The haters in California who worry that teaching kids about LGBT history will turn their little darlings into a orgy of genital-devouring genderqueers didn’t get enough signatures to get a ballot referendum repealing California’s LGBT-inclusive Fair Education Act (aka SB48). Ooooh, that stings!
But worry not! The hatey haters at Stop SB48 have promised to return soon with an all-new initiative designed to ensure that Bayard Rustin and Barbara Jordan’s homosexuality never makes the history books. Will their plan succeed this time? It depends…
Adam Bink at Prop 8 Trial Tracker explains the difference between the referendum and initiative process and the likelhood of StopSB48’s success:
An initiative requires collection of the same number of signatures as a referendum (504,760) but one gets more time in which to get complete the process (90 days for a referendum to get title and summary, collect signatures and turn them in vs. 150 days for an initiative). In addition, for an initiative, the 150-day clock starts after the title and summary are received from the attorney general, whereas with a referendum [groups must start collecting signatures starts before they receive the AG’s title and summary]. The initiative must also qualify at least 131 days before the next statewide election at which the sponsor is attempting to qualify the measure — in this case, before November 6, 2012. They also must start from scratch — they cannot use the signatures they collected the first time around. There are also additional deadlines depending on how many signatures are collected and which counting method is used by elections officials to verify signatures.
Translation of all of that. The Stop SB 48 campaign claims they collected 497,404 signatures. Let’s say for the moment that isn’t bluster and it’s accurate. A general rule of thumb on collecting signatures is that a percentage (some say around 20%) are invalid for one reason or another — and that is acknowledged below by the campaign itself. So they fell fairly short, even if they aren’t exaggerating. If they get an extra 60 days to collect signatures, will they make it? Maybe.
Bink says the Stop SB48 crowd will have to face tough deadlines, raise money to employ paid signature-gatherers and work against the time, money and resources of pro-LGBT groups fighting their bigoted lies.
Also considering that schools will begin teaching LGBT history on January 1st, Bink says that most voters will see that California children haven’t started drinking Pink Ladies, marching for bisexual Wiccan rights or buying copies of Sloppy Cumbottoms 3—despite their exposure to LGBT history—and may decide not to sign a petition against SB48 the second time around.
And if StopSB48 does mount a campaign, we’ll be around to make sure that it doesn’t go unchallenged—that means you, haters.
Little Kiwi
Alan Turing, a gay man, was responsible for the enigma device: cracking the nazi code. helping end WWII.
he ended up committing suicide because he was so vilified for being gay.
now, how many of us learned about this in school? how many hearts and minds would be changed with the knowledge that not only did a gay man help win “us” the war, but that “our” societal treatment of him for who and what he is drove him to end his own life?
yeah. education.
Kevin_BGFH
@Little Kiwi: Alan Turing is the example I continually use. His story is an excellent example of someone who is famous for something other than being gay (he is also essentially the inventor of the computer), but his being gay is also an integral part of his story. Yes, he was driven to suicide — after being forceably chemically castrated by the British government to stop his sexual urges. This, mind you, after being one of the top masterminds that saved the British from the Nazis.
Everyone thinks SB48 will be either focusing entirely on Harvey Milk and the gay civil rights movement (not that that’s a bad thing in the right context), or will be focusing on “outing” historical figures and debating whether or not Abraham Lincoln was gay. But there are plenty of historical figures like Turing who are famous in their own right where their sexuality is an important part of the story.
So many critics complain, asking why we need to know what these historical figures did in private (like we actually go into *that* kind of detail), but do they complain where Martha Washington or Mary Todd Lincoln are mentioned, revealing something about George and Abe’s sexuality?
B
Re No. 1 where Little Kiwi wrote, “Alan Turing, a gay man, was responsible for the enigma device: cracking the nazi code. helping end WWII. he ended up committing suicide because he was so vilified for being gay.” and Re No 2 where Kevin_BGFH wrote, “Alan Turing is the example I continually use. His story is an excellent example of someone who is famous for something other than being gay (he is also essentially the inventor of the computer), but his being gay is also an integral part of his story.”
First the factual errors/ambiguities: Turing did not develop the Enigma machine. He found a clever way of breaking its encryption in a short enough time to be useful. The alternative was an exhaustive search of all possible keys, which the Germans changed periodically, and reading month-old messages was not useful – for example, you did not have to break a code to know that a German submarine had been near one of your troop ships when you already had a radio report that the ship sank due to being hit by torpedoes. You had to be able to break the code very quickly, and by discovering how to do that, Turing saved countless American lives – those who reached England instead of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Turing didn’t invent the computer if you mean the hardware device. Instead he developed a theory of computation. Part of that was a model of a computer called a Turing machine. This model was not in any way a useful device for computing anything, but Turing showed that what it could compute was identical to what a more sophisticated machine could compute, so the Turing machine model was useful in mathematical proofs. The reasons for Turing’s apparent suicide are not known (some claim it may have in fact been an accident and others think he arranged for some ambiguity due to his mother being still alive). He died of cyanide poisoning and there was a half-eaten apple sitting next to him, but the apple was never tested, so how he ingested the cyanide was not known. While he had been convicted, there is no indication that he was being harassed by random members of the public for being gay, and his friends had not declared him to be persona non grata or anything like that.
One of the historically relevant facts about him being gay is that he was “caught” due to a completely random event, resulting in the loss of his security clearance, which meant he could not work on cryptography. If that had occurred before World War II, a large number of Americans would have been killed in sinking troop ships. The war would have gone on longer and Russia would possibly have taken over more of Germany.
didaskalos
calling Harvey Milk or Alan Turing a “gay man” misses the point. Both of them fancied teenage males. There’s a different word for that, but it’s been edited out of the discourse because of the gentleman’s agreement NOT TO TALK ABOUT P#$%^&**((* since After The Ball (1989, Kirk & Madsen.)
It’s interesting to analyze the rhetoric of who want to talk about, who doesn’t want to talk about it, and why.
—DIDASKALOS
jeff4justice
Local politicians and churches in my town worked to collect signatures for SB 48.
Here’s how I responded:
Jeff Confronts Anti-LGBT Politicians In Yuba-Sutter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKTJwk5ENgk
Jeff Confronts Sutter Co. Sup. Gallagher On SB 48
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzTBJxmCORM
Pro-LGBT Demonstration In Front Of Crossroads Church Yuba City
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pNSh7TasSI
FX
@didaskalos: why you mean ephebophilia I guess. Well it’s a relatively common attraction among heterosexuals (think of all the men attracted to girls in their late teens, and also to the forty-year-old moms who are hardcore fans of Justin Bieber or Taylor Lautner – reportedly a pain in the neck of both stars). So I guess it cannot a problem at all in our society to “fancy teenage males”.
B
No. 4 · didaskalos wrote, “calling Harvey Milk or Alan Turing a ‘gay man’ misses the point. Both of them fancied teenage males. There’s a different word for that, but it’s been edited out of the discourse because of the gentleman’s agreement NOT TO TALK ABOUT…”
Let me get this straight. The homophobes are complaining about SB-48 ostensibly because they don’t want details of various individuals’ sex lives discussed in class. So, we provide a description of what a course might cover other than sex lives, which in turn generates complaints that we are not talking about sex lives.
Come on guys. At least get your story straight (whether you are straight or not).