I’m getting kind of tired of writing about all the homophobia in the Santa Ynez Valley.
But it seems to be the topic du jour. Now, Santa Ynez Valley Union High School is getting in on all the action. As the principal put it, the school was “unintentionally pulled into an issue that has divided the community.”
That good ol’ Solvang City Council decision on Pride banners and rainbow crosswalks strikes again!
Some parents were apparently and, unsurprisingly, extremely upset that the school allowed students to paint a crosswalk in rainbow colors as part of No Place for Hate week.
Maybe some of the parents who used the school district’s Facebook page to rage against a rainbow crosswalk and all it’s perceived to represent need to participate in the weeklong celebration of diversity.
“The discrimination of LGBT has long as it’s been over,” Jesse Taylor stated so very eloquently in a post on a Santa Ynez High School Administration/School Board Transparency Project Facebook page thread. “Simply put we can all love and respect one another however, ideologies don’t need to be crammed down another person’s throat. In fact, the group that wants to preach tolerance and acceptance, should, conversely, accept and tolerate those that are intolerant.”
Wow. The logic of some people, amirite?
If you’re going to rant on a Facebook post about the education system, at least edit your ravings for punctuation, grammar, and spelling.
It’s so weird that a symbol of diversity is considered to be ideology—the colorful crosswalk was just a proclamation of students’ reality and their acceptance and support of that reality. What Jesse Taylor doesn’t seem to understand is that minorities are no longer willing to accept discrimination from folks like him—and rather than hiding their diversity from the intolerant for fear of the inevitable and predictable backlash, they now celebrate that diversity out in the open.
The whole public school system gets at least two weeks off school for a Christian holiday (It’s Christmas for those of you who live under a rock), but paint a crosswalk rainbow colors, and now there’s an ideology problem.
High school students from all walks of life pulled together to put that symbolism out there for the world to see. And people like Mr. Jesse Taylor decided they would enforce their ideology on the students by basically bullying the school to paint over the crosswalk in the middle of No Place for Hate week—a crosswalk that would have been repainted white at the end of the week, anyway.
Now that makes a statement.
What’s ideological is the backlash. The whipped frenzy of parents suddenly hyper-concerned about sexuality in high school students: Hello? Weren’t you idiots all in high school once? Don’t you remember? Sexuality is a BIG thing in high school. But better to pretend it isn’t, I guess, for the sake of living under rocks.
Absolutely better to preach intolerance and bullying over respect, celebrating diversity, and acceptance. I guess the parents didn’t understand the No Place for Hate assignment as the Santa Ynez Valley continues to dive deeper into a discussion about homophobia and the reality that discrimination is alive and well there—despite those who insist that it isn’t as the words they use to spew their hate highlight the very thing they deny exists.
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