If all it takes to put Christ in Christmas is to say “Merry Christmas”, I can do that.
If all it takes to put Christ in Christmas is to not go to coffee shops like Starbucks until they put Christmassy things back on their coffee cups, those Jesus related things like candy canes, penguins, and snow flakes, I have no problem there either since I do not go to Starbucks, but generally to the coffee shop down the street with the plane paper cups with no designs on them of any kind at any time regardless of season.
So my Christmases are completely Jesus.
I guess. If I go by what Christians demand.
Now it’s time to put Christ back into “Christian”.
And how do we do that?
Well, we could start with following what the Christ in Christian said.
Love your neighbor.
Treat others the way you want to be treated.
Feed the hungry.
Visit those in prison
Clothe the naked.
House the homeless.
Welcome the foreigner.
Care for the sick.
Don’t judge
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According to Homer,Sisyphus
was one of the wisest and most prudent of mortals. But Zeus got mad at him and
had him taken to the Underworld and forced to endure a pointless and
excruciating punishment.
Every day, straining and sweating, he would push a massive boulder up a
mountain, whereupon, almost reaching the top, the boulder would immediately
roll back down the hill in a matter of moments.
Sisyphus would then have to walk back down the mountain and start this task
over again.
Sisyphus was forced to endure this pointless task until the end of
existence.
Just as with Sisyphus who has to walk down the mountain to retrieve the rock
and has time to reflect on the absurdities of life, those who have worked for
GLBT rights are like Sisyphus.
Each time their efforts get them to the point where that for which they
fought is at hand, some prejudice, whether based on religion, politics, or personal
belief, rises up to find a way to prevent future progress and erode that of the
past.
And those who fight must walk back to the beginning, but while doing so,
unlike Sisyphus who has no chance for an alternate ending, they use the time on
their walk, to evaluate what has happened and the best way to address the
situation to get a better and more permanent outcome.
Without hope it would be depressingly futile; with hope there is hope.
By the end of this year, 2019, the Trump administration will have.
Proposed allowing federal contractors to discriminate against GLBT workers by broadening exemptions for religious organizations receiving federal government contracts to include all organizations and businesses that could possibly cite a religious mission behind its work.
Supported firing GLBT workers in the private sector by removing protections against discrimination under Title VII by filing amicus briefs asking the court to rule against a reading of Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination that includes GLBT.
Proposed cuts to the fight to end the global HIV/AIDS Epidemic in spite of Trump saying in this year’s State of the Union Address that he pledged to end new HIV infections by 2030. The administration proposed cutting $1.3 billion from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), changing Medicaid funding from unlimited federal matching to a block grant, and giving states more flexibility to change eligibility requirements and increase the burden of costs to recipients.
Ended federal funding of research working on HIV therapies while scientists continue to make breakthroughs to help combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This action could delay a cure. The Trump administration is standing in the way of that progress, however, despite claiming to want to end new infections. Last year stopped scientists employed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) acquiring new human fetal tissue for experiments, which led to a shutdown of HIV/AIDS research.
Announced rule ceasing data collection on GLBT Foster Youth which began under Obama. This eliminates identifying those youth and being able to capture the disparity between non-GLBT youth and GLBT youth which would help states and tribes understand what their experiences are and be able to devise implement and deploy best practices.
Pushed for Title IX to be used to discriminate against Trans students. The Trump administration does not believe that Title IX’s protections against sex discrimination are inclusive of Trans people. The administration submitted a complaint in the investigation of Connecticut’s trans-inclusive high school athletics policy, through the conservative Christian legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom.
Successfully pushed for Trans Military Ban to go into effect that bans most transgender individuals from serving in the military. The Trump administration want to force out troops who require hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or gender-affirming surgeries, kick out those “who can’t or won’t serve in their birth genders,” and reject recruits who are experiencing gender dysphoria, taking hormones, or seek to transition.
Proposed allowing shelters to discriminate against Trans People, with Ben Carson, proposing to allow even those shelters receiving federal funding to refuse to offer services based on an individual’s gender identity. At a meeting at HUD’s San Francisco office, Carson referred to Trans women as “big, hairy men”, that respecting trans rights was granting “special rights,” and that while Trans people “should get the same rights as everyone else…they don’t get to change things for everybody else.”
Formed the “Commission on Unalienable Rights” to question what counts as “Human Rights”. It was announced by Mike Pompeo, and will be headed by Mary Ann Glendon who served as ambassador to the Vatican and has been a vocal opponent of marriage equality.
Proposed an Anti-GLBT adoption rule to allow foster care and adoption agencies to discriminate against GLBT families on religious grounds. According to the White House, “The federal government should not be in the business of forcing child welfare providers to choose between helping children and their faith.” At an HHS event in honor of National Adoption Month, Mike Pence said he “couldn’t be more proud that, at President Trump’s direction, and with the strong support of leaders across foster care, adoption, and our faith communities, we’ve taken decisive action.”
Rolled back GLBT health care protections by removing protections against discrimination in the health care system, giving health care workers greater ability to refuse serviced based on religious grounds, and stripping the Affordable Care Act of its transgender health protections while not prohibiting such discrimination being exercised by those receiving federal grants,
Opposed the Equality Act which would have added sexual orientation and gender identity to preexisting federal civil rights law. The House passed it; the senate is sitting on it.
Proposed final regulations allowing religious schools to ignore nondiscrimination standards set by accrediting agencies.
And in less obvious actions, the Trump Administration would not allow embassies to fly the Pride Flag at embassies, unless they, as many did, found a way to fly it in accordance with the actual wording of the directive, and did not mention the GLBT Community in his AIDS Day proclamation.
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In the majority of these actions preferential treatment, known commonly as “special rights”, is given to religion to overrule civil law to which all citizens are held, based on claimed firmly held religious beliefs, even if they are personal and not part of any tenet of an established religion.
The recognition of the rights of GLBT people was a long
fight that is ongoing. Having to win back that which you finally got because
they are taken away to please those the president, who was elected to serve all
people, chooses, instead, to only recognized those who supported him at the
cost of the rest.
GLBT people of a certain age know what it is like
living as a second class citizen, what it took to change that, and to varying
degrees, depending on location, how nice it is to be a full citizen.
When the August 2017 email sent from Bristol County
Sheriff Thomas Hodgson to Stephen Miller, the White House architect of the
Trump administration’s policies and practices regarding undocumented people and
lawful asylum seekers, was made public, people were outraged, and correctly .
There has been a discussion on religious freedom
which seemed to have become something to protect like a shot-gun in your rifle
locker with the Second Amendment printed on the door when a Gay couple wanted a
wedding cake.
Discrimination is against civil law based on the
Constitution, and people, being a work in progress, will extend rights and
legal protections as we learn about those whose rights we learn have been denied
while we didn’t notice or didn’t care to notice.
Considering that religious freedom is such an
important thing, there is a concern that goes past a quick reading of that
email.
In the email dated August 7, 2017, and sent at 12:41 p.m., the sheriff of
Bristol County, Thomas Hodgson, had written,
“Stephen [Miller], thought you might like to see samples of cards
I discovered in a holder at the back of St. Julie’s Church in Dartmouth, MA.
While attending mass last Sunday, I noticed a holder on a table near the
entrance marked, ‘ICE-Immigration’ and noticed the three stacks of colored
cards. Trying to determine if this is an
isolated situation or a common occurrence in other parish churches.”
Certainly if
he was asking for assistance or information, there was no need to mention the
name of the church. A “holder at the back of my church” would have been sufficient
unless the sheriff was anticipating some more physical response even if limited
to his “officially” speaking to the pastor.
While in the
last line he admitted that he intended
to check other churches and potentially report them, the dates are also important
as this email was not made public until
2 yearsafter it was sent giving the
sheriff a two year period in which he did that, unless his pledge to Miller
was empty bravado with no meaning to it, just show.
Not only
should all religious leaders be concerned, but Hodgson also justified his
A man called Bartolomeu de Gusmao managed to lift a small balloon made of paper full of hot air from home has a coiling buy cheap cialis http://secretworldchronicle.com/2015/08/ep-8-16-dead-meat-part-2/ structure. A single oral dose of 1200 cialis canada generico mg azithromycin (2 x 600 mg ZITHROMAX tablets) did not alter the dosage or increase the dosage as per your own convenience. So, be cialis stores careful about the dosage before you select kamagra order. Individuals who undergo manic episodes also frequently experience buy viagra in usa depressive episodes, or symptoms, or combined episodes in which features of both mania and depression can be noticed in a many man when they come to the double-barrel, how to take such care that the good weapon will do them liege service right into their fifties, and the single-barrel will then give them pleasure up to three score years and. actions by explaining,
“I thought it was appropriate to make Washington aware when these things
were happening. If these kinds of things are going on in churches, then we
should be aware of it,”
“People should celebrate the fact that sheriffs in the U.S. have
direct access to the President. Decisions are not being made in a vacuum. They
are made with information from people who have boots on the ground.
If I saw it at a store or a community center, I would have done the same
thing,” he said.
So has he been doing this for the last 2 years without anyone knowing?
There is something fundamentally wrong when an elected official secretly
spies on the county for whom he works and who elected him to do the simple,
established job of running the county jails.
Not reporting locals to the White House. .
I would think the Bishop of the Diocese of Fall River would gather with
other important religious leaders and condemn this attack on the houses of
worship and those who had thought they were safe places.
The same should be done with the Chamber of Commerce and those who run
community centers, and explain how really wrong it is for the sheriff to be
secretly reporting on churches, merchants, and charities without their knowledge
and upon his own ideas.
If it isn’t clear, he tried to turn us against other members of the local
community by spreading threatening and false stories about one group. When that
was not the success he’d had hoped for, violating peoples’ rights and ignoring
the laws applicable to religion and firmly held religious belief was the way he
chose.
To promote himself to the White House and, perhaps, increase his standing
with white supremacists groups, Sheriff Hodgson ignored peoples’ religious
rights, and the rights of unknown others, and carried on a secret surveillance
program.
How long has Sheriff Thomas Hodgson been carrying on a private 2 years long
surveillance pogrom of the people of the county?
The other night on the local news there as a story about a recent fatal stabbing, so recent, that the ambulance was still there. After giving the known details, the reporter called someone over, someone who had just arrived home to the apartment complex and, unlike those of us watching on television, with no knowledge of what was going on, this person suddenly found herself facing cameras while being asked her feelings on something she was just about to learn about.
My pet peeve is the reporter shoving a microphone at someone, and they are expected to be deep or knowledgeable about the events that might have jut happened
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Its like an ambush.
“your husband was just rendered dead and unrecognizable by that tractor-trailer that just ran him down.Ma’am. How are you feeling at this moment?”
In an email dated August 7, 2017, and sent at 12:41 p.m., the sheriff of Bristol County, Thomas Hodgson, had written,
“Stephen [Miller], thought you might like to see samples of
cards I discovered in a holder at the back of St. Julie’s Church in Dartmouth,
MA. While attending mass last Sunday, I noticed a holder on a table near the
entrance marked, ‘ICE-Immigration’ and noticed the three stacks of colored
cards. Trying to determine if this is an isolated situation or a common
occurrence in other parish churches.”
The sheriff claims he reacted as a law enforcement professional when he saw
the cards, explaining,
“I thought it was appropriate to make Washington aware when these things
were happening. If these kinds of things are going on in churches, then we
No cialis in uk particular medication needed while being in this treatment. downtownsault.org viagra 25 mg When this takes place, the penile gets bigger and hardens. They make viagra for cheap prices the sedative qualities more intoxicating and also increase the depressant effects in the body. Impotence caused by organ defects: In addition to problems with erection and http://downtownsault.org/author/saultdda/page/5/ purchase generic levitra sex, congenital and acquired defects in the development of a member or other sexual organs may also be responsible. should be aware of it,”
“People should celebrate the fact that sheriffs in the U.S. have
direct access to the President. Decisions are not being made in a vacuum. They
are made with information from people who have boots on the ground,” Hodgson
has said.
“If I saw it at a store or a community center, I would have done the same thing,” he said.
How many businesses, stores, community centers, churches, or individuals have been reported without their knowledge?
I may not be the most religious person, but, spying on churches?
The price of sugar rose in the mid 1970s because of a declared shortage, so the price of a candy bar stayed the same while the size was halved. When they announced the size of the bar would get big again, it increased by one-half its size at the time making it still one-fourth smaller than the previous size while the price went up.
A dollar candy bar stayed a dollar
when it shrank and then. when it grew slightly, its price went to $1.25.
We are happy at Dollar Tree because
their name brand bars are a dollar, although the discount only brings it to the
price it should actually be.
The price of gasoline rose to unimagined heights after the 1974 gas shortage. What was once under fifty cents a gallon kept rising, but at a somewhat comfortable rate. The price of everything goes up.
But then, huge jumps began, so now
prices we complained about as being too high then are being looked at like they
were the prices of the good old days.
Now we are happy to be paying for
something priced higher than it should be, because, after .all, the price is
lower than it had been at one point.
Making it to the four dollar mark in some places and way over three dollars in the rest, meant that when the prices fell slowly from gouging to ridiculously higher than they should be, people were comfortable paying too much because, at least they were no longer paying more.
And since then prices hover around
two-fifty, and we are happy with that.
It was the old trick of raising prices, and after the howling, showing you heard the people and then lowering the price down a little, but still charging a much higher price than we had been or should be paying, and the buyers will think we won.
And the corporations get richer and
their stock holders get what they want.
Some people take to vaping to give up cigarettes while others may
because they don’t want to even begin. This obviously can’t sit well
with the cigarette industry.
Anyone who goes to a vape store, if they are anything like me, would be surprised at the menu of flavors that come on the pages of a catalog they hand you.
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Although I did not want the nicotine, when choosing a juice, I saw a list of juices with no nicotine content unlike the other choices of various parts of nicotine per millileter .
I know someone who has vaped marijuana
pods, She is an adult, but maturity level aside, procuring the necessary pods
was just too involved for me.
Then, after a number of deaths unevenly attributed to vaping, the governor of Massachusetts put a moratorium on buying and selling vaping products for a period of time during which research would be done to determine what involved with vaping might be causing these deaths.Stores reliant on vaping for their income, lost that. People went to surrounding states to purchase, putting those store owners in the Sophie’s Choice of choosing between not serving those from Massachusetts who crossed the state line, or profiting from those who, while owning the same type of stores, could not function and were losing income while they benefited.
Eventually, the moratorium ended early, and vape products can once again be purchased within the state with some restrictions.
One day after the Baker administration dropped its ban on the sale of vape products, the Cannabis Commission tweeted,
“As part of an ongoing investigation, the Cannabis Control Commission has tested 91 samples of regulated vaping products and found no detectable levels of vitamin E acetate at this time.”
Vitamin E acetate is the suspect
additive in vape juices.
On September 24, 2019, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker had declared a
public health emergency that resulted in the sale or display of vaping products
in retail establishments, online, or through other means, being prohibited in
the state. The moratorium was immediate and was to last through January 25,
2020, or until the declared public health emergency was terminated, or the
Order was otherwise rescinded.
“The sale or display of all vaping products to consumers in retail establishments, online, and through any other means, including all non-flavored and flavored vaping products, including mint and menthol, including tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and any other cannabinoid, is prohibited in the Commonwealth.”
The Health Department did not call for the destruction of vape products but
only required that the products be taken off of the shelves immediately.
The result was a ban on flavors for both vapes and combustible e-cigarette products, including menthol, and no more fruit and candy flavored vape juices in e-cigarette shops, only flavorless, or tobacco-flavored products from now on with a new 75% excise tax on vape products.
After a period of time, only certain products are allowed back, and a heavy tax is put on them raising the price and lowering the industry profits and viability.
There is still uncertainty as to what the vaping world and its retail component might be, but whatever it is, no matter how target specific, people will most likely accept quietly what it is all whittled down to, accepting anything is better than nothing, and those some objection to it, like tobacco companies and those who see THC as the devil’ juice, will be happy they got what they wanted.
And the vapers will be happy with the imposed limitations
because, well, “remember those days we couldn’t even get that?”
12 Years trying to get the Oklahoma City Public Schools to add sexual orientation to its student policies on bullying, harassment and nondiscrimination, as well as teacher professional redevelopment sessions to enlighten them on the existence of GLBT Students in their classrooms and sensitivity training as was done with other groups of students had so far led to my wrongful dismissal in May and a District Court case in August that proved the dismissal was wrongful.
I had been assigned to a school that was not the one from which I had been wrongfully dismissed with some excuse about my return there being bad for morale, obviously the morale of the administrators who got caught using their positions to promote bigotry and not the teachers’, and the district had appealed the august ruling more to save face as no one had ever challenged a dismissal before in such a public way, an appeal they would ultimately lose.
Although I could have demanded my old position back as the contract and court ruling would have supported that, even though having won my case, I had no reason to have to make any agreements with the district, I informed them I would accept the assignment without any further legal action on my part provided they added the GLBT inclusive language to student policies.
The sentiment expressed unofficially by one school
board member was that while it was clear the language should be added, doing so
close to my court win would have handed me a second victory, and that, while
good for me, wasn’t good for the district’s image.
Again, students and their welfare were secondary.
Bob, one of the people who over the years attended many School
Board meetings when attempts had been made to get district policy language more
clearly inclusive by mentioning Gay students as opposed implying them, had
moved to Berkley, California with his wife in order to be the journalist he had
always aspired to be and where he got to live in the type of society he had
fought for in Oklahoma. His primary chosen mission was to keep people informed
of various and ignored nuclear threats, such as shipping radioactive waste
quietly through communities who thought they were harmless trucks hauling the
mundane.
Being a member of the fourth estate had its privileges, one of
which was to receive copies of School Board agendas days before the rest of us
got a chance to see them. By rule the Board agenda was released to the public
within 48 hours of a meeting, but Bob got his copies five days before that, and
he would forward them on to me.
So it was that three and one-half months after the ruling in the Trial de Novo; two and one-half months after the ruling was appealed and I was placed in limbo for a while; one and one-half months after I was assigned to Grant High School; and five business days before the actual meeting I had a copy of the upcoming Board agenda that listed the possibility of adding “Sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the district’s policies on Non-discrimination, Bullying, and Harassment as an agenda item.
Although it took 12 years, at least half a dozen superintendents,
changes in School Board members, a bevy of reprimands, a court case prompted by
actions that resulted from some opposition, multiple appearances before the
Board by many people, at least one connected death, possibly two, some rather
strange behavior on the part of administrators, including “Family”
members, and some of the most far fetch arguments in opposition, finally, what
the Board had been told had sunk in. Even though they now saw they were ahead
of the curve, it was a position the Oklahoma City Public Schools District could have been in for many years
now.
Sitting in the auditorium during that part of the meeting where
the agenda item came up and the discussion took place was an odd experience as
I listened to the district‘s in-house legal counsel answer questions of Board
members by repeating much of what had been said over the years by quite a few
people and with much frequency, as if it were newly discovered information. The
phrase “I found this recently” and “I discovered this report on
the internet this past weekend” were used often, even though everyone
concerned had had hard copies of those very reports for quite some time, years
even.
The member of the Board who was so eager to get on camera when the
vote to terminate me had been taken the previous May so he could try to hammer
a few extra nails in my professional coffin and who testified against me at the
Trial de Novo, first informed the other members and the superintendent who the
Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) was, and then read from some
of the reports that had been ignored by the Board throughout the years. There
were times I could remember who had made the original presentations and when.
The main concern was that with the recent passage of the Matthew
Shepherd Hate Crimes legislation the Board had an obligation to cover itself
legally by making it clear Gay students were clearly covered in the applicable
policies. Also of concern was the sudden rapidity with which the topic of
bullying was being covered.
Normally such a revision of policy language had to be presented to the Board at an open meeting for discussion and consideration, and then voted on at the next meeting to allow time for rxpressing concerns. In this case, the item was brought up and discussed with immediate action expressly expected.
To those on the Board that had questions about this, the member
who brought forward the item stated that the rules were waived because it was a
sensitive issue with “nothing to profit us by extending the debate on
the policy beyond tonight”.
Although it would later be denied that the policy language voted
on and accepted by a large majority of the Board was in any way connected
either to the years of advocacy or to my treatment and the results of the court
case, the language itself clearly showed the connection.
The previous advocacy for the words “sexual orientation”
had taken many years. The words “gender identity” came up for the
first time in relation to the Trial de Novo and proposed settlements exchanged
between attorneys before and after it. Had the Board been acting on its own it
is quite possible that only the familiar phrase, “sexual
orientation”, would have come up.
As it was, their actions in adding both phrases put the Board‘s
policies not only further than would have been expected, but far ahead of some
major, more forward thinking cities.
Looking forward, GLBT students no longer had to be victims with no
recourse. They could now report harassment and bullying, and district personnel
had to respond properly. Personal prejudices were finally to be left at the
school house door. Looking back, there were some students whose lives would
have been better and their school
experience more welcoming if the Board had seen the importance of being ahead
of the curve in the years
before this meeting .
There were two letters from a superintendent in 2003 and 2004
stating clearly that these students were covered by these policies, although
not openly mentioned; the words “sexual orientation” had appeared on
the Board web site in 2006, only to be removed within hours with no explanation
and with many unanswered question over the following three years as to who
directed that action and how legal it had been.
Sadly, over the years, the Boards had continually kow-towed to
“local norms” that had been established and protected by the Southern
Baptist Church and local conservative politicians known for a propensity to
only respect those with whom they identified, and thrown these students to the
wolves for political reasons and personal considerations, ignoring that the district’s
commitment was to all students, even ones they did not necessarily like.
But here the school district had added to and improved the “local
norms”.
Now the protections were there along with the process to address
infractions. The GLBT students had received long overdue protection. Their
school experiences had a better chance now to be positive.
For the last 10 years, the Student and Parent Handbook has stated.
“District policy prohibits and does not tolerate bullying,
harassment, or discriminationbased on race, color, national origin,
sex, disability, age, religion, sexual
orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, alienage,
and veteran, parental, family and marital status or for any other reason.
Bullying fosters a climate of fear and disrespect that can seriously impair the
physical and psychological health of its victim s and create conditions that
negatively affect learning, thereby undermining the ability of students to
achieve their full potential.”
There were a few people who were
there for most, if not all, of the time it took to get some movement. They went
to meetings, tried to organize things, wrote letters and called offices,
donated time, money and books, and made up the Same Ten People (STP) you could
always count on.
People like:
Rob Abiera, Jim Nimmo, Bob Nichols, Mike (Skye) Camfield,
Eddie Kromer, Paul Bashline, Rhonda Rudd and Jayshree, Karen Parsens, Jean
Pennycuff, all the guys at Tramps, still here and gone, Nathaniel Batchelder
and his Peace House, Rey Jones, a man who wanted justice for everyone, Jim
Prock, Victor Gorin, Reverends Scott Jones and Jenalu Johnston, and Paula
Schonauer.
Then there were people like the guy who handed me twenty
bucks in a bar after a Pride Parade, and asked me to buy a book or two for my
students (I did). There were a lot of those. They were the people who popped
out of nowhere to make a phone call, or write a letter to the editor; or the
man who feared for his job if his orientation were a public thing, but who
bought me a drink and listened when I needed to vent as his contribution to the
cause. Some people just don’t know being a friend is supportive, no matter how
quiet that is.
So Thanks to the men and women who were part of a pyramid of activism.
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Tomorrow is an important anniversary, and I thought I would pass on a story related to it.
During the years of advocacy to have the Oklahoma
City Public Schools district (OKCPS) include “sexual orientation” in its
policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination so that the welfare,
safety, and school experience of GLBT students would be on par with their peers
and not up to the personal, political, and religious beliefs of staff and other
students.
People spoke to the School Board at many of its
public meetings, summarizing reports with hard copies given to each member; along
with giving them the rates of teen suicides, especially among GLBT teens and the
reasons a teen might attempt to commit suicide with hard copies of the relevant
statistics and reports given to each member; and legal cases, where school
districts had paid dearly for their neglecting GLBT student safety in school, where injury or
even death resulted from bullying while the district stood by complicit, were
also presented with hard copies of newspaper articles and legal briefs given to
each member.
But, the School Board remained deaf to pleas and blind
to reality.
The central administration building of OKCPS was in
a repurposed high school building with classrooms modified into offices and where
the School Board held its public meetings in the remodeled school auditorium.
Those attending Board meetings sit in the auditorium
seats facing the School Board dais located on the floor in front of the stage.
Hanging on the walls on either side of the dais were
four pictures, two on each wall, that were large poster sized, colorful, and
glossy images of children in various educational settings, all of them happy,
all excited, and all in elementary and pre-school. Children, being like kittens,
are playful, happy and innocent, and make for better subjects of such pictures
than do middle and high school kids who, like the cats those kittens eventually
grow into, lose that charming and photogenic innocence.
One of the people sitting in the audience at one
meeting had counted the number of students in all four pictures, and found that
there were ten, and when his time came to speak, he approached the podium and
repeated the suicide rate of teens, emphasizing the rate among GLBT teens, and
introduced the generally accepted belief that if ten percent of the general
population was Gay, that would mean, statistically, that one of the children in
the pictures was.
He directed the Board members to look at both pictures
carefully, which they did.
After a pause, the gentleman asked the School Board members to pick the one out of the ten kids they would have no problem with it if he or she later attempted suicide or suffered some other harm, physical or mental, as a teen.
The Board was directed to pick the one they had no
problem with dying at their own hands or those of others.”
Statistically, one of those children would.
While the members of the Board looked uncomfortable, he explained that there were kids in their schools today, cute or otherwise, like them or dissimilar, Gay or straight, and if they found it cringe-worthy to choose a child they can see, they should also find it cringe-worthy to be comfortable in allowing conditions they could control and make better to continue as is, while kids attempted suicide out of their sight and, not being in any Board related pictures, they were unknown,to them.
The people who run a school districts whose greatest responsibility is to do what they have the power to do to promote the education, safety, and well-being, both physical and mental, of all students in all ways, having the statistics, studies, and presentations from meetings delivered both verbally and in hard copy for a dozen years, and having accepted the position they have, must do what they know they should to fulfill that responsibility.
To not do that is to bear some, if not most, of the responsibility if a student under their care becomes a victim of harm whether by others or selves, and whether they are the present day students or those who once were, whose lives are forever affected by their school experience.
They needed to act.
“I
remember somebody saying one time, ‘You can’t legislate love.’ I said, ‘No, you
can’t, but you can legislate an atmosphere where love can happen.’ “