The 2012 Alberta Provincial Election is something I routinely discuss with my students.
I was reading a blog post that was written by Wildrose candidate Allen Hunsperger that featured his views on gay people that included:
-“accepting people the way they are is cruel and not loving.”
-Hunsperger used Lady Gaga's song Born this Way to preface his point that gay people can choose “to not live the way they were born.” He went on to write, “You can live the way you were born, and if you die the way you were born, then you will suffer the rest of eternity in the lake of fire, hell, a place of eternal suffering."
-Hunspurger went on to label public education as “godless,” meaning “profane or wicked.”
Afterward the leader of the Wildrose Danielle Smith refused to condemn Hunsberger's post and reiterated that her party won’t legislate on contentious moral issues. You can read about all this here.
How the hell am I going to explain this to my students?
Can you imagine if a teacher witnessed one student bullying another for their sexual orientation and the teacher opted out of doing anything because they didn't believe in taking a stand on contentious moral issues?
Allan Hunspurger is a bigot. Danielle Smith is a coward and Albertans should be ashamed of both and leave them where they belong -- in the past.
If this is how our potential elected officials model citizenry, what affect will this have on our children?
Bravo to Glenn Taylor and the Alberta Party for challenging Danielle Smith and the Wildrose to withdraw Allan Hunspurger as a candidate for the upcoming election.
Joe, I think politicians in most countries are the most lowly rated of people in their country. Educators should try and explain the issues , the different perspectives etc for eg the gay agenda of taking homosexuality out of bedroom or the moral dilemma of those who see homosexuality as morally wrong and yet been accepting and understanding of the other
ReplyDeleteI am sad to say that he is a candidate running in my constituency. Fortunately there is a younger demographic in the constituency who are hopefully much more open minded than this one individual who does not even reside in the constituency.
ReplyDeleteJoe, thanks for your posts. As a born again Christian myself, I can see where this guy is coming from. (You are probably thanking God now that I live in the US and not Canada). While this guy may seem to be a bigot, think about it this way- If you believed that a habit would keep someone from being all that they were supposed to be, would you not tell them? In this guys mind, he is actually doing people a favor.
ReplyDeleteFrom my personal point of view, my heart breaks for people that are stuck in sin, sexual or otherwise, and sometimes it takes strong words to get people to wake-up. While I do think that students everywhere should be respected as people, we should not take a "live and let live" attitude. There are still absolute right and wrongs.
Joe,
ReplyDeleteIt was a sad day in our school today. Kenneth James Weishuhn, a boy in the school district next to ours, committed suicide on Saturday because he had been bullied and harassed ever since he came out as gay a few months ago. You can read about it here: http://ronskemp.wordpress.com/tag/primghar-iowa/ There is some good call to action in this post. To be sure, we also have problems in this area in the U.S.
Thank you for standing up and being passionate about the bullying.
Sincerely,
Denise