You know how the right-wing is attacking Obama’s safe school czar Kevin Jennings? Over his “queering” of America’s schools? When all he wants to do is keep LGBT kids safe from bullying? While America is subjecting him to attacks, a certain lawmaker is advising all of his nation’s schools — including the religious ones — to do exactly this.
Haha no, his name is not Jared Polis. It’s Dutch lawmaker Boris van der Ham, an ardent gay rights advocate, who had the revolutionary idea that, hey, school children in the Netherlands should learn about the queers. Even if they go to a school with Jesus nailed to the wall. Radio Netherlands:
Religion-based schools should mention homosexuality in their sex education lessons, just like other Dutch schools do, according to liberal MP Boris van der Ham. His view is that pupils in orthodox Christian or Islamic primary and secondary schools need this kind of education as much as any child.
The MP’s plea coincides with Thursday’s debate on the issue. In a joint letter to parliament, six well-established national organisations involved in sexual education are asking for homosexuality to be included as a mandatory topic in the sex lessons. The groups, including the national gay interest group (COC) and teenage gay group Expreszo, point out that most schools ignore same-sex relationships. In Amsterdam 82 percent of schools were found to stay silent about the topic.
“Sexual education gets only a minimal mention in the national curriculum. This enables many schools to avoid it altogether,” Mr Van der Ham told news website nu.nl. Publicly funded non-denominational schools also wriggle out of giving this kind of education, he says, proposing that funding is cut when schools leave the obligatory sex lessons out of the curriculum.
Ultimatums? Threats? We’re liking what we hear.
spalatos
Great idea and one that children should understand if they are already taking sex ed courses.
dvlaries
It only we could import this kind of bravery and innoculate our own elected weasels with it. 🙁
Jaroslaw
Oh no! Sanity somewhere in the world! Isn’t it so much more fun to have psychologically damaged kids growing into messed up adults? Just think of the suicides we won’t have and broken families. No NO NOOO this just won’t do.
(This was satire for those who can’t tell.)
Thomas
I’m a straight that is all for gay tolerance, but private schools have the right to teach whatever they want to teach. This is a more fundamental right than gay marriage or anything else like that. And when you walk about threats and such it makes a person like me less supportive of a person like you.
McShane
This is exactly where devout gay activists should be putting their energy–into something that would be doing every gay kid some good. There is nothing more cruel than gay children growing up just feeling like freeks and not knowing who they are.
spalatos
@thomas
thanks for nothing? no really, i wont threaten you, but its good to know you spread the hate when one of “us” does something to dampen your fucking tolerance…btw I’m a gay trying to tolerate you straights, you guys are a tough crowd let me tell you.
Bill
I would imagine that if a ‘Queerty’ article would be enough for a ‘man’ like Thomas at 12:25PM/Post #4 to rescind his tolerance for gay citizens’, he probably wasn’t all that tolerant to being with.
Statements like this make the person who is making them look entirely stupid.
But more importantly, they expose our fake allies.
Fuck off, Thomas.
Go look at some boobs. (www.boobs.com)
I’ve even included a link for you, idiot!
But thanks for your support!
Jack
@Thomas – gee, thanks. And I ‘tolerate’ you with all my heart! Merry Christmas!
naprem
I love that the “national gay interest group” is called COC.
Bill Perdue
What a guy.
But I think that all abrahamic cult educational centers should be secularized (without compensation) to prevent rape and other forms of sexual and psychological abuse.
Adolescence can be difficult enough but trying to make sense of any kind of sexuality is impossible when you’ve been raped.
J. Clarence
Maybe I just went to the one radical Catholic school in the country but when we covered our version of sex ed, by our athletics coach, there was mention to homosexuality. And not as the great evil.
In general though. It’s so strange that more school do not provide sex ed information that is practical and relevant to all students, just the heterosexuals one. Our system still seems stuck in the Boys Beware mentality.
As for Holland, it’s awesome that elected official is willing to state the obvious shortcomings of current education in some religious affiliated schools.
It all goes back to the social-conservative belief that the more kids know about homosexual is directly proportional to the amount of homosexuals.
DaveO
News flash – this has far less to do with Jesus than it has to do with Allah.
Thomas
“to rescind his tolerance for gay citizens’, he probably wasn’t all that tolerant to being with.”
I didn’t rescind anything. I just said less supportive. It is like this: I support gay marriage because a) I don’t think it is threatening, b) it is a good social policy that could help provide homes for kids that need to be adopted, and c) I think the issues that gay couples have to deal with such as insurance and estates are fundamentally unfair. However, b/c of a-holes like Bill, I’m not going to be manning phone banks or stuffing envelopes anytime soon.
Then again, he did give me that link. Pictures of boobs calm me down when I am angry and frustrated.
Daniel
They are publicly-funded non-denominational religious schools. Since gay tax dollars go to fund them, then gay people should be included in sex ed lessons so gay kids grow up healthy, safe, and informed.
Wen
Im from Holland, and he gets my vote in our next elections in 2011. He does excellent work on other gay bills as well and is an atheist. And in parliament a majority is for this plan, so that is good news, too. I personally would prefer each school to be fully secular, like in France, and make religous teachings optional (for after school curriculum), but in Holland were not that far yet. Im happy to have a government that takes gay/lesbian issues so seriously and it’s terribly frustrating to watch whats happening in the USA, especally the aggressive religious right so violating human rights of fellow country gay men and women, its heartbreaking, angering, mindblowing and painful to watch. We dont have that much fundi christian schools and there is ofcourse the freedom of religion that clashes with anti-discrimination, but a school has no right to do that. In Holland were slowly going from anti-discrimination really getting above religious freedom, and Im very happy about that.
AxelDC
He should at least buy them a drink first.
Peter
Thomas, Thomas, Thomas;; your intolerance is showing. The right for religious organizations to teach what they want to their kids, and the right for gays to marry ARE TOTALLY EQUAL according to the US Constitution. Your rights are NOT more fundamental than ours. That is what equal means. Got It? If not, then you are still a bigot.
Ben
I understand the viewpoint that private schools should have the right to teach what they want. However when it comes to sex education there’s a fundamental break. Sexual education it should cover the full range of sexuality, it shouldn’t pick and choose based on political/religious ideologies.
Is it impossible that two heterosexual, religiously inclined parents could send their homosexual child (closeted or otherwise) to a non-secular school? Should this child be punished by learning sexual information that doesn’t directly apply to her/him and be given facts and figures that don’t adequately take into account their sexual risk factors or inform them of their options?
Basically by saying that sexual education shouldn’t be standard (and non-discriminatory) across the board, we’re creating a perfect breeding ground for sexual misinformation and the further spread of STIs. Unfortunately sexually-transmitted diseases don’t discriminate, even if you’re not properly informed about them.
So Thomas – without snark or rudeness – because children can’t be their own best advocates, we should arm them with what they need to know to keep themselves safe regardless of sexuality. They shouldn’t have to go searching for that information from the internet or from their friends. We, as responsible adults, should inform them and allow them to make their own decisions about what to do with that information.
B
No. 4 · Thomas, “I’m a straight that is all for gay tolerance, but private schools have the right to teach whatever they want to teach.” Care to show what law or constitutional provision gives private schools that right? … and don’t cite the U.S. constitution as it does not apply in the Netherlands.
adam
I think homosexual relations should be taught as part of the high school curriculum in which general sex education is included.
I also think that if religious schools exclude homosexual relations, they should have their tax exemptions revoked.
Wen
@ Adam , I agree on both of you points, nothing to add.
Andy
@adam
I couldnt have said it any better
Sam
A little positive from North of the border:
http://www.xtra.ca/blog/national/post/2009/12/11/Quebec-releases-anti-homophobia-plan.aspx
JANdeWIT
Hi Queerty.
I did post this article on my blog drasties.
Hope that is ok with you.
See:
Uitleg op School met de bijbel/koran over homosexuele praktijken
This article I posted earlier on this subject:
Dutch MP: homosexual sexual education should be mandatory
http://www.drasties.com/
Dutch on the world. World on the Dutch
Thanks JANdeWIT.
schlukitz
No. 13 · Thomas
Pictures of boobs calm me down when I am angry and frustrated.
Then Bill sending you that link, was a very good thing. ;P
There is no need for you to be angry and frustrated, however. We are all delighted that you support same-sex gay marriage, gay-adoption and equal insurance and estate treatment.
And because of your supportive stance, it is difficult for many of us to understand why you would not be supportive of a policy that allows children to have access to information on how the real world functions sexually.
Mr. Van der Ham is not advocating the recruitment of new gays by suggesting that they should be learning about the queers even in religious schools. He is simply saying that this facet (and fact) of human sexuality should be available to all children, regardless of whether they are attending a private or public school, and is just as important as making politics, geography, spelling, reading and arithmetic available to their growing and expanding minds. After all, and I think you will agree, knowledge is what sets us all free
A course on sexuality, including the homosexual life-style, is no more likely to turn a child gay, than the likelihood of it turning a gay child straight. It just makes for a more well-rounded and more informed citizen and contributor to the social fabric of our nation when he/she grows up.
Withholding this sort of vital information from the school curriculum only helps to foster a closed-minded, bigoted attitude toward anyone whom we consider different from us.
Is that the kind of America we want, Thomas?
Thomas
Thanks, schlukitz
I don’t think that the government should force private individuals to say anything they don’t want to say. Of course, I think that gay people cannot be recruited any more than people can be recuited to have blue eyes. They are either born that way or they are not.
If the government want to force public schools, that’s fine. If private schools want to teach the material. That’s fine, too. Forcing private schools just builds resentment, which would cause the efforts to backfire anyway.
I think where the gay community overreaches is when it aims to force people to accept homosexually morally. That simply will not happen for all sects. Not all sects accept loans with interest, either. What the gay community needs is equal rights and tolerance. Gay people don’t have to force everybody to like them to accomplish that.
And let us not forget that any truly Christian school people have to teach that we must accept people for who they are.
schlukitz
Thank you for your reply and the sharing of your thoughts with us, Thomas. I very much like your closing paragraph.
It is important for all parties concerned to understand that the gay community is not aiming to force people to accept homosexuality as a moral imperative. We gays fully understand and get that this will not happen for all sects.
You are absolutely right when you say that what the gay community needs is equal rights and this is a totally separate issue from Christian morality. We are not looking for the blessings of the church in our marriages, only the secular right that we should all have, straight, gay, white, black, Jewish, Christian, whatever, to marry and spend the rest of our lives with the person we love.
It has never been our wish to redefine marriage, as we have so often accused of. Love is love, and how can anyone redefine that? By same-sex couples wishing to legalize their bond of love, we are only strengthening marriage, not weakening it.
And at a time when nearly 50% of heterosexual marriage are ending in divorce, I should think that everyone would be happy that we gays are trying to reverse this trend and support an institution that gays have been denied participation in since the advent of most major religions.
Tolerance. Now, that’s a word we hear a lot, Thomas.
To those who would bestow benevolence upon us, the term is coached with benevolence. To those upon whose heads this benevolence is bestowed upon however, the term drips with patronage. It has the same bitter taste and judgemental sound of “We don’t homosexuals. We just hate the sin.”
Equality should not have to be tolerated. It should be the cornerstone and the foundation of any free, Democratic society. Tolerance is merely putting up with something that is disliked not approved of. It still has the ugly tinge and the odor of second-class citizenship attached to it, like separate drinking fountains for whites and blacks.
Separate, but equal, they said. Funny, the blacks had no stomach for patronization and their second-class citizenship either. Why should be gays be satisfied with it just because there are sects who have a problem with sex in general?
When same-sex marriage was granted by the Spanish government, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero delivered a moving Gay Marriage Speech in which he made this profound and exquisitely beautiful comment, which I will never forget for as long as I live.
“a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members.
Truly; those are words to live by.
http://www.gayliberation.net/opinion/2005/1220zapatero.html
My brother/sisters and I dream of, long for and fervently hope that the day is not far off when America becomes a decent society that no longer humiliates against any of it’s members.
What a giant step for mankind that will be!
schlukitz
Corrections in my seventh paragraph: It should read “To those who would bestow tolerance on us….,” and “We don’t hate homosexuals.. We just hate the sin.:
I also neglected to respond to your comment that “Forcing private schools just builds resentment, which would cause the efforts to backfire anyway.”
The 1964 Civil Rights Act was not looked upon favorably either. The religious majority violently opposed it and cited moral reasons why they too felt it was “forcing” the issue and would just “build resentment.”
The same can be said for women’s suffrage.
Had the issue not been “forced”, your wife probably would not have the right to vote, and blacks still would not be able to marry whites and might have taken another 100 years to happen. And as it so happened, nothing has backfired as a result in those advances in civil-rights.
You see, Thomas, in the end, it is not about forcing anyone to like us. It is about doing the right thing and treating all human beings as equals. And that should not require the approval, tolerance and the sanctioning of God, Jesus Christ, The Church….or anything, for that matter.
And that’s a moral stand I will definitely support. 😉
Jaroslaw
So should the private school be allowed to teach the earth is flat?
Cam
No. 4 · Thomas said…
I’m a straight that is all for gay tolerance, but private schools have the right to teach whatever they want to teach. This is a more fundamental right than gay marriage or anything else like that. And when you walk about threats and such it makes a person like me less supportive of a person like you.
_________________________________________
Sorry Thomas, Private schools do NOT have the right to teach whatever they want to teach. They must conform to state or federal teaching guides. For example, a private school cannot decide that they will not be teaching math, it would lose it’s certification. Similarly, a private school cannot teach that all women should kill all men, that would be dissallowed by law. If the Netherlands establishes that gay rights are a fundamental mandate for their schools the private schools, have to teach it. The Netherlands has been having huge problems with some immigrant communities attacking Dutch kids for slights as small as having shirts the color of the Dutch flag. The govt. is responding to force tolorance education into the schools there to assist in integration. Sounds reasonable.
Wen
Cam ‘The Netherlands has been having huge problems with some immigrant communities attacking Dutch kids for slights as small as having shirts the color of the Dutch flag.’
Hi, there was no such problem, I swear 🙂
AndyZep
Just like every other group in the world you would like tolerance to be a one way street. People must accept what you think feel and believe as gospel and what they think feel and believe is of no importance whatsoever. If homosexuals want to associate with other homosexuals in the bonds of holy matrimony that is their right, they have freedom of thought feeling and association. If Muslims want to associate with other Muslims in education that is their right. It is not up to you to tell them what to think feel and believe. Tough hop.
It is not that Thomas is intolerant, it is just that you only approve of his tolerance when you are the beneficiary. Expecting you to live a life of tolerance as well is just not something you are prepared to do. Civil Rights 101 people have a right to their own beliefs be that kissing boys or praising Allah, neither of which appeal to me.
EWE
How did the Dutch surpass everyone in intelligence? When did they all become so enlightened? How did this happen? I should just move.