Y‘all know what a waste I consider these completely unnecessary Kulturkampf battles to be; we’ve got about a gazillion more important things to be spending our political energies on. So imagine my dismay, and my lack of interest in getting involved, when the latest craziness struck so close to home.
But there was just one thing in the "Irmo High Gay/Straight club" story that I could not allow to pass without commenting. It was this:
âThis group is forming to provide support for the gay and lesbian students,â said C. Ray Drew, director of the South Carolina Equality Coalition, a gay rights advocacy group. âIt provides a reprieve of the often hostile environment gay students often encounter. This club is no more sexual than the chess club.â
The chess club? Oh, come on… it’s a little more sexual than the chess club,
isn’t it? It would have to be,
unless chess has changed a lot since I was in high school.
Maybe there’s something going on between the queen and the knight that I’ve missed. Or between the knight and the knight, given our context here. And don’t even get started on the bishops; Randy and I are Catholics, and we will take offense…
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sigh…. If it’s so unnecessary why do you blog about it? I say it’s no more sexual than the French club or the drama club or any other club where teenagers meet. Oh wait, I’m referring to heterosexual kids there; I forgot they don’t think about sex after school. Yeah, right.
So what about the part where they said “It provides a reprieve of the often hostile environment gay students often encounter”? Don’t you think that’s a worthy goal?
Actually, this is similar to the gay marriage issue, in that it is about providing a structure for support. I’m amazed how some people just don’t get that.
JimT, if we get it, does that automatically mean we’re supposed to like it?
I never imagined I’d hear about a gay sympathy club for high school students.
I guess I’ve lived too long.
But I haven’t lived too long to object. There is no need, nor requirement in the constitution of the United States of America, to provide a support structure for the gay lifestyle — certainly not among students who have yet to reach the age of majority.
No wonder gas costs $3.85/gallon. We have lost what’s left of our dumbed-down minds.
No. There’s no requirement in the constitution to require such a support group; but there’s no statute forbidding it either; the reason gas is so high may have something to do with people being distracted by these problems, rather than responding to the real crises that have been growing around us.
This is kind of freaky. I was president of the Irmo High School Chess Club. I’ll send a photo.
So what’s the freakiest move you did in the Chess Club? The Polish Gambit? The Creepy Crawly Formation? Black Knights’ Tango? sounds kinky to me….
We used to say “fork you” a lot. It seemed clever at the time.
Interesting thing about the chess club. We had exactly 2 girls who joined. It didn’t dawn on me until years later that the only reason they joined was to meet guys. I never could figure out why they kept coming to the meetings but didn’t care anything about playing chess.
Brad, Bishop-Bishop or Bishop-any piece would be an issue, right!?
Don’t forget, Irmo was home to the huge controversy over the Indigo Girl concert. I was at Spring Valley at that time and was in charge of student activities. We had the first opportunity to schedule them. I caught wind of negative feedback from some in our faculty and realized this would blow up. I personally would not have a problem with them but as a school official, I felt the distraction would interfere with education.
The Irmo principal is in charge of a secular institution. I think he should have kept his personal beliefs from becoming the major issue by resigning without making a public stand.
No, Mr. McFarland, I daresay you do not get it. If you have not grown up as a teenager hearing that you are an abomination to God, if you have not seen a homosexual excommunicated from your church, if you have not heard homosexuals described as defective, or as you have said, an insult to nature, you would not know how damaging to your self-esteem these things can be.
Suicide among gay teenagers and young adults is high, not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with being gay, but because at some point young people internalize the negativity they are surrounded with and the messages become “I am an abomination to God, I will get kicked out of my church, I am defective and I am an insult to nature.” The impact of these messages is enormous, and often only the strong do survive. If people really do get all that, and still don’t care, I suppose there’s no way anybody can reason with them.
Principal Walker’s very public outburst of self-righteous outrage blesses no one. In fact, it sends one more message to gay young people that they are so awful that their principal would rather quit his job than acknowledge them.
As Mr. Warthen points out, taking this skirmish into the streets of Irmo and beyond (I saw it on MSNBC yesterday) is a huge distraction from important issues. I don’t know anything specific about the Gay-Straight Alliance, but if its purpose is to salvage the self-esteem of these vulnerable young people or if it can prevent the suicide of even one person, it is a good thing.
Let me put it another way, JimT.
We can’t have a high-school support club for every ill that can befall a student, so I’d leave homosexuality off the list.
Yes, I do get all that; those who live life as homosexuals don’t have an easy road, but that suits me fine. No, I don’t care whether they’re happy or miserable, and yes, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to feel that way and think that way. I don’t want one penny of the taxes I pay spent to clear the path for behavior I consider an abomination.
If you can’t understand that, I don’t suppose I can reason with you. The only conceivable purpose for a Gay-Straight Alliance is to promote homosexuality.
Why on God’s green Earth would we want to do that? What’s good about homosexuality if it makes people so miserable we have to have a high-school support group for it?
Because homosexual behavior has no conceivable purpose, as far as I’m concerned, if it makes people miserable, well, fine.
Mind you, I would never lift a finger to harm a gay or lesbian person. But I will never lift a finger to help them be gay or lesbian, and I am adamant about that.
I don’t think it is a “support group” like you mean. They’re not alcoholics, after all.
Yo, JimT — this wasn’t a post about the new club. This was a post about the chess club. And I was worried that I was going to offend some present and/or former chess club members, but who’da thunk our man bud himself presided over the chess club at that very high school!
Fortunately, he didn’t take offense. You know, even though I was (of course) the essence of cool in high school, even I did nerdy things; I was just too antisocial to join clubs. I still do nerdy things — does it get any nerdier than maintaining a blog?
And Randy, you’re right: Bishop and ANYbody is a scandal, including bishop-queen.
But the king’s gotta expect stuff like that to happen. He moves one square here, one square there, and occasionally gets panicky enough for a castling move.
Meanwhile, the queen’s running around all over the place, doing as she pleases…
Sighhhh… you know, it seems to me that whenever religious beliefs, dogma, principals, whatever you wish to call it, enter into a discussion about anything so many people become instantly, fiercely, smugly and moralistically polarized and intolerant. The language used and the emotions involved become so furiously extreme as to appear violent. Religion is supposed to be a GOOD thing, right? Oh – wait – it’s only a good thing when it jives with YOUR personal beliefs… otherwise it’s an… what was the word… “abomination”?
I believe in a greater spiritual reality and in the numinous element that characterizes all living things. But self-righteous, in-your-face religious conviction disgusts me. Enough blood has dripped from the hands of religion to fill the oceans.
Claudia, what do “religious beliefs, dogma, principals, whatever you wish to call it” have to do with chess, and whether it is sexual?
Also, if you’ll forgive me, I think you meant to say “jibes,” not “jives.”
“Jive” is another concept that, like sex, just doesn’t seem to have much to do with chess…
bud, don’t forget to send me the picture. I’ll post it along with the other one you sent me earlier, if that’s OK.
Well I suppose, though I don’t see what gas has to do with a gay club in the high school.
I guess I’m somewhere in the middle of all this. I don’t want to be a gay-basher nor a moral crusader. But I don’t think the move away from the traditional family is as harmless as Brad and Karen suppose, nor is it a “blessing from God” as Phillip supposes. I just believe that there is absolute truth, however imperfectly we may live it out. Sometimes it corresponds in a very rough fashion to our society’s traditional values, and sometimes it doesn’t. (An example where it doesn’t is our tendency to rely upon militarism, and even consider the U.S. military to somehow be “God’s army.”)
I just don’t think rushing away from a New Testament family model to all kinds of other possibilities is going to be helpful in the long run, but rather destructive. But I’m not going to get my boxer shorts twisted over it. The U.S. may one day well collapse because the family unit is completely out of kilter, but the Kingdom of God will not be altered by that. I suppose that may seem cynical, but I don’t mean it that way. Rather I have basis for hope and action, despite things following apart.
I agree with Phillip that gay orientation may be nature (with the emphasis upon “may be,”–I am not sure the verdict is in on that) but not gay practice, any more than other forms of wrong sexual behavior are “natural.” They may be generally practiced to whatever degree, but general practice doth not make right.
There are many issues that voters need to consider. I don’t agree that this one is just a pain or a distraction. It is important, as are many other issues. And I understand why the principal is stepping down. This is not a neutral issue. The push is on to force everyone to recognize that any style of family is fine, and since we have had such a problem with the traditional family, well maybe we just ought to come up with a whole host of new paradigms. Well, it makes about as much sense as abandoning a car because the water pump is broken. How about fixing the water pump?
Claudia,
Is religion just a servant to our particular agenda? Or is there a standard of right and wrong that comes from objective truth?
I’m not sure the Old Testament prophets would agree that religion is just supposed to make people feel good. Nor does Jesus for that matter.
Everybody quotes “let he that is without sin cast the first stone,” but nobody quotes, “go and sin no more,” let alone tries to define what Jesus understood under the subject of “sin.”
I guess everybody is supposed to feel good about themselves, and God is supposed to be our servant to do that.
Please pardon if my words are misinterpreting what you are trying to say. That is not my intention. I am trying to clarify, though it is hard not to be suspicious of extremes on either side. I’m wondering if, because some people misuse religion, others throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Brad,
I think Claudia is addressing the gay issue in general, taking up the thread from below. That is really what this is about. The question as I understand it is, “is the abandonment of the traditional family unit really an important issue for this election–or can we not instead discuss energy policy?”
I don’t think you and others are doing a propery service to this issue by just reducing it to a “culture war,” and insinuating that is isn’t worth considering. It is controversial, yes. So therefore we drop it?
I think you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater as well.
OK, Editor Brad – “jives” correction noted and acknowledged! And yes, as Herb suggested, I’m referencing the overarching discussion surrounding certain religious beliefs about homosexuality and Eddie Walker’s reasons for resignation… I don’t think we can have a discussion about the facts surrounding his actions without it. Maybe I digressed too much from the specific topic… I apologize.
(Please let it be noted here that Eddie Walker has shown himself to be one of the finest principal leaders in SC; I was surprised and distressed by his resignation.)
mr. warthen, you are a poser of the highest order. i know you are just trying to poke people with a stick and draw attention to your blog, but you are giving comfort to people who cause others to suffer, and you are denigrating people who have little defense. i can’t believe this is what inspired you to become a journalist.
Ummm… I knew that. I was just trying to tease Claudia back to the facetious level, which is the only one on which I am inclined to engage the subject. The chess club reference struck me as funny. The rest seems to me a waste of time…
It’s a no-win subject. You end up alienating people whom you would like to engage constructively on other, more relevant, issues. It’s such a no-win subject that you even get criticized for not wanting to talk about it (I point you to the never-ending hollering about our position on the pointless referendum a couple of years back, on which we made it clear that we preferred whatever approach was most likely to make the subject go away so we could deal with other things).
Oops… I was answering Claudia, not this owen person, who seems to be taking me to task for making fun of the chess club members.
No, folks, don’t explain it to me. I know what he meant — even though, if I were to take his point seriously, I’d question who the victim is here: the kids, or the principal who either has to support something he doesn’t believe in, or quit the job he’s good at? And who is served by his resignation, exactly? As near as I can tell from the comments from all sides, no one.
If I wanted to get serious about this, I would describe the whole thing as what the prosecutors in Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities referred to as “a piece of s__t case” — one in which there are no heroes, no villains, and everybody loses.
Pretty damned depressing, huh? And pretty damned pointless, in a country that is going down the toilet for lack of our ability to achieve consensus on an energy policy, and in a state that keeps sending everybody to prison, but won’t pay for guards.
How about somebody sponsoring a “Good Government Club?” That’s something we could use in our schools…
good government can’t exist without good journalism. which is why what you are doing is so wrong. there is no real debate as to who is the powerful and who is powerless in this situation. mr. walker did not have to resign, just as you do not have to resign any time you come up against an issue that compromises your principles. you are playing the curmudgeon for entertainment purposes, but the fact is innocent kids are being hurt and you are siding with the powerful; again, not the job of a journalist.
OK, so maybe the physical and emotional well-being of vulnerable teenagers is “damned pointless” and we should be focusing on your other topics this week: Driving 55 mph, the Beatles movie “Let It Be,” and Henry McMaster’s speaking style. Those are, at least, worthy.
You have a bizarre knee-jerk history on the gay issue: Not important. Nothing to see here. Move along. Vote for the Constitutional Amendment because that will make people stop talking about it.
It’s one thing to be frustrated with the lack of understanding between the folks holding different views on these issues. I share that frustration. But it’s another thing entirely to be so flippant and dismissive of these kids’ wellbeing every time this issue comes up.
The issue is not “pointless” if what this principal has done done in a very pubic way is foster an atmosphere that makes it even more difficult for these kids.
The well-being of vulnerable teenagers is not pointless. It deserves serious attention. You could start with a much less snarky tone.
Yeah, I typo’ed “public.” I’m sure that will get a snarky response as well.
“Ummm… I knew that. I was just trying to tease Claudia back to the facetious level, which is the only one on which I am inclined to engage the subject.”
Again acknowledged, Brad. In my circles, usually I’m the one accused of being too flippant. But this whole thing just makes me too sad to make an attempt at levity. Whether you see Eddie Walker as a gifted school leader who got lost in his own prejudice or as a man of religious convictions that he cannot compromise, everyone here loses… especially the kids.
And Herb – let’s have the “Is religion just a servant to our particular agenda? Or is there a standard of right and wrong that comes from objective truth?” discussion one day… just please forgive me if I start climbing the well-worn steps to that particular soap box of mine! (But you may find that we agree more than we disagree.)
With respect to all…
Claudia
I teach and the biggest need for a club is one that involves everyone. Skaters, nerds, hip hop, cheerleaders, jocks, chess clubbers, (I was on the marching band). No child is ever immune from feeling on the fringes of society every step of their adolescence. Even we as adults, feel on the outs every now and then. What about a building self esteem club? What about a club that focuses on tolerance not just for gay/straight, black white, but for everyone? I find even the most affluent golden child struggles with being ostracized for having a lifestyle that was not their choosing and being punished for having successful parents who buy their children things. And conversely, a child shunned for not having enough money to afford the “in things.” Observing how the children interact, I can tell you it is as much about helping them learn to love themselves and reject the limitations and labels that others would put on them if they are willing or unable to prevent themselves from being yoked in such a way. Couldn’t all of our children use a club that would allow them to shake those chains? Just a thought, because no one has an immunity idol for discrimination. No one.
I disagree that the discussion is pointless. Yes, we have many other things to discuss, but it’s not like if we only get to discuss one thing. I totally agree it is insane how our state continues to send people to prison without being willing to pay for it, and I think it is even more insane that the only rejoinder our governor knows in any given situation is to cut taxes. But having said that, I don’t really know what else to say. At least with the topic I wrote about, I do know something about it and I care about it very much.
I do agree it is pointless to have this discussion with some people, such as some of the brasher writers who take the time and energy to post. But you never know who else is reading, and you knever know but what some word you write will strike a meaningful chord with someone. If I commited some kind of faux pas by intruding on your chess club post, I apologize, but I felt I had something worth contributing.
Brad, I’m not criticizing you for not mentioning the subject, but rather for what appears to me as trivializing it. If you don’t want to take up a controversial subject—well there may be good grounds for not doing so, though you did a very admirable job with the sociological and anthropological arguments a few threads back. Mike Cakora touched on it as well.
What you don’t need to do, in my opinion, is to insinuate that the subject is unimportant. Maybe it is a hot potato. Maybe it gets too much attention at the expense of other issues, but that does not necessarily make it peripheral.
I think the most people we ever brought to a tournament was 25 people – 2 varistiy teams and 3 JV ones, but I could be misremembering. We might have had more people come out for chess than for football one of the years. (Public school, with 1/2 or so being in one of two magnet programs).
At least I can say I lettered in something 🙂
Bottom line concerning children that are gay and being put upon in high school and need a club to feel good…they are not supposed to be having any kind of sex at that age. If you are going to be teaching anything, teach abstaning from any kind of sex until they are married.
JimT,
If I have been too zealous on one position, please forgive me. My desire is that we interpret Scripture in the right way. There is no need to turn Scripture around to say what it doesn’t mean, just let it be and get on with it.
In no way do I wish to squelch discussion, even if I have very definite convictions. I do not belong to the “shouting fundamentalists,” and I don’t want to be identified with such. I do not fear people of other lifestyles–but I would think that I should be allowed to address their position in a responsible way, or not?
Well, maybe not. I have the sense that if one does not accept certain premises, then one is intolerant, no matter what.
But please understand that the opposite is also the case. I think it will not be long before churches and Christian organizations will be coerced into hiring without any questions asked. And I ask, is reverse discrimination going to help the issue?
Mr. Brasher, omg, help me pull my foot out of my mouth!! I just meant “strident writers.” I realize you are not the knee-jerk type of guy.
I also desire that we interpret scripture the right way. Maybe Brad will have a post on that so I don’t have to crash another post inappropriately! 😉
PS. I don’t think churches will be coerced into hiring without question. The only employment legislation afoot regarding gays is the perennial ENDA, which contains no hiring quotas at all.
This is not like a chess club, or Beta Club.
This is a vice, and would be more like a Smoking Club, Drunks Club, or Lottery Club, or Skank Club.
Lee, what would you have against a smoking club? It’s just people having fun and it doesn’t hurt anybody, right?
The schools shouldn’t sanction any activity which encourages vice and dissipation. Homosexuality is worse than alcohol, cigarettes and drugs in terms of harm to the youth and to others.
At this age, children are being recruited by adult homosexuals who use their insecurity of undeveloped personalities as a means to convince them that they are “gay”.
Its shameful that the same pseudo-liberals who would oppose the tobacco and beer industry selling to youth, will condone and encourage the recruitment of youth by homosexuals.
Heavy… now, to move on in my never-ending quest to engage in facetiousness for this one post at least…
I love "English Teacher’s" litany of those categories of students who should be included ("Skaters, nerds, hip hop, cheerleaders, jocks, chess clubbers…")!
But don’t forget "The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies" and "dickheads," all of whom think Ferris is "a righteous dude."
Actually, that might be a good name for an all-inclusive club: The Save Ferris Club.
Hey, in case y’all missed it — be sure to check out the related, follow-up post, which features a picture of our own bud as president of the Irmo High School Chess Club back in 1973…
Ahhhhhh! You meant “brasher” as in brash. That’s hilarious. Thanks for the laugh!
Just in case anyone’s interested, the name is from someone who works with brass, (but I won’t use any words to describe it–my dad used to keep clippings by his desk of the different ways his name had been spelled, you can imagine what one does with brassier, etc.) and not brash.
Herb, if gay-ness comes from nature rather than nurture, but homosexual practice is a matter of choice, well as I said in the other post, that makes it no different from innate heterosexuality vs. actual heterosexual practice. In my beliefs, the nature of being homosexual implies the eventual realization of that tendency in sexual activity, as does the same in heterosexuality. Both the nature and the practice come from creation. (If one chooses to be celibate for whatever reason, that’s a different story, but again that cuts across both gay and straight lines).
Abstinence, the wisdom of delaying sexual involvement until greater maturity, can still be encouraged within both the gay and straight population at the high school level.
For the principal to say that a gay club implies sexual activity is disingenuous, for all HS activities that are oriented towards couples (dances, Homecoming King and Queen, etc.) imply couple-hood of a heterosexual nature, even if the sexual-activity part of that is officially discouraged.
The principal has the right to resign and express his opposition based on his religious principles. However the whole timing thing with his sticking around for a whole year is lousy, potentially fostering an unpleasant atmosphere around the affected students for a whole year.
Again, I hope we can save these old posts; in 20 years this is going to seem very quaint that we are debating such things.
Phillip,
I wonder if we will really think it is so quaint when we further deconstruct the traditional family unit, thus weakening our whole society. But I’ve already made that point, doubtless we will see the results one way or the other.
What is really disappointing for me is the way the media treats the point, as a couple of fine posts over at getreligion.org develop, for example “A barely-there, skinny 19-point margin”, etc very ably point out. The majority in this country do not want same-sex marriage sanctioned. (Now maybe the majority are just all prejudiced rednecks, and doubtless there is a great deal of fault in the way this subject is discussed, but could there also be the possibility that the majority also have a reasonable basis for their convictions, other than simple prejudice?) The media misrepresents this concern, and now Brad trivializes it as well, opting instead to make driving 55 mph the big issue of the day. To me, as I understand it right now, this is Pharisaism of the basic sort, using lesser issues to torpedo or trivialize more important ones. I’m not saying that there is a time and place for all, and there may be good reason to avoid a battle at some particular point in time. But being silent is one thing, misrepresenting it is another. To say it is not important, or even to make light of it and ridicule it, is ultimately tragic.
I do not know about the wisdom of the principal’s sticking around for a year, so I can’t comment on it.
“Again, I hope we can save these old posts; in 20 years this is going to seem very quaint that we are debating such things.”
Gee, Phillip, not even Mr. Warthen has ever written a sentence so obviously doomed to be untrue, unless you mean that homosexuality will have fallen back to where it has been for most of human history — out of favor.
I suppose you think the Arab-Israeli thing will be old hat patched up and sporting a new feather by then, too, just like Jimmy Carter fixed it.
I submit that the average heterosexual finds homosexuality too disgusting even to think about. The more OK the government tries to make the gay lifestyle, the more resentment both the government and the gay community will reap.
You can’t legislate nature, sir. But if you think you can, please change the number of hours in a day for me without changing the amount of sleep I require per day. I could use a few more daylight hours per sleep cycle to earn the funds needed to pay Mr. Warthen’s cigarette tax and gas tax, and to fund the coming Obama presidency, which will bankrupt America every which way but loose for the benefit of the black minority.
“I submit that the average heterosexual finds homosexuality too disgusting even to think about.”
Does that mean we should outlaw sex between parents? (Don’t know anyone who wants to think about that going on!)
I have to say, if opponents of gay marriage would admit “I hate it cuz I think its icky” I could at least acknowledge them for being honest. Instead, the common tactic is to hypocritically ramble on about the importance of marriage without every mentioning outlawing divorce except in cases of infidelity — you know, something that affects far more people than gay marriage ever will, and goes exactly along with the words of Christ. Or they ignorantly say that marriage has always been between one man and one woman… which wasn’t always the case in either the bible or parts of this country (one man and at least one woman).
Of course, ickiness hardly has the ethical or moral high ground (it didn’t when it was used an excuse to lynch a minority for looking at your woman the wrong way and it doesn’t today).
“The principal has the right to resign and express his opposition based on his religious principles.”
From one story the school apparently has a Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter. I wonder if the principal would resign if someone wanted to start one for Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Agnostic/Atheistic Athletes. I mean, if its about morality, his religion says that all of those groups are going to hell, but the homosexual could still be saved (some churches are happy to accept homosexuals who get dunked and take Christ as their personal savior… if one had to be perfect to get saved no one would make it).
Auntie M, homosexuality will always be a minority within the spectrum of adult sexuality; minorities of any kind always tend to be “out of favor” in general. The question is whether the dominant heterosexual population continues to work extra hard to deny certain basic tenets—life, liberty, happiness—to gay men and women. I just simply don’t understand why it is so important to deny gay men and women the right to be married and obtain the legal rights therein. I just see people affected by this and it hurts me, on a personal level.
Herb, again I think the fundamental changes in the family unit are much more affected by other aspects in our society worthy of analysis, study, and discussion. To me, the outlawing, prohibiting, of an aspect of stabilization of a loving relationship is just another blow against love and kindness in our society. I see the legalization of gay marriage as absolutely a pro-family move.
Oh, and one more thing, Herb, about public opinion: as late as the late 1950’s, Gallup polls had public opinion against mixed-race marriage at over 90%. Within a decade, the Supreme Court struck down most remaining laws against mixed-race marriage, and in the forty years since then, it has become pretty much no big deal in American society, which is morally right and proper.
I don’t doubt that this issue is heading in the same direction.
A lot of criminal and other deviant tendencies come from nature. Civilization, including school and church, is supposed to teach people to control their animal appetites, especially perverted ones, and make themselves into decent people who don’t pose a threat or embarrassment to the rest of society.
Phillip,
That is a fundamental question, whether 1) sexual orientation, and 2) sexual behavior, are the equivalent of race and part of our identity. There are a lot of things that need to be addressed in what you say, for example, what exactly is “a loving relationship”–a very nebulous term, to say the least. Any number of different paradigms might be called “loving relationships,” including Kudzu’s (comic strip) take-off last year on someone wanting to marry themselves. That all depends on who you ask.
I think that society has a real issue to deal with in kids growing up in gay marriage “families.” We already have a host of problems because of delinquent fathers. Are we going to help them by having two fathers? Or what does a kid call same-sex parents? I guess I don’t have a clue, and admit my ignorance at that point.
More later, sometime.
Herb,
The advocates of “gay marriage” have an answer – just redefine marriage to let those “two fathers” prey on (er, uh, “marry”) the children. No more child abuse, no problem. Just define it away.
Lee,
It looks like you shut them up.
There are things that are going on in this country that goes against the laws of mankind and the eventual survival of our way of life. “The evil that men do live long after them”.
Gosh, we are saved! We can eliminate two “fathers.” We’re all saved, write an epic, compose a sonnet, let’s get some haikus. I taught sarcasm today. Can you tell?
Good idea, teach. Now would be a great time for a few haiku…
Not directly related to the subject at hand, and addressing only this gem: “It looks like you shut them up.”
If the other person will not change their view on any issue irregardless of how many of their “facts” you directly disprove (and get whiney about how disproving them is apparently changing the subject), what’s the point in keeping posting? Even moreso when they keep saying you don’t even believe what you’re posting?!?!?!
Lee isn’t looking to change any minds here, or have his changed. He’s looking to rant. There is no more point in conversing with him than the people who believe in young earth creationism or are holocaust deniers.
Wow you amaze me
And yet you still can’t phase me
Hey Bro, don’t taze me!
Acrostric:
S ome people
O r
U nder a bright flag
T end to call names
H ate words like
C an we not
A gree
R ight
O r wrong
L iving
I s hard enough
N ow we gotta get through these
A (you can finish the word. 🙂
:: applause for the English Teacher :::
RE: Four posts up — The third paragraph was missing several qualifiers. I can’t speak for other posters here, and shouldn’t try to. I meant it to reflect how it seemed to me.
RE: Poetry — More coming I hope?
Gratitude for just saying, one for you….
Noise (voice) pollution
There is another form
of pollution
And there is only one
solution.
Put a sock in it. I’m just saying.
Its Voice Pollution!
Screaming and shouting
Points of view, they’re doubting
If they don’t get their way.
They’re pouting.
Molehills to mountains.
Simple solution
for noise voice dilution…
PUT A SOCK IN IT!
snap snap snap snap snap
Why Johnny can’t read. ^
Thanks Lee! You continue to help with the reinforcement in the skill of sarcasm. 🙂
Maybe if I read it aloud to the beat of bongo drums…
Nah, fingernails on the chalk board. 🙂
It is sad that Brad Wharten and The State Newspaper only want to report on the issue Gay-Straight Alliance Clubs in our schools and just sit on the sidelines, not taking a position.
Next year at Irmo High School I am sure that some parents are going have “I support Eddie” bumper stickers on their cars. And, the club members I am sure are going to probably be more harassed than ever before.
The suicide rate of gay and lesbian teenagers and young adults is many times higher than heterosexuals in the same age group. Is it any wonder why? I suffered from depression in high school, but I could not tell anyone why I was depressed and suffering from anxiety. Several teachers in my senior year in high school pulled me aside and asked what was going with me? I just could not tell them. Even I was in denial. I can only pray that this club will help those in need and keep them safe or a least safer.
Homosexual adults look for confused adolescents whom they can recruit by convincing them that they are really “gay”, before they can mature and sort things out.
This club serves that recruitment perfectly.
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