A Letter to the Editor

Although the debate over Proposition 8 rages on, no one is addressing what in my mind is the first and most important hurdle, the effect on California’s children. In Massachusetts a first grade teacher walks into a classroom, traumatizes the students with a detailed description of the operation that changed him from a man into a woman and does so under the guise of DIVERSITY and TOLERANCE. Shouldn't we learn from the mistakes made in Massachusetts? Shouldn't this type of “teaching” be age appropriate instead of self-serving?

As someone who has helped raise a generation and is a grandfather to the next, I would have to say that this is by far the most important hurdle. Child abuse comes in two flavors, physical and emotional. They cannot vote. They are without an advocate especially when our “public servant” Jack O’Connell served them up as “guinea pigs” to further his own political career. Like the children in Massachusetts, the door would have been wide open, whether you liked it or not and parental rights would have been limited.

While I am sympathetic towards those who oppose Proposition 8, I cannot comprehend how parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters voted to bring this “teaching” into the schools without having guidelines defining what would be age appropriate topics. I can’t believe that any reputable child psychologist would disagree with me.

To those who would argue that these would be isolated cases, I would say that one is too many considering that children have to deal with terrorism, predators, obesity, diabetes, substance abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, etc. – things that their parents didn’t have to deal with. Isn’t it better to plan than to have to clean-up after the fact?

To those who would say that Proposition 8 should have targeted school reform rather than marriage, I would say, I’ve only addressed the first of at least five hurdles. Once the state asserts that same-sex unions are the equivalent of marriage, it must defend and enforce a whole host of other social changes. That redefinition not only affects children but adults as well.

My thanks to you.