California Schools to Add Requirement for Teaching Contribution of Gays, Lesbian etc to School Curriculum

Is this Really Necessary?

California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law

making California the first state in the nation to add lessons about gays and lesbians to social studies classes in public schools.

Brown, a Democrat, signed the landmark bill requiring public schools to include the contributions of people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender in social studies curriculum

California’s legislature has a long history of micro-managing the state’s education curriculum

California law already requires schools to teach about women, African Americans, Mexican Americans, entrepreneurs, Asian Americans, European Americans, American Indians and labor. The Legislature over the years also has prescribed specific lessons about the Irish potato famine and the Holocaust, among other topics.

The Dismal Political Economist was strongly opposed when Conservatives in Texas interfered in the teaching of history to force school to include what they felt was appropriate, instead of leaving that to the professionals, and he feels the same way about the California intrusion.  A simple statement that history should be taught with no bias or prejudice against any group, any action or any event would seem sufficient. 

Then they should leave history to, well, historians, who really know quite a bit about history and how to teach it.

However, people like Randy Thomasson,

 president of SaveCalifornia.com, a conservative family group, said under the new law parents will have no choice but to take their children out of public school and homeschool them to avoid what he said was "immoral indoctrination." The new law applies only to public schools, not private schools or families who homeschool.

make it really difficult for The Dismal Political Economist to hold that neutral, objective position.

 The message The Dismal Political Economist has for Mr. Thomasson is that he should read about the life of Alan Turing, and then decide if including that in the teaching of history is "immoral indoctrination" or an attempt to make history students aware of the great contributions Mr. Turing made to computer science and winning World War II and the horrible and unjust persecution he suffered in life because he was gay. 

 Mr. Turing saved lives, Mr. Thomasson, thousands of lives, maybe a lot more and deserves to be prominently featured in every history text.   You, sir, do not.