Traditionally, Gay children had to remain silent and closeted in school.

Different meant bad and that meant bullying.

It took years to get school administrators to accept that there were Gay kid in schools and that they had needs that should be addressed like the need to feel validated, not rejected.

Slowly, although the adults might be stuck in their outdated assumptions about others, over time kids began to see there was nothing wrong with their friends, just differences, and those really only bothered the old people.

Gradually, as Gay students became more a part of their school communities as the young rejected the adult biases in spite of the adults’ efforts to raise bigoted Mini-Mes, a side benefit was better student attendance, better test scores, and fewer drop-outs and attempted and/or completed suicides, and a healthier school environment/

Behavior wise and achievement wise, there was really nothing that separated the Gay kids from the non-Gay ones, and there was nothing in their classroom behavior and academic achievement that set them apart.

But ‘Murka and Jaysis may get that changed.

I taught Special Education students for a number of years and had developed programs for my students based on their individual needs as related to behavior, socialization, and academic achievement.

Occasionally, when a student had attained a certain achievement level or who had modified their social behavior to be more in line with proper social behavior, the student would be carefully placed in a regular ed class in the subject area in which they had showed achievement and be moved to a less restricted placement with the agreement that if things did not go as expected, perhaps the smallness of the SpEd class had made learning easier, or perhaps large groups in a classroom was just too overwhelming, the student could return to the more restrictive Special Ed classroom.

Before any move was made to place a student in a Special Ed classroom or in a less restrictive setting, the student would be evaluated to learn their strength, weaknesses, talents, and needs, and the evaluation of the student continued when placed into a particular classroom with other students with a variety of strengths, weaknesses, talents, and needs.

Within each Special Ed category, Learning Handicapped, Emotionally Challenged, Autistic etc. there are individual needs related to each individual kid.

No category is a one size fits all category.

Also, after a while, the Special Ed students were not separated to isolate them from those they made uncomfortable as at least in recent years Special Ed classrooms were brought into the main parts of a school rather than meeting in a basement room by the boiler.

According to it’s website,

“Moms for Liberty is dedicated to fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.”

Their particular target is public schools and the rights they defend seem to be only the rights of people like themselves and not all parents.

The subliminal hint in their name is the use of “Liberty” which, like Patriot, America, Freedom etc, are co-opted by radical conservatives who hide behind these words and justify bigotry as American Freedom.

Moms for Liberty became a widely seen group when during the pandemic they attended and protested school board meetings to oppose mask mandates and Gay inclusivity in schools.

The group has offered bounties for people turning in teachers who discuss “divisive topics”, condemned the Trevor Project for attempting to reduce teen suicides among Gay kids, and lobbied for Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill.

As one Moms for Liberty Miami-Dade member explained the groups objectives,

“The kids that do have their, you know, they’re confused, or they are gay or whatnot.”

After that well stated introduction to Gay kids in school, she went on to explain,

“that the way they’re trying to go about it is to make it an open conversation and an open thing in classrooms. But like for example children with autism, Down Syndrome, they have to have special IP meetings with a counselor, they have to be put into separate classrooms. I understand, because it’s a different type of education for children with those disabilities, but I think that for children that identify differently, there should also be like a specialized… something for them, so that they feel that they’re important enough that they’re being counseled.”

The message sent is that Gay kids need to be separated from their friends during the school day, not because of a discovered need, but merely on the assumption of some “moms” that the student is different from them and their kids and that is intrinsically bad.

It also makes it much easier to find your bullying target as “Those Kids” will be herded together and obvious as a group.

For a group that claims to know what goes on in school, the group’s leader justified the need for separation to allow for treatment outside public view and without any naturally flowing classroom conversation of some student’s family life, by using this scenario that is totally insulting to teachers.

“I think for the same reason why teachers wouldn’t just bring a child with autism in front of the class and be like, hey, he’s got autism. Embarrassment”

.Then in total cyclic “reasoning”, in explaining why it would be embarrassing for a Gay kid to be in a class especially as states like Florida are forbidding the mere mention of Gay in any way in the classroom which makes being Gay in school a created embarrassment, the group leader said that because of the embarrassment this causes, Gay kids should be set apart so they can have those discussions with counselors and no one has to know about them or that they are there.

Moms for Liberty Miami-Dade chapter chair Eulalia Jimenez claims kids are being “influenced to be gay.”

“I believe that the Gay Community has felt invalidated and left out, and, rightfully so, they want their place. But again, why does this need to be imposed on young children?”

I went to the Baltimore Catechism I have had since elementary school with all the rules a Catholic needed to follow, sometimes accompanied by odd explanations of why, to see if there was anything there to cover that question, and then to my heavily Christian influenced Boy Scout manual only to find nothing, wondering while doing so if during the Lord’s Prayer being recited in her public school classroom as a kid my mother ever got distracted by questions like this, moved on to the handbooks of the various public schools I taught at and saw that I might find the answers from those who were in Fellowship of Christian Athletes, held prayer gatherings at school, or had attended any of the many school promoted local Baptist Church “teen Lock In” weekends.

Nothing, nothing on “this need to be imposed on young children.”

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