Fearing Openly Gay Teachers

by Michael Jones · 2010-02-01 13:58:00 UTC
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ClassroomRemember the Briggs Initiative, the 1978 California ballot proposition that would have banned gay and lesbian teachers from working in public schools?

As folks who've seen the movie Milk know (or for those who have read the book The Mayor of Castro Street), the Initiative failed with flying colors, becoming one of the few ballot victories for LGBT rights during the 1970s. Or make that any decade, for that matter.

The idea that people would want to root out gay teachers from public schools is a pretty scary proposition. And though you might think that the sentiment died in 1978 along with the Briggs Initiative, think again. DailyKos/Research 2000 has a new poll out surveying Republican attitudes on a number of issues, among them the question of whether openly gay teachers should be allowed to teach in public schools.

Ready for some heebie-jeebies? A whopping 73 percent of Republicans surveyed said that gay people should not be allowed to teach in public schools.

And all of a sudden it feels like the 1970s again.

As TPM notes, if 73 percent of the Republican Party frets about openly gay teachers, that puts them to the right of some of the most prominent Republican political figures in history, including Ronald "The Gipper" Reagan, who urged folks to defeat the Briggs Initiative way back in the 1970s.

But the trend right-ward hasn't stopped with queer teachers. A full 31 percent surveyed said that contraception should be banned (what, did they survey a large quantity of day care providers?), 39 percent want Obama to be impeached, and 63 percent think Obama is a socialist. Oh, and 53 percent think a former Mayor from Wasilla is more qualified to be President.

Do these numbers speak for the entire Republican Party? No, of course not. There are lots of folks working to redefine what it means to be Republican. But is this a sign that the bulk of the party has turned rapidly right-ward since the 1980s?

That is, if tea parties and purity tests weren't proof enough.

Photo credit: dcjohn

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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