The situation surrounding Sharon Huff, the mother of the 7-year-old who was reprimanded for mentioning that he had two moms, will be considered during a special session by the Lafayette Parish School Board tonight. (Administrators assert that Marcus was reprimanded for being disruptive, not for what he said, and that school documents published by the ACLU do not tell the whole story.)
Speaking to Lafayette’s primary newpaper, The Advertiser, Sharon sounds reasonable and thoughtful.
“We will live our lives like we did before,” Huff said. “I am ready to get back to work and let everybody else deal with what is going on. I’ve said what I had to say.” …
Getting the ACLU involved in her son’s situation was not an easy call, Huff said.
“It took me about 24 hours to research different people on the Internet to find out who I wanted to talk to,” Huff said. “I decided I would call them to give me advice. I wanted to talk to someone who could tell me how to talk to the school without making it a big deal.”
The latter part did not happen as she anticipated, Huff said.
“This is not about a gay rights issue,” she said. “To me this is a child that is told they can’t talk about their family because their family is different.”
The Advertiser also spoke to others who said, “It could have been my kid.”
“One of my first thoughts … was that maybe we should pack up and move to Northampton (Mass.) where my children wouldn’t get in trouble,” [Amy Hackett] said. “I don’t want my children shamed.”
Hackett and her partner have two daughters, ages 15 months and almost 3. The girls were both adopted in Boston, but they decided to raise them here close to her partner’s family.
The FRC, Focus, CWA, AFA, PFOX, and Exodus all appear to have been silent on this so far. The story has been reported widely, with FOXNews.com carrying the AP version and conservative CNSNews.com ignoring it, so they’ve certainly heard about it.
From New Orleans, Times Picayune staff writer James Gill penned an opinion piece calling school admistrators to task for a “ham-fisted approach” and stubbornly delaying an inevitable apology, making the people of Louisiana “look like a bunch of yahoos”.
An apology will be forthcoming because the alternative is an ACLU lawsuit alleging that Marcus’s constitutional rights to free expression and equal protection were violated. No doubt they were, but litigation, and the attendant publicity, is only going to prolong the agony for Marcus and put him beyond the pale in the schoolyard.
Surely it is time his interests were regarded as paramount. The school system should issue a handsome apology, expunge the reprimand from his records and let all this legalistic blather die down. He is 7 years old, for crying out loud. Give him some peace, if it’s not too late.
World Net Daily reported on this here. They provided both sides of the account without preferential commentary to either side (with the exception of the Brave New Schools headline). The New York Post, a NewsCorp paper, also reported on this. I’ve yet to see a pro-school-board article in the conservative press. I think it would be safe to say that silence equals embarassment.
Thanks for pointing those out, Rich.
And, Raj, the coverage I see in the WND piece hits the verifiable, objective facts that have been reported elsewhere.
The only relevant detail I don’t see there is that the ACLU has posted the school documents that back its claims and the school hasn’t attempted to discredit them apart from saying that they don’t tell the whole story.
Based on the respective datelines at both sites, it appears that information was available at the time WND published. While relevant to the story, I don’t find that omission earthshaking.
SteveB edited my post without my permission. I find that quite objectionable, and will not be returning.
As I told him via email, I have no objection to deleting my posts. But I do have an objection to editing my posts. Particularly without my permission.
It is your site. Do with it what you wish. But I will not be posting again.
I’m more than happy to delete rather than edit. We prefer unfettered exchange within the comments, but we reserve the right to edit/delete and may exercise it on rare occasions, coupled with a message to the author.
One thing I noted from looking at the actual documents on the ACLU site was that there were many boxes that could be checked (including being disrespectful). The fact that only other was checked should have been a red flag.
It should be obvious to conservatives that it is just as easy to discipline conservative disruptive speech as liberal disruptive speech. Speech, particularly at the elementary grades, needs to be more than merely disruptive — and even the disruptiveness of the speech is in dispute here — to be subject to discipline. Political correctness is just as noxious whether it is left-wing or right-wing. I think the conservative press gets this and most likely explains their continued silence.