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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Washington Post - Tennessee’s ‘Don’t say gay’ bill doesn’t go far enough

By Alexandra Petri -

There is, in Tennessee, a bill prohibiting educators from talking about homosexuality in elementary and middle schools. It just passed the Senate by a vote of 6 to 3. It’s called the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill by its opponents, who think it goes too far.
I oppose it, too: I don’t think it goes far enough. The bill says it’s perfectly fine for educators to talk about heterosexuality from kindergarten through eighth grade.
How filthy!
How dare they pollute the minds of the innocent young with this? Throughout your lives, all you see is heterosexuals flaunting this lifestyle right and left. On billboards. In movies. In music. Through the Midwest. Even on television shows watched by kids!
Sure, I have no problem with heterosexuals. I happen to be one myself. But that doesn’t mean I want my children to be exposed to this before the ninth grade. Don’t they have enough to do, like learning to read and write and identify countries on maps? Why push a social agenda?
Heterosexuals are everywhere once you grow up. You eat lunch with them. You take them to prom. Sometimes you have to share a cubicle with one and talk about his or her hobbies. Many kids even have one in their home or family. Aren’t kids exposed to enough heterosexuality in the media and in their homes without being forced to hear about it at school, too? They don’t need this explained to them! They should be memorizing state capitals and increasingly their utility!
People would not choose to be attracted to members of the opposite sex if someone had not read them a book in their childhood about a male and female duck forming a family. Curse whoever read that book! Such attractions are powerfully distracting! They ended Edward VII’s promising career!
Why brainwash our kids?
If you can’t share it with the whole class, don’t bring it up at all! Some people say they have favorite sexual positions. My favorite position is the one where you don’t talk about it, ever, and occasionally you eat a sandwich and feel kind of lonesome.
So don’t get me started on this ‘sex’ phenomenon. I don’t know whose idea it was, but it can’t be natural. If God intended us to frolic about in the buff with members of the opposite sex, he would have created Adam and Eve, rather than allowing us to evolve slowly over the course of geologic time until we reached our present position. I come from a Scandinavian family, so my sole sex education came one time when we visited the zoo and happened to see some monkeys. “Whatever it is they’re doing,” my parents told me, “don’t.”
I am now 23 years old, and I still believe that I was put on Earth by a complicated ritual involving Ayn Rand and eight storks. I fully intend to adopt, not on principle but because I have no idea how babies are made. I assume that they are either conceived immaculately — if you’re very lucky — or constructed somewhere from inexpensive materials and then shipped, which would explain why we refer to mothers as “expecting.”
It’s an awful lot to wrap one’s head around, and I don’t think kids should have to think about this at all. Later they may have to confront the horrifying fact that they are somehow attracted to someone or other. But until then, I say, forgo all the naughty bits. If they want to tackle the issue on their own time, the less we inform them about what they might be feeling, the better. They are unlikely to figure out any of this on their own. It is far too complicated! They can’t possibly hope to get anywhere until the Elders give them the 83-page manual. And the Internet remains a total mystery to anyone under the age of 25.
Lady Gaga is one thing. We all know she emerged fully formed from an egg. But our kids are another.
So I say this bill is a travesty — there’s too much sex in it. Sex belongs outside the classroom, in, uh, laboratories, or wherever it is they do it. I really couldn’t tell you.

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