Did Cali Ban Mommy and Daddy?

I was talking to my Mom the other day about The Political Machine, and she asked if I could look into something she'd heard about in an e-mail from a friend. The friend had sent her this link, to a comment on a forum. She was convinced that teachers in California were now forever forbidden to utter the words "mother" or "father, or any permutation thereof. I immediately said, "Mom, don't believe stuff you read in e-mails. I'm sure it's just a twisting of some new law, to scare people." I promised to check it out.

Turns out it's all true, according to this breathless account by World Net Daily. Check out the text of the law in question, SB 777. It's all right there...written in secret gay code, I guess...let's see if "Fox News" can clear this up for us. While the debate there may have seemed "fair and balanced", note the banner headline throughout the story, and note how the Fox anchor tries to pin down the pro-SB 777 guest on the textbook issue. Even so, not bad for Fox.

I think this is the offending section:

"SEC. 32. Section 60044 of the Education Code is amended to read: 60044. No instructional materials shall be adopted by anygoverning board for use in the schools that, in its determination,contains: (a) Any matter reflecting adversely upon persons because of a characteristic listed in Section 220.

Section 220 of the Education Code is amended to read:
220. No person shall be subjected to discrimination on the basis
of disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion,
sexual orientation, or any other characteristic that is contained in
the definition of hate crimes set forth in Section 422.55 of the
Penal Code in any program or activity conducted by an educational
institution that receives, or benefits from, state financial
assistance or enrolls pupils who receive state student financial aid."

Now, if this law was to be implemented perfectly, the most it could mean to textbooks would be the inclusion of things that aren't there now. I don't see the leap in logic to banning words like "Mom" and "Dad". A textbook company might try to think up some kind of neutral catchall to save money, but hey, let the invisible hand of the market guide that choice.

As far as promoting sexual lifestyles in the schools, I don't remember a whole lot of Mom or Dad, or even sex, in the curriculum. Wasn't it pretty much some microscope slides and that gross "visible human" diagram, followed by a list of diseases and accompanying sores? If that's "promotion", the best thing the fundies could hope for would be an expansion of that. There have been a lot of things in my life that have made me want to have sex, but the school curriculum definitely was not one of them.

There are some legitimate concerns here for certain religious people, no doubt, but there are lots of things that get taught in school that you have to unteach your kids when they get home. That's why they're called "personal beliefs." The inclusion of a "non-nuclear" family in a textbook might require some explanation to your child, but I'm sure you're up to it.

The main idea behind this law is that children don't need to be made to feel like freaks. I think that is the standard that courts will apply when deciding on challenges to this law. Don't you think that's reasonable?

This is another great example of people, who beat us over the head with pragmatism 98% of the time to deny funding for things that aren't war, resorting suddenly to the freest of abstract thought when it suits their needs. It's kind of funny, except that it upset my Mom. She likes it when I call her that.