is to insure and protect our freedoms and rights. It is going beyond it’s reach when it goes further. Forcing people to hire any group is doing just that. Further, if it is wrong for any religious group to force their version of morality on others, it is also wrong for others to try to force their morality on any religious group they may disagree with. What I see here, as in many other places is, what the reality of it is, people think it is okay to have what they believe to be right forced on others, they just don’t like things they personally disagree with being forced on them. The gay students/teachers are free to go somewhere else or start their own school. Isn’t that what I am told about things I disagree with in the public school? Instead, they want to try to force that school to go against what they have chosen to believe. No ones rights are being hampered. Except those of the people who run that school. But, since you disagree with them, it;s okay.
You won’t change my mind here. Forcing them to hire people they do not want, or forcing them to admit people they do not want, is complete hypocrisy of anyone who says that no religious institution has the right to force their views on others. When we are no longer free to do as we wish as long as we do not affect the rights of others, we are no longer completely free. Slowly these freedoms are being taken, and because so far you agree, you don’t mind. When they get flipped against you, then you will see why it is wrong.
Homophobes themselves are closet homos. Targeting a group like that only shows bigotry. Fuck em’
I know it’s pretty wrong but if the school is private and christian I think it’s quite logic and consistent. You see according to Christian dogma it’s a sin so I don’t see what’s the big deal. It’d be a big deal if it was a public school but if you have your kids going to a Christian school why would you act surprised when they forbid “sins” :O
I feel sorry for the kids who are so protected from the world that they have to learn about it from their peers. yes homosexuality exists. No it is not contagious. I hope whatever those kids are taught they are able to think their own thoughts and make their own decisions.
@agnophilo - I meant to have ALL of the students transfer, so that without students, the school will receive no funding and will be forced to closed. But as seeing that this is in Tennessee, I doubt it would happen.
Teapot covered most of what I want to say. Regardless, here it is.
As has been established by other commenters one person’s freedom ends when it infringes upon another’s. Religious intolerances have always done, and continue to do, just this. They cannot be qualified with any genuine, objective argument thus they are tantamount to bigotry. The religious apologists just like to conveniently forget that the first stone cast in the infringement of liberty was by them and jump straight to the “but you preventing me from being bigoted infringes on my freedoms” part. It’s like when a thief breaks into a house and is met with a baseball bat to the face then successfully sues the home-owner for GBH. Never mind that the thief’s little Breaking And Entering performance was the initial violation of freedom…. In these wars of ‘my rights VS your rights’ one can normally trace the issue back to an initial violation, in this case the unreasoned, religious prejudice towards all who don’t fit their picket-fence ideal of sexual ‘purity.’
If I started picking on a religious person for simply believing in God, despite being unable to objectively prove that a belief in God is a bad thing, I would be branded a bigot. And rightfully so. And sure as a cover of ‘Last Christmas’ will come out ever few years round December-time the same Christians defending the school’s right to enforce bigotry behind a smoke-screen of ‘freedom of speech/religion’ would not be defending my right to push my own anti-religious agenda in any publicly-attended institution I might be in charge of. They’d be up in arms screaming and crying ‘oppressed minority.’ If a secular company informed all its employees that speaking, admitting to, or wearing symbols of, religious worship was henceforth banned from their establishment we’d be hearing the exact same arguments about violation of freedoms and persecution that we are now hearing in defence of that very thing. As usual the Right are highly discriminatory in how they tout their ideologies on ‘liberty,’ ultimately boiling the down to “when it suits my agenda.”
Is what the school is doing legal? Seems so. Is what it’s doing just? Fuck, no. Does it pull the usual apologetic, double-speak fallacy of white-washing their own original persecutory behavior over with juvenile interpretations of ‘freedom of speech’ then screaming ‘persecution’ themselves when called out on it? Yessir, it is. Is ‘Twilight’ a priority-fucked up piece of blandly written, indulgent garbage for adolescent girls/middle-aged adolescent girls…?
They profess to be a Christian school. If they put out that their official stance was against homosexuality, I would understand. But outright banning any mention of the topic? Ridiculous, and I’m fairly certain illegal. It’s one thing to voice your stance against a lifestyle. It’s quite another to discriminate and take a rather unloving, hurtful attitude. Shame on the administrators.
this is disgusting. I went to christian school preschool-7th grade, and I am honestly not surprised one would do this.