The good people on the board of education in Clovis, New Mexico have voted to review all of the content of all student publications after a Yearbook published pictures of lesbian couples in their high school. Principals are also empowered to censor such publications like the Plainsman Yearbook. The Plainsman of Clovis High will be be both plain and straight.
Clovis Municipal School District Superintendent Rhonda Seidenwurm was that the school previously had no say in the matter.
The controversy surrounds the photos in The Plainsman that were part of a segment about relationships. The photos of two lesbian couples included narratives describing their relationships in a section entitled “Do you want to go out?” Nine heterosexual couples were also featured in the section.
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I’d lick it
i jus wish ppl would understand tht jus kuz ppl r gay dnt mean tht thy r infetid wit sumthn.
The issue of acceptance will eventually be resolved by society. Perhaps it’s bias because I’ll stipulate I’ve had generally good experiences with my homosexual friends. They are as good and/or bad as my heterosexual friends. Acceptance is not approval and while approval isn’t required, common sense and courtesy should apply even when law doesn’t. If no one is being physically harmed, violated without consent and/or children are not involved, those whom other’s have sexual relations with has zero impact beyond the complications that can arise from ANY sexual relation (jealousy, stupidity, STD’s, buying a mini-van, wearing matching clothing, etc.). When that finally sinks in to the collective unconscious, acceptance will come.
It is not impossible that at some point in our (possibly) near future that homosexuality might be ENCOURAGED by society and not just a component of our species’ nature. How’s that? All I have to say is, “New babies need food.” And potable water. And clean air. Our Spaceship Earth has limited seating, folks.
It would be a shame if humanity cannot grasp this simple logic and reality of human nature before having a dystopian future (present?) hammer us over the head with it.
Luckily for the teenagers at that school, kids in general have a much wider exposure to people different from them than they used to. One of the positives of the internet culture is that you’re much more likely to run into people with a different background. So this sort of moral enforcement isn’t nearly as effective as it once was.
Wow, JT. That’s quite aways to go for a movie reference. You don’t see enough Calamity Jane jokes let alone ones that reference classic horse opera.
On the serious side, Jill and puzzling are correct. It’s a denial of the reality of human sexuality and the repression is Orwellian newspeak. And it is repression in every sense of the word.
The smartass part of me thinks they might sell a lot more yearbooks with more lesbian photos.
P.S. I know I deserve the pummeling I am likely to get for that last one. 😀
People, people, people:
If you simply watch DeMille’s The Plainsman (1936) you will note that, while Calamity Jane is featured, she is distinctly heterosexual. The calamity was entirely a heterosexual calamity. Moreover, Wild Bill (Gary Cooper) was wild but not that wild.
I hope that this and the above picture helps.
Puzzling,
Sorry about the mispelling!
Puzzlikng and Jill,
I agree with both of you. For adults in the year 2008 to engage in this kind of censorshiop is improper and detrimental. The school is telling these kids that only certain kids are welcome. It is also detrimental to the straight kids to see how students who are different are treated by their admnistration. Sad and foolish behavior on the Clovis people and the Missouri people in 1983 who must have prevented any future teen pregnacies and divorces in the State of Missouri.
The theory of Newspeak is that if something can’t be said, then it can’t be thought. Better that the Board of Education protect all the good christians in Clovis, lest they stray.
Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier:
The Hazelwood case began in May 1983 when the principal of Hazelwood East High School in suburban St. Louis ordered the deletion of two pages from Spectrum, a student newspaper produced as part of the school’s journalism course, because he objected to a pair of articles–one on girls at the school who had become pregnant and another on the effects of divorce on students.
I’m sure Hazelwood hasn’t had a teen pregnancy or divorce since!
Well that makes two places where they’re aren’t any homosexuals, Iran and Clovis.
And that was a very shitty thing to do to those young people.