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solarbirdI left a few stories out that I had sent to myself in email. Sorry about that. Here they are! They aren't any fun either.
The Laramie Project, a play about the murder gay Wyoming man, is "too controversial" for the Yakima (!) school board;
Sound Politics, a local political blog, supports the school board decision, calling the play too "pro-tolerance" - apparently, a play that suggests that murdering gay men for being queer is bad might be, you know, too soft on t3h fags; the "controversy" over the "real" causes of the murder mostly come from an ABC 20/20 story which has largely since been shown to be inaccurate, but hey, let's "teach the controversy," right?;
Another local blogger chips in a few cents on the play and Sound Politics reaction;
And one more link to the GOP struggle over whether to blame a mythical gay mafia for the Foley scandal and purge the party of GBLT people, courtesy Andrew Sullivan again, who has become quite aware of the dynamics of the theoconservatives who make up the biggest block of his party.
----- 1 -----
School District Pulls Play from Fall Schedule at Local High School
KIMA TV
By Maria Medina
October 6, 2006
Long URL elided
YAKIMA - There was shock among several students after learning their fall play would be postponed until next spring or possibly indefinitely.
"We'd brought it up in the meetings...there might be issues we never really expected it was going to be the school district," said drama club president and Davis senior Kristie Prescott.
Prescott and several drama club students decided to do the Laramie Project last month at the start of the school year. It's a play about the aftermath of a young Laramie, Wyoming man brutally murdered by two men for being gay.
But soon after, controversy erupted in the high school's community with students, their parents and even staff.
[More at URL]
----- 2 -----
"Laramie Project:" Get Me Re-Write
Sound Politics
October 9, 2006
http://soundpolitics.com/archives/007057.html
School distict administrators in Yakima have put on indefinite hold plans by Davis High School students to stage "The Laramie Project" because of concerns the pro-tolerance play might be perceived as promoting homosexuality. Yakima Herald Republic reporter James Joyce III characterizes the play and the underlying real-life story thusly:
The play is based on Matthew Shepard, a University of Wyoming student who was brutally murdered in 1998 at the age of 21 because he was gay.
[...]
There is a legitmate question of whether we want public schools instead of families teaching tolerance. Regardless, any staging of The Laramie Project should also include a post-production discussion forum where the differences between the 20-20 report and the script are fully aired; and where the Leftist meme of "politically constructed realities" gets the full treatment it so richly deserves in this instance.
[More at URL]
----- 3 -----
The Laramie Project Project
by Goldy, 10/10/2006, 1:29 AM
http://www.horsesass.org/index.php?p=2085
Yesterday I abused the Yakima School District for canceling a student production of The Laramie Project, a play that explores the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, WY, and the impact the ensuing controversy had on the community. Like the media reports at the time, the play largely portrays the murder as a hate crime. a vicious, premeditated attack on the openly gay Shepard.
District administrators halted the production out of concern that some in the community might perceive the play as promoting homosexuality. you know, in the same way a recent broadcast of the movie Mississippi Burning caused so many of Yakima's youth to suddenly turn black.
Well apparently, (un)Sound Politics contributor Matt Rosenberg agrees with the district.s decision. Rosenberg suggests that such a "pro-tolerance" play might be inappropriate subject matter for a high school production, stating that "there is a legitimate question of whether we want public schools instead of families teaching tolerance." Yeah, because we wouldn't want to offend the values of those anti-tolerance families, I guess.
[More at URL]
----- 4 -----
'Values' Choice for The GOP
By Eugene Robinson
The Washington Post
Tuesday, October 10, 2006; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100901037.html
It's possible that the Mark Foley scandal could finally end the phony, trumped-up "culture war" that the Republican Party has so expertly exploited all these years -- possible, but not likely. I'm afraid the Foley episode will be remembered as just another bloody battle, one with lots of collateral damage.
[...]
But some conservative activists are irate that the "values" party would allow such an arrangement. Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog, thundered on the group's Web site yesterday that "House leaders permitted homosexuals to infiltrate and manipulate the party apparatus while they publicly postured as friends of family values and traditional marriage. The facade is now in ruins."
[...]
The culture war is supposed to be about morality, but really it's a crusade to compel Americans to follow certain norms of private behavior that some social and religious conservatives believe are mandated by sociology, nature or God. Republican officeholders have paid lip service to this crusade, all the while knowing that the human family is diverse and fallible. They know that the gravest threat to marriage is the heterosexual divorce rate. They know that Republicans drink, swear, carouse and have affairs, just like Democrats. They know that homosexuals aren't devils.
Most Americans know all of this, too, by the way. Main Street hasn't been Hicksville for a long time.
But Republicans positioned themselves as our national Church Lady and were rewarded with the support of the staunchest religious conservatives, who now feel betrayed. Faced with the spreading Foley scandal, the party has a choice.
[...]
Or the party can purge its gay staffers, maybe symbolically burn a few at the stake, and continue to pretend that you can legislate what is permitted to reside in American hearts and minds. Unfortunately, that's where it looks like we're headed.
[More at URL]
The Laramie Project, a play about the murder gay Wyoming man, is "too controversial" for the Yakima (!) school board;
Sound Politics, a local political blog, supports the school board decision, calling the play too "pro-tolerance" - apparently, a play that suggests that murdering gay men for being queer is bad might be, you know, too soft on t3h fags; the "controversy" over the "real" causes of the murder mostly come from an ABC 20/20 story which has largely since been shown to be inaccurate, but hey, let's "teach the controversy," right?;
Another local blogger chips in a few cents on the play and Sound Politics reaction;
And one more link to the GOP struggle over whether to blame a mythical gay mafia for the Foley scandal and purge the party of GBLT people, courtesy Andrew Sullivan again, who has become quite aware of the dynamics of the theoconservatives who make up the biggest block of his party.
----- 1 -----
School District Pulls Play from Fall Schedule at Local High School
KIMA TV
By Maria Medina
October 6, 2006
Long URL elided
YAKIMA - There was shock among several students after learning their fall play would be postponed until next spring or possibly indefinitely.
"We'd brought it up in the meetings...there might be issues we never really expected it was going to be the school district," said drama club president and Davis senior Kristie Prescott.
Prescott and several drama club students decided to do the Laramie Project last month at the start of the school year. It's a play about the aftermath of a young Laramie, Wyoming man brutally murdered by two men for being gay.
But soon after, controversy erupted in the high school's community with students, their parents and even staff.
[More at URL]
----- 2 -----
"Laramie Project:" Get Me Re-Write
Sound Politics
October 9, 2006
http://soundpolitics.com/archives/007057.html
School distict administrators in Yakima have put on indefinite hold plans by Davis High School students to stage "The Laramie Project" because of concerns the pro-tolerance play might be perceived as promoting homosexuality. Yakima Herald Republic reporter James Joyce III characterizes the play and the underlying real-life story thusly:
The play is based on Matthew Shepard, a University of Wyoming student who was brutally murdered in 1998 at the age of 21 because he was gay.
[...]
There is a legitmate question of whether we want public schools instead of families teaching tolerance. Regardless, any staging of The Laramie Project should also include a post-production discussion forum where the differences between the 20-20 report and the script are fully aired; and where the Leftist meme of "politically constructed realities" gets the full treatment it so richly deserves in this instance.
[More at URL]
----- 3 -----
The Laramie Project Project
by Goldy, 10/10/2006, 1:29 AM
http://www.horsesass.org/index.php?p=2085
Yesterday I abused the Yakima School District for canceling a student production of The Laramie Project, a play that explores the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, WY, and the impact the ensuing controversy had on the community. Like the media reports at the time, the play largely portrays the murder as a hate crime. a vicious, premeditated attack on the openly gay Shepard.
District administrators halted the production out of concern that some in the community might perceive the play as promoting homosexuality. you know, in the same way a recent broadcast of the movie Mississippi Burning caused so many of Yakima's youth to suddenly turn black.
Well apparently, (un)Sound Politics contributor Matt Rosenberg agrees with the district.s decision. Rosenberg suggests that such a "pro-tolerance" play might be inappropriate subject matter for a high school production, stating that "there is a legitimate question of whether we want public schools instead of families teaching tolerance." Yeah, because we wouldn't want to offend the values of those anti-tolerance families, I guess.
[More at URL]
----- 4 -----
'Values' Choice for The GOP
By Eugene Robinson
The Washington Post
Tuesday, October 10, 2006; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100901037.html
It's possible that the Mark Foley scandal could finally end the phony, trumped-up "culture war" that the Republican Party has so expertly exploited all these years -- possible, but not likely. I'm afraid the Foley episode will be remembered as just another bloody battle, one with lots of collateral damage.
[...]
But some conservative activists are irate that the "values" party would allow such an arrangement. Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog, thundered on the group's Web site yesterday that "House leaders permitted homosexuals to infiltrate and manipulate the party apparatus while they publicly postured as friends of family values and traditional marriage. The facade is now in ruins."
[...]
The culture war is supposed to be about morality, but really it's a crusade to compel Americans to follow certain norms of private behavior that some social and religious conservatives believe are mandated by sociology, nature or God. Republican officeholders have paid lip service to this crusade, all the while knowing that the human family is diverse and fallible. They know that the gravest threat to marriage is the heterosexual divorce rate. They know that Republicans drink, swear, carouse and have affairs, just like Democrats. They know that homosexuals aren't devils.
Most Americans know all of this, too, by the way. Main Street hasn't been Hicksville for a long time.
But Republicans positioned themselves as our national Church Lady and were rewarded with the support of the staunchest religious conservatives, who now feel betrayed. Faced with the spreading Foley scandal, the party has a choice.
[...]
Or the party can purge its gay staffers, maybe symbolically burn a few at the stake, and continue to pretend that you can legislate what is permitted to reside in American hearts and minds. Unfortunately, that's where it looks like we're headed.
[More at URL]
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Some... entertainment?
Date: 2006-10-13 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-13 06:41 am (UTC)Gay Dem operatives outing Rep Gay members and Social Conservatives not caring that those people are Gay.
I'm pissed that some Gay Dem's are so quick to abandon the principles they claim to stand for. I'm rather happy that a lot of straight Republicans could care less who is or isn't Gay. Kind of opposite what a lot of folks expected, isn't it?
Too bad the Gay movement in general isn't all over the Democratic party for doing this stuff. If people would only stand back a moment and think: Most Republican's don't care if you're gay.
Isn't that a victory? Shouldn't people take a step back and say: "hey, there's something we can build on," ?
no subject
Date: 2006-10-14 04:43 am (UTC)Most Republican's don't care if you're gay. Isn't that a victory? Shouldn't people take a step back and say: "hey, there's something we can build on"?
I hope very much that this is the decision the party comes to. But there's a real in-party battle over this. The theocons very much want a GBLT GOP purge. Others in the party very much don't want one and think it's intensely stupid. But they're in a real spot, because they've been endorsing the anti-gay rhetoric (and actions) of the party for a decade now. So this may be a reckoning on the subject, and I've no idea which way it'll go. I hope very much that it goes the way Condi Rice's side apparently wants it to go, but I don't know that it will.
Believe me, I very much want my life not to be a partisan issue! That's why I stopped being all libertarian for a while and started going to GOP caucuses and meetings and helped write district platforms and all that kind of work. It didn't work out because the theocon influence was just too strong - but it wasn't a stunt. I meant it.
So there's an opportunity here for a huge step forward, from a most unexpected source. I think the odds are not very good - but I'm trying to be hopeful, you know?