Any other moral or social agendas you'd like teachers to address? Perhaps they could talk about the importance of abstinence and virtue? How about honesty and fidelity?
If teaching equality and acceptance for all constitutes a social agenda, then it's a social agenda we should all be in support of. Unless, of course, you believe that equality and acceptance is wrong, in which case your argument should focus on why you believe such things to be true, rather than touting what i've advocated somehow constitutes a negative agenda. Rest assured, it most certainly is not.
Teachers should advocate nothing but the facts. Moral commentary should be left up to parents, period. You seem to think people are too dumb to arrive at the correct conclusion without the assistance of some benevolent social order.
Moral commentary should not only be part of a school's agenda, but for the most part it already is to some degree. It may not be taught as a class, but teachers and faculty most certainly practice and endorse it, as well they should. When they do not, it usually makes the headlines and those faculty are either reprimanded or fired. I imagine you have no problem with teaching that all people are equal based on race, gender, or ethnic background; indeed, children are taught that we are all equal regardless of such history, and this should include sexual orientation as well.
In addition, children are disciplined if they act out against a fellow student. While it used to be acceptable at certain points in our history to belittle those of another race, it longer goes unpunished. The same should be true in regards to individuals who are homosexual. If children are belittling some child who is homosexual, or physically assaulting him, they shouldn't be allowed to go unpunished for such a thing. By failing to teach 'moral commentary' as you say, that's basically advocating that such behavior should go unpunished. After all, if you believe that homosexuality is wrong or unacceptable, you certainly don't advocate equality for them, which means you're teaching your child that, which means he'll act on it in some way.
What gives you the right to push your moral and social agenda onto other people's children? Just because you cite "tolerance" as a pretext to this indoctrination does nothing to change the fact that you're engaging in social engineering via government proxy. Any "liberal" should find such a prospect highly disturbing.
You assume that the teaching of equality and acceptance is some sort of a negative indoctrination, and that you and others of the same mindset reserve the right to teach your children hatred and bigotry. When that happens, it no longer becomes your issue; it becomes mine and everyone else's as well. Why? Because sooner or later your child will act out on what he's been taught, and if he has been mistakenly taught that homosexuality is 'wrong' or that homosexuals are undeserving of equality, chances are he'll lash out in one way or another. It may be something as minor as verbal abuse (and i'm using minor relatively here). Or it may be a physical altercation. Or it may be something much worse.
How about, instead of forcing your agenda on people via the government, you start a private organization which aims to educate and enlighten through choice?
In other words, if you wish to teach your child that homosexuality is wrong, and that races, genders, and ethnicities other than your own are undeserving of equality, then you should have the right to do so. Furthermore, he/she should not even have the opposing viewpoint of equality from their school. Is this what you are saying?
Well, I disagree. It's because of backwards views like this that Exodus Internation exists to begin with. While I would be perfectly happy with a private organization opposed to something as radical and silly as Exodus International's backward agenda, the best way to eliminate such organizations to begin with is to educate our children on equality.
It doesn't matter what you or I think is acceptable. This is SUPPOSED to be a free country. Just because you percieve some kind of problem doesn't give you the right to rectify it by indoctrinating people's children via government proxy.
Again, you are mistakenly subscribing to the notion that education on equality somehow equals negative indoctrination. This simply isn't the case; in fact I believe the opposite to be true - lack of education here is the negative, because that leaves the child at the mercy of hate-based indoctrination. You would have an argument if there weren't people and organizations who actively seek to propagandize people against those who they believe to be inferior based on the arbitrary reasons of race, gender, and yes, sexual orientation.
I don't agree with your conception of "equality". I think it is a false and intellectually shallow concept propagated by elitists and ate up by the useful idiots in Hollywood and the media. A nonsensical, feel-good abstraction that does nothing to explain truth or reality. So, just because you think "equality" is the best thing since sliced bread doesn't mean you should force such a conception on other people's children.
Whether you agree with it or not, the term 'equality' signifies a qualititative relationship between the factions I have mentioned above, and it is accepted to be true based on the very definition of the word. Philosophically, equality has been considered a constitutive feature of justice for all rational, autonomous beings for ages, yet it's not always been practiced. If you disagree with equality for certain distributions of people - something your post seems to imply - then you are in the precarious position of being morally bankrupt. If, however, you do not, I assume you have no problem with the fact that it
should be embraced. And by embracing it, you have no problem with it being taught.
The fact that you seem to rebel against the notion of equality as some sort of subjective tenet that I devised leaves me wondering if, in fact, you do believe that something is wrong with homosexuality, and those that practice it may not be deserving of equality. Do you believe homosexuality should be accepted, and are homosexuals deserved of the very equality i've been talking about?
