Illinois Teacher Suspended For Assigning an Article on Homosexuality in the Animal Kingdom

Dan Delong, an English teacher at Southwestern High School in Piasa, Illinois has been suspended for allegedly allowing students in his English classes to read an article about homosexuality in the animal kingdom. The article that Delong allegedly had his class read was published in a 2006 edition of “The Gay Animal Kingdom” and is available at http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_gay_animal_kingdom.

The article by Lehrer explores the work of people like Joan Roughgarden, a biology professor at Stanford University who challenges Darwinian sexual selection by documenting more than 450 animal species that engage in homosexual behaviors. An estimated 450 species exhibit such proclivities, here. She explained:

“When I was at that gay pride parade. I was just stunned by the sheer magnitude of the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender] population. Because I’m a biologist, I started asking myself some difficult questions. My discipline teaches that homosexuality is some sort of anomaly. But if the purpose of sexual contact is just reproduction, as Darwin believed, then why do all these gay people exist? A lot of biologists assume that they are somehow defective, that some developmental error or environmental influence has misdirected their sexual orientation. If so, gay and lesbian people are a mistake that should have been corrected a long time ago. But this hasn’t happened. That’s when I had my epiphany. When scientific theory says something’s wrong with so many people, perhaps the theory is wrong, not the people.”

Students have rallied around Delong, here.

These were high school students, who are supposed to be exposed to different views and theories. Do you consider the material still “inappropriate” for high school students?

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