A quick look at the article shows that the guy has done all kinds of other things (graduation rates are up, new schools are opened, etc), he sees education as a civil right (that's a good thing, just in case anyone thinks civil rights are bad), is not afraid to think outside the box. Sounds like the kind of person who would make a good Secretary of Education.
(Oh, and by the way, the gay-friendly high school was not 'the one thing' that was mentioned - it was part of a list of things. So, just settle down, Lark. Gay people are not going to go away, are not a threat to your family any more than anyone else, nor are they going to turn your children gay - and heaven help your kid(s) if they should be gay, with attitudes like yours. Besides, every school SHOULD be gay-friendly - no one learns well in a hostile environment).
I came across the comment of this level headed blogger. Makes sense to me.
PROBLEMS A GAY SCHOOL CREATES:
If a freshman wants to enroll how do they prove their gay? These are 13 and 14 year olds that we're asking to make a determination about their sexual identity. At this age it is highly inappropriate for a school to push sexuality on a young teenager. Isn't sexuality forced on our kids at younger and younger ages these days? Kids should be kids and not have to be pawns to perverted adults idea of liberal education.
I am 45 years old and in my day if we knew there was a gay school in the area we would be harrasing them and goading them into fights.
A gay high school sports team? Would fans of the opposing team be arrested for yelling "you suck"?
Would the gay team even get out of the locker room?
But I digress, a gay high school creates serious problems. The most of which is forcing sexuality on kids as young as thirteen years old.
China, India, and Singapore are emerging as superior nations because their next generation is concentrating on learning not do-goody-goody-touchy-feeley-liberal social engineering. If America wants our next generation to compete globally our education system better offer vouchers to foster competition and choice and get out of the business of being parents.
Unfortunately Obama and his clones view education as liberal indoctrination.
Asking thirteen year old boys and girls entering high school to confront their sexuality is wrong. Sexuality should not be a criteria to gain accepance into high school. Parents should be the ones to deal with their children on these matters, but our liberal educators feel it is perfectly ok to usurp parental authority at their discretion.
I wasnt going to say any thing on this topic cause it usualy
turns into a fight so I will watch what I say.
Did any of you watch that new movie "Milk" ?
even is your not gay or even support it
it is not right to treat any human being
any lesser then the other.
Here is a interesting artical in the Advocate last month
Take a look just reading it wont make you gay honest
Steven.. ALL schools should be EVERYONE friendly. I don't believe it is necessary to designate a specific public school geared for one type of people because of their sexual preferences. If we are going to allow public schools to segregate themselves based on ones views... than I want a CHRISTIAN public school for my children.
I totally agree... homosexuality and race are on two totally different planes. A person can hide their sexual preferences if they choose..... they can't hide their race. One is choice.. the other is not.
It would be excellent if every school was 'everyone-friendly'. But, the primary point in my previous post was related to the fact that out of the numerous accomplishments of Mr. Duncan, the only thing that you saw fit to point out was the plan for the 'gay-friendly' school (which, by the way, didn't even get implemented).
>>I totally agree... homosexuality and race are on two totally different planes. A person can hide their sexual preferences if they choose..... they can't hide their race. One is choice.. the other is not.<
<br>
So, Lark, can you tell us at what point(s) in your life you 'chose' to be heterosexual? Do you think that maybe some day you'll 'choose' to 'be' gay?
Steven...
First the choice was God's. God set it in motion when he made me as a female. Second it is my choice to follow God's plan for my life. People can choose to follow God's plan rather they acknowledge God's plan or not. People can choose to fall in love with whomever they set their heart on. People can be sexually attracted to whomoever they set their thoughts on. I don't believe this choice is like choosing what you want to eat. It is a choice that involves a slow process in which a person's mind is trained by the things they choose to dwell or not dwell on.
To answer the other part of your question.. no, I will not choose to be gay at some later junction in my life. I thoroughly believe that it dishonors God to tell Him that He did not know what He was doing when He created me.
Also.. on Arne.. yes I did see his other accomplishments. Yes, I was and still am choosing to discuss the issue he came up with of a "gay-friendly" school. Yes, I did see that it was defeated. However, many times people will try to put the same idea out there again, but in another form that is more acceptable to society than the first try was. And so your point is?
I am not going to challenge your religious beliefs as they are yours to have, but there are parts of your post that are simply dead wrong with regards to your ideas about sexuality as a choice.
Sexual orientation is not an individual choice. The choice for all sexual impulses, regardless of where you fall into the nature versus nurture debate, is rather how one chooses to react to those impulses.
What a homosexual can do is choose a life of abstinence based on a faith or creed, or they can make a decision to follow through on their sexual impulses. Although Christians may consider one honourable and the other an abomination, the sexual orientation of the individual is unchanged in either case. The recidivism rate of so-called "cured" homosexuals is high because the sex drive is one of the most base of human drives.
Dealing with homosexuality on a personal level, family level or even community level is not an easy or enviable task.
We could rephrase what your second paragraph says..
Sin is not an individual choice. The choice for all sin impulses, regardless of where you fall into the nature versus nurture debate, is rather how one chooses to react to those impulses. (I would add to that... sin is addictive... rather it is sexual sin, lying, stealing etc.)
You know.. I totally agree with you... homosexuals were born that way.. the same way that ALL people are born with a sinful nature. Everyone has sinful areas that they are in need of God's deliverance from. Sometimes that deliverance is quick and sometimes it may be a lifetime battle for someone. This is the same for ALL sin that has become an addiction.
I definitely agree with you on your statement, "Dealing with homosexuality on a personal level, family level or even community level is not an easy or enviable task."
Have you ever talked to someone who has struggled with their sexuality and felt guilty (because of being told by people that their homosexual orientation is sinful) and tried and tried to 'choose to be straight' but despite their efforts kept coming back to the realization that they were the way they were and nothing could change that? I have. These are not people who have a martyr complex. These are not people who chose to be gay. They tried to deny it. They wished they were straight. But they were not. You need to get out of the fundamentalist ghetto a bit more and actually get to know some gay people as people, not sinners. Well, they are sinners too, because we all are sinners, but you know what I am trying to say.
Steven... I do know some gay people and some of them well. Are you actually suggesting that the people who say they are born gay have something medically wrong with them in their brains to cause them to have sexual tendencies that go against the way their bodies were designed?
"who has struggled with their sexuality and felt guilty (because of being told by people that their homosexual orientation is sinful) and tried and tried to 'choose to be straight' but despite their efforts kept coming back to the realization that they were the way they were and nothing could change that?"
HMMM.. have you ever considered that perhaps they felt guilty about it BECAUSE it is a sin. That they have tried on their own efforts to be straight and IF they tried to believe in God for "straightening" then they gave up befor God delivered them.
I don't know what lie to which you are referring. Can you please explain?
The topic is one that I have dealt with for all of my life, so I feel qualified to offer a few thoughts with an attempt to keep them as unbiased as I can.
I grew up in a Christian home that was protected and insulated from the so-called "world". We did not have television or radio and very little other "outside" influence in our home, so growing up I knew little to nothing about human sexuality. Our home was typical with a strong father figure and a loving mother; a typical nuclear Christian family.
When I look back, I can identify with a feeling as young as 5 years of age when I started to come to a certain awareness of self. As I matured into teenage years, still naive as to the nature of sexual desire, I began to pick up the following Christian sentiments summarized by several posters on this forum:
Jonas - gay people (and their supporters) should be castrated.
Fred - gays (and adulterers) under civil law should be executed.
RM - if there were a gay school when I was young I would have harrassed and goaded them into fights.
Paris - homosexual jokes during a prior conversation on the same topic.
Lark - sexuality is a choice.
As I began to mature, I faced a great challenge that I did not know how to deal with. I begin to understand that the feelings that I had were taboo to speak about and began to believe that I had made this choice to have these feelings and that I was unworthy because I felt this way. Feeling that what I felt was so terrible that I was unable to speak to anyone, as an 11 year old I had to try to interpret what I was feeling based on one verse in the Old Testament and one verse in the New Testament without involving anyone else.
I made a valiant effort as a young Christian to change the feelings I had. I remember nights knelt in prayer on the cement slab behind our shop after everyone else had gone to bed praying to God to deliver me from the feelings I experienced. I would literally beg into the heavens for God to deliver me from these feelings. Other nights I would sneak out after everyone had gone to bed and drive for hours during the night talking out loud to God asking for Him to change the way I felt.
For lack of faith or whatever reasons, God did not answer my prayers. Feeling alone and isolated, unable to share with anyone based on how I had come to perceive that that way I felt was judged, as a Christian I moved outside of God's will and engaged in behaviours that were sinful and immoral in Christian terms to try to expose myself to being "normal" in hopes that something would change.
Eventually, my search led me far from God and finally to a place where I began to see Christianity as a dead, powerless religion and finally lost my faith that there is even a God. As I understood Christianity and as it was presented to me, there was no place for someone like me, so I forsook it and surrounded myself by people who accepted me at face value for the person I am.
I don't offer my story as a justification for the way I am, nor do I offer it as a pro-gay story, advancing a liberal agenda or social engineering. I do not argue that the Bible has instructions on this topic, nor do I claim to say that I am right in my response to my life situation. It simply is a factual account of my own perceptions and reactions in dealing with something that as far as I know I never made a willing "choice" to come into my life.
As I have learned to know others like me, I have learned that my life experience is not uncommon. That has given me the courage to face life and come to believe that I am a person of worth and that I have a place in life. We as humans deal with the cards that are dealt to us whether through consequence of our own choosing or by grand design, and as such I have chosen not to be a victim and to take responsibility for my own life.
Can you relate with this, or do you have any thoughts? If you have personal experience with this or with someone who is close to you, I would covet your response.
>>Are you actually suggesting that the people who say they are born gay have something medically wrong with them in their brains to cause them to have sexual tendencies that go against the way their bodies were designed?<
<br>
No. There are people who are BORN gay, just like there are people who are born bi-sexual and people who are born heterosexual. This is not something wrong, medically or morally.
>>have you ever considered that perhaps they felt guilty about it BECAUSE it is a sin. That they have tried on their own efforts to be straight and IF they tried to believe in God for "straightening" then they gave up befor God delivered them.<
<br>
I have a good friend and mentor who has known for most of his life that he was gay. He is a Christian minister who has a very strong faith and trust in God. He tried to deny his sexual orientation and hide it by marrying and having a family, all the while wishing he was straight and trying desperately to not be gay. And yes, he begged God to 'make him straight'. Eventually he came to the realization that he was gay and no one, including the One who created him, would change that. He is one of the most spiritual, deep thinking, honest, and compassionate people I know - and one of the happiest and most well-adjusted.
Psy, Thank you for laying your heart out here for us to see. I respect that. Your story pretty much mirrors a couple people I also know. I love them as friends, but I think they are wrong when they give in and start accepting themselves that way.
As a hetero, if I quit fighting my own base sinfull urges and started "accepting myself for who I am", I would be off the Bible way and on the highway to hell. I think thats what Lark was saying too.
I think people with homosexual tendancies have a unique challenge before them to live according to God's Word. But I don't think that it's any harder than any of the rest of us. Just different struggles, yet very do-able.
Caution: This forum may contain statements and comments that are offensive. If you are easily offended, please exit this forum now.
By using this forum you agree to be accountable and liable for your post's. All postings are the responsibility of the posting participant. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the management.
