From: rlc1028@zeus.tamu.edu (Gadson Sandor)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.homosexuality
Subject: Re: Education Regarding Alternative Family Units (Re: The Analogy Betwixt Gays & Blacks (Re: Children in Samegender Families))
Date: 2 Jan 1993 17:59 CST
Organization: Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: zeus.tamu.edu

In article <1318@blue.cis.pitt.edu>, psg+@pitt.edu (Paul S Galvanek) writes...

|Simply by bringing homosexuality, or any specific group, into the class
|room you make a value statement.  By teaching it you're saying; this
|is worthy of our time and the special attention it's being given.

	But, are we saying it's value is "good" or "bad"?  Not necessarily.
The kind of "value" you seem to be talking about is attached to anything
we teach... value due to attention.  We teach about Hitler's persecution
of Jews.  We may not necessarily say that it was good or bad.


|If tolerance is really the goal, and I don't believe it is for a moment,

	What is the goal then?  Do you think the homos are trying to
turn school kids Gay?  


|that group.  The very fact that people insist that homosexuality be given
|"equal time" is a sex ed class implies that this type of behavior is
|the moral equal of heterosexuality.

	Not exactly.  It may imply that for some people it is the moral
equal, or even moral superior, to heterosexuality.  It doesn't imply that
a student is to take it as such for herself.


|The basic problem with the idea that tolerance for gays should be mandated by
|law and taught in schools, is that it flows from the false notion that ALL
|discrimination is wrong.  It's not!  To dicriminate is nothing more than
|to make choices, it's the ability to discern what we like from what we don't
|like and distance ourselves from what we don't.

	And informing students about homosexuality makes them better equipped 
to make discriminating choices about it.  



|Sometimes we as a society 
|have decided that SOME types of discrimination are based on false prejudice 
|or lack of accurate information - Blacks are all lazy uneducatable thieves, 
|was a fairly common  description of an entire race up until recently and
|it was simply false, so we stop it.

	Yes, and Homosexuals were thought to be promiscuous, undependable
people until recently.  The discrimination based on this false perception
is what people are trying to alleviate.

	Under certain conditions imposed by racist whites, some Blacks were
disinclined to work, uneducated, and often involved in crime.  It was the
re-education of society that helped to remove this image for all Balcks, 
and helped to give them a better chance to prove the contrary.

	Under conditions of social intolerance, some Gays are inclined to 
be promiscuous.  They are not allowed to marry, so keeping up a stable
relationship can be difficult.  But there are plenty who manage to do so, 
and wish to re-educate people to remove the promiscuous sterotypes.  Their
goal is to call attention to Gays in stable relationships that are pretty 
much lite hetero ones.  The "false common description of an entire" culture
is what is to be eliminated so that the discrimination that comes as a 
result of it may stop.



|Where discrimination of gays, to the extent that it even exists, differs
|is that it's based on mostly accurate information about known behavior.
|Tell a person what it means to be a homosexual and you will get a reaction.

	But what does it mean to me an homosexual?  People are trying to
tell others what it means to be an homosexual through projects like this
Rainbow Family thing.  The problem is that people who are opposed to 
homosexuality don't want anything but their misconceptions about the
behaviour of homosexuals perpetuated in society.

	What do homosexuals do?  They do most of the same things Hetero-
sexuals do.  The only obvious excpetion is anal intercourse.  And you'd
be surprised that many homosexual people don't do this.  Conversely, there
are hetoersexuals who do.

	If you told someone what homosexuals do, there would be only one 
or two things that might be objectionable.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Behavior, that's the key word!  People always have and always will make 
|judgements about others based on behavior and will usually choose not to 
|make relationships with those who engage in behaviors or acts they find 
|distasteful.  The simple fact is most people find homosexual behavior to
|be anywhere from unacceptable to outright repulsive.  Sorry but like
|it or not you can never make people accept what you do. 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	This still is based on your assertion that the goal of the school
programmes is /acceptance/, and not simply tolerance.
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