What will Governor Moonbeam Do? (Part 2)

Governor Jerry Brown has a controversial  bill on his desk awaiting his response. SB48, according to Equality California (a group which favors this legislation) will:

... amend the Education Code to include social sciences instruction on the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. This bill would also prohibit discriminatory instruction and discriminatory materials from being adopted by the State Board of Education.

(The full text of the bill may be found here.)



In my previous post, I discussed the impracticality and even inhumanity of injecting identity politics into the classroom.  The California Catholic Conference voiced its opposition to the bill on those grounds last April.

But the debate over SB48, nicknamed "The Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act" is not simply a debate about how to encourage politeness in schoolchildren.   It's not really even about bigotry.

When schools teach about the Women's Suffrage or Civil Rights movement, they usually do so in a manner that constitutes an endorsement. In the process, students rightly learn that institutionalized sexism and racism are dehumanizing and therefore socially unacceptable.  It is wrong to discriminate against human beings because of a state of being such as skin color or gender.  Skin color does not make a person good. It does not affect the state of his or her soul. Women may in general be physically weaker than men, but that does not make us morally inferior. While there may be evidence to suggest that men have more inclinations toward violence, that does not mean human males are born into a state of moral inferiority when compared to women.

A person's moral inferiority comes from choices, not from the way the way he or she was born. A man who, for example, cheats on his wife does so not simply because he has a male inclination for unfathfulness; he does so because he chose act upon it.  The action is where the moral problem lies, not the inclination.

So what will schools be endorsing when they teach about the LGBT movement if it is given the same treatment as the Civil Rights movement?   The LGBT movement's goal is the acceptance of certain behavior, not merely the acceptance of a state of being or an inclination. If the school treats that goal as laudable, it is essentially endorsing the homosexual lifestyle as something morally acceptable. This will most certainly come into conflict with the religious and cultural values of many students in California schools.

That is what makes this issue different. It is not simply about how one is born, or whether a person has certain desires, tendencies, drives, or inclinations.  It is about how one chooses to live and act, and whether a school, as an agent of the State, has the right to tell parents and students how to define sin.


In short, the debate over SB 48 is a debate about the role of the state in defining the sexual morality of private citizens and their children.

This becomes an especially sticky issue because teachings on sexual morality are often (though not always) faith based, which means this is also a question of free exercise of religion.

Though schools are often important for the social development of children, parents are the first and most important educators, especially in matters of faith and morals, and they are right to object when a particular school or and entire school system seeks to undermine what they teach their children in good conscience. 

It gets even stickier when students become old enough to choose whether or not to believe as they were raised.  It is not unheard of for a student to be raised in one faith, but convert to another in her teens. At the secondary level, a public school has to avoid infringing upon the constitutional rights of the student as well as the parents. The state has no business telling a student that she cannot believe what her faith teaches.


Schools and their employees cannot fulfill the requirements of this bill, and remain neutral with respect to the morality of homosexual behavior. This creates serious problems for parents, teachers, and students, whose reasoned moral objections to homosexuality and the LGBT movement come in conflict with this legislation.  Whether legislators in California like it or not, individual citizens do have a right to work in an environment that does not force them to choose between their consciences and their employment or education. It is not the place of the public schools to engage in social engineering or to judge the beliefs and opinions of students, though efforts to do so are nothing new, historically speaking. It is a practice that goes as far back as the 19th century.

As I pointed out in my last post, the state is much more likely to reach its stated goal of reducing bullying if it sticks to the more neutral path of instructing students in the very useful principle of respect for one's fellow human beings.  It is actually possible to teach kids to be polite to others, even in the face of serious disagreement or even fear, without injecting oneself into the religious instruction the student receives from his or her family.

Specific moral instruction is best left in the purview of parents, but there are many in education and in politics who believe they and the schools have a duty to subvert parental teachings with which they do not agree, especially if those parents embrace traditional Judeo-Christian morality.  In my own experiences at multiple public schools, I observed that this prejudice is so pervasive within the world of public education, that many of my colleagues were not even conscious of how it affected their attitudes toward parents and even toward their own students.

Contrary to what some among my former colleagues believe, it is possible to have strenuous moral objections to someone else's choices, actions, or lifestyle, without losing sight of that person's humanity.  With effort, one can even express such disagreements politely. It is even possible for young people to manage this with proper instruction.   But the purveyors of "tolerance" seem as unable to tolerate this concept as to tolerate the suggestion that there is even such a thing as objective morality.

Tolerating the idea of objective morality means living with the possibility of falling from grace, and this is not terribly compatible with modern thinking.

In fact, our fallen nature is really our most ancient and universally recognized trait.  From Shakespeare's plays to Lord of the Rings, fall and redemption make up the thematic material of some of the greatest literature ever written.  Even the Ancient Greeks had their own story of  a "fall" in the form of Pandora and the infamous box of furies. As G.K. Chesterton noted, it wasn't until recently that people began to suggest that there is no such thing as sin:

Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat. (Orthodoxy)

 

I suspect that this bill is less about bullying, and more a part of an effort to teach the next generations to deny both dirt and cat.

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Update: Read about what Archbishop Gomez has to say on this topic.

What Will Governor Moonbeam Do?

Identity politics took a central place in the political discourse of our nation during the last presidential election.  It seemed to me that this did more to reinforce racial division in the country than it did to heal it. I suspect it may have even served to undo some of the progress that has been made over the past couple of decades. One of my eleventh graders that year said to me one day that she never felt divided from anyone because of race, until she witnessed the national tension during that campaign season. She discovered unity is more difficult  when people are determined to carry out the dehumanizing practice of sorting themselves and others into competing victim groups.

This brings me to the issue of identity politics, and its influence on education as we know it.

As many of you are no doubt already aware, a piece of legislation is about to hit the governor's desk in California that, as the San Francisco Gate puts it, "would make the state the first requiring public schools to include the contributions of gays and lesbians in social studies curriculum".  It further explains that the bill "adds lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people as well as people with disabilities to the list of groups that schools must include in the lessons. It also would prohibit material that reflects adversely on gays."


So, if Jerry Brown signs SB48, the good news is English teachers will have to stop ignoring Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde.

Wait a minute...  They are already in the curriculum!


And if since the bill also covers historical figures with disabilities, history teachers will have to stop leaving out FDR.


Wait...    Never mind. He's already there too.

We remember writers, mathematicians, scientists, and historical figures, not because they are token figures of a certain group, but because of their influence for good or ill.  We read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein because it is a great novel, not merely because a woman wrote it.  We study FDR's presidency because it was unique and historically important, not simply because he was in a wheelchair.  While someone's ethnicity, disability, or gender will contribute to who she is, it is not her only definitive characteristic. Even for historical figures whose identity is very important, such as Frederick Douglass or Martin Luther King, great accomplishment and historical influence are still the primary reasons why we remember them.


Many suggest that the debate over homosexuality in America is no different from the questions of race that our nation faced over the past century. Even if, for the sake of argument, we concede this point, this legislation still remains impractical in light of certain realities in the classroom.

Nobody who has ever spent significant time in a school can deny that kids are pretty good at dividing themselves along arbitrary lines, whether it be race, class, fashion, glasses, or grades.  I have seen students treat one another better after meaningful personal interaction.  I have never seen a student decide that he is going to quit making fun of someone because a great author or historical figure had the same trait as the "other".  A student who bullies his classmate because said classmate is "a brain", for instance, isn't going to change his behavior because Einstein was "a brain" too. In fact, he is more likely to write off Einstein as well as his classmate, and go on his merry, anti-brain way.  I have never seen  a token minority author or historical figure serve to eliminate racism, nor a lesson on a token woman cure anyone of misogyny.

As someone whose curriculum consisted mostly of old books written by people who are now dead, I found the question of prejudice to be a very relevant one for my classroom.   If students cannot see the human dignity of those living human beings sitting next to them in class, they aren't going to be able to see it in fictional characters created by long-deceased authors. After all, can there be a greater divide between people than between the living and the dead?  Students must learn to see the inherent human dignity of those around them before they will be able to see it in people and characters from the past. Mark Twain showed us this more than a century ago: it is the lesson that we learn from reading Huckleberry Finn.  It is the time they spend on the river together that allows Huck to see Jim as a man and a friend, and not merely as a slave.

Tolerance is not a false pretense that people have no significantly different beliefs, backgrounds, and ideas.  It is not a hypocritical assertion that we are all the same.  It is a learned skill. It is, essentially, a form of patience that allows us to live and work with people whom we do not entirely understand, or with whom we fundamentally disagree, without losing our sanity or our awareness of each others humanity.

A curriculum that emphasizes differences and token representatives of politically fashionable classes of human beings does more to undermine a culture of acceptance in schools  than it does to create one. Students need no reminders that there are stark differences among them. Drawing attention to labels provides those unneeded reminders, and reinforces the false and dehumanizing notion that students cannot relate to anyone who does not have some arbitrary identifying characteristic in common.

The bill is also intended to add the history of the LGBT movement, but prohibits any material that could reflect poorly upon it.  This bears more resemblance to propaganda than it does to an honest approach to history. If similar legal injunctions existed with respect to study of the movement for racial equality, many activities of groups such as the Black Panthers and the more controversial comments of Louis Farrakhan would be forbidden material.  The fact that some people working for racial equality behaved badly has not undone the appreciation most people currently have for the progress our nation has made in race relations over the past five decades.  Human history, like the human beings in it, is full of behavior that "reflects badly" on someone. We can learn as much from those as we can from the moments when heroic people did something gloriously right.

In charity, I can only hope that those who are promoting this bill are unaware of the practical problems outlined above.

If they are aware of them, one needs to ask why they think a curricular emphasis on the LGBT movement will will change the value students place on their classmates or on Walt Whitman's literary achievements.  I shall deal with that question later.

Anti-Feminism and the Birth Control Pill

Interestingly enough, even in the Pill's earliest days, it was known to have poisonous effects on the female body. But, during the initial trials in the 1950s, researchers John Rock and Gregory Pincus were so excited about its effectiveness they didn't stop to think about whether or not they were harming women (emphasis mine):

Dr. Edris Rice-Wray, a faculty member of the Puerto Rico Medical School and medical director of the Puerto Rico Family Planning Association, was in charge of the trials. After a year of tests, Dr. Rice-Wray reported good news to Pincus. The Pill was 100% effective when taken properly. She also informed him that 17% of the women in the study complained of nausea, dizziness, headaches, stomach pain and vomiting. So serious and sustained were the reactions that Rice-Wray told Pincus that a 10-milligram dose of Enovid caused "too many side reactions to be generally acceptable."

Rock and Pincus quickly dismissed Rice-Wray's conclusions. Their patients in Boston had experienced far fewer negative reactions, and they believed many of the complaints were psychosomatic. The men also felt that problems such as bloating and nausea were minor compared to the contraceptive benefits of the drug. Although three women died while participating in the trials, no investigation was conducted to see if the Pill had caused the young women's deaths. Confident in the safety of the Pill, Pincus and Rock took no action to assess the root cause of the side effects.

...

In later years, Pincus's team would be accused of deceit, colonialism and the exploitation of poor women of color. The women had only been told that they were taking a drug that prevented pregnancy, not that this was a clinical trial, that the Pill was experimental or that there was a chance of potentially dangerous side effects. Pincus and Rock, however, believed they were following the appropriate ethical standards of the time. In the 1950s, research involving human subjects was much less regulated than it is today. Informed consent standards were minimal and only the most basic toxicity tests were required for human trials.

(Source: PBS.org)

In other words, they decided the pill was safe and the women were just hysterical little things and the side effects were all in their heads.

There are few things more frustrating than having a doctor dismiss symptoms that you know are real by conveniently filing you away as hysterical woman. This has only happened to me personally on one occasion, but that does not make it any less infuriating.

Also interesting here is that a female researcher raised concern about the harmful side-effects, only to be dismissed herself by these two men who apparently believed that not being pregnant is much more important than being healthy.

All good feminists should be outraged by this. So should anyone concerned about racial equality and imperialism, for that matter. We are told that the pill is supposed to be liberating for women, but it was (no pun intended) conceived through the exploitation of women. Women who were not even fully informed about the fact that they were test subjects! So much for choices.

Postracial, my foot.

Race shouldn't even be an issue in this election, but since it's too late for that, I may as well put in my two cents here.

America has not elected its first Black president.

It has done something that should be much more significant: it has elected its first BIRACIAL president.

But said candidate, the media, and many who elected him are apparently content to ignore one side of his heritage.

As a biracial person, I am appalled by this. Even early in my childhood, I quickly grew sick and tired of having to "check only one" box when asked to identify my race on my personal records for school and college. I didn't think of myself that way. I loved and honored both sides of my family, and it seemed illogical to ignore one for the sake of a narrow-minded bureaucracy.

In the last eight years or so it has seemed as if there was growing awareness of the fact that a person can be of two races at the same time: that s/he can grow up in between two cultures and take the best of both into adulthood.

When the LA Times and other news outlets were publishing articles suggesting Obama's biracial heritage was a problem, Obama could have refuted the very premise of their questions and publicly celebrated his biracial heritage as an example of what is possible in America. He could have argued that American culture has matured to the point where it will take him for who he is and what he believes.

Instead he has chosen to check only one box. Worse, he has chosen to allow others to check only one box for him for the sake of political convenience.

Now, I know there are other issues in this election that are far more important. The protection of the unborn, the family, freedom of religious expression, and the security of our nation just to name a few. Those alone are reason enough for my vote against him today, regardless of anything else.

Obama campaigned on hope, change and new politics, yet he and his supporters acquiesced to what should be outdated ideas about race relations in this country. He speaks of "the power of ideals". It would seem that the ideal of being judged primarily by the content of one's character wasn't powerful enough here.

So much for change.

Eduardo Verastegui on Abortion in the Latino/a Community

Hispanics for Life has a video out with Eduardo Verastegui of the film Bella, warning all voters, and Hispanics and other people of color about the particular impact abortion has on those communities. (See the link and warnings below.)

Even the Washington Post, has picked up on the disproportionate number of abortions among people of color. (Tip of the schoolmarm ruler to Christina Dunigan.) Taking their numbers from the Guttmacher Institute, the research tentacle of Planned Parenthood, they note:

Although abortion rates have declined among all racial and ethnic groups, large disparities persist, with Hispanic and black women having the procedure at rates three to five times the rate of white women.

In 2004, there were 10.5 abortions per 1,000 white women ages 15 to 44, compared with 28 per 1,000 Hispanic women of that age and 50 per 1,000 black women. That translates into approximately 1 percent of white women having an abortion in 2004, compared with 3 percent of Hispanic women and 5 percent of black women.


This page at Hispanics for Life states:

Dr. Edward Allred, a wealthy abortionist and owner of Family Planning and Associates, said this in an interview with the San Diego Union in 1980: "Population control is too important to be stopped by some right-wing pro-life type. Take the new influx of Hispanic immigrants. Their lack of respect for democracy and social order is frightening. I hope I can do something to stem that tide; I'd set up a clinic in Mexico for free If I could.
Maybe one in Calexico would help. The survival of our society could be at stake."

"More children from the fit, less for the unfit, is the chief aim of birth control," was the slogan used by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Sanger declared that Hispanics, Blacks and Jews were 'human weeds" whose reproduction would bring "a dead weight of human waste" into the world.

In her book, Women and the New Race, she asserted the "most useful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it."


BlackGenocide.org also notes the even greater impact of Planned Parenthood on the African American community:

Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America.

Planned Parenthood employees have been caught on tape telling potential donors that their funds can be earmarked to pay for abortions of minority babies.

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If you wish to see the Hispanics for Life video, see the link below. Be warned, however that this video contains VERY graphic images of abortion, and the remains of aborted babies. I found it very difficult to watch, as did Annie over at Abortion Pundit. In fact, I had to fast-forward it through most of the abortion images.

Children, post-abortive women who regret their choice, and other sensitive individuals SHOULD NOT watch this video!

Click here to see it:
http://www.durarealidad.com/

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Here is a video of Barack Obama speaking before Planned Parenthood (tip of the ruler to Alan)



Obama is so supportive of abortion, that he has even voted against emergency medical care for babies that survive botched abortions.

From the Off-The-Deep-End Files:

Had my mother seen this during my childhood, she would have laughed. I probably would have laughed. Actually, come to think of it, my mom would probably still get a good laugh out of this one. Time for an e-mail.

You see, I have always been a picky eater. It wasn't until my college years that I really began to become more adventurous with food, whether from my own varied racial/ethnic background or anybody else's. Maybe my childhood aversion to onions, turkey stuffing and green peppers was, in fact a sign of racial self-loathing due to my mixed caucasian and hispanic heritage.

Or maybe I was just a picky kid with a penchant for bland food.

You decide.



From BBC NEWS, 7 July 2008:

Nursery alert for racist toddlers

Nursery staff must be alert for racist remarks among toddlers, a government-sponsored agency report has said.

The National Children's Bureau guide, Young Children and Racial Justice, is meant to help identify potentially racist attitudes in youngsters.

It is an umbrella group for bodies working with children and young people in England and Northern Ireland.

The 336-page guide said staff should investigate the reasons behind apparent racial prejudice.

Name-calling

It said: "A child may react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying, 'Yuck!"'.

That may indicate a lack of familiarity with that particular food, or "more seriously a reaction to a food associated with people from a particular ethnic or cultural community".

It also warned: "Racist incidents among children in early-years settings tend to be around name-calling, casual thoughtless comments and peer group relationships."

Full Article Here


I wonder how these people would interpret a child's dislike of foods from her own culture?

Amy also has some worthwhile things to say on the matter.

Democrats...in Outer Space!

No, it's not a new movie. But last week, it could have been the title of the Democrat debates.

Kucinich thinks he might have seen something from there (and looks like he'd be an expert on such, as Jay Leno pointed out.)

Hilary "Because I'm a Woman" Clinton must think that's where the rest of us are from, if she thinks her inconsistent answers make her look presidential. Even her rivals, who have been reluctant to question her too much up until this point are beginning to pick up on this, as the John Edwards ad below demonstrates:



The whine and cheese pity party she's throwing for herself now is not going to improve her public image, either. Trying to appeal to feminist voters and then calling in your husband to protect you against those mean little men (who happen to be treating her like they would any other high-profile candidate) at the debate does not make one look like a strong woman who can hold her own in a boys club. C'mon, Mrs. Clinton. Ditch the whiny little girl act and fight like a real woman!

Barack Obama was probably the only person to escape the debates with even a shred of his dignity intact. His remarks after the debate should make poor Hilary Clinton ashamed of herself. I'm not voting for him, but at least he didn't participate in the UFO discussion.

Classist Bigotry

Yep, you heard me. Dawn Eden hits the nail on the head once again,and exposes race and class prejudice for what it is.

"Don't take the play so serious!"

There are two things you can do when confronted with racial slurs. You can get offended, and try to silence the person using them. Or, you can appropriate them, and turn them into terms of endearment, thereby taking the sting out of the words in question.

Here's a little story about what happened when some people did the latter, but found themselves in a confrontation with someone who did the former.

Who came out looking like the bigger person?

Trading on the Female body

When pro-choicers are willing to cooperate with pro-lifers on a women's health issue, you'd better wake up and pay attention. Something big is happening.



The underlying socio-economic and racial implications of harvesting eggs for cloning are fairly dark as well.

H/T: Barbara Nicolosi and Jeff Miller, The Curt Jester.

Obama is right about one thing.

Looking over my site statistics recently, I discovered I got another hit from someone who searched Google. This time the query was, "color of baby with Mexican and Caucasian parents". In the process, he or she found a post in which I facetiously offer the color beige (somewhere between brown and white).

The fact that a person would even care about this enough to bother Googling it made me think of Barack Obama.

Ok, let me explain that.

Barack Obama's political views prevent him from being my first or any other choice for president*, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, as they say. He has made one point during his campaign that makes sense to me.

If you are of mixed racial background, other people will identify you with whatever part of your heritage you look like. Part of it is probably just the way our brains work. It's easier for us to think about things in the simplest terms possible. Having categories helps, but it can lead to some unwarranted assumptions about people.

In the course of my own experience, only one person has ever figured out that I am "mixed" just by looking at me. The rest usually assume I am Mexican (which is half correct). Some think I look Italian, others think I look Persian. Still others just look a bit confused, and ask politely what my background is, when they have trouble placing my features.

When I am seen in public with my German-Irish mom, people who don't bother to look at us too closely are surprised to find out we are related.

Much to my amusement, a junior high schoolmate of mine once found it difficult to compute the idea that people of different ethnicities could actually have a child that could be both of something at the same time.

Fortunately, my parents had the good sense to raise me with a sense of myself as an individual.They married one another in the first place because they loved each other as whole people, not to prove something about multicultural relations. So their respective backgrounds were simply there, as a fact of my childhood, like my dad's after-dinner peanut butter sandwiches. No fanfare, no trumpeting. Just a cozy-comfy part of our family.

It makes sense, really. Parents are supposed to take the best of what they are and what they know, and pass it along to their children. Mine have done their jobs. Now, the most important thing for me to think about is not simply what they gave me, but what I am going to do with it.

Now, Senator Obama has taken himself into politics, which means he has to know how voters' minds work. And he knows that if he tells people he's white, he'll get the same reaction that a red-headed-fair-skinned person I know gets when she identifies with her Native American side. The same reaction I, with my brown hair and somewhat olive skin get if I tell people I'm Irish!

A really confused look. "She's making a funny, right? Should I laugh? But what if she isn't? I'd be so rude!! Auuuggh!"

Senator Obama has simplified the matter by identifying primarily with what is visible.

Ultimately, this serves a dual purpose. On the one hand, he is playing the race card to help his campaign. "Hey, people, I could be the first black president!". It also attempts to answer to the ridiculous question of whether he is "black enough".

There are those who assume that people who look like him will identify with him, and others who assume that he doesn't look enough like them to be able to relate to them. Some criticize him for allowing public opinion to influence ethnic identity too much, others criticize him for not letting him do it enough. It doesn't matter if he identifies himself as black or biracial. Someone won't like it.

So here's a revolutionary idea for you: why don't we worry about more important stuff?

I don't hear nearly as much talk about what kind of president he will be.*

The thing is, Obama and the rest of us with biracial heritage are walking proof that at least a few people in this world have figured out that they don't have to look alike to be able to understand, work with, or even love one another.

But racial tension gets better ratings, so nobody in the media seems to be talking about that, either.


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*Question: Do you really want the same government that invented FEMA and the IRS, can't deliver your mail, doesn't even take proper care of hospitalized soldiers to run a national health care system?

I didn't think so.

BJU Spanish targets Spanish-Speaking Catholics

(Source)

This is not surprising, given the school's reputation for anti-Catholic bigotry and its history of racial prejudice, but still irritating.

The course description for Spanish II (Emphasis mine):

• "Begins with a thorough review of Spanish I with special attention to practical, original communication. Spanish II then continues with an in-depth study of other tenses, moods, and vocabulary with a strong emphasis on written and oral communication as well as oral and reading comprehension. A greater spiritual emphasis is added as students increase their ability to witness through a study of Catholicism and Spanish history. Special emphasis is placed on how to effectively use God’s Word in addressing false doctrine in the Catholic Church."

Compare to the description of French II, and remember that France was historically another Catholic country:

• "Expands on the foundation laid in French I while strengthening the comprehension of the spoken and written language. The text includes a selection of French songs, with a Christian emphasis in each chapter. The oral and reading comprehension sections expose the student to French literature, as well as to the oral dialects of various areas of French-speaking lands throughout the world. Offered on BJ LINC."

You'd think at least their Latin II course would include ways to combat Catholicism, but I guess they have some reason they'd prefer not to debate Catholicism and scripture with people who study Latin. That course description as follows:

• Latin II Builds on vocabulary and grammatical elements taught in Latin I. Places an emphasis on translation skills. Introduces the subjunctive mood and case uses.

A quick search of the course catalog reveals that the Spanish II description is the only place in the entire document where the word "Catholic" appears at all.

Now you'd think they'd want to "minister" to Catholics in all language groups, but the writers of the curriculum must believe that Spanish Speaking Catholics are the easiest targets.

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The Bob Jones University course catalog can be found here.
Thanks to Marv Wood who noted this in his comment on Catholic and Enjoying It.

Genocide in America?

Surely not, you say.

Unfortunately, yes. And it is a particularly insidious kind.

In America today, almost as many African-American children
are aborted as are born.

A black baby is three times more likely to be
murdered in the womb than a white baby.

Since 1973, abortion has reduced the black population by over 25 percent.

Twice as many African-Americans have died from abortion than have died from
AIDS, accidents, violent crimes, cancer, and heart disease combined.

Every three days, more African-Americans are killed by abortion than
have been killed by the Ku Klux Klan in its entire history.

Planned Parenthood operates the nation's largest chain of abortion clinics and
almost 80 percent of its facilities are located in minority neighborhoods.

About 13 percent of American women are black, but they
submit to over 35 percent of the abortions.

---Taken from Blackgenocide.com

BlackGenocide.com also lists the following statements from Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood's revered founder:

"The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." "Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race." "We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population…" "Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock." "Eugenics is … the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems. "Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives." "The unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' [is] the greatest present menace to civilization… the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective." "The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics." "Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying… a dead weight of human waste… an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all." "The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind." "The marriage bed is the most degenerative influence in the social order..." "Give dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization." Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood, proposed the American Baby Code that states, "No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child… without a permit for parenthood".

Sanger would be thoroughly pleased with the way her organization continues to run itself, and especially with the support it gets from Black leaders such as Senator Obama. In every town in which I have lived, Planned Parenthood operates its clinics in poor, minority neighborhoods, and works to sell its services as the only choice.

Several leaders of the Pro-life movement in the African American community spoke out on this issue at the March for Life in Washington, DC. and the Walk for Life West Coast in San Francisco, CA. this past week. Their voices deserve to be heard.

My husband also comments on this issue on his blog.

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Update: Alvida King speaks out on this subject as well.

Mp3 Audio: Speaking about abortion and the African American Community, including her own experiences as a post-abortive African-American woman.

More on her personal experiences.

Video: Dr. King in a television advertisement for the above mentioned website:

The Bigotry of Low Expectations.

It's not obvious from my profile picture, since my face isn't shown, but I'm technically a minority.

At least, half of me is. You see, I am of mixed Mexican and Caucasian ancestry (one parent from each "race"). This combination of brown and white has left me an interesting shade of beige on the inside, but since my outsides are more on the brown side, most people look at me and go, Oh, she's a Mexican... And they approach me as such.

That doesn't bother me most of the time. I am proud of and identify with both sides of my heritage. I guess that's why I get a little sensitive when people make certain kinds of remarks about minorities in education, the workplace, and other key areas of society.

And that's why I'm furious over the way a certain Puerto-Rican student at Columbia University was recently treated on the basis of two things: His race, and his membership in the US Military. Well, it's not this incident that makes me furious. It's the disease of which this incident is merely a symptom.

When some fellow students at a booth for the International Socialist Organization were making rather loud, negative comments about the military. Matt Sanchez, the student in question, tolerated this, until they asserted that the military exploits minorities, using them as cannon fodder. Sanchez, noting that all of the ISO protesters were not minorities, challenged this, informing them that he is a minority person who signed up for the military, and he does not feel exploited. Their response? "You're too stupid to know you're being used."

I guess they felt it was their duty as his racial and intellectual superiors to inform him. And the University must have agreed, because it has yet to discipline these students for their violation of Columbia's policies against racial harassment.

Unfortunately, this attitude that minorities are too inept to look after themselves is not limited to this small group of students at Columbia University. When Jaime Escalante (the high school teacher immortalized in "Stand and Deliver") wanted to teach Calculus to minority kids at his inner-city school site who were academically behind, he met with resistance from faculty. These teachers believed Escalante's students incapable of advanced academic study, and argued that they should be protected from what they believed was inevitable failure.

There are universities now that are considering lowering their admission requirements, in the hope that it will attract more minority students to their campuses. What happened to helping them rise to the existing standards?

When I was in high school, my ethnic background and my very respectable GPA resulted in lots of mail from academic advancement and scholarship programs for minority students. Most of the letters I received assumed that I came from a financially, academically, and even culturally disadvantaged background. The message between the lines was, "you poor thing, let us help you". It never occurred to them that, thanks to the diligence of my parents many of the racial obstacles I might have faced had already been overcome. This is especially a credit to my father, who had to overcome a significant amount of overt racism to become a successful adult, including the low expectations of many of his school teachers, who assumed that a Mexican kid from a poor neighborhood would never go anywhere.

I encountered similar attitudes early in my own teaching career. One person I worked with, who taught a remedial English class for 7th graders told me, both in and out of the presence of these students that "These kids are low" and that they were never going to handle academic life well. She assumed that most of them would end up as dropouts, teenage parents, and even inmates before they were 18, and it was clear from her remarks that the fact that most of these students were ethnic minorities played into her assumptions. She therefore did not assign any homework, since she figured they wouldn't do it and she didn't want them to fail the class. It never seemed to occur to her, despite a lifetime of teaching, that she was contributing to their future failures by not reinforcing a study habit that might keep them from becoming dropouts and delinquents. (I will also note that this person was surprised to find out that English is my first language, even though she never heard me speak any other language, and I haven't the slightest trace of any foreign accent.)

Ironically, several of the kids in this class to whom I spoke wanted to go to college--a place she assumed they would never see, and which she didn't want to bother preparing them for. This teacher was skilled at gaining the respect of her students. Seeing the crestfallen looks on their faces when they overheard her say that she did not believe they would amount to anything was among the most frustrating and painful moments in my career. I had to remind myself that it really is the 21st century.

Even more frustrating is when I see people of color, who have positions of power as teachers, public activists, politicians, doctors, attorneys, actors, and occasionally even parents and students, adopting this attitude as well, and ceasing to encourage younger people to use their talents to follow their dreams and ambitions.

The initial intent of programs like Affirmative Action was, I have always thought, to provide a way for students to get around barriers created by unreasonable stereotypes. I reasoned that the assumption was that people of color are just as intelligent and capable as anyone else, and the forceful minimization of the effects of racism on the education system would provide equal opportunity for people of equal talent to shine. Experience, however, is making me start to think otherwise. Maybe these people who seek to "help" us never really believed in racial equality at all.

Related Link: The Columbia Daily Spectator