Bobservations

The other night, after we’d finished dinner, Carlos and I sat at the table chatting about this and that, and I said:

“I’m going to get some bread out of the freezer so I can have toast in the morning.”

“You’re going to bed?”

“What?”

“You said you were going to bed so you can have toast in the morning.”

“Yes, my life is so full, and the thought of toast thrills me so much, that I want to go to sleep At 7PM so morning comes sooner and I can have toast.”

“Okay … are you gonna clean the kitchen first?”

As he likes to remind me, I signed the papers so I’m stuck with him.

Tuxedo and MaxGoldberg always got along, but every once in a while had a little spat; this is from September 2009:

“Tuxedo Carrington and MaxGoldberg Carrington Colby Dexter.....I can't wait until one of them pushes the other into the fishpond on the Carrington Estate!”

I love the look on Max’s face and the way Tuxedo is sitting up on his hind legs ready to pounce. I think the fight lasted about three minutes and then they were buddies again.

A sixth-grade teacher in Floriduh asked her class how many were Thing 45 fans, and despite most of them not knowing who Thing 45 was, they wanted to be liked by the teacher so they all raised their hands … except for little Bobby. The teacher looked at him and asked:

“Why are you being different again?”

“Because I’m not a Thing 45 fan.”

“Why aren’t you a Thing 45 fan?”

“Because I’m a Democrat.”

The teacher sniffed:

“Oh really? Why are you a Democrat?”

“Well, my mom is a Democrat, my dad is a Democrat, so I’m a Democrat.”

“Well, what if your mom was a fool and your dad was a jerk—what would that make you?”

“A Thing 45 fan.”

Be like Little Bobby.

Speaking of being like Little Bobby, graduating students at New College of Florida will hold a student-led “Commencement On Our Terms” after Dr. Scott Atlas was scheduled to be the commencement speaker for the regular graduation. You see, Atlas worked in Thing 45’s administration as a special White House advisor during the pandemic. His views contradicted all medical advice on how to combat COVID making him one of the head COVIDIOTS who denounced COVID testing and masks as millions died.

Students at the school have chosen civil rights leader and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Maya Wiley as the keynote speaker at their alternative, woke, graduation.

Cuz they don’t need another idiot in Floriduh.

I have come to the realization that there are two Carlos’ in our house. One is a hard-nosed diva … Tear down that bitch of a bearing wall and put a window where a window ought to be … and the other is the martyr who, when you ask what he’s doing, mutters … I’m just doing my chores so I can still live in the house.

Yes, one minute I’m terrified he’s going to beat me with a wire hanger and the next I’m wondering if I should start a bonfire and burn him at the stake.

Joan Crawford or Joan of Arc. Tis a puzzlement.

An 18-year-old shooter fired indiscriminately while roaming a residential street in Farmington, New Mexico this week killing three people before the police arrived and killed the suspect; six other people, including two officers, were injured.

In Texas, the apparent capitol of Mass Shootings, police have charged a 12-year-old boy with murder after he shot and killed a Sonic employee who was arguing in a parkin g lot with the boy’s twenty-year-old friend. The 12-year-old boy used an AR-style weapon and fired at least six rounds at Davis.

Just another day in the United States of Guns. Thoughts and prayers in the hopes that Congress will one day grow a spine and do something but we all know thoughts and prayers fix nothing so ... 

Officials in Kansas City, Missouri are hoping to declare the city a sanctuary for people seeking or providing gender-affirming care, defying anti-transgender state officials bigots who are intent on banning it for minors and restricting it for adults.

Kansas City Council members acted after the GOP-controlled state legislature gave final approval to a bill banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

This could be a good first step, but the march goes on …

When Senator Joe Manchin scolded the EPA for requiring power plants to reduce their carbon emissions, he didn’t mention that the agency’s rules might threaten his personal income.

In fact, the risk to one plant, in particular, could threaten a lucrative source of money for Manchin. His family business Enersystems Inc. delivers waste coal to the Grant Town power plant, a financially struggling coal facility that Manchin has spent much of his political career protecting.

It’s not about protecting jobs at these plants it’s about protecting Joe Manchin’s bank account.

Fuck him.

Eli Bernard is a model, personal trainer and student but really all one needs to know is: Would You Hit It?

Emily Scheck Has A New Family

Emily Scheck, who runs cross-country for Canisius College in Buffalo, was just going along, living her life, having fun last summer when she received a text message from her mother.

It seems her mother, while going through Emily’s things at home, had found a picture of Emily and a girl she was dating, and Mom was sickened; she told Emily that she was disgusting, and that she had a choice to make: enter gay conversion therapy or be cut out of her parents lives forever.

Well, good for her, Emily chose actual love over fake love, refused therapy; the next day, her father came to Canisius and removed the license plates from her car—Emily owned the car, but her parents paid the insurance, and when they stopped paying, her father came for the license plates. He also filled the car with all of Emily’s  things from home and left his own message: she was never to speak to them or her siblings again.

Emily Scheck was alone, no family, no support, with just $20 to her name, and a bill her parents had stuck her with for items the family had purchased on a recent vacation.

She was able to get a few meals through a campus program, and when she couldn’t afford books for the upcoming semester. Friends lent her their copies so she could study. But Emily wondered how she could afford to stay in school without the financial support of her parents—tuition per semester is about $18,000—and she told her coach, Nate Huckle, about her situation; he offered to help, perhaps with housing or financial options, but as time passed, Huckle couldn’t come up with a plan for Emily.

Then her friends stepped in, again, creating a GoFundMe page with a goal of about $5,000; within days the site had raised $25,000, mostly from strangers. It looked good, but with all she’d been through, Emily knew that when things looked good, there was another shoe about to drop.

She was contacted by an NCAA compliance officer at Canisius who told she had two options: return every penny from the donations and maintain her NCAA eligibility, or keep the money and leave the cross-country team.

Canisius offered to work with the NCAA to raise enough money for Emily, but there were no guarantees; and if she tried to sue, how could she pay for that, and would she even prevail. There might be a chance that she couldn’t stay in school and compete in track.

All Emily Scheck wanted was to buy some food, buy some books, pay her tuition and get some insurance for her car so she could work and pay her own way through school, and choosing that first option—returning all the money—made no sense.

So, Emily quit the team and stayed in school with the help and support from strangers and friends, just  because her parents couldn’t simply love their daughter and accept her for being gay.

Naturally, when the story broke, it turned into a public relations disaster for Canisius College—a Catholic school—and the NCAA who were portrayed as forcing a student off the team and, perhaps, out of school. And, because of the media coverage, things changed again; funny how that works.

The NCAA reversed their decision to ban Emily from the track team; she would be not only be allowed to keep the donations, pay for school and food and books, and get her car back, but the GoFundMe page could continue to raise money for her. Canisius College released a full statement to that effect, but the last line says all anyone needed to know, especially Emily Scheck’s parents:

“Hopefully going forward schools and the NCAA compliance office will be more understanding when athletes come to them with special needs created by unexpected life situations, like being abandoned by their parents.”

Luckily, though it took some time, and for a time seemed hopeless, Emily Scheck now has a much larger, more loving family, than the one that turned their backs on her. And, as of this week, Emily Scheck has stopped accepting donations; over the course of just a couple of months she was given $100,515 to stay in school and stay on the team. She said:

“I never expected this amount of support. I have chosen to stop accepting online donations because what has been given is more than anyone could have expected. I now know that family is not always something you have, but something you find."

OutSports

The Baldwin Promise: Send Every High School Graduate To College

So, Baldwin, Michigan; ever heard of it? Yeah, me neither, but that’s about to change.

See, about a decade ago, less than half of the graduating Seniors — and it’s a small number, yes, but still — chose to go to college, and of those that did and then graduated from college, well, that number was two.

This year, nearly every single graduating student is going to college; so, what happened? In 2009, the Baldwin Promise was created; a fund which offers to pay up to $5,000 a year for any student from the Baldwin public schools to attend a public or private college in Michigan.

The Baldwin Promise was started by Rich Simonson, a Baldwin native who left the area for his career in politics — he ran Gerald Ford’s campaign in Michigan — and then returned to Baldwin when he retired. One day while having breakfast with friends, Simonson came up with a proposal: Why not ask everyone they knew to give some money to the community so that every local student could go to college?

Now, most people thought that idea kind of crazy, but Simonson did not; he began asking everyone he knew for $500. He even convinced school employees to donate and then asked Baldwin’s summer residents to give, too. People who couldn’t afford $500 all at once made payments to the Baldwin Promise; Simonson’s goal was $140,000, but they raised over $160,000.

Sure it sounds easy. Get people to donate and then give the money away. But it’s more than a check and a handshake. It starts with the kids in school, and the change in mindset that college is not something for other people an unaffordable dream, but something for everyone if you work toward that goal.

Now, when figured into the cost of higher education — a private college might cost $31,000 a year —  $5,000 doesn’t sound like much, especially considering things like the Kalamazoo Promise — funded by anonymous donors — which is a “first-dollar” scholarship that pays 100% of tuition and fees at public colleges and universities, and can be added on top of Pell Grants. The Baldwin Promise is a middle-dollar scholarship, which means it comes after the student has applied for Pell Grants and institutional scholarships.

But … the Baldwin Promise came about because of Simonson and because the town and its people changed the way they talked about education, the value placed on education. From their first days in kindergarten — where students are taught to excel — and through elementary, middle and high school, students, teachers, administrator and parents, and the town itself, think about college and life after Baldwin schools.

And that’s the change; sometimes college seems like a lofty goal, an expense maybe out of reach, but in Baldwin, it’s talked about from the moment you start school, and talked about, and taught, all the way through; and when you grow up realizing there might be a helping hand, heck, in Baldwin, there will be a helping hand, you’re more apt to think that college is something for you, and not something for everybody else.

And to be fair, the Baldwin Promise is not the answer to the high cost of higher education, but if it helps even the students in one small town, and it helps those students from day one to understand and strive to go to college, then think about all those Baldwin kids and what they’ll take away from this.

And what they’ll make of it.

Read more at The Atlantic

Can I Get An Amen: Professor Coupland Has Been Fired

I love teachers; my father was a teacher, and a darn good one if I do say so myself, and I do because this is my blog. But, one thing, of many, that I learned from my Dad is that we are all teachers; we can all educate someone, just by imparting information or opinions or ideas.

Sadly, though, there are times when I think some people should not teach, anywhere, anytime, ever, and Rick Coupland is a prime example.

Coupland, a former St. Lawrence College professor, is out of a job because of a Facebook post. 

Yes, a Facebook post. It all began when Coupland apparently posted something to Facebook — and then removed it sometime later; but, as happens with social media, there are things called screenshots, and when someone takes a screenshot of a post, and then you delete, it, they still have it. No matter how many times you try to delete it, and it disappears from your Tweet, Status Update, Instagram, whatever, if I have a screenshot, it still exists. It.Cannot.Be.Erased.

And that’s what happened when Rick Coupland shared a link to a Facebook story about a rainbow flag being raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, and added this commented:

"It's the queers they should be hanging, not the flag."

I think the minute he shared and commented, Coupland knew he was done; he tried to delete it — again, not before screen garbs were taken — and then even deleted his Facebook account, but the damage was done. It was out there.

St. Lawrence College began receiving complaint after complaint about this professor, and, well, quicker than you can say, “Asshats stay off Facebook,” Rick Coupland was fired.

Good.

And, real quickly, before anyone spouts that Freedom of Speech argument, let me say, Yes, we have Freedom of Speech, and we also have consequences when we exercise that freedom.

Freedom of Speech does not mean Freedom from Consequences. And let's not even go into his Free Speech suggested that gay people should be hanged. 

CBC

SC Christian College Bans Homosexuality ... Then Says It Didn't

Last year, over at Erskine, a private college, a private Christian college, in Due West, South Carolina, two volleyball players, Drew Davis and Juan Varona, came out as gay. Take a minute to let that sink in … rural … South Carolina … Christian college … gay.

But still they came out, and it wasn’t easy, even though their team supported them. Drew Davis, left, was outed by an ex-boyfriend, then his father disowned him and his mother told him he'd be unemployed for the rest of his life; oh, and he attempted suicide. And now he faces a new policy at Erskine, enacted by the school’s new president, Dr. Paul Kooistra, which bans homosexuality as a "sin and contrary to the will of the Creator."

Can you actually “ban” homosexuality? I think not. But it seems that Dr. Kooistra will ban all homosexual students under his new policy.

The policy statement appears to threaten those students who fall outside the narrow view of Dr. Kooistra in a section where it states that "members of the Erskine community are expected to follow the teachings of scripture concerning matters of human sexuality and institutional decisions will be made in light of this position."

‘Institutional decisions will be made.’ That sounds like Kooistra plans to somehow punish, perhaps by expulsion, any gay students.

And Juan Varona, right, is fearful of what that means for LGBTQ students at Erskine, saying "the school took several steps back instead of progressing towards a future where everyone can be treated as an equal."

During an interview with Outsports, Varona mentioned the Ten Commandments:

"I understand the religious stand on adultery, which is part of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, and that would apply to heterosexual and homosexual people."

And, well, Cyd Zeigler, of Outsports, took that a step further with his own question:

“It's insightful that Varona would mention the Ten Commandments. There's another Commandment among the 10 that's given higher priority in all versions of the Bible: ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.’ We're assuming this means that Erskine College will also ban all of its athletic teams from practicing or competing on Sundays. That's unfortunate, because on Sunday, April 19, the men's volleyball, men's golf and women's golf teams have tournament games scheduled. The following Sunday four teams - softball, women's lacrosse, women's tennis and men's tennis - have matches scheduled. For the school to ban homosexuality but not ban these competitions on the Sabbath would be the highest form of hypocrisy.”

Hmmmm …. 

Of course, with the media attention on the banning of homosexuality at Erskine, the school is now on the offensive … rather than just being offensive … by suggesting the media didn't understand the "context" of its statement, and stressing that since it posted the statement it has not banned – or expelled – any gay people.

In fact, after the story broke, as bigots and homophobes do, the school actually moved the anti-LGBT policy statement on its website and in its place posted a PDF of its newsletter, including its response to the media, titled, "Context for Erskine’s Statement on Human Sexuality." This new ‘context’ statement says its ban on homosexuality describes the college's  ‘position,’ not its ‘policy’:

"No students have been asked to leave Erskine based on this statement."

The statement then goes on to brag that "Erskine does not discriminate against any protected categories of individuals in the administration of its policies, programs, or activities."

Sure they can say that, because in South Carolina, there are no protections for LGBT people.

So they haven’t really changed anything at all, they’ve just swept it into a nice pile in the corner where they can still get to it, but hope that no one sees it.

sources:

College Bans Homosexuality After Two Athletes Come Out

College Under Fire For Banning Homosexuality Wants You To Know They Didn't Ban Homosexuals

Derrick Gordon Comes Out

Derrick Gordon, a sophomore starter for the University of Massachusetts men's basketball team, has come out as gay, making him the first openly gay male NCAA Division 1 basketball player.

"I've always loved sports, but always felt I had to hide and be someone that I'm not. For my whole life I've been living my life as a lie. I am telling my story so that athletes never feel like they have to hide. You can be true to yourself and play the sport that you love."

A few days after coming out to his parents, Derrick decided to tell his coach, Derek Kellogg, and him teammates. The coach took the team aside to set up the scene:

“We’re all here together, and we need to love each other for who we are. One of your family members, your brother, wants to let you know something about himself.”

Derrick then came out to the team, and one of them instantly spoke up and said, "We got you; you're one of us." And then they took Derrick to dinner.

Derrick says he was inspired to come out after the NBA signed its first openly gay player, Jason Collins:

"That was so important to me, knowing that sexuality didn't matter, that the NBA was OK with it. [But] it was a rough process, actually, leading up to this. Those guys [Collins and Michael Sam] just helped me get to where I am right now. If it wasn’t for them, I’d be stuck. For this to be happening right now, me coming out, it’s an indescribable feeling, honestly. I couldn’t be any happier. I feel like I can fly.”

Gordon has said that while he will focus on basketball, he also wants to help encourage more openness in sports:

"When kids aren't able to come out, I know why. It's a scary thing. That's one of the reasons I'm doing this. I want to give kids some courage and someone they can look up to. If I can come out and play basketball, then why can't they do it? I want to be able to help those people."

His coach seems to think he’ll go great things:

"I'm proud of him for coming out, I think it's really courageous what he's doing. He's talking about saving people's lives. Who doesn't want a kid like that on their team?"

Who wouldn’t want someone like that in your life?

Welcome out, Derrick, and please accept as our gift to you, the Obligatory Coming Out Toaster Oven and your very own copy of The Gay Agenda.

Welcome out.

source

Who Do I Hafta F**k To Get A Decent Senator For South Carolina? Part Four: Senators Mike Fair and Lee Bright

A few weeks back, a group of South Carolina lawmakers — obviously without an active brain cell between them — got their Tea Party panties in a snit and voted to cut funding for a reading program at South Carolina  Upstate because one of the required books had a :::gasp::: gay theme.

These wingnutted, asshatted, teabagging Republicans cut $17,146 from the university’s budget — the exact cost of the required reading program which included “Out Loud:  The Best of Rainbow Radio,” a collection of stories shared on South Carolina’s first gay radio show. And one of those asshatted wingnutted teabagging Tea Party Panties in a Snit Republicans was state Senator Mike Fair [left], who said of the program:

"It's just not normal and then you glorify, or it seems to me, that the promotion at USC is a glorification of same sex orientation.”

Hmm, reading a book about the state’s first gay radio show is glorifying homosexuality? Good, maybe it’s time South Carolina realized that there are :::gasp::: gay people here.

But Mike Fair wasn’t finished with his anti-gay book burning crusade because now he says the school has taken wheat he dubs their “questionable behavior” even further when it booked the show "How to Become a Lesbian in 10 Days or Less."

“That's not an explanation of 'I was born this way.’  It's recruiting.”—Senator Mike Fair

And now Fair, and one of his fellow asshatted, wingnutted, teabagging, Tea Party Panties in a Snit Republicans, Senator Lee Bright [right], have banded together to vote against each and every  incumbent USC trustee.

Trouble is, both Fair and Bright — Fair and bright? Oh Jeebus, the irony — didn’t bother to find out anything about the show before they set up their bonfires for the Book Burnin’ Marshmallow Roast.

Tammy Whaley, the assistant vice chancellor for USC Upstate communications, released this statement:

“The title of ‘How to Become a Lesbian in 10 Days or Less,’ while deliberately provocative, is satirical in nature but has not been received as such. The controversy surrounding this performance has become a distraction to the educational mission of USC Upstate and the overall purpose of the Bodies of Knowledge symposium. As a result, we have canceled this segment of the symposium.”

Oh, so it’s not about recruitin’ Lesbians? Y’don’t say? And Gail Stephenson, president of Upstate Pride, took it a step further and wondered what the team of Fair and Bright — seriously, I cannot stop laughing at that — might try to ban next:

 “Diversity is diversity.  And we can't just say we are going to choose this part of diversity, but we're not going to choose this part of diversity.  Then what's next?  Are we going to cut out women's studies?  Racial integration?”

Careful, Gail, you might give Fair and Bright some new ideas.

Seriously, people, who do I hafta f**k to get a decent Senator, lawmaker, Governor, for South Carolina?

source

Chase Martinson Was Kicked Out Of School For Coming Out As Gay

Chase Martinson was enrolled at Hannibal-LaGrange University, but one semester he took a break to deal with some health issues, and when he reapplied for admission he quickly received an acceptance letter welcoming him back to school. But then another letter came; a letter telling him he was no longer welcome at the school.

What happened? Did his tuition check bounce? Were his grades not up to snuff? Did he come out as gay? If you answered #3, then count yourself the lucky winner.

The letter Martinson received said this:

"Admittance is open to academically and morally qualified students.  Admission is open to students who are in agreement with the HLGU Student Life Guidelines."

The letter then directed Martinson to certain passages of the student-life guidelines, where the school's sexual impropriety — gay, of course, is an impropriety — rules are spelled out, expressly forbidding "homosexual activities." In fact, Hannibal-LaGrange University even prohibits someone from “appearing” to be gay.

But Chase isn’t accused of homosexual activities; he wasn’t caught doing the nasty with a fellow, fellow, student; what Chase Martinson did was come out as gay on Facebook, and he doesn’t understand the issue:

"I just wanted to be me, and I never had any idea this would happen. I thought I was already in, but then they send me this letter saying, 'Just kidding.'"

But HLGU is a Baptist school, and prides itself on running the school with a strict set of Baptist principles and it also offers up a "biblical" definition of marriage:

"It is God's intent that heterosexual union is the only acceptable expression of sexuality and must be reserved for marriage. This expression of a self-giving love is viewed as a gift from God. All members of the University community should abstain from behavior which may lead to a violation of God's standards on sexual activities."

And then the school goes on to list being gay, as well as sexual abuse, sexual harassment, incest and sexual assault, as "misuses of God's gift." Yup; they trotted out the comparison of being gay and incest as misuses of God’s gifts, though one is a crime and one is not.

"There's really nothing I can do. It's just really sad. I have no desire to go back to that school."—Chase Martinson, who has decided to enroll at the University of Missouri-St. Louis next year.

Chase says he has no desire to pursue legal action against the school, which is a good idea since Missouri only prohibits discrimination against students for characteristics like race and gender; in Missouri, it’s still perfectly legal to fire someone for being gay. Plus, as a private school Hannibal-LaGrange University can put out and enforce any rule it chooses with no repercussions.

And even though he’s moved on , and is moving on with his plans to enter the field of medicine, Chase laughs at the notion of the school and its anti-LGBT rules, because the school also bans pornography, sex before marriage and cohabitating.

Yeah, college, even a Baptist college where no one is looking at porn, and no one is hooking up after class, and men and women are sharing a room and a bed?

That’s high-larious.

Now, of course, you can cite the argument that Chase Martinson broke the rules of the school, but my question is, is the school checking all the girls and guys to make sure they’re virgins? Are they doing internet history searches to see if nekkid pictures pop up on anyone’s screen? Are there bed checks?

Chase Martinson is a gay man who wanted an education at the school that he thought fit him best. Unfortunately, he was wrong.

source

Matt Kaplon Comes Out

It seems that every week sees more and more LGBT people opening up that closet door and stepping out; and it seems that many of these newly out are from the fields of professional sports, as well as college players.

We can count Matt Kaplon among the latter.

Kaplon, student and baseball player for Drew University, came out to his team and the world last weekend after being inspired by the coming out story of NCAA basketball player Derek Schell. Matt Kaplon credits Schell with saving his life and said of his own coming out:

“Everyone tells me that college is supposed to be the best four years of my life. I've had a great time, but for three and a half of them, I've been hiding things and not being the real me. Building friendships and meeting people and with my teammates, they know part of me but I finally feel like I want them to know everything. I want to be me 100% and make sure they know I'm not hiding anything. I'm ready for that. I'm ready to start not having to hide.”

Matt was welcomed by his team, and congratulated on coming out, and even his coach, Brian Hirschberg, was proud:

“He's as close to a family member as anyone I've ever coached. He's like a younger brother to me. When Matt shared his story with me, I respected him more, if that's even possible.”

So, welcome out Matt, and as our Coming Out gift to you, HOMO HQ will be sending you a copy of The Gay Agenda as well as the time-honored Official Coming Out Toaster Oven.

Welcome out, Matt, welcome out.

And, Thanks Coach.

via OutSports

South Carolina Colleges: No Gay Books For You!

I’m all for government trying to save money wherever it can to cut the budget responsibly, but when they do so in the name of censorship, well, that crosses a line.

Down here in South Carolina — where it’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity — the House budget-writing committee has tentatively approved a spending plan for 2014-15 that would cut $52,000 from the College of Charleston and $17,142 from the University of South Carolina Upstate.

Oh, because both those schools assigned books about The Gays to students to read.

Last summer, the College of Charleston assigned the Alison Bechdel book, “Fun Home,” to incoming freshmen. In the book, Bechdel describes her childhood with a closeted gay father and her own coming out as a lesbian.

Uh oh. Lesbians! Gay men! No money for you!

And at USC Upstate, students were assigned to read “Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio,” about South Carolina’s first LGBT radio show; it was part of a required course for all freshmen, which included lectures and other out-of-classroom activities meant to spark discussions about the book.

Uh oh. Lesbians! Gays! Radio! Close.That.Wallet. 

And then the social conservatives, AKA Republican homophobic wingnuts and religious zealots proposed reductions in the budgets to those two schools; reductions, oddly enough, that equal the exact amount of money spent on those two courses with The Gay Books.

State Representative Garry Smith [right], one of the aforementioned wingnut GOP goosesteppers, said he made the proposal after college officials refused to give students an option to read something else:

“I understand diversity and academic freedom. This is purely promotion of a lifestyle with no academic debate.”—Garry Smith

Two things, Garry, you tool. You don’t understand diversity if you seek to cut funding for classes that are discussing diversity.

And secondly, get this through your thick Neanderthal skull: being gay is not a lifestyle, it’s a life. My lifestyle is how I live, not my sexual orientation. Perhaps it might have done you some good to audit either one of those courses before you opened your bigoted yap.

Now, oddly enough, especially for South Carolina, and the South Carolina GOP, one such man, Republican Representative  B.R. Skelton tried to argue that the funds should be restored to the schools, saying that if funding of education is dependent on the kinds of books assigned, “we’re going down a road we don’t need to go down.” 

And, naturally, the Democrats thought this whole idea both ludicrous and stupid.

Representative Joe Neal called the budget committee action a case of using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat, while one of his fellow Democrats in the State House,  Gilda Cobb-Hunter, said state legislators have no right pushing their own personal beliefs onto colleges and college courses.

It’s funny, in Arizona they’re debating whether or not you can refuse service to the LGBT community on the basis of your own personal religious views, while in South Carolina they want to ban classes that assign books on The Gays.

That slippery slope is headed straight toward Uganda, people, because if we continue to allow The Gays to be denied service, for any reason, anywhere, and if we continue to say that no one, even adults in a college setting, can even read about The Gays, it’s not far off from going back to criminalizing homosexuality, and even worse.

On a high-larious sidenote:

As this story broke, I came across this other tale:

The United States flag outside the South Carolina Department of Education ... let that sink in ... the department of Education ... was flown upside down for part of the day; the same day the legislature voted to cut the funding to those two schools.

South Carolina can't even fly the flag right. Coincidence? Or is it just another example of the heat and the stupidity of this state?

SC Lawmakers Punish Schools For Gay Books

SC Dept of Education Goes Upside Down