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Video: ABC's This Week
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The proposal went through easily last month, with the city's board of education unanimously approving it by default, as it was not pulled for further discussion or a vote. Tina Owen, Lead Teacher of Alliance, said they would be accepting applications from middle-school-age children for the 2009-10 school year immediately.
Marty Lexmond, the director of school innovation for Milwaukee Public Schools, told U.S. News and World Report that such an institution was needed to help adolescents, who are now increasingly publicly identifying their sexual orientation as early as middle school.
Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute was dismayed that the motion went through with no discernable opposition.
"I'm stunned that the religious leaders, the Christian pastors in Milwaukee, did not rise up in righteous indignation against this school," lamented Higgins. "That is what I find perhaps equally [as] troubling, if not more so."
"I think it's unconscionable to be affirming this in public schools," said Higgins. "This is not an issue for public schools. And kids at 11- and 12- and 13- and 14-[years of age] are confused on many issues - sexuality [being] one of them."
Regina Griggs, executive director of the group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), agreed.
"To affirm an 11-year-old? Please," said Griggs. "They haven't even gone through puberty, but they know that they want to have sex with other men and women? I'm sorry, but it's ridiculous."
The original Alliance high school opened four years ago, also with little opposition. Other similar plans across the country, however, have not had it as easy as the Milwaukee school.
In Chicago, plans for a "gay-friendly" high school were recently delayed due to concerns from both sides of the debate, as some feared that the plans amounted to segregating homosexuals. And when Manhattan's Harvey Milk High School opened in 2003, named for an openly homosexual politician of the 1970s, students met with protesters outside the school's doors.
Reading The Corner on NRO you see trends.
Facing Internal Exile many of us are floundering, pondering whether the Party is worth the trouble, questioning if BO is really a clear and present danger and then remarking, after the "debate" of RNC Chair candidates, Monday (moderated by Mullah Norquist) "that's just sad."
You, also, may be less than cheered by the consultants, determined (naturally, and as always) to "separate policy from tactics." Meanwhile, the Democrats are preparing to dissolve the electorate, fulfilling a long-held dream to make a majority of voters dependent for their supper on the Federal Government. Republicans have helped this long-term effort, stupidly perhaps, but well-enough that the new President's "refundable tax credits" may very well be the Straw that breaks the Camel's Back.
Which begs the circular question: Is it too late for the Republican Party? Is it worth the trouble?
Heartening is the sudden emergence, from a pack of wannabe, self-actualized Web 2.0 "movements" of RebuildTheParty.com
I joined trustingly, as if I was disarming a road-side IED, in Bagdhad's Green Zone.
No one in Silicon Valley is more determined to build "the next killer app" than are Republicans ready, perhaps (finally), to heed good advice our leaders should have understood when first printed in the NRODT ("National Review on Dead Trees") after the 1994 Revolution.
That advice was "abandon all illusion of media sympathy" and "build your own lines of communication."
First, Jim Manzi, one of The Chosen-Citizen Contributors to the casual Corner, who had the following brief posting there Monday. He pointed to a column on Ars Technica recommending, among other advice, Rebuild the Party as worth watching (and Joining, TODAY).
Technology and Winning Elections [Jim Manzi]
