Wonder how long after implementation of DADT, our teachers can serve openly

[justiceischeap]

I find myself wondering how long before attitudes change and teachers no longer have to be in the closet without fear of being fired.

[ClassWarrior]

1. Someone unrec'd this?

NGU.

[Bragi]

2. It'll be some time

Sadly, it's politically much easier to allow gays to openly participate in the U.S military death machine abroad than it is to allow them to actually teach America's children.

[TexasProgresive]

3. A question-prior to DADT

Was there a law that prevented gays from serving in the armed forces or was it just some sort of policy?

Clinton wanted to open the way for gays to serve and this was the best he could get. So with DADT repealed can the armed forces go back to the way things were pre-DADT?

[justiceischeap]

4. There was an outright ban on gays in the military and people were discharged

that weren't even gay. A male soldier hits on a female and she says, no, tell people she's gay. She's then investigated and has to prove that she isn't gay instead of them proving she was gay. There were witch hunts, it wasn't a great solution but it was better than what was going on.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=433&topic_id=571684&mesg_id=571757

[TexasProgresive]

7. My question has to do with policy v. law

If the prior policy of the armed forces was policy why couldn't Clinton ordered it changed by executive order as opposed to trying to get a bad bill through congress?

2nd with DADT repealed what's to prevent the armed forces from putting the old policy back in place- especially when a rePUKE is CIC?

I haven't read the repeal but I don't have a lot of faith.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

10. See below

1.Clinton DID try to lift the ban (military policy) on gays and lesbians serving in the military but Congress, including many Democrats led by then-Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), revolted and threatened to write the ban into law if Clinton didn't relent and, odds are, it would've been approved by a veto-proof majority. Clinton ultimately relented- recognizing how disastrous an outright ban passed by Congress would be- and instead signed the compromise DADT into law, which allowed gays and lesbians to serve, albeit not openly and attempted to curtail "witch hunts" to weed out gay and lesbian service members. Given that Congress probably would've made good on its threat, I think that he made the right decision

2. This does worry me but we will still have at least 2 years ahead of us without DADT during which gays and lesbians will begin serving openly, which should be a sufficient amount of time to demonstrate that there are no negative effects on the military. Yeah, some a**hole Republican could come into office in 2012 (Ra forbid) or in 2016 (Ra forbid) and decide he/she wants the military to re-institute the ban but odds are it would backfire on him/her due to the sudden loss of service members whom have already "come out" and there would be little (any?) public support for such a move and probably not even much among the military brass- nearly all of whom favored the repeal of DADT. Frankly, once progress is made in a certain direction, it is usually very difficult to go back to the way things were at an earlier time and I don't see any attempted Republican reversals of the DADT repeal as being any more successful than reversing any other parts of Obama's agenda.

[TexasProgresive]

11. Thank you. n/t

[phleshdef]

5. Um, I had at least 5-6 openly gay/lesbian teachers and this is southen WVa we are talking about.

Is this really a problem outside of Christian owned private schools?

From grade school through high school, I encountered at least 2 lesbian gym teachers a lesbian art teacher, a lesbian english teacher and a gay band teacher. At least half of them are young enough to not be retired at this point. This was no secret to anyone. Everyone knew and still knows. I'm 31, so its not some recent development either.

[justiceischeap]

6. In the small community I went to school in (graduated in 89)

It was an issue, as I'm sure it is in other smaller communities. I also know of many teachers who can't be out in their profession. I guess it depends on where you work (and I'm referring to the public school system, not private)

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. I'm a teacher and have never worked with a gay teacher who was out at school

[phleshdef]

15. Well, it wasn't like these teachers were discussing their love lives with students.

But some were seen out in public with their signficant others. Everyone knew. There was no question.

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. I went to lunch with a teacher friend today

We ran into a couple students. I hope they didn't think we are gay because we were seen together in public. :eyes:

[hfojvt]

22. our former county chair was gay and a teacher

I saw him the day after election day with his significant other, and I had no clue. I thought they were just friends driving around together. However, in town it was better known. Then I just learned that the former superintendent was gay, and the former HS counselor said that the school board found out about it and couldn't do anything. The Kiwanis club's reading award was named after him, at the school foundation, but that was dropped after he got caught in a DUI.

[jwirr]

8. I do not have as much hope as you do. The laws change actions

but they do not necessarily change what people think. All these years after the civil rights fight in the 60s we still have people who will vote for Hailey Barbour because he is a racist. Schools will have a harder time because there are ways around sending your child to a certain school. Bigotry is taught from generation to generation and it is very hard to totally destroy.

[slackmaster]

9. I had teachers in grades 4 and 6 who were openly L and G respectively

They made no effort to hide their sexual orientation.

I graduated from high school in 1975.

[Codeine]

13. My 12th grade English teacher is lesbian and

lives openly with one of the Spanish teachers from the same school. She came out right after I left high school, so she's been an uncloseted lesbian in that environment for over twenty years, as has her partner.

And I had the HUGEST crush on her in my senior year. Obviously my gaydar wasn't properly calibrated back then. :dunce:

[Uzybone]

14. My brother, sister in law and GF are all teachers in TX

they all teach in different schools and all have gay co workers who also teach in classrooms.

What are you talking about?

[justiceischeap]

16. There are a lot of teachers that cannot be out because they'd be fired

It's a continuing problem that, hopefully, can become a thing of the past when ENDA is passed. A LGBT person can still be fired from their jobs in most places of employment based solely on their sexuality.

[Ilsa]

18. Small school districts sometimes invoke "morality clauses"

as excuses to discriminate against people. It gets used against single women, too, if they get a reputation for being "promiscuous."

[proud2BlibKansan]

21. Most school districts have morals clauses in their contracts

Very common.

[Yo_Mama]

17. I'm 49

And when I was in elementary school I had a male gay teacher, and when I was in junior high I had two lesbian gym/health teachers.

Everyone knew about it. It wasn't exactly subtle, because they were both couples living together. The gay guy in elementary school was living with his lover who also taught at the same school, and the lesbians in junior were happily paired up.

Did they talk about it at work? No, but no teachers talked about their personal lives - that was all strictly no-no. I'd be very, very surprised if teachers are getting dismissed for being gay and lesbian currently, barring that they spend tons of class time talking about it. This was the 70s. There were young swingers who were teachers - compared to their probable sex lives, the two couples I'm talking about were pretty darned boring.

Now you WOULD be dismissed back then for "moral turpitude", which included things like stripping as a second job, getting arrested for public drunkenness, or being caught shoplifting. But barring it becoming some huge public issue from the person's own conduct, I never heard of anyone being dismissed from a public school for his or her own sex life. My mother was an elementary public school teacher at a different school system, and she had a lesbian colleague there.

Maybe things are different now, but if so, we've regressed.

In religious schools, often both students and teachers are bound to certain conduct standards, and that hasn't changed. So getting pregnant without being married might lose a teacher her job and get a student expelled, or being openly lesbian might if it became an issue in the school. But otherwise? I think not. There are gays and lesbians teaching at Catholic schools right now.

[Odin2005]

19. I had an openly lesbian math teacher in high school, and this was a little rural town.

Nobody gave a crap. :shrug: