6/3/99
ldlockman@telplus.net
Now that Assistant Attorney General Steve Wessler has apologized for distributing obscene material to fifth-graders at Windsor Elementary School, what's next? Will parents and school board members insist that the gay-activist "civil rights teams" be disbanded and the program terminated? Or will Wessler continue to expand his Gay Left indoctrination program into other school districts?
At Wessler's urging, many schools across the state have adopted a curriculum developed in the state AG's office with federal grant money from Janet Reno's Justice Department. The course of instruction purports to discourage kids from using "hate language" aimed at minorities, but you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the real purpose of the curriculum is to promote the selfish special interests of gay activists, even while they stuff their pockets with tax dollars.
No sooner had Wessler procured the federal grant when he awarded a lucrative no-bid contract to veteran lesbian activist Betsy Sweet, domestic partner of state treasurer Dale McCormick. Sweet has been paid in excess of $15,000, at the rate of $50 an hour, to write the curriculum for the civil rights teams. The result of her labors is a warmed-over version of 1960s sensitivity training, fortified with radical leftist jabbering about the unholy trinity of "race, class, and gender," and dedicated to the politically correct but nonetheless thoroughly goofy notion that "sexual orientation" is a legitimate minority category deserving of inclusion in the civil-rights statutes.
Prominent lesbian political operative Karen Geraghty, past president of the Maine Lesbian Gay Political Alliance, was paid $1,200 for her services as an advisor to the program. Is it any surprise that the Wessler/Sweet/Geraghty curriculum contains an explicitly political component urging increased funding for the AG's office and passage of a gay-rights bill by the Maine Legislature?
In keeping with the latest fads in “progressive” education, interactive games and role-playing exercises are built into the curriculum as a way to encourage kids to report their peers for using "hate language" (conveniently undefined). But until the recent events at Windsor Elementary School came to light, it wasn't widely known that part of the fun and games involved requiring 11- and 12-year olds to recite pornographic language so foul that mainstream media outlets can't report what was actually said.
Strip away all the warm and fuzzy rhetoric about "diversity" and "tolerance", and Wessler's program is revealed to be nothing but a taxpayer-funded jobs program for homosexual activists whose mission is to feed at the public trough while they teach impressionable school children that homosexuals are an oppressed minority group entitled to the same special status and benefits as truly disadvantaged racial, ethnic, and disabled minorities.
If Wessler were truly interested in educating young people about civil rights, he would explain to them that in a series of decisions, the US Supreme Court has ruled that minority groups seeking protected class status under the civil-rights statutes must meet certain eligibility criteria. Groups seeking protection must, as an entire averaged class, demonstrate a history of economic deprivation and political powerlessness.
Inasmuch as gays and lesbians flunk these tests (indeed, gay activists boast of their wealth, power, and influence), neither the Congress nor the Supreme Court has ever recognized "sexual orientation" as a minority class. The truth is that America's gay population has all the money and power it needs to take care of its own problems, real or imagined, without soaking taxpayers for the cost of lawsuits and protective orders.
Instead of turning school assemblies into X-rated Jerry Springer episodes, Wessler ought to be distributing case summaries of these judicial decisions that clearly exclude affluent pseudo-minorities from the umbrella of civil-rights protections that have always been reserved for the needy, not the greedy.
In the meantime, parents should demand that Wessler and his cohorts pack up their obscenely fraudulent "civil rights" project in a suitable waste container and remove it from the school grounds. This is toxic material that deserves prompt burial in a secure landfill.Lawrence Lockman is chairman of Concerned Maine Families
What's Your View?
Start or join a discussion on The Liars' Bench or email us