This story has it all.

Small minds, prejudice, bigotry, idiocy, fear mongering, thought police....the hits keep coming!

I have news for them...gay people are every where.

The school officials ought to smarten up oh and be fired too.

Lessons on Gay Equality From The Mouths of Babes

Harvey_milk_penn Last week, I wrote about nine-year-old Ethan McNamee, a Denver third-grader who organized a gay rights rally at the Colorado State Capitol on Saturday, May 16. Today, I want to introduce you to another young gay rights supporter, Natalie Jones, a sixth-grader from Mt. Woodson Elementary School in Ramona, CA.

Earlier this month, Natalie was given an assignment as part of her independent research class to prepare a written report on any topic. After having seen the Academy-Award winning movie Milk, starring Sean Penn, Natalie chose to write about the man Penn portrays in the film, real-life gay rights activist Harvey Milk. She received a score of 49 out of 50 possible points for her assignment.

After the grading, Natalie and the other students in the research class were then told to create power-point presentations from their projects to show classmates. But the day before Natalie was to give her presentation, she was called to the principal's office and told she couldn't do so.

Bonnie Jones, Natalie's mother, spoke with the superintendent of schools about the disturbing turn of events. The superintendent told her that a district board policy on “Family Life/Sex Education” prevented Natalie from sharing her assignment with the class.

That policy reads, in part, “(P)arents/guardians shall be notified in writing about any instruction in which human reproductive organs and their functions, processes, or sexually transmitted diseases are described, illustrated, or discussed. In addition, before any instruction on family life, human sexuality, AIDS or sexually transmitted diseases is given, the parent/guardian shall be provided with written notice explaining that the instruction will be given ... ”

A few days later, parents of students in Natalie's class received letters from the school explaining that her presentation on Harvey Milk would be held during lunch recess on May 8, and that students could only attend if they had permission.

That news further upset Natalie's mom, who told the American Civil Liberties Union, "This whole thing is unbelievable — first my daughter got called into the principal’s office as if she were in some kind of trouble, and then they treated her presentation like it was something icky. Harvey Milk was an elected official in this state and an important person in history. To say my daughter’s presentation is ‘sex education’ because Harvey Milk happened to be gay is completely wrong.”

Elizabeth Gill, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s national LGBT Project, agrees with Jones. “Schools that act as if any mention of the existence of gay people is something too controversial or ‘sensitive’ to discuss are doing a disservice to their students,” said Gill. “This school completely overstepped its bounds in trying to silence Natalie Jones by shunting her presentation off to a lunch recess time and misusing a school policy to justify requiring parental permission to see it.”

Acting on behalf of Natalie and Bonnie Jones, the ACLU sent a letter to the Ramona Unified School District on May 20, notifying the district that it violated the sixth-grader's free speech rights when it refused to allow her to give the presentation in class, and that it improperly required classmates to get parental permission to see the presentation.

The school district has five days to respond or the ACLU may file a lawsuit.

Tomorrow marks the fifth day, but it's also a holiday. So, we'll likely have to wait a day to get word of the district's response. I'll post it here when the response is published.

http://www.pimpmywry.com/2009/05/lessons-on-gay-equality-from-the-mouths-of-babes.html

Just how paranoid are we going to get.