Brickbat: Stay in the Closet

Carlos Alberto Kunichek | Dreamstime

When Joey Slivinski and Thomas Swartz, two openly gay seniors at Missouri's Kearney High School, got their yearbooks, they found only blank space beneath their names. School officials did not use the quotes they have provided—"Of course I dress well. I didn't spend all that time in the closet for nothing" and "If 'Harry Potter' taught us anything, it's that no one should have to live in the closet"—saying some might find them offensive.

Comments

[Telcontar the Wanderer]

10 points from Trigglypuff.

[AlmightyJB]

Not total picture but she gets closer than the US media has.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41028733

[CooterBrown]

How is this news? My senior quote didn't get published either, no one gave a shit.

[some guy]

It's not news. It's a daily brickbat. If this is the worse thing Charles could come up with, then we should celebrate. Too often this spot is talking about cops shooting some innocent person or dog.

[Jerryskids]

That's funny, "No one gave a shit" was my senior quote, too!

[SIV]

You weren't gay enough

[Eek Barba Durkle]

My senior quote didn't get published either,

I don't know how many times I have to say this, a brown paper bag full of dog shit is NOT a senior quote.

[Fist of Etiquette]

They should have edited out those alt-right haircuts.

[Inigo Montoya]

"Our schools are supposed to be a place for being who you are." -- Uh, no dude. Could you be any more naive? They are not that at all. They are there to serve the interests of the teachers union. If you happened to learn to read and write while you were there, consider yourself lucky.

[Cyto]

Seriously. Schools are places to hammer down nails that stick up.

Conform. That's what school is for.

[Shirley Knott]

Or at the "loftier" level the idiot attempted -- Our schools are supposed to be a place where society shapes you to its current view of its future needs. Raw material (you) fed into a milling machine so all the unwanted bits can be carved off.
This was explicit as a core goal of public education under the tender guidance of the progressive movement.

[Citizen X - #6]

+1 Underground History of American Education

[loveconstitution1789]

Hopefully some math in there too.

[Longtobefree]

Nah - no need to count votes anymore, HAL does that now, to insure proper results.

[Cynical Asshole]

They're also there to enforce conformity and indoctrinate. "Being who you are" is the exact opposite of what they want.

[some guy]

In other words, the school admins found the quotes offensive and FYTW.

[loveconstitution1789]

Nobody had quotes under our school pictures. Life went on.

Weird though that speech against gay behavior is deemed offensive and now speech by two gay boys is deemed offensive. Its almost as if silencing speech of anyone is a bad idea.

[Longtobefree]

Well, no. This is to clearly point out that silencing 'other than left wing' speech is OK, but being offended by gays offending you is not either.
Play the 'change the victim' game here.
Two other white persons of the majority sexual orientation submit a quote along the lines of "make America great again", and get censored. Any apologies?
How about quotes from Robert E.Lee? "The education of a man is never completed until he dies."

The point of the piece is that yes, once they start suppressing free speech, the left cannot really fully control who gets potentially offended.

On the other hand, why do high school yearbooks let seniors put quotes in there? May as well have the prom in a minefield from the perspective of lawsuits. We got a really bad picture with our legal name. That's it.

[loveconstitution1789]

I know, its like high school kids have something profound to quote for future generations.

[Eek Barba Durkle]

One of my good friends' senior quote was "Yes officer, I know I was speeding, but if we could hurry this up, I'm on my way to see your wife."

I graduated from a single-demographic small rural Arkansas school in the mid 90's - two separate people in my class used their senior quotes to come out of the closet...and then got the hell out of town forever.

[Conchfritters]

Yeah, these kids go to school in North Arkansas - this isn't San Francisco exactly.

[EscherEnigma]

It's more "time capsule of you at 17/18" then "profound wisdom". Something you can open up to show your kids and say "yeah, I was an idiot kid once too. Wanna see?"

[EscherEnigma]

"On the other hand, why do high school yearbooks let seniors put quotes in there?"
Some do, some don't. Mine didn't because it was pretty controversy-averse? and wouldn't permit anything that might ever lead to a problem.

But many do. And if they do allow them, then like other cases of "Free Speech" and public schools, they got to play by the rules.
________
?Seriously, they made everyone wear solid color (in white, navy blue, hunter green, or khaki) polo shirts and button-downs (logos could be at most the size of a half-dollar). Pants were slacks only of the same colors (no jeans), no brightly colored footwear, only "natural" hair-colors were allowed and so-on. They got as strict as they could with a dress code before it became a "uniform" as they could get away with, and only stopped at that point because if it were a uniform they'd have had to supply uniforms to students. All to avoid "disruptive t-shirts" and "gang colors". My high school was paranoid as shit about even a hint of controversy. And this was a public school.

[Rhywun]

Yeah, I'm not familiar with this practice either. We just wrote really offensive stuff in each other's books ourselves.

[mad.casual]

More than one retro-themed bar in Chicago has taken to collecting old year books from, I guess, yard sales and other sources as decore. It certainly can be entertaining reading while inebriated. To the point where more than once I've found myself judging the quality of a Netflix series or movie by relative comparison.

Come to think of it, it's not entirely dissimilar to reading internet forums.

[Stormy Dragon]

It's not like the school censored quotes about Jesus or the Confederacy. That would have been a national firestorm. But since it was only LGBT people getting censored, the fauxbertarians don't care.

[mad.casual]

Do they allow quotes about Jesus or The Confederacy in the first place?

Also, with the little evidence provided, it's unclear whether the quotes were pulled under the guise of actively suppressing these student's free speech or whether they were pulled as a libel/slander of the HS or otherwise in violation of an anti-gay/orientation comment policy. The article identifies them as openly gay and the jokes are about them being forced into the closet and (not having chipped through the paywall) nothing further one way or the other.

Not that fauxbertarians need a reason to rage, but they usually do make a point of making sure the teams are well-defined before doing so (or otherwise refusing both teams and taking everyone's yearbook comments away).

[loveconstitution1789]

What's good for the goose and all....