The Christmas carol “Deck the Halls” has a line which goes, “Don we now our gay apparel,” with the word “gay” meaning hardcore anal sex happy. But some sniggering choir student at Cherry Knoll Elementary School kept laughing every time they sang the word in class and instead of calmly explaining to the kids that “gay” means lots of things (like fierce, bootylicious and fa-la-la-la-fabulous), the teacher just changed the word “gay” to “bright” on the printed lyric sheet, effectively pissing off lots of gay and bright people in the process.
The principal has since put “gay” back into the song, allowing us to save our holiday outrage for the fellow shoppers and family members who so richly deserve it.
MEJ
When I was in school, during this song, a classmate kept saying “balls of holly”, rather than boughs. He was given a weeks worth of detentions, and the lyrics stayed the same. Clearly this teacher doesn’t have the ability to keep his class in line.
skippyk
this guy is a TEACHER!!??
god forbid he try and EDUCATE!!??
Cam
How typical, just hide everything and pretend it doesn’t exist.
This is why the GOP was SO freaked out about DADT repeal. Hard to pretend gays don’t exist when they are out there getting shot at for the country. And hard to deny that same person the right to marry.
This teacher sounds too stupid to teach.
chink change
How can he do that? De-gaying Christmas is like de-gaying Easter.
Daniel
I really don’t understand what the fuss is all about. Who cares? It’s a stupid Christmas song.
I also find it pretty obvious that very few of those complaining have experience working with large groups of young children. You expect them to respond to calm explanations of what “gay” means in that context. You expect them to act like adults, but in miniature. They aren’t. And even a couple of students giggling can get the whole classroom started, and at that point, there isn’t much you can do. The usual response — to move on to something else — doesn’t work if you’re a music teacher rehearsing a song. And god knows if he had dropped the song over that word we’d be complaining about that instead.
Larry
ironic the teacher replaced gay with bright especially since she was quite the opposite of bright..which like gay also has multiple meanings
B
No. 2 · skippyk · wrote, “This guy is a TEACHER!!?? god forbid he try and EDUCATE!!??”
Maybe he did want to spend his time educating the kids, and changed the word merely as the easiest way to get though the rehearsal so he could get back to teaching them basic addition.
It didn’t sound like he changed it because he had a problem with the word “gay”, but rather that he had a problem with a child who was (gasp) acting like a child.
Larry
if you read about this anywhere but queerty you would know that the female (music only) teacher actually did have a problem with gay