"Don't say gay" and other things no one said.
The best way to win an argument is to avoid the substance, defeat arguments no one is making, ramp up the emotion and personally attack the speaker. - Every Politician
To demonstrate the above referenced technique (and because the Dispatch will never publish anything I write), I give you my response to a recent Letter to the Editor entitled “Taking 'identity politics' out of education erases history kids need to know.”
(The Dispatch letter portions are in bold. My response is in the bullets.)
Dublin activists presented a resolution to the Dublin School Board requesting that instruction be free of “identity politics.”
This is fairly accurate though we are not really activists. Because we are not that organized.
The argument is if all children are equal, why the need to discuss race or other aspects of identity? Such talk is divisive and highlights differences versus commonalities.
That is actually not the argument. The argument is “let’s not teach our kids to judge themselves or other people based on skin color or other identities.” And also, “let’s not teach our kids that their identity is the most important aspect of who they are and also determinative of their future.”
The danger is that, historically, our nation has implemented policies that subjugate individuals along the lines of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation.
That is true. But this is also true: Americans have been fighting for equality for quite a long time now. Let’s see… there was the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, the War on Poverty, the Food Stamp Act of 1964, the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, the Social Security Amendments of 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the Social Security Amendments of 1962, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964… In five landmark rulings between the years 1996 and 2020, the Supreme Court invalidated a state law banning protected class recognition based upon homosexuality, struck down sodomy laws nationwide, struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, made same-sex marriage legal nationwide, and prohibited employment discrimination against gay and transgender employees. Adoption of children by same-sex married couples became legal nationwide in 2015. Hate crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity are punishable by federal law under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. And civil rights for LGBTQ people are advocated by a variety of organizations at all levels and concentrations of political and legal life.
How can students learn of these acts and their lingering effects without discussing identity?
I guess it depends on what you mean by “discussing identity.” I do not think anyone is advocating that we all pretend to be the same race, gender, and ethnicity with the same sexual orientation. Discussions about and recognition of identity is perfectly normal. We are just asking it be done without a progressive spin.
While these activists purport to advocate for creating a blank slate where hatred and injustice are bygones of the past, their other activities actively promote the presumably non-existent bigotry. They are lobbying to ban a book from the elementary curriculum claiming the mere presence of a lesbian charector “sexualizes children.” Yet, this is no more sexual than the presence of a woman who is married to a man.
I am not sure that anyone was actually lobbying to ban a book. I believe the argument was “this book is arguably not appropriate for six-year-olds so please let the parents know so they can prepare their child or opt them out of the planned classroom reading, if necessary.”
The book in question is Sharice’s Big Voice. At the very end of the book, the main character announces that she is a lesbian. So, no, this is not about “the mere presence of a lesbian character.” This is about introducing children as young as five or six to the word “lesbian.” Now, there are many people who do not care because maybe they use the word all the time with their six-year-old? I don’t know. But I have several close gay friends who are married and who my kids hang out with and, even so, I never set my six-year-old down and said, “Hey, your aunties over there? They’re lesbians.” I don’t know why. I guess maybe for the same reasons I never set him down and said, “Hey, your father and I - totally straight heteros.” I feel like it’s a discussion about sex, and I do not think he is ready for that discussion yet. That’s it. That’s my issue.
Now, there are certainly other parents out there in Dublin (a community with about 50% of its members identifying as religious) who feel even more strongly than I do because homosexuality is a religious issue for them and, I think, they probably want to have that conversation with their kid before the public school does. And, if we really want to be inclusive, we should try our best to respect all identities - even the religious ones. Right?
The outcome is that children who self-identify as LGBTQ or have LGBTQ relatives will not see themselves represented. These identities will be entirely scrubbed clean from the educational experience. How can we expect children to become contributing members of a pluralistic society if they don’t witness society’s identities in a normalizing context?
I would rate this Four Pinocchios. There are many books in our district schools that show all kinds of family structures, including families with two mommies and two daddies. There is even a new one representing a transgender mommy that I found last week. These types of books represent the LGBTQ community for elementary children - and manage to do so without inserting possibly inappropriate sexual terms.
Moreover, their claim that the LGBTQ identity should not exist in any form in elementary schools is essentially hate speech.
Yes, that would be hate speech. But NO ONE suggested anything like that.
The fact that these ideals gained traction in a generally cultured, diverse, urban community like Dublin only underlines the need for explicit instruction on injustices against minorities.
I am pretty sure these “ideals” that she speaks of have only gained traction in her head.
I am not sure what “explicit instruction on injustices against minorities” means. It sounds kind of ominous to me. But if she means public schools should seek to teach history - all of our history and in a fair and unbiased manner - then yes. That is a good idea.
So, in sum: No, Ms. Agarwal, asking that elementary curriculum materials be “age appropriate” is not erasing history.
Discuss.