On October 11, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on a "field trip" by San Francisco public school first graders to City Hall, where their teacher Erin Carder and her lesbian partner Kerri McCoy were "married" by Mayor Gavin Newsome. The children, reportedly, threw flower petals and blew bubbles on the newlyweds. The school’s interim principal Liz Jaroslow justified the excursion as a "teachable moment."
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Then, on October 28, a kindergarten teacher in Hayward touched off a firestorm by asking her five-year-old pupils to sign "gay pledge cards" produced by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a homosexual activist group now active on hundreds of high-school campuses.
The pre-schoolers, many of whom presumably have not yet mastered the alphabet and may not yet be able to write their names, were nonetheless recruited as gay-lesbian-bi-sexual-transgendered "allies." The pledge cards, according to an Associated Press report, were given out as part of GLSEN’s "National Ally Week" and read, in part:
I am taking a stand for a safe and harassment-free school for all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression…. As an ally, I pledge to not use anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) language or slurs.
The two incidents highlight a key point made by the "Yes on Prop 8" advocates, who argue:
The [California] Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage did not just overturn the will of California voters; it also redefined marriage for the rest of society, without ever asking the people themselves to accept this decision. This decision has far-reaching consequences. For example, because public schools are already required to teach the role of marriage in society as part of the curriculum, schools will now be required to teach students that gay marriage is the same as traditional marriage, starting with kindergarteners. By saying that a marriage is between "any two persons" rather than between a man and a woman, the Court decision has opened the door to any kind of "marriage." This undermines the value of marriage altogether at a time when we should be restoring marriage, not undermining it.
