12 Likes
It is easier to world-proof the child than it is to child-proof the world.–Anonymous
Hmmm. I thought that’s what Churches are for.
And that’s why so many of the RWNJs despise the OHCHR… those rights are bestowed on [some] of us by awmitey gawd, & they don’t bother to mention that part of it.
That kind of talk is heresy in Texas.
You Know Who exemplified that type of ‘thinking’; no wonder they worship him.
4 Likes
Now who’ll teach the remedial gay class?
15 Likes
There are openings. Heck, go be a superintendent. My district has been through three in three years. My kid’s district has been through a near complete changeover of all top positions in two years. It’s your time to shine.
I don’t have much to add, you guys have said it all.
I just want to say, reading this forum has been keeping me sane in lockdown.
Thank you Happy Mutants.
Love from Australia.
20 Likes
Are you kidding? The Sportsball is the reason they can afford a pretty new building in the first place!
I think the way to combat this is to get more people involved in school board elections. Just having a couple of reasonable people on the board might have kept this from happening.
Don’t all the kids play their sports in the middle of the road. You just have to watch out for the cars and get the stumps out of the way before they get to you. The tennis ball bounces better off the asphalt or dirt than the grass.
1 Like
If it was good enough for Kevin Beattie, then it was good enough for the rest of us kids from Carlisle.
It got harder as more people bought cars, and by the late 80s it was nearly impossible in my street.
10 Likes
The parent-child relationship referred to above is one of control and ownership.
This seems to be an especially USAnian attitude. You’d think societies where having (more) children also has an economic necessity motive (they need to earn from an early age to help the family and kids are necessary if the parents are to be looked after in their old age) would treat kids more like property, but it’s the USA. I wonder why.
What? Interspecies hugging? Are you mad? What sort of depraved person are you? Whatever next? 
3 Likes
As is often the case in the U.S., a lot of it has to do with the long-standing power of fundamentalist Christianity with its deeply ingrained toxic masculinity. Put simply, the Xtianists see both children and women as equivalent to a man’s chattel, grouped amongst his possessions.
Fundamentalist religion that provides a pretext for that kind of douchebaggery is much weaker in other Western countries. Within the context of a modern secular nation-state where separation of church and state is a core value it can be jarring, but in the U.S. there is a constant and on-going assault by fundies on that principle. In countries outside the OECD where fundamentalist strains of the Abrahamic religions are still strong, though, these patriarchal attitudes are still present.
14 Likes
Afghanistan being the current case in point. Those Americans who were trying to nation-build a democracy there had as much success as they’re having domestically.
5 Likes
In large part, the PNAC fantasy was a self-deceiving grift because many of its Reaganite proponents had already spent at least three decades pandering to and enabling the same kind of religious fundamentalism in the U.S. that they claimed they wanted to relegate to the sidelines in other countries (ones that in reality weren’t that much more benighted in terms of culture). And those same neoCons were happy to pick and choose which sexist and repressive fundie countries were our “valued allies” (e.g. KSA, Pakistan) and which deserved to be invaded and re-made.
Which is Exhibit A supporting the case that the “new American century” that the neoCons really wanted was always more about preserving the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex, and the ability of multi-national corporations to do what they pleased around the globe. Republican business as usual.
10 Likes
Thank you for finding that info - I was in a rush and could only spew from memory.
Here in Argentina it was a biiiiig deal when the countries ratified it - my kid had whole activities and take home posters in elementary school dedicated to it, and in fact, adorably, at about 7 years old redacted a whole list of The Rights of Head lice, including the right to go to school and especially that ‘they’ had the right not to be combed out of hair with an uncomfortable fine toothed comb. What struck me then and now, was that it occurred to them that the last of 10 Rights should be:
10. Seriously
Is that the clause that’s been missing from all our treaties?
5 Likes
“I would rather pay for the child’s education than the adults ignorance, for one or the other I shall be obliged to pay for.”
Wish I could find the real quote - it comes from an early American Republican.
13 Likes
Not the same, but similar sentiment:
The only thing that is more expensive than education is ignorance.
– Benjamin Franklin
16 Likes
I can’t believe I missed this, but they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on an activity where sweaty muscular young men spend hours smashing into each other and rolling on the ground, then take their clothes off and shower together. And they’re worried about a fucken flag turning their kids gay. Not one of the gayest sports ever invented in the history of gay sports, but a flag. They should refocus their energy if they’re really worried about turning their kids gay.
11 Likes
I once read an article quoting a retired, gay American football player saying that he had been surprised by what players who were Definitely Not Gay did with each other in the locker room.
8 Likes
Sounds like Jerry Smith. Best tight end in the game. He also played football.
9 Likes
Hey the Ancient Greeks did it and they…wait…
9 Likes
