The article to which Mr. Queer... er, Cody is referring can be accessed through my infinitely superior blog: https://www.cementhorizon.com/digitaljohnny/archives/001599.html (click on the reference to high school).

Now that I've detracted from his readership, I must say that I don't know how to feel about gay school. Although I do love this quote from the cnn article:

"Is there a different way to teach homosexuals? Is there gay math? This is wrong," Long said. "There's no reason these children should be treated separately."

Hehe... gay math, now that's a subject that I'd like to take.

Seriously though, I think it is borderline segregationist to have an all-anything school, mostly because it precludes interaction between groups of people that will have to interact in other life situations that can't be controled as easily. I do think that going to school with gay kids is good for het's in that they can get to know them personally and see that they're normal kids just like them, and it's good for gays in that they are treated as normal members of society. Granted, not everyone is nice to gay kids and hate crimes and harrassment in school is a very real and very scary issue. Perhaps, as will all-girl or all-boy schools, gay school will provide a learning atmosphere where gay kids who have had bad experiences in other schools will be able to relax and concentrate on their studies... but perhaps it will be super "cruisy" (I looove that word) and that will cause distractions. In closing, I'd like to say that I wish I had gone to an all-gay high school... lord knows the boys would have been cuter and more nice to me.

I'm not sure how I feel about this school either. I see the similarities to all-girls' schools, the safer learning environment, what have you. And I think it would produce a set up that would not be more cruisy, but simply more like the experience that every straight kid has in high school of rampant hormones stalking the halls. But how DO you get into this school? Sexuality is so fluid, especially when you're a teenager-- what happens if some girl enrolls thinking she's a lesbo, and then whoops! by sophomore year she realizes she's all about the dick. Granted, I think gay kids are a lot more accepting of these kinds of realizations, but my point is that no one should feel they have to be a certain way to be in their own school. It also seems like they're putting the cart before the horse. I mean, there are some schools that don't even have fucking gay/straight alliances, but a few priviledged queer kids get their own school? I guess I'm against this school at the moment. Check back with me tomorrow, though, things may have changed.

i'm less bothered by this than i am by single-sex schools (i'm looking forward to a bitter struggle with my catholic-boarding-school-educated fiancee about where to send our daughters, if any, for their learnin').

incidentally, from a constitutional standpoint, since sexuality is not a suspect classification (Lawrence v. Texas notwithstanding), this school is likely to survive any federal legal civil rights challenges. in case you were wondering. i'm not sure what the NY constitution is like.

but the bottom line is that this is by no means the first public gay high school. i went to public high school, and my school was TOTALLY gay.

Thanks for making my link work, Cody... if you and I were competing media corporations, I'd be taking so much of your market share, you'd be out of business in no time.

I do like Erica's point that gay school wouldn't be any less cruisy than other schools because almost all teenagers are horn-dogs. But, it'd be my guess that there'll be less total geeks at gay school who can't get laid.

As for the legal aspects of this thing, I do think that sexuality or sexual orientation is a valid category when you're talking about civil rights. These categories have been added to anti-discrimination laws and play a large part in hate-crime law. I, myself, am a big fan of individual-based rights, rather than group-based rights, although I do see the need for them in specific cases. I think it's jacked up to deprive girls like me the chance to experience gay school, with it's culinary arts classes and higher than average number of cute HS boys. Just because I'm not a member of the right group, does that mean I'm relegated to shitty-ass NYC public schools without specialty arts and open-minded cirruculum for all 4 years? Damn my vanilla sexuality...

i'm sure sexuality is all over the place in NY state law and federal hate crime legislation, but i'm just saying that if anyone brings an equal protection challenge against this particular form of discrimination, they will fail, because the supreme court has consistently held that discrimination on the basis of sexuality is a-okay as long as it isn't based on pure animosity, which this isn't. if the new york state constitution includes sexuality in its list of proscribed discrimination, well, that's a whole nother ballgame.

but i think you'd be hard-pressed to classify school segregation of any kind as a hate-crime, so i'm just saying that if there are any legal challenges to be made they'll be on the state level, by straight students.

speaking of which,

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/30/bush.gay.marriage/index.html

don't you think it's good to expose the straight world to mainstream gayness, though? i would not be nearly so tolerant of these goddamn ubiquitous queers if i hadn't grown up with several of them around me all the time. shunting a minority off into a separate world for the duration of their youth really only seems like a good idea for such freakish groups as catholics and girls.

i said "less bothered," you'll note. i'm not jumping on board with this thing, i just find it intuitively less problematic than single-sex education. i'll keep the jury out until i know more about the admissions policies and get a look at the unintended consequences.

but i'll venture to add that there are almost certainly more gay teens in NY than spaces in the school, so there will be plenty of mainstream gayness to go around at the old-skool schools. whether this turns out to be a burden or a blessing for those left behind remains to be seen.

Man, Bush says some of the most infuriating things in that gay marriage article.. when he's supposedly making a call for tolerence:

"Yes, I am mindful that we're all sinners," the president said Wednesday when asked for his views on homosexuality. "And I caution those who may try to take the speck out of the neighbor's eye when they've got a log in their own... I think it's very important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts, to be a welcoming country," Bush added. "On the other hand, that does not mean that somebody like me needs to compromise on an issue such as marriage."

His implication that gays are naturally sinners is sickening. I guess from a religiously conservative point of view, homosexuality is a "sin", but I happen to think that antiquated religious beliefs such as this should not affect national policies so directly. The bible also apparently takes an ill view of money lenders and teaches that the earth and all of its creatures were created by God in seven days, but our government obviously approves of bankers and lenders and cannot (legitimately) prevent the teaching of the theory of evolution. This kind of discrimination based on bullshit religious reasons is completely unacceptable... not only is it purposefully selective and hypocritical but it goes beyond the bounds of government power to codify a religious belief such as this. Even the argument that it would be based on a general moral principle rather than a religious doesn't seem hold water with me. It's not like killing or stealing, where every/any culture would look down upon it, but based in America's particular top religions. OK, I'm just making myself mad now. Screw George W. and the GOP, the enemies of civil liberties and a truly united nation.

Also, note Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Unlike some, I do not think that this language can be only interpreted to mean hetero couples:

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

how could you have a log in your eye and not notice? i guess this is one of those metaphor things.

probably. the man is a master of metaphor:

MAKE THE PIE HIGHER
by George W. Bush

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!

kristina's right, the geeks would totally be out of the picture. but now i'm thinking, what of the flaming fags and hard-ass dykes? how will these conflicting groups ever learn to deal with one another? ok, fine, i'm not actually thinking that. really what i'm thinking is bush is a fucking moron. fuck him right in the eye! but, um, watch out for that log that's apparently already there. whatever *that's* all about. sheesh, what a freak.

dear holohan that poem made my morning your friend didofoot.

The Vatican on gay marriage:

"Marriage exists solely between a man and woman ... Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law," the 12-page document by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said Thursday.

"Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior ... but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity."

This kind of reasoning all well and good for people who believe in God, who haven't already been shunned by most major religions and who are still somehow deluding themselves that marriage is still sacred in modern times, but what about us who don't believe in God, who know that regligion is a sham and realize that the amount of divorces in recent decades has done irreversible damage to the institution of marriage. People in America and Europe don't take marriage seriously anymore because it's so easy to get out of, even if you are religious and pretend to believe that it's holy. I say if people are going against their vows, *that* is a much greater "sin" than meaningfully making vows to love, honor and cherish the love of your life forever, whether it be a man or a woman. Antiquated beliefs, such as this one, about "moral order" have been used in the past to deny various groups rights to marry, own property, or even the right to be seen as a human being under the law. This is just as wrong and inhumane.

return fire:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/08/01/vatican.gay.marriages/index.html

"For its part the Catholic church stresses the document does not promote discrimination against homosexual relationships, but instead says same-sex unions are not the same as marriages that 'bring new human beings into the world.'"

i love this senseless rationalization from right-wingers. "oh, i'm against gay marriage, but i'm not anti-gay. i just think that heterosexuals should have more privileges, and that their relationships are worthy of greater recognition. because of... oh, yeah! the children!"

getting back to the gay high school, here's the way to answer one of the most common arguments coming out of the reactionary camp.

mouth-breathing right-winger: we can have a public gay school but we can't have a public religious school? what kind of value system is that?

you: well, the constitution explicitly says that the government can't establish a religion. but YOU people have been swearing for years that the constitution doesn't forbid discrimination against homosexuals. well, discrimination against homosexuals is really just discrimination based on sexual preference, and if it's okay to discriminate against one sexual preference (homosexual) it's okay to discriminated against another (heterosexual). so really, you have no one to blame but yourself.

I'm actually kind of with the mouth-breathing right winger, in that I think the whole point of public school is that it accepts all of the kids who are too stupid, irreligious, poor, untalented or lazy enough to be denied access to real education. Regardless of values or the constitution, I don't think straight kids should be imprisoned from age 5 to age 18 in a school whose funding is compromised by the district's support of an exclusionary school.

a valid point, to be sure, but i'm just saying the government's refusal to fund religious schools doesn't in any way weaken their ability to fund gay schools, at least under current constitutional jurisprudence. when the supreme court decides that sexuality is a suspect classification (and they will), they'll start applying the same level of scrutiny that proscribes government funding of single-sex schools.

about gay school--I just can't see it being a good thing for any other purpose than to give temporary relief to students who have been abused at other public schools. Tolerance, as Kristina says, comes from learning side by side. I am mindful though that it is the nature of institutions to pursue their own continuance, so I won't be surprised if their is pressure applied for the school to increase it's enrollment. Pretty soon they'll start transfering students who don't request it. They are going to end up with some queers and some metrosexuals.

About the Vatican-Bush-religious mess--The morality they espouse is not the morality of common sense or of the modern world in which they live. It is the morality of their own authority, which admits nothing but their own narrow One-God-centered view of the world. The reason we don't allow religion and politics to intermarry is because their offspring is uglier and more dangerous than either parent. It produces extremism, intolerance, and other barbarities.

So give me civil unions, Mr. President. If I want a marriage I'll go to church. I want legal (not religious) recognition of ALL relationships between ALL couples (and maybe a triplet or two).

The argument that gay unions don't produce children is bullshit, for at least 2 reasons that I can think of.

1. Gay couples can have children. They can adopt children, a noble and humanitarian thing to do, even for straight couples who can and/or cannot have children of their own. These children would otherwise end up wards of the state or possibly with less loving families. The kind of loving, attentive and, no doubt, understanding up-bringing these kids receive from gay couples should be recognized and appreciated. They can also have their own genetic children, whether it be a lesbian couple getting a sperm donor or a gay couple donating sperm to a serrogate mother. This may be costly, but it is possible and couples are doing it. I, personally, like the idea of a surrogate mother for my own children... getting all the benefits of kids w/o having to carry one for 9 months and getting all kinds of physical problems down the road. I figure I'd rather spend a lot of money on a surrogate mother than plastic surgery ;)

2. We don't need any more friggin' kids! As human beings, all morality is based on pragmatic facts and needs in life. In the past, having children was encouraged and almost mandated by law and morality because of the need for more laborers and the need for population growth in times of famine or plague. In the modern era, we are experiencing out-of-control population growth, so much to the point where people are being encouraged to have fewer children. So, I say, yay for couples that don't have kids. They won't have to blow money on shoes and education so they'll have more money to save for their own retirements when the social security system eventually fails because of those blood-sucking baby boomers. I want to have a kid, though... just one...