Teaching about Adam and Eve is unconstitutional, but embracing Adam and Steve is mandatory?

You can't talk about the Catholic Church in history class. Not in any meaningful way anyway. Our children are taught that Joan of Arc was just another war-mongering wench and Henry VIII merely had a minor quibble about the terms of his divorce. Otherwise the specter of religion might creep into the public schools and wash away the apocryphal wall of separation between Church and State.

Context is important in teaching history, unless that context contains elements of religious dogma. Thus you get the blood and gore accounts of The Crusades or The Inquisition without any inkling of their origins in theology or Canon Law.

So I was mildly amused Wednesday afternoon to read about a dust-up occuring in California over the need for homosexual context to be included in history curricula. It seems one cannot possibly teach about Harvey Milk or Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin (who?) without also graphically illustrating the finer points of sodomy while making the case for same-sex "marriage."

Uh, OK. You got it. I happen to believe that context is important.

Now, here's what I want in return. First off, no more "Columbus gave syphillis to the Indians" crapola. If the disease spread by homosexual activity is still off-limits (and indeed none may dare say how HIV is transmitted throughout the gay community) then I don't want to hear any more of those slanders against my man Christobol.

And it's The Holy Inquisition to you bub. The Church did the world a favor by consolidating a plethora of arbitrary and capricious excuses for "justice" into a well-defined process for uncovering the truth. In the same vein The Crusades were honorable pursuits by pious men seeking to glorify Almighty God and reclaim the Holy Land for Christendom.

If you think about it, the Twin Towers would still be standing if they'd vanquished the Mohammedans. I'd call that a "win."

And while we're on the subject of context how about teaching the kids just how many card-carrying Lenin-loving communists there really were in Hollywood and how they were mailing government secrets off to the Russkies by the truckload. Joe McCarthy was a Patriot, with a Capital P. That's a fact. Alger Hiss was a traitor. That's a fact too.

What's that? You're suddenly not such a big fan of "context?" That's what I thought. Now I'm sure you can find a way to explain why Harvey Milk was assassinated without having to demonstrate butt-fucking to kindergarteners.

Posted at 09:32 by Chris Wysocki   [/education]   Comments | Perm Link |
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