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6th Grader's Report on Milk Banned

sugaredwalls

sugaredwalls

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California school bans sixth grader’s presentation on Harvey Milk

Wrongly citing a school policy on sex education, a California school illegally censored a sixth grader’s classroom presentation about Harvey Milk earlier this month. According to a demand letter sent by the American Civil Liberties Union to the Ramona Unified School District today, the school violated Natalie Jones’s free speech rights when it refused to allow her to give the presentation in class. Instead, the school improperly required classmates to get parental permission to see the presentation during a lunch recess.

“This whole thing is unbelievable – first my daughter got called into the principal’s office as if she were in some kind of trouble, and then they treated her presentation like it was something icky,” said Bonnie Jones, mother of the Mt. Woodson Elementary School student. “Harvey Milk was an elected official in this state and an important person in history. To say my daughter’s presentation is ‘sex education’ because Harvey Milk happened to be gay is completely wrong.”

The assignment, part of an independent research project class, was originally to prepare a written report on any topic. Natalie Jones, who was inspired to write about Harvey Milk after watching Sean Penn win an Academy Award for portraying him, got a score of 49 out of a possible 50 points on the written report. Students were then told to make PowerPoint presentations about their reports, which they would show to other students in the class. The day before Natalie was to give her 12-page presentation she was called into the principal’s office and told she couldn’t do so.

When Bonnie Jones spoke with the superintendent about the presentation, he said Natalie couldn’t give her presentation because of a district board policy on “Family Life/Sex Education.” A few days later, the school sent letters to parents of students in the class, explaining that her presentation would be held during a lunch recess on May 8, and that students could only attend if they had parental permission.

“The principal and superintendent grossly misinterpreted school policy. They illegally censored student speech protected by the First Amendment and the California Education Code,” said David Blair-Loy, Legal Director of the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties. “Writing or talking about a gay historical figure who advocated for equal rights for LGBT Californians is in no way the same thing as talking about sex, and school officials should not pretend otherwise.”

“Schools that act as if any mention of the existence of gay people is something too controversial or ‘sensitive’ to discuss are doing a disservice to their students,” said Elizabeth Gill, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s national LGBT Project. “This school completely overstepped its bounds in trying to silence Natalie Jones by shunting her presentation off to a lunch recess time and misusing a school policy to justify requiring parental permission to see it.”

In today’s letter, the ACLU is demanding that the school:


* Apologize in writing to Natalie Jones and send a letter about that apology to all the parents who were sent the principal’s letter about the presentation
* Give Natalie Jones an opportunity to give her presentation to all the other members of her independent research project class
* Clarify in writing that the parental notification and permission portion of the “Family Life/Sex Education” policy only applies to the curricula identified as “course content” for “Family Life/Sex Education instruction.

The ACLU is giving the district five days to respond or it may file a lawsuit on Bonnie and Natalie Jones’s behalf.
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Essentially, Natalie Jone's report was classified as sex education because the subject of her report, Harvey Milk was gay.

I'm sure other student's reports done on straight people were held to the same scrutiny to ensure none of the content could be deemed sex education......riiiiiiiight. :mad:

I think the ACLU has a good case.

link
 
That's ridiculous; Harvey Milk is a part of history. Not a part of gay history, but a part of American history, someone, just like, oh, MLK jr., perhaps?
California is pissing me off, and I'm a native. And a teacher here. I hope the ACLU does sue.
 
I'm a teacher too. I'm also a native Californian but I live in Oregon.

The religious fundie homophobes are so freaking scared that public schools are running some sort of secret gay agenda to turn all students homosexual. Seriously, that's what those nutters think.
 
I'm physically sick from this. What is it going to take to get it through peoples heads that LGBT people aren't the demons they want to believe us to be?

What makes it worse is that this wasn't a bunch of fundies MF'ers, this is the school's administration doing this shit!

Harvey Milk should be somebody that EVERYONE - queer, straight and in between - should use as an example of how one person can change things. That he was gay was incidental. He changed things by doing what was right and by teaching others to do what was right. To have the administration of a school denigrate his contribution is utterly disgusting.
 
I wish I could agree with you in thinking it wasn't xtian fundamentalists behind this school administration's decision. It's always them, every time. The school classified a report on Harvey Milk as sex education because of those assholes.

It's the neocon xtian fundies who are generally responsible for most anti gay bullshit, they spew forth their verbal diarrhea about how they don't want anyone teaching their child about "sinful" behavior. Because of them, no school will touch anything gay with a 10 ft pole. People are so fucking sue happy that schools cave to groups like xtian fundamentalists in order to avoid being sued by some fundie lawyer because little Suzy's xtian values were violated by listening to a report about bad, bad gay Harvey Milk.

In the next breath, they think they can cram their fucking book of fairy tales, the bible, down everyone's throats in a public school and pass off creationism as a viable science. They lobby to bring back prayer in schools (xtian prayers of course) and to make it against the law to hire gay teachers. They are insidious, hateful people who think they are on the side of God.

They're nothing more than bigots.
 
sugaredwalls said:
I wish I could agree with you in thinking it wasn't xtian fundamentalists behind this school administration's decision. It's always them, every time. The school classified a report on Harvey Milk as sex education because of those assholes.

It's the neocon xtian fundies who are generally responsible for most anti gay bullshit, they spew forth their verbal diarrhea about how they don't want anyone teaching their child about "sinful" behavior. Because of them, no school will touch anything gay with a 10 ft pole. People are so fucking sue happy that schools cave to groups like xtian fundamentalists in order to avoid being sued by some fundie lawyer because little Suzy's xtian values were violated by listening to a report about bad, bad gay Harvey Milk.

In the next breath, they think they can cram their fucking book of fairy tales, the bible, down everyone's throats in a public school and pass off creationism as a viable science. They lobby to bring back prayer in schools (xtian prayers of course) and to make it against the law to hire gay teachers. They are insidious, hateful people who think they are on the side of God.

They're nothing more than bigots.
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Yeah, fundies have a LOT to do with it - behind the scenes, I'm sure. They can't get their prejudiced little minds around "stay out of my bedroom and I'll stay out of your church," but I still think it goes even deeper than that. It's all about power and hate.

Bottom line is that religion is simply a convenient place for all of these kinds of people to hide their bigotry and hate. Most religions allow (overtly or covertly) for hating the "other guy" and the more fundie, the more hate. With or without religion, these are the same people that would gladly kill Harvey Milk all over again.

BTW, as much as I personally despise them, we can't lay ALL of this on the door step of Christian fundies. The Mormon's are STILL funding a lot of the anti-LGBT rhetoric. You all so have the "non-denominational" old fuckers who think sex is dirty and disgusting.
 
Safe_Bet said:
Yeah, fundies have a LOT to do with it - behind the scenes, I'm sure. They can't get their prejudiced little minds around "stay out of my bedroom and I'll stay out of your church," but I still think it goes even deeper than that. It's all about power and hate.

Bottom line is that religion is simply a convenient place for all of these kinds of people to hide their bigotry and hate. Most religions allow (overtly or covertly) for hating the "other guy" and the more fundie, the more hate. With or without religion, these are the same people that would gladly kill Harvey Milk all over again.

BTW, as much as I personally despise them, we can't lay ALL of this on the door step of Christian fundies. The Mormon's are STILL funding a lot of the anti-LGBT rhetoric. You all so have the "non-denominational" old fuckers who think sex is dirty and disgusting.
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Mormon's consider themselves Christians, lol, the real uber fundie xtians have a difference of opinion about that though.

They did contribute to the overturning of gay marriage in CA though, they raised almost 20 million dollars to pass Prop 8. I would love to see those rat bastards lose their tax exemption status, them and any other religious organization that insists on using their funds to force us all to follow their religious beliefs.

Here is a link from World Net Daily (conservative xtian site) stating how they are going to protest against the Day of Silence because it's a "gay agenda"

They are protesting against people being fucking silent. That's insane.
 
Wow. I wish I could be shocked. But good for Nathalie and her mother, and for Harvey Milk! Shows why positive representations of LGBT folks and other marginalized groups are so important.

"I would love to see those rat bastards lose their tax exemption status, them and any other religious organization that insists on using their funds to force us all to follow their religious beliefs" - AMEN to that.
 
I would LOVE to see them lose their tax exemption status but I would rather they just shut the hell up and keep their religious beliefs to themselves.....and adhere to separation of church and state.
 
sugaredwalls said:
I would LOVE to see them lose their tax exemption status but I would rather they just shut the hell up and keep their religious beliefs to themselves.....and adhere to separation of church and state.
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I was totally shocked by this story, but i was curious as to why this could have happened. Was it, as some are suggesting, an agitation by those who sided with Christian dogma? Was the principal in fact simply acting according to his beliefs, or was there something else at work?

I asked a teacher I know. She agreed that the incident was shocking (and agrees that the report should have been given anyway, without the accompanying hullabaloo), but went on to make some excellent points about the general precociousness of children. Remember that this is all going down in sixth grade. The kids in question are about ... 12 to 13 years old? Now imagine if some kids ask, "I haven't seen the movie. What does gay mean?" Then the teacher says, "Gay means having sex with the same gender." And another student asks, "How do people of the same gender have sex?" Or even, "What's sex?"

Sex ed for me formally started when I was in Grade 8 or Grade 9. In my whacky school, parents *did* have to sign a letter approving discussion of sex and sexual safety. A few parents felt that this was the role of parents, and not the school, and some students weren't allowed to attend. I should say I grew up in a pretty rough Catholic neighborhood.

Discussing gay issues does bring some notion of sexuality to the table. Now of course, I completely agree that a moderated discussion would still be a good idea. And, the student in question *did* score a 49/50 (good job!). But experience with the general melange of cultures that my LA background gives me seems to suggest that some communities are archly conservative, and would NOT have appreciated a forthright discussion of gay issues. Could the principal have been erring on the side of abundant caution, or was he merely a stooge of the Christian conservatives? I honestly don't know.
 
quimsical said:
I was totally shocked by this story, but i was curious as to why this could have happened. Was it, as some are suggesting, an agitation by those who sided with Christian dogma? Was the principal in fact simply acting according to his beliefs, or was there something else at work?

I asked a teacher I know. She agreed that the incident was shocking (and agrees that the report should have been given anyway, without the accompanying hullabaloo), but went on to make some excellent points about the general precociousness of children. Remember that this is all going down in sixth grade. The kids in question are about ... 12 to 13 years old? Now imagine if some kids ask, "I haven't seen the movie. What does gay mean?" Then the teacher says, "Gay means having sex with the same gender." And another student asks, "How do people of the same gender have sex?" Or even, "What's sex?"

Sex ed for me formally started when I was in Grade 8 or Grade 9. In my whacky school, parents *did* have to sign a letter approving discussion of sex and sexual safety. A few parents felt that this was the role of parents, and not the school, and some students weren't allowed to attend. I should say I grew up in a pretty rough Catholic neighborhood.

Discussing gay issues does bring some notion of sexuality to the table. Now of course, I completely agree that a moderated discussion would still be a good idea. And, the student in question *did* score a 49/50 (good job!). But experience with the general melange of cultures that my LA background gives me seems to suggest that some communities are archly conservative, and would NOT have appreciated a forthright discussion of gay issues. Could the principal have been erring on the side of abundant caution, or was he merely a stooge of the Christian conservatives? I honestly don't know.
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DUDE! Do you honestly think that 12 and 13 year old kids DON'T know what gay means? Even in the most backwards rural communities they still get CNN. They might think that we are a bunch of "heathen sodomites who should all burn in the eternal fires of damnation", but they DO know what homosexuality is.
 
I asked a teacher I know. She agreed that the incident was shocking (and agrees that the report should have been given anyway, without the accompanying hullabaloo), but went on to make some excellent points about the general precociousness of children. Remember that this is all going down in sixth grade. The kids in question are about ... 12 to 13 years old? Now imagine if some kids ask, "I haven't seen the movie. What does gay mean?" Then the teacher says, "Gay means having sex with the same gender." And another student asks, "How do people of the same gender have sex?" Or even, "What's sex?"
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Fuck, where's the emoticon that goes "thud" when you need it ?????
 
Safe_Bet said:
DUDE! Do you honestly think that 12 and 13 year old kids DON'T know what gay means? Even in the most backwards rural communities they still get CNN. They might think that we are a bunch of "heathen sodomites who should all burn in the eternal fires of damnation", but they DO know what homosexuality is.
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Not only that but apparently GLBT's are all fucking 24/7 because it's all about having sex and only having sex ya know, that's the ONLY way to explain gay. We don't have jobs, families or a life...we just fuck all day long. :eek:

Sigh.....of course nobody needs to explain st8t relationships, it's a given...as how gay relationships should be.
 
Safe_Bet said:
DUDE! Do you honestly think that 12 and 13 year old kids DON'T know what gay means? Even in the most backwards rural communities they still get CNN. They might think that we are a bunch of "heathen sodomites who should all burn in the eternal fires of damnation", but they DO know what homosexuality is.
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You're probably right -- playing devil's advocate comes disturbingly naturally to me. And, I'll bet that some of these kids have a compassionate stance on everyone's rights (and some of them are probably dealing with nascent gay feelings;-) ). While it's not unlikely that there are some kids who will ask awkward questions (even if to get a rise from their peers), it is up to teachers to moderate discussions in class.

Thinking about this again, my sense is that the principal could have set the tone, but instead pushed the panic button. He probably was a stooge for the 'Yes on Prop 8' campaign. Tolerance starts in school. Educators *and* parents are involved. This school missed a great opportunity for discourse that put rights first and sexuality second. I'd really love to read that kid's paper on Milk.
 
I kinda love how she says "the gays" On the 6th slide.

My grandmother, even after I came out to her and proposed new terms, still says "the gays"

I know she means it lovingly.
 
gloriann said:
Here is her presentation:

http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/lgbt/schoolsandyouth/ramona_milk_presentation.pdf

It's good, I would have given it an A, too.
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So would I !I know alot of people here have a problem with Christians who start trouble for LGBT community, I would like to point out that they are not true christians...they are bigots who do the same thing as muslim terrorists which is create fear and hatred in order to maintain their own wealth and power. As for the school district in California they need to pull their heads out of their A**'s ! this is comming from some one who was born in Cal.
 
As a middle school teacher, I would have given her an "A" as well. It was very well done.

I am a Christian, I have many GLBT friends, I have nothing against them, they are human, just like me! I completely agree with Redred, those that are throwing a fit, aren't true Christians and need to pull their head outta their a**.

In all honesty, I'm not sure I wouldn't have winced a little at what the child wanted to do her report on, but it seems as if this school completely overreacted. Don't get me wrong, I would have let her do the report and not said anything about it, but then I would be the one willing to take the fallout if another kid went home saying they learned about being "gay" at school today.
 
I wouldn't of winced one bit. I would of encouraged her, gave her an A+, a gold star, a scholarship and then shown her presentation to the makers of History text books to say "shame on you", many prominent gays in history and current culture and not one mentioned anywhere....AT ALL!!!!!
 
Precious_Lady said:
As a middle school teacher, I would have given her an "A" as well. It was very well done.

I am a Christian, I have many GLBT friends, I have nothing against them, they are human, just like me! I completely agree with Redred, those that are throwing a fit, aren't true Christians and need to pull their head outta their a**.

In all honesty, I'm not sure I wouldn't have winced a little at what the child wanted to do her report on, but it seems as if this school completely overreacted. Don't get me wrong, I would have let her do the report and not said anything about it, but then I would be the one willing to take the fallout if another kid went home saying they learned about being "gay" at school today.
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Sorry, but I have to ask - how is learning about Harvey Milk learning about being gay? The man was a politician who energized the gay community, and giving a report on him isn't anything like explaining the gay lifestyle. Why shouldn't a kid do a report on Harvey Milk? What fallout could there possibly be?
 
Etoile said:
Sorry, but I have to ask - how is learning about Harvey Milk learning about being gay? The man was a politician who energized the gay community, and giving a report on him isn't anything like explaining the gay lifestyle. Why shouldn't a kid do a report on Harvey Milk? What fallout could there possibly be?
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Well, there could be fallout over the fact that now a kid knows gays exist.
 
Some people are lactose intolerant.

BWAHAHAHA, "lactose intolerant"! I slay myself sometimes.
 
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