Editorials
CONTENTS Volume CXX, Number 1 COMMONWEAL Correspondence 2 Editorials 3 Editor's...
...Display advertising correspondence should be sent to Ruth E. Taylor, rejection of the curriculum and refusal to negotiate an alternative, Chancellor I I Graffam Rd., So...
...That is, until the curriculum was rejected by District 24, which cited, in part, its own and monthly July and August, by Commonweal right under decentralization regulations to shape the curriculum...
...In the case of the "Rainbow Curriculum," the views Lesson 1. "Love me, love my lifestyle" cannot be the foun- of parents, school board members, and probably a majority of dation for the tolerance, respect, and civil rights that gays New Yorkers were denied legitimacy by being ruled out of the and lesbians want and deserve...
...04106 (207) 799- Fernandez suspended the board of District 24...
...As a result our deepest disagreements, enforced diversity asks us to sur- of the showdown with District 24's board, what had been treatrender those disagreements, to pretend that our deepest beliefs ed as a fracas over educational policy making is gradually redo not matter and to shed them for a government-enforced least vealing itself as a species of political strong-arming...
...power of this ingenious tactic lies in the unwillingness of a ma- It's modern liberalism's somewhat dowdy and sensible cousin...
...considered...
...jority to seem to be intolerant of views advanced by a small but In the Chronicle of Higher Education (December 2, 1992) 4: 15 January 1993 Commonweal...
...One section urged that primary Countries: Robert A. Senser 24 school children, including first graders, be introduced to the idea that same-sex couThe Lonely Man of Faith: ples be seen as normal family units, and it urged teachers to include references to Michael Wyschogrod 26 gays and lesbians in all curricular areas...
...In a New York Times op-ed piece, Richard Vigilante deny a public voice to those who oppose treating heterosexual argues, "Rather than asking us to live together in peace despite and homosexual relationships as moral equivalents...
...sultants, the chancellor's staff (some of whom say they never saw the contested maStaff: Harriette Balsky, Carmen Alava, Pamela Quatse terial...
...Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, is published biweekly except Christmas/New Year's...
...Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Development of a multicultural curriculum began several years ago as an effort Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Associate Editor: Paul Baumann to teach tolerance and reduce prejudice in the public schools...
...Chancellor Fernandez treated opposition to the Rainbow the genuine strength of the pluralism by which New Yorkers Curriculum as a species of bigotry...
...10038...
...Fernandez has called opposition 4387, classified advertising correspondence to 15 to the curriculum a "malicious, highly organized campaign to distort" its contents...
...Church officials have testified against the curriculum, but Mary Cummins, the president of District 24's board, for better or worse, marches to her own drummer...
...New York, N.Y...
...POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Commonweal, 15 Dutch St...
...The moral effort to forge a sense of moral cohesion and political momentum...
...9 Baltimore & Eisenach: Judith Herschcopf Banki II Live & let live Whitby & Kleve: Anthea Dove II Poetry: Nancy G. Westerfield 12 B. A. St...
...5 Labor's metamorphosis?: Kevin Kelly 7 Some cause for hope: Abigail McCarthy 8 Bishops & generals: David R. Carlin, Jr...
...how the curriculum passed muster with reviewers, conAbigail McCarthy, David R. Carlin, Jr...
...Now we are seeing a new kind of pluralism, "enforced own biases served until recently to obscure the issues and to diversity...
...It has now beSenior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt come the occasion for a confrontation between Fernandez and District 24 in Queens, Design: Emil Antonucci over who should decide what, if anything, to teach primary school children about Media: Frank McConnell homosexuality and homosexual relationships...
...Mayor David Dinkins gave have long survived, just as a spirit of agreeing to disagree has whole-hearted support to the curriculum and Fernandez...
...Her opposition galvanized other school boards and parents, many of whom are not Catholic, and many of whom are deeply troubled about what their children will be taught in schools on the subject of homosexuality...
...Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Pressed by the Gay and Lesbian Teachers' Association, the Central Board's curriculum office engaged a lesbian first-grade teacher to contribute a gay perspective...
...The Gay and Lesbian Teachers' Association CLINTON SOUNDS GOOD lobbied the curriculum office to include materials on gay rela- BUT NOW A WORD FROM SCROOGE tionships...
...Coming on the heels of a brutal battle over AIDS education Lesson 2. Don't introduce moral conflicts into the class- and condom distribution in the high schools last year, this year's room when adults themselves are deeply and honestly con- struggle has subverted the justifiable goal of reducing disflicted...
...The fight in New York may prove instructive elseIntoxicated by My Illness: where...
...Homosexuals want gay bashing to stop, they want crimination against gays and of nurturing tolerance in a city discrimination in jobs and housing to end, and most Americans where a tradition of "live and let live" has had a long and honagree with them...
...deleted, rewrote, or postponed to a later grade the material on gay families...
...erance...
...But some homosexuals want more than tol- orable working life...
...Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of Her text seems to have been included without vetting or consultation...
...Thus, what the polling data tell us about citizen sup- There are various ways, in addition to tranquilizport for the rights of homosexuals needs to be tempered by the ers, of coping with the fissiparous and contingent recognition that the moral views of most Americans are not like- nature of modern life...
...Portland, Me...
...CONTENTS Volume CXX, Number 1 COMMONWEAL Correspondence 2 Editorials 3 Editor's notebook: Paul Baumann 4 Skepticism softens: E.J...
...along the way it acProduction Editor: Jacqueline Dowdell quired the units on gays and lesbians and homosexual family groups...
...But what Stage: Gerald Weales 20 might have begun as a fracas born of bureaucratic bungling has now BOOKS become a major battle in the culture wars: When does the struggle to The Broken Staff: prevent discrimination against homosexuals become an effort to gain social approval Robert L. Wilken 21 of homosexual relationships...
...It sailed through...
...Because the strongest opposition has come from the District 24 board, which is made up solely of white Catholics, that resistance to the curriculum has been atCommonweal 15 January 1993: tributed to machinations by leaders of the Catholic church, accusations that recall the nineteenth-century nativists who saw immigrant Catholics marching to the papal baton...
...Andrews 16 Pushing, shoving, name-calling-the stuff of playground skirmishesScreen: Richard Alleva 18 has broken out among the adults: New York City school leaders, bureaucrats, politicians, and parents are jeering and jabbing...
...Those who want such relationships to be regarded as the equivalent of heterosexual marriages should know that most Americans don't agree with them...
...An African-American district in Queens and a Hispanic one in the Bronx have also rejected the curriculum, and none of the remaining districts has accepted it without substantial revisions...
...common denominator of values" (December 12, 1992...
...Dionne, Jr...
...For its Telephone: (212) 732-0800...
...Gay-rights groups, emboldened by the election of openly gay and lesbian candidates in New York and around the country AN EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK but vulnerable because of political setbacks elsewhere, view the gay curriculum as a measure of acceptance" (New York Times, December 15, 1992...
...Screen: Richard Alleva Poetry: Rosemary Deen How the curriculum actually came to be written and implemented is only belatInterns: Jessica Bayne, Walter Swett edly being told in the city's newspapers (a story in itself): how the gay and lesbian Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, materials were included...
...No parents those on the liberal end of the spectrum, includwho honestly hold such a belief could responsibly allow their ing Commonweal, look to communitarianism as children to sit in a class where such approval is promoted...
...a way of ameliorating the distortions of liberal individualism...
...Philosophically many of ly to regard homosexual relationships with favor...
...Still, there may be some government where opposing views must be openly and honestly lessons in this for normal America...
...In and responsibilities, and embraces traditional mediating instiacademia, PC has proved a powerful vehicle through which mi- tutions such as the family, churches, and neighborhoods in an norities enforce their claims upon the majority...
...and how it was sent for implementation to New York's thirty-two local school Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor boards where it met fierce, and perhaps fatal, opposition from District 24...
...aggrieved group (sometimes justifiably aggrieved), even when The ins and outs of this continuing saga are marked by all those particular views may be wrong or wrong-headed...
...Other local districts Foundation, 15 Dutch St., New York, N.Y...
...10038...
...Heather Has Two Mommies, a story book listed as a reading resource, is about a child conceived through artificial inseminaSTAFF tion being raised by two lesbian moms...
...Live and let live" has been debate...
...What of the Byzantine maneuvering the rest of the country expects may seem to work in academia, however, is fatal in a representative from New Yorkers and their politics...
...Madeline Marget 22 The immediate focus of the New York skirmish is a multicultural curriculum, "Children of the Rainbow," that Schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez sent to the Labor and Economic Growth in Five Asian city's thirty-two school districts for implementation...
...In fact, the religious beliefs of most Americans still hold that homosexual acts are wrong...
...Dutch St...
...The media's styles...
...Lesson 3. Political correctness is a fatal barrier to open Communitarianism emphasizes the reciprocal nature of rights and honest debate about such moral disagreements...
...Other moderated the city's diversity of cultures, moral views, and life politicians, civic leaders, and bureaucrats joined in...
Vol. 120 • January 1993 • No. 1
