I've written about the debates in the last two issues of The Houstonian, and even though Cheney and Edwards sat down and talked about stuff for 90 minutes I refuse to keep talking about the same things.
With that said, let's talk about some good old-fashioned hate from deep in the heart of South Carolina. It seems that U.S. Senate candidate Jim DeMint, a third term Republican congressman, is toeing the gay-hating Republican party line and taking it to even new levels of insanity.
In a debate on Sunday, DeMint said that homosexuals should not be allowed to become teachers regardless of how qualified they are. Of course this is just flat-out discrimination and the conservatives aren't even bothering to hide it anymore.
DeMint, like many other ignorant, small-minded people, think that a gay teacher will have no agenda but turning their students gay. It could be said that this is a ridiculous statement, but it is even more ridiculous that people buy into this garbage.
How do gay or straight philosophies affect the teaching of reading, writing and arithmetic? Do elementary school students even care about whom their teacher has sex with? Never crossed my mind back then, but who am I?
Now as if that wasn't enough, DeMint later added single mothers to his list of people that shouldn't be allowed to be teachers. This was actually his attempt to come off as something other than a gay-basher. During an interview after the debate, DeMint was asked about his anti-homosexual comments. He told the interviewer that he would have given the same answer if asked about single women with live-in boyfriends. He explained his stance by saying that those two groups don't represent his values and he doesn't want them teaching his grandchildren.
DeMint apparently believes that homosexuals, single mothers and anyone else he doesn't like are incapable of conducting themselves in a professional manner while on the job. I've never had a married teacher discuss his or her sex life with the class at any level of my education, so why would single mothers or homosexuals be expected to talk sex to a bunch of second-graders?
Even though this is happening in South Carolina, it is relevant here. Sam Houston has a respected education program that trains its students to be the best teachers they can be. Imagine if the conservative Texas Legislature took some cues from South Carolina and determined that qualifications should be secondary to personal beliefs. Imagine the insult educators in South Carolina are bearing at the hands of this bigot because he doesn't respect their professionalism and love of teaching. It just goes to show that this country still has a long way to go before people are even treated close to equal. For every group that makes civil rights strides, another group is singled out for scorn.
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