Last week in Taki's Magazine, in the first of a two part series, I recounted (in slightly amped-up form) a conversation I've gotten into not infrequently over the years:
Him: Hey, you’ve heard of Mr. Big Name [a world-famous icon of masculinity], right?
Me: Sure. Who hasn’t?
Him: Well, he’s gay.
Me: Really? That’s interesting.
Him: Yeah, my buddy Al, who was a stuntman on a bunch of his early movies, told me.
Me: But isn’t he married to that supermodel?
Him: It’s just a front.
Me: And don’t they have several kids who look just like him?
Him: Everybody in Hollywood knew he was gay way back when.
Me: And wasn’t his wife threatening to divorce him a couple of years ago because he was sleeping with his leading lady?
Him: His publicist must have made it up.
Me: And didn’t his ex-wife sue him to get his child-support payments raised to $100,000 per month? And didn’t he almost ruin his career by insisting that his crazy Danish girlfriend be cast opposite him in all his movies? And didn’t he hire private eye Anthony Pellicano to wiretap those script girls who had filed paternity and sexual-harassment suits against him? And doesn’t he maintain a secret second family in Bakersfield?
Him: He’s gay as a French horn.
So, this week in Taki's, I'm back with the rest of the possible explanations for this curious state of affairs.
"Or maybe lots of big stars are innately bisexual. Yet most of the social science evidence suggests that bisexuality is quite rare among men—rarer than homosexuality. Perhaps artists are more likely to be bisexual? I don’t know."
ReplyDeleteThere is something wrong with this statement. I come from a culture where male bisexuality is so pervasive, in fact, a lot more so than female bisexuality. Maybe this statement applies to Anglo-Saxon culture. I don't know.
What about guys who deliberately present themselves in ways that might appeal as much to men as women? i.e. Jani Lane and numerous rock stars from the 70's & 80's. There's also the deliberate blurring of the lines so that many songs are implicitly if not overtly about homosexuality. I figured this was some sort of move to reduce adolescent male aggression. Yet you will necessarily be left confused about the sexuality of many rock stars and even actors. This is the price you pay for normalizing relative effeminacy in males - freely crying when sad, sharing feelings, being vulnerable in general.
ReplyDeleteThe corollary is the toughening up of women so much so that there are some males who really believe a large percentage of women are now abusive towards these vulnerable men just because women are now socialized to behave in ways formerly more typical of men.
There's no helping it, I think. It seems obvious that Hollywood or the Government or both wanted our population to move towards androgyny.
So, go pop some steroids, bulk up, toughen up and hide your emotions if too many people are picking you up on their gaydar, Sailer. Gratuitously bossing other men around won't hurt either.
Might it be that so few gay actors died of AIDS in the 80's-90's because actors (both gay and straight) are fanatical about their health-body-image, so that few of them "barebacked" and most of them used condoms? Also, the notion of "bearding" - i.e., pretending to be straight by dating female stars or entering into marriages in which the woman "beards" for the gay husband, has long been a staple of gay Hollywood, running back to before the 1930's-40's power of the studio system whose heads and Publicity departments certainly ecouraged and facilitated bearding as a means of avoiding negative press which would destroy the investment studios had lavished upon their grooming of actors. There's another consideration as well, and it has also to do with publicity: closeted gay actors' fans are predominantly female, so that actors' open gayness destroys female box office appeal - there's a direct career-salary motive for gay actors to remain closeted (which would also suggest an equally powerful motivator to gay actors to have used condoms - because if they were "outed" by their having contracted HIV/AIDS, they'd be shootinng their box office earnings in the foot). And it's not just actors' box office/salary that would suffer if an actor was outed by having AIDS, it's also all the endorsement and merchandising deals thay'd lose out on: regardless of sexual orrientation, money is a powerful motovator for most individuals. By the same token, if your theory of gay Hollywood moguls suborning wannabe actors into having gay sex-for-advancement with them is correct, why would those gay moguls jeopardize their huge financial investment in those upcoming actors by not wearing condoms during gay sex with these protegés?
ReplyDeleteDuh?
ReplyDeleteYou're not alone in this line of thinking. In the highly acclaimed movie "L.A. Confidential", there is the character Matt Reynolds, a young straight actor who sleeps with men to advance his career.
ReplyDeleteREYNOLDS: (shakes his head) You know, when I came out to L.A., this isn't exactly where I saw myself ending up.
JACK: Yeah. Me neither.
Reynolds looks like he's going to cry. Hudgeons returns with a double Scotch straight up and a hot dog with sauerkraut. He hands the drink to Matt.
HUDGEONS: Dutch courage, kid. Drink up.
Reynolds downs a few gulps, looks across the room at Loew.
REYNOLDS: I don't know if I should do this.
HUDGEONS: Hey, it's not like you don't know how. And Jack here has connections on 'Badge of Honor.' Pull this off and there'll be a part for you. I smell a comeback. Don't you, Jack?
I still believe that 80-90% of male stars in Hollywood are homosexual. The fact that most of them are not dying of AIDS has more to do with advances in treatments for AIDS that prolong lives and the implications of agents and media covering the Deaths of male stars as being from something other than AIDS like Cancer or Congenital Heart Defects, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt would Definitely Hurt the bottom line of Studios for the general public to find out the Truth about most male stars being homosexual. Once outed, most male stars quickly end up unemployed in Hollywood. When was the last time anyone saw Val Kilmer in a film since his ex-wife said he was gay - for instance?
"Deaths of male stars as being from something other than AIDS like Cancer or Congenital Heart Defects, etc."
ReplyDeleteToday's celebs who are HIV positive are, of course, getting treatments that keep them alive.
Those of the 80s and 90s, however, had a much harder time, agents or not, hiding what they died of because of leaks from the staffs of the hospitals in which they were treated.
The rag mags paid big bucks to nursing staff members for info.
How do you think Magic Johnson really got AIDS?
ReplyDeleteOr maybe it's that most men who go gay do so because they're terrified of women, while men with the confidence to step in front of a camera have no fear of women.
ReplyDeleteGay male dancers have to be very physically fit, and are therefore much more likely to be attractive to other gay men, and therefore be more promiscuous-and more likely to get AIDS.
ReplyDeleteOTOH a lot of gay male actors (eg Paul Lynde, Jim Nabors, Raymond Burr) wouldn't be most gays ideas of an attractive sex partner, and therefore would be less promiscuous-and therefore have a lower chance of getting AIDS.
"There is something wrong with this statement. I come from a culture where male bisexuality is so pervasive, in fact, a lot more so than female bisexuality. Maybe this statement applies to Anglo-Saxon culture. I don't know."
ReplyDeleteCultures with higher rates of male "bisexuality" can be explained by the "prison rules" paradigm: men who are deprived of access to women resort to male on male activity, with the preferred model involving the sexual exploitation of younger, feminine looking males by older, more masculine men.
This prison rules paradigm seems to explain the high rates of male bisexuality in cultures both ancient (Athens, Rome) and modern (Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc).Just as in prison, men in these societies lack the kind of easy access to women that Anglo men enjoy.
Steve presents a powerful case, but on the other hand so many actresses complain about the lack of strong, masculine leading men (because they look bad in romantic scenes) they'd rather have a significantly older guy than many of their age peers.
ReplyDeleteA bit of a shock about the Hurt Locker guy. He sure fooled me.
I think perhaps to square the circle, you could look at how male actors apprentice/develop in the US. Soaps are declining, which was a great practice ground, so a lot of guys come out of theater programs which are GAY GAY GAY to the max, or schlocky tv programs like Glee which are uber-gay. Thus they "act gay" because in an ultra-feminine environment (as noted above by a commenter) that is what is expected and traditional macho men rub both the gay execs and women the wrong way.
"How do you think Magic Johnson really got AIDS?"
ReplyDeleteMy guess? Magic engaged in group sex while he was suffering from a lesion on his "johnson." After an HIV infected man ejaculated in one of the girls, Magic then engaged in sex with her.
Hey Steve, I was just on Interracial Singles and after describing myself as a "judgmental conservative," my 94% match turns out to be "Ebonigoddess." Those wacky computers.
ReplyDeleteHey, c'mon, Paul Lynde wasn't bad looking. I met him once in a hotel elevator. Bigger than I thought he'd be, 6'2" 230.
ReplyDeletePlease pardon the rather graphic nature of this comment.
ReplyDeleteIt's not terrible easy to get AIDS, especially today. One must have unprotected anal intercourse on the average of dozens of time to be infected. Of course some seroconvert after one, uh, shot. Gaussian distributions and all.
This is anecdotal of course, but in my circle of bourgeois homos anal sex is not favored. Not because it’s dangerous but because it’s considered unpleasant, at least as an actual participant. Most gays try it, very many don’t like it. Most homos are cocksuckers, not rump rangers. Contracting AIDS via fellatio is for a healthy person rather improbable. Gay porn is not a mirror of reality.
Yet, by the same statistical token above some homos will engage in simply anything and as much of it as possible.
K
"How do you think Magic Johnson really got AIDS?"
ReplyDeleteGreat question. Steve?
I personally think he killed and ate a monkey in West Africa
Dan in DC
What's the obsession with gayness on this site? Love your blog, Steve, but on this subject I have to say: who cares? Though I must admit I find it interesting/amusing that Robert Reed, who played that exemplary wholesome father figure, Mike Brady, was gay (and, apparently, a real pain in the ass who drove everyone on the Brady set crazy).
ReplyDelete"Or maybe it's that most men who go gay do so because they're terrified of women..."
ReplyDeleteI'm unsure of many, many things in life, but I'm 100% sure that the above is not true. The men who are terrified of women stay virgins. Homosex is not a consolation prize for normally-wired people any more than crap is a desirable substitute for them when there's no ice cream in their fridges.
I can't recall the title, but I read a book years ago that claimed that actor Robert Taylor was gay and that his marriage to Barbara Stanwyck was arranged to hide both of the fact that both were homosexuals.
ReplyDeleteThe writer admittted that both had had numerous affairs wih members of the opposite sex, and he also admitted that despite all of the rumors about the two, neither was ever linked to someone of the same sex. But he was sure that Taylor was gay because he was really good looking and dressed very well and Stanwyck had to be a lesbian because she had a deep voice ande generally preferred to wear slacks offscrenn rather than skirts.
Tim Cook, the new CEO of Apple is gay
ReplyDeleteLot of those old time movie stars were "Gayer than a French Horn" Like:
ReplyDelete-John Wayne
-Ronald Reagan
-Charlton Heston
-Lee Marvin
-Charles Bronson
-James Cagney
-Jimmy Stewart
-Clark Gable
-Paul Newman
As for newer ones, while John Travolta and Richard Gere may not be Gay I refuse to believe they were ever movie stars.
"Cultures with higher rates of male "bisexuality" can be explained by the "prison rules" paradigm: men who are deprived of access to women resort to male on male activity, with the preferred model involving the sexual exploitation of younger, feminine looking males by older, more masculine men.
ReplyDeleteYes, except that this doesen't apply to my country at all. Women are not in chains here, nor is there a strong taboo against sex outside marriage. Yet, there are many otherwise heterosexual men, stereotypically masculine, who have sex with men taking the active role. Msny men, many married with kids, will allow gay men to perform fellatio on them. Of course, they would never perform fellatio on another men as that is a "women's" role.
This is also equally true for ancient Hellas and Rome. It is a myth perpetrated by Victorian-age Anglo-Saxon culture that the "vice" of hoosexuality was only practiced by the ancient Hellenes and Romans when women were not available. Most of the "pederasts" were, in fact, aristocrats. They had plenty of access to women, and some of them even had harems of female slaves. And yet, many of them still prefered males even though they were studs with women.
The distiction was not between heterosexual and homosexual, but rather between dominant and passive. In fact, the words "heterosexual" and "homosexual" were invented by Victorian era English. These words didn't even exist up to the 19th century!
For instance, Julius Caesar suffered scorn his entire life due to the episode with king Nicomedes of Bithinia. The scorn came not from the rumors that he had sex with the king, but that he layed the woman's role. Also, the link between effeminacy in males and exclusive homosexuality has been observed since antiquity. Here is a supposed dialogue between 8 year-old Julius Caesar and the 80 year-old king Nicomedes as written by Colleen McCulough in her "The First Man Of Rome" series. In it, the flamboyantly effeminate king, who is completely mesmerized by the maestic beauty of the adolescent, is trying to seduce Caesar, and the latter is trying to dissuade him with his formidable tact and people skills:
"A young man so charming and enchanting...young men who don't fancy men are not so personable. I know your secret, young Gaius, descendant of Iulus!"
"Great king - or shall I refer to you as queen? - you have observed how steady I ride my horse, how far I can shoot my spear and how skilled I am in handling a sword. You have observed what a formidable athlete I am...and that should be your first hint...that I am not a man who fancies other men."
"A façade...nothing but a façade. You know that you wouldn't be accepted by yours if you assumed your true preference. This is especially so since you are a patrician and thus needs to keep an aura of dominance in all your social relations."
"Great king, you have observed how much I fancy fighting, how afraid my enemies are of me, a fear that is only surpassed by the admiration the men under me have for me. How I would butcher the entire World to restore any slight to my dignitas. This should be your second hint...that I am not a man who fancies other men."
"I know you like having men under you, but what you don't want others to know is that you like having men on top of you!"
"great king, you are starting to insult my dignitas. Don't make the mistake of insulting my dignitas, which to me is far more valuable than my very life...or yours."
"But you are so beautiful!...it is not possible for a young man so beautiful to not fancy other men!"
So young Caesar smiled at king Nicomedes and replied diplomatically:
"great king, this makes me a favorite of the goddess Fortune, and not a homosexual."
This summarizes the issue of homosexuality in the ancient World.
The question of how did Magic Johnson get AIDS is a good one. Odds overwhelming unprotected anal sex or intravenous drug use.
ReplyDeleteHow did rapper Easy E get AIDS?
I suspect the most closeted stars are gay black men in Hollywood, sports or music industry.
Another incident that gets pushed down the memory hole - the incident from a decade or so ago when Eddie Murphy was busted picking up a transvestite prostitute.
AIDS is controllable with medication, but stars die of AIDS all the time. It's just covered up by their physicians and families. In the last 3 years a prominent movie and television star died suddenly of an infection that commonly fells AIDS patients. But the obit and gossip columnists never made the connection. But anyone who is reasonably knowledgeable about AIDS recognized the cause of death for what it was. Was the star gay or was it the result of an indiscretion with a needle? Who knows?
After Steve's comment on Pearlman's looks, I was curious enough and did a GIS for 'Lou Pearlman'. Apart from a striking resemblance to Karl Rove, he also has one hell of a 'paedo smile'. So much so that, upon seeing his mugshot, my first guess would not be him being a white-collar criminal of ponzi schemer kind, but a clown-suit criminal of serial killer kind.
ReplyDeleteK said, "but in my circle of bourgeois homos anal sex is not favored. Not because it’s dangerous but because it’s considered unpleasant, at least as an actual participant. Most gays try it, very many don’t like it. Most homos are cocksuckers, not rump rangers."
ReplyDeleteA question for you: is frottage (along with oral sex) a more favored practice than anal sex among gay men? I read that once, but don't recall the source.
"In the last 3 years a prominent movie and television star died suddenly of an infection that commonly fells AIDS patients. But the obit and gossip columnists never made the connection. But anyone who is reasonably knowledgeable about AIDS recognized the cause of death for what it was. Was the star gay or was it the result of an indiscretion"
ReplyDeleteGin from Lake Havasu, why the mystery? Who is this "prominent movie and television star" whom you believe may have died of AIDS 3 years ago?
"When was the last time anyone saw Val Kilmer in a film since his ex-wife said he was gay"
ReplyDeleteSaw a picture of him at an NBA game last year, hardcore alcoholic face. That'll do wonders for your career, too.
It seems like bisexual men do exist:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/health/23bisexual.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
"Yes, except that this doesen't apply to my country at all. Women are not in chains here"
ReplyDeleteThen why be so coy about it? State the name of your DL country already.
Mostly OT but related a bit to this topic...
ReplyDeleteExciting news for those who follow Paul Ewald's and Greg Cochran's germ theory of causation: it's been known for some time that narcolepsy is an autoimmune disorder. Ewald and Cochran posited over a decade ago that the trigger was most likely a viral infection for those genetically predisposed (certain HLA type).
The world's leading expert on the illness, E. Mignot of Stanford, and his team, have established that the H1N1 flu (and perhaps other respiratory infections) spiked the number of cases of narcolepsy in a study of cases in China.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110822092246.htm
As many here know, Ewald and Cochran have offered that the likely cause of males not being sexually attracted to females but rather to men is a brain change instigated by a viral infection.
With each new discovery about things like narcolepsy, that idea seems more and more likely to be on target.
Bernie Mac?
ReplyDeleteA gay friend of mine (who recently died in his mid-80s) once told me that anal sex wasn't at all common among gay guys prior to the '60s and '70s. It was a function, in other words, of "gay lib," in fact maybe a symbol of it.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot more about the political-symbolic importance of anal sex (and promiscuity) in Richard Berkowitz's very interesting "Stayin' Alive: The Invention of Safe Sex."
LINK
If I may be forgiven linking to myself, a little more about Berkowitz and gay sex in the '70s:
ReplyDeleteLINK
I think you meant to say "late, UNLAMENTED Susan Sontag." Also, any molestation of a boy of any age by a man is by definition homosexual, but obviously that's a hatefact. Can't say that!
ReplyDeleteThe concept of ephebophilia is an important one, but the word is virtually unknown and that means that the concept itself has little traction. In the public consciousness, ephebophilia thus gets filed - ridiculously - under paedophilia. The effect is to demonize heterosexual behaviour that has a sound bio/evolutionary basis and to absolve the "homosexual community" of crimes of predation that form a fairly substantial part of its sexual mainstream.
Martin Short has had fun with a closeted gay character, Jiminy Glick. I think he also played a closeted gay producer in Steve Martin's LA Story...
ReplyDeleteSteve, Marlon Brando's first wife produced a photo at their divorce proceedings of Brando giving oral sex to an unidentified man. Becoming a house boy to a powerful gay man in Hollywood in order to further your career was not unheard of then and I doubt it's changed. Kenneth Anger tried unsuccessfully to use the photo in his infamous "Hollywood Babylon" book but was stopped. However the photo was reprinted in Metasex issue 3.
ReplyDelete"Yes, except that this doesen't apply to my country at all. Women are not in chains here, nor is there a strong taboo against sex outside marriage."
ReplyDeletePlease name the country.
"When was the last time anyone saw Val Kilmer in a film since his ex-wife said he was gay"
ReplyDeleteLooks to me like he's been working pretty hard, actually. Last movie I saw him in was MacGruber (2010). He wasn't looking very good.
Apparently Kilmer had a pretty nasty relationship with another alleged gay actor, Tom Cruise, while they were filming Top Gun.
Personally I think gay rumors are largely due to the well-known desire of any minority group to say "so-and-so is one of us." In the case of gays, the desire is amplified by sexual attraction.
You forget the appeal of secret knowledge. Maybe the belief that star X is gay is just a special case of the belief that, say, 9-11 was an inside job.
ReplyDeleteAlso there's the deconstructive element. Deconstruction is just an elite manifestation of a broader cultural trend.
-obsaldo M.
I think a lot of people who died of AIDS had their cause of death fudged.
ReplyDelete"Yes, except that this doesen't apply to my country at all. Women are not in chains here, nor is there a strong taboo against sex outside marriage."
ReplyDelete"Please name the country."
Well I don't know for sure, but I'll just bet it's one of those Spanish speaking countries. My best friend's second husband was "Latino" and went bi-. I also worked with a piece of work who had been in the seminary in El Salvador but was expelled at the age of 16 for dilly-dallying and producing a son. He later married and had a daughter but appears to have passed most of his quite unattractive later years in the "gay" world. This is not unusual among "Spanish."
Must be something in the language.
You kind of morphed from "movie stars who are gay" to "actors who are gay", so I'm not sure which you meant. There's definitely a number of gay actors who died of AIDs (and since you didn't exclude musical stars, that ups it even more):
ReplyDeleteDenholm Elliot
Michael Jeter
Ian Charleson
Brad Davis
Merritt Butrick (weird name, but he was Captain Kirk's son!)
Howard Rollins
Raymond St. Jacques
On the gay movie stars list, these guys here didn't die of AIDS, but they were certainly gay and lived through the epidemic (or died before it). And I'd say most of them were "big stars" or at least household names.
Montgomery Clift
Paul WInfield
Rupert Everett
Ian McKellan
Farley Granger
Richard Chamberlain
George Takei
Neil Patrick Harris
Dirk Bogarde
John Gielgud
Nigel Hawthorne
Roddy McDowell
Denis O'Hare (on broadway, anyway, and big on TV)
And I stopped there because I have to finish building a test before I leave work.
So I'm not sure what I'm missing. There's lots of gay actors and more than a few gay movie stars.
"I think a lot of people who died of AIDS had their cause of death fudged."
ReplyDeleteLike Yassir Arafat. It takes a lot of collusion to cover up the cause of death of an internationally famous political figure,
Any handsome and/or athletic and/or well-endowed guy is gay, whether he realizes it or not.
ReplyDeleteMight it be that so few gay actors died of AIDS in the 80's-90's because actors (both gay and straight) are fanatical about their health-body-image, so that few of them "barebacked" and most of them used condoms?
ReplyDeleteI don't think many gay men used condoms until the AIDS epidemic was in full swing in the mid-80s. So, if homosexuality was widespread in Hollywood, you'd have expected to see a wave of stars coming down with AIDS in the early 80s. That didn't really happen, AKAIK.
Cennbeorc
This prison rules paradigm seems to explain the high rates of male bisexuality in cultures both ancient (Athens, Rome) and modern (Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc).
ReplyDeleteThe problem with this explanation for ancient Rome is that upperclass Roman men had ample access to slavegirls, prostitutes, etc., but were still largely bisexual. (It's said that of 12 Roman emperors, only Claudius was straight, while Hadrian was fully gay.)
Cennbeorc
Suetonius tells us of the depravity of the emperor Tiberius, whom , among other things, was what we would call a pedophile. Among the young boys he had trained for his pleasure was his nephew, Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus. The child would grow up to be the emperor Caligula.
ReplyDeleteIt makes you wonder what kind of future our next generation has.
Roddy McDowell a Homosexual???!!!
ReplyDeleteApparently Kilmer had a pretty nasty relationship with another alleged gay actor, Tom Cruise, while they were filming Top Gun.
ReplyDeleteI always dismissed the Tom Cruise thing but a gal I know knows someone who claims to be very close to the situation (old family friends or something, though they can't be too friendly if they're putting his business out there like that) who swears up and down he's a homosexual and his marriages are all shams.
Steve, ever hear the rumor about the former Ram's quarterback, Roman Gabriel, being gay?
ReplyDeleteI know he had a few roles as he attempted a movie/tv career, but in the early 70s I heard he was gay?
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWhat's the obsession with gayness on this site?
I think that makes five things I've read that Steve is obsessed with and can't stop talking about.
It's an HBD thing. Genes, evolutionary biology, etc. Can't get away from the topic, though people try.
@AsstVillageIdiot:
ReplyDeleteIt is NOT Steve Sailer but the obsession of the NEA to support the homosexual agenda that YOU need to be concerned about.
Here are excerpts from some of the many resolutions adopted by the National Education Association at its 2011 Convention:
"B-12. Diversity. The National Education Association believes that similarities and differences among . . . gender, sexual orientation, gender identification . . . form the fabric of a society. The Association also believes that education should foster the values of appreciation and acceptance of the various qualities that pertain to people as individuals and as members of diverse populations.
B-14. Racism, Sexism, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identification Discrimination. Discrimination and stereotyping based on . . . gender, sexual orientation, gender identification . . . must be eliminated. The Association also believes that these factors should not affect the legal rights . . . of the partners in a legally recognized domestic partnership, civil union, or marriage in regard to matters involving the other partner, such as medical decisions, taxes, inheritance, adoption, and immigration. Plans, activities, and programs must —
Increase respect, understanding, acceptance, and sensitivity toward individuals and groups in a diverse society composed of . . . gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender persons . . .
B-39. Multicultural education. Multicultural education should . . . reduce . . . homophobia . . . and all other forms of prejudice, and discrimination and to develop self-esteem.
B-51. Sex Education. Teachers and health professionals must be legally protected from censorship and lawsuits. . . . Such programs should include information on . . . diversity of culture and diversity of sexual orientation and gender identification . . . and homophobia.
B-52. HIV/AIDS Education. The National Education Association believes that educational institutions should establish comprehensive human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) education programs as an integral part of the school curriculum.
C-30. Student Sexual Orientation and Gender Identification. The National Education Association believes that all persons, regardless of sexual orientation, or gender identification, should be . . . guaranteed a safe and inclusive environment within the public education system. The Association also believes that, for students who are struggling with their sexual orientation or gender identification, every school district and educational institution should provide counseling services . . ."
What Freddy Rumsom said,
ReplyDeleteHaving been a member of the NEA for over 34 years, I can tell you the last thing the organization's leaders care about is the success of the education of the nation's kids.
They spend their time spewing the crap Freddy quoted because position-taking on such issues as diversity celebration allows the high mucky-mucks to cozy up to the high-mucky mucks in politics.
The issue of bullying is a great example of how the NEA, cozying up to the gay lobby and the pols that rely on money from the gay lobby, spends its time coming up with position papers and stupid policies that have very little to no effect on actually reducing bullying in the public schools.
All that will really happen is that a cottage industry of speakers will sprout. (Actually, that's already happened.) They will make their living sucking dollars from the wallets of tax-payers by traveling from district to district, school to school, telling teachers what teachers already know--bullying is bad. They will tell us what we already know--how to recognize bullying. They will tell us what we already know--that kids who are bullied feel bad about coming to school. They will appear on Oprah (oh, wait, she's retired from her everyday show.) Okay, they will appear on Ellen, the new Oprah, the relatively new resident minority who has suffered the slings and arrows of discrimination.
They will speak before us on school days specificlly shortened for their appearances, thereby shortening the school day and hours of instruction that should be devoted to teaching kids things like reading, writing, math, and science.
We know bullying is bad. We know that effeminate boys are often the victim of bullying. We know nerds are often bullied. We know ugly kids are ofte bullied. We know fat kids are often bullied. We know all kinds of emotionally vulnerable kids are bullied Got a teacher who doesn't take steps to stop any kid from being bullied?
Then deal with that teacher. Whoops, forgot. The NEA doesn't think a lax teacher should be held accountable for anything.
For this theory to be correct, there would have to be, instead of a huge number of gay actors, a huge number of gay directors, casting directors, agents, etc. Is that documented?
ReplyDelete