7 Year Old Punished for Talking About His Gay Mother

Ridiculous.

 

that's gay

 

that just shameful.

 

How did I know someone would say this? Yet, it is still curiously funny....

 

There has been a movement to discourage people from using the word "gay" as an insult. And while this boy was not using the term as an insult, it could be hard for a seven year-old to make the distinction. So the teachers just adopt a zero tolerance policy.

Or the teacher overheard only part of the conversation, was unaware that the kid's mother actually was gay, and thought he was using the term as an insult. Though that seems a bit far-fetched, especially since the punishment continued (after the point when someone must've known the kid's mother really was a lesbian) and the principal apparently thought the word itself to be really bad.

I don't know what kind of person would consider the word "gay" to be so bad that he wouldn't want to repeat it over the phone.

 

Anyone surprised?, I mean it happened in Lafayette, not exactly New York City.

 

Question is, how does he feel about HANGING OUT WITH HER?

 

LOL


That case is pretty stupid -- on several different levels.

 

Yet one more reason to realize that zero tolerance equals zero intelligence.

 

This thread is offensive or something.

 

I hope they've thrown out all the dictionaries. We wouldn't want children looking up bad words now.

 

The following week, Marcus had to come to school early and repeatedly write: "I will never use the word `gay' in school again."

Plus, if the word is so bad, why would you have him write it repeatedly on the board?

 

I like to listen to Marvin "last name is a bad word"

 

LOL.
it is ridiculous nice way of showing our young ones how we should life together and accept each other.

 

What is equally ridiclulous is that there are people out there who, upon reading this, will think " See, yet another reason why homosexual cioules shouldn't have kids."

 

Cioucles = couples...can't explain how, just operate on trust on this one...

 

I bet that kid has some interesting stuff for show and tell...

 

When is the last time anyone read a post from this guy that wasn't freakin' hilarious?

 

It's not just hicks in Lousiana that are red necks, our Army thinks it's more important to be hetero than pave the way for a smooth transition in Iraq.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29683-2003Dec2.html

Policy Translates to Losses
'Don't Tell' Leads to Ouster Of Scarce Arabic Linguists
By Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A01


Cathleen Glover was cleaning the pool at the Sri Lankan ambassador's residence recently when she heard the sound of Arabic drifting through the trees. Glover earned $11 an hour working for a pool-maintenance company, skimming leaves and testing chlorine levels in the backyards of Washington. No one knew about her past. But sometimes the past found her.



Glover recognized the sound instantly. It was the afternoon call to prayer coming from a mosque on Massachusetts Avenue. She held still, picking out familiar words and translating them in her head.

She learned Arabic at the Defense Language Institute (DLI), the military's premier language school, in Monterey, Calif. Her timing as a soldier was fortuitous: Around her graduation last year, a Government Accounting Office study reported that the Army faced a critical shortage of linguists needed to translate intercepts and interrogate suspects in the war on terrorism.

"I was what the country needed," Glover said.

She was, and she wasn't. Glover is gay. She mastered Arabic but couldn't handle living a double life under the military policy known as "don't ask, don't tell." After two years in the Army, Glover, 26, voluntarily wrote a statement acknowledging her homosexuality.

Confronted with a shortage of Arabic interpreters and its policy banning openly gay service members, the Pentagon had a choice to make.

Which is how former Spec. Glover came to be cleaning pools instead of sitting in the desert, translating Arabic for the U.S. government.

In the past two years, the Department of Defense has discharged 37 linguists from the Defense Language Institute for being gay. Like Glover, many studied Arabic. At a time of heightened need for intelligence specialists, 37 linguists were rendered useless because of their homosexuality.

Historically, military leaders have argued that allowing gays to serve would hurt unit cohesion and recruiting efforts, and infringe on the privacy rights of heterosexuals. In 1993, at the urging of President Clinton, Congress agreed to soften the outright ban on gays in the military with a policy that came to be known as "don't ask, don't tell," which allowed them to serve as long as they kept their sexual orientation secret.

On its 10th anniversary, "don't ask, don't tell" exists in a vastly changed nation. In 1993, there was no "Will & Grace," no gay Jack on "Dawson's Creek," no gay-themed Miller Lite commercials. In 1993, fewer than a dozen U.S. high schools had Gay-Straight Alliance organizations. Today, there are almost 2,000. In 1993, fewer than a dozen Fortune 500 companies offered health benefits to domestic partners. Today, nearly 200 do.

This newer version of America is the one young enlistees leave behind when they join the military. On average, three or four service members are discharged each day because they are gay. Most are discharged for making statements about their sexuality, and most are younger than 25.

"In the case of some, they get in the Army and they are traumatized by an awareness that the military is 20 years behind the societal curve," said Jeff Cleghorn, a former lawyer with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a gay-rights group monitoring military justice.

The Army says the discharged linguists were casualties of their own failure to meet a known policy. "We have standards," said Harvey Perritt, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va. "We have physical standards, academic standards. There's no difference between administering these standards and administering 'don't ask, don't tell.' The rules are the rules."

Many military scholars agree that it's a matter of time before the ban is lifted. Said John Allen Williams, a professor of political science at Loyola University in Chicago and president of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society: " 'Don't ask, don't tell' is an interim step until the inevitable change. It's a useful speed bump
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