Elayne Riggs' Journal (for Leah)

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Marcus Has Two Mommies

Via Neil Gaiman's blog - the ACLU tells of a 7-year-old boy in Louisiana punished because he explained what "gay" meant to a classmate who asked him about his parents (who are lesbians).
Upon hearing this, Marcus’s teacher scolded him in front of his classmates, telling him that “gay” is a bad word and he should never say it at school, then sent him to the principal’s office instead of letting him go to recess. The following week the school required Marcus to attend a special behavioral clinic at 6:45 in the morning, where he was forced to repeatedly write “I will never use the word ‘gay’ in school again.”
I echo Neil's disgust with this when he says, "I keep finding this disturbing in a variety of different ways." Update: Ms. D has the story too, as well as a link to the Yahoo news item about it. And Atrios picked up on the same story in Salon.

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