Amy Sorrell, an Indiana teacher, faces the possibility of losing her job on May 1. Why? She didn't abuse students. She didn't pose nude or have an affair with someone. She didn't do anything of the things you'd typically think of when you hear a teacher has been dismissed. Here is the story.
Ms. Sorrell allowed a middle school student to publish an article in the school paper, an article that asks tolerance for homosexuals. What? You heard that right. This woman faces losing her job, because she let a level-headed article, asking people to be TOLERANT, be pulished in the school paper.
The first slap came when the principal of the school, Ed Yoeder, filed a complaint stating: "Any article that controversial should have been cleared by me before appearing in the paper." Sorrell's answer was that she didn't consider "tolerance" to be a controversial issue. I have to agree.
The school board has since charged that the subject matter is not appropriate for middle school students. Are they serious? Apparently, but I want to know what sort of mental illness these people have.
As the mother of a middle school student, I can state with authority that an 11-year-old student is not to young to know that homosexuals exist. (In fact, many of the more crass and less educated call each other 'homo' or 'gay' with no concept of what the terms mean and no respect for those who actually are." Seems like a timely and appropriate issue to me.
Neither was the article an expose of what happens behind the closed doors of a gay or lesbian bedroom. It was a simple plea for tolerance. Seems to me that MORE children could do to learn tolerance these days, but this goes back to the idea of personal responsibility, which the press and government seem to want to abolish along with our first amendment rights.
Since the start of this, four major rights and legal groups (including a law school in VA and the ACLU) have expressed interest in defending Sorrell. The result of that was an accusation that Sorrell is in some sort of conspiracy to prove that the district and Yoeder are bigoted. Interesting... When all else fails, throw stones and cloud the issue.
Explain to me how a country that passed hate crime laws so long ago can sit back and watch while a school district is allowed to do something so bigoted, something that clearly enables and espouses a community founded on hate.
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