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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
Leave it to the South Carolina Legislature to shock my system this morning:
A bill, sponsored by Rep. Joan Brady, R-Richland, would require school districts to send home information or include in their student handbooks information about teen dating violence — including how to recognize whether a student is in an abusive relationship and where to go for help.
According to a 2007 state Department of Education survey, nearly 14 percent of S.C. students reported being “hit, slapped or physically hurt on purpose by their boyfriend or girlfriend” in the previous 12 months.
So far so good. It sounds like a productive idea. But then comes the shock:
The bill hit an unexpected roadblock Wednesday when Rep. Greg Delleney, R-Chester, introduced an amendment requiring the material to address only heterosexual relationships.
“I don’t want the Department of Education or school districts to teach children in grades six through 12 about (same-sex) relationships,” Delleney said.
I don't know where to begin to tell you what's wrong with Delleney's mindset. But I will try.
1. It stands to reason that if children are in a same-sex relationship (and I'm sure there are many who are), I don't think the school can't teach them something they already know. And even if they aren't in a same-sex relationship, children are not naive. Remind me to tell you the theories my 10-year-old cousin relayed to me about some of the characters of High School Musical.
2. Delleny's mindset is pure ignorance. His statement implies that learning about same-sex relationships will be mandatory in classrooms. This is what the bill says:
By Dec. 1, the S.C. Department of Education would have to develop a model dating violence policy to assist school districts in developing policies for reporting and responding to dating violence.
• By the 2010-2011 school year, each school district would establish a specific policy to address incidents of dating violence.
• Each school district’s dating violence policy would have to be published in school and school district handbooks or any publications on the school or district Web site that provide the rules, procedures or standards of conduct for students at school.
3. Delleny's mindset is also offensive. Gays are constantly hit with the barrage of nonsense that we want “special rights,” but Delleny went out of his way to exclude us. He doesn't want to help us combat potential violence in our relationships because he doesn't care about us. It's bad enough when this comes from an ordinary citizen but the fact that a legislator publicly voices this notion without any shame is awful.
Delleny wasn't elected for his personal and religious beliefs. He was elected to serve the people of South Carolina regardless of race, religion, national origin, gender, or sexual orientation. He can't pick and choose who to serve. Or, in this case, who to protect.
His words emphasizes just how difficult it is for gays to live not only in South Carolina but in the United States in general. No other group is subject to the level of disrespect that we generally receive. Delleny wouldn't have gotten away with his public “screw you” if he had made any other group the subject of his tirade.
He will probably get a pat on the back by like minded homophobic individuals. Yes, Delleny is homophobic. I don't really see how anyone can use buzzwords to defend his actions. He isn't protecting traditional relationships or upholding morality.
Delleny is making it acceptable for South Carolina to cover it's ears so as not to hear the pleas of help coming from victims of relationship violence.
In a broader sense, he is making it acceptable to discriminate against South Carolinians simply because he has a personal problem with their sexual orientation.
And this is just basically wrong.
16 Comments
RidiculousWhat an f-ing monster.
Maybe you should cut him some slackHe probably thinks that heterosexual relationships, because they’re not gay, have higher incidents of domestic violence. I mean we all know that in heterosexual relationships the man usually beats the woman. /sarcasm
The message hereSouth Carolina does NOT ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Basically the law is saying that if you’re gay or lesbian, it’s legal to fire, evict, or refuse service to you. So, if you’re a public school student, it’s legal to deny you educational or social services because of your sexual orientation. It’s institutionalized homophobia and it’s going to continue until non-discrimination legislation is updated to include sexual orientation, which is probably going to take twenty years to happen. The legislators, lawmakers, and judges are mostly bigoted christians who think it’s appropriate state policy to either discourage or ignore homosexuals.
But SeriouslyThe least they could do is make the document neutral and talk about “if your child has a boyfriend/girlfriend” and even address the fact that the bf/gf is opposite sex.
Romers vs. EvansThis law would be overturned if taken to a federal court, for singling out a minority.
This is gratuitous gay bashing.There was no reason to add this amendment for any reason other than he thought he could get away with it. We will fight it in the Senate with everything that we can.
NeutralYeah or even your child’s significant other.
Riiight…Just like DOMA has been taken up by the federal courts and all the constitutional amendments in many states outlawing marriage between those of the same sex.
How blatantly petty can you get?What’s the point of doing this, other than to stick it to gay people? How can he possibly think that this is anything but an enormous waste of time and resources? God, these schmucks are so damn transparent.
I try to understand the mindset, but I’m always stymied by how openly hateful these people are, especially when it’s an elected official ignoring the duties of his office.
Rep. Greg Delleney is an A$$ HOLE, Can’t let children know that Teh Gays Exist. WTF? I will never understand the way the Fundie mind functions, assuming that it does.
Well…They probably do have higher rates of abuse, but of course that’s beside the point.
It’s quite simple.This is how they think: their ideology takes precedent over all else, to the point where they assume all people are similarly driven by competing ideologies.
To them, homosexuality isn’t a natural phenomenon. It’s a competing “religion”.
The simple psychological concept of “projection” explains at least 75% of all fundy “logic”.
The rest is just plain old immaturity and selfishness.
well deservedIt will be the bigot-legislators’ comeuppance to spend months developing the policy and then have the courts destroy it. Of course that will lead to the fundie fury against the “big bad judiciary”. I doubt I live long enough to see a real just and egalitarian society in the USA.
Perhaps not about Delleny’s religious beliefsRather, this could be about his belief in getting re-elected. If he knows his constituents are a bunch of bigots full of religious zealotry, he’ll pander to them by submitting bills like this one. It really doesn’t matter if the bill actually passes, the folks back home will remember that he was “trying to do the right by God”. And that is the real battleground; the hearts of ordinary people, congregation by congregation, while simultaneously fighting the legal battles.
We are fighting an uphill battle in some states; why not try to level the hill a bit at the same time? Instead, we deny the hill even exists by smugly telling ourselves that the bigots have obviously been deluded into believing in the sky fairy. It is the group-think, that which has been built around that delusion to draw them together against outsiders, that we must fight. We need to draw in any churches that are our allies, we need to be running ads and billboards that show the (eurocentric) face of that dead jewish prophet with the message that True Christianity is about Love, not Hate. We need to convince them that Devil has led them astray from the teachings of Jesus and into believing that persecuting the weak will make them strong. That is how we will will this war, not by forcing our views and laws down their throats…
Here’s what passed…The amendment to exclude passed by a vote of 87 to 13. The bill passed 75 to 25. It came out of nowhere so there was no time to lobby to stop it.
Bigot to the coreDoes this fool somehow think that by excluding same sex relationships from the handbook, these students won’t realize they exist? Goes to show the bigotry has no limits, it even leads them to attempt to ONLY protect heterosexual teens from dating violence.
I swear, the only thing that turns these a$$holes around to see how wrong and hateful they have been is finding out they have a gay child. But even then you still never know. This guy’s a real piece of garbage.