One Reason
The story below is from Oklahoma and is one of the reasons (among many others) that I completely withdrew my involvement with children and ended my journey more than 10 years ago towards becoming an educator. I have very little patience for this sort of thing and even less patience for people who believe that becuase I am gay, I am somehow a threat to society and more specifically to children. This is from Pam’s House Blend blog. This country still has a LONG way to go on tolerance.
Teacher Joseph Quigley of Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma City, who is also gay, found himself at a termination hearing recently. School Board Superintendent Karl Springer’s recommended the termination of Quigley, who has been with the school district since 1994, because “he wasn’t following plans for improvement and didn’t obey administrative directives.”
Quigley’s attorneys say otherwise:
“The attempt to fire Mr. Quigley, a career teacher with a stellar record, appears to be driven by some administrators after he advocated for better protections for gay and lesbian students. The legal counsel for OKCPS has relied on trumped up and exaggerated charges to make the case for his dismissal. In fact, Mr. Quigley was the subject of harassment and false charges merely because of his advocacy for gay and lesbian students and/or the fact that he is gay.”
MetroStar News, an Oklahoma LGBT newspaper, reports that Quigley received consistent high marks on his evaluations for a decade — that clearly doesn’t indicate someone was unhappy with his performance in the classroom.What did Quigley “do wrong” in the eyes of the school? Perhaps this sheds some light on the matter:
He stated that the administration “singled him out, applied a double standard, micromanaged him and has instituted a relentless scorched earth policy to get rid of him.” He also pointed out that it wasn’t until after 2007 that his evaluations showed him to be substandard, when Ms. Walling became his evaluator. It was clarified that his evaluations suddenly went down after 2006 , after Joe advocated the inclusion of “sexual orientation” among the groups listed in the Student Handbook to be protected from harassment and bullying.
Here we go. More advocates for the beating of LGBT youth, because, of course, in Oklahoma they deserve it — and the advocate, needs to suffer consequences as well. Quigley and his attorneys are considering taking his case to the federal court.What’s really sad is that Oklahoma is in a race to top of the wingnuttery charts. It was the only state that had no Blue counties in this past election, and voters in that state managed to turn Oklahoma even more Republican. Its LGBT and reality-based citizens pay the price; this should be a reality check to LGBTs out there who are in deep Blue states with a host of civil rights and the luxury to focus on marriage equality. People in deep Red states are in the bullseye of the bigots with limited support from allies, national orgs (and elected officials practically MIA).
