A Homophobe in NJ Remind us Again Why We Need Pride
Even in a city as diverse as Hackensack, you’ll find bigots. They blend in among midlevel bureaucrats, positions of substantial power but relative obscurity.
Like Frances Cogelja, a school board trustee, who is horrified at the direction this country is headed in. Not because of the porn star president, or babies being ripped from their mothers’ arms at the border; no.
What Cogelja finds “repugnant” is the sea change transforming us from a nation in which gay people must stay in the closet or risk losing their jobs and friends, to one in which schools openly celebrate their achievements.
She is "disgusted and appalled” by a new law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy – one that requires all public schools in this state to teach about LGBTQ history!
She wrote as much to the superintendent, it was just revealed through a public records request, and now her constituents are calling on her to resign. Happy Pride month, 2019. Thank you, Frances Cogelja, for reiterating why we need it.
New Jersey is only the second state in the nation, after California, to pass a law requiring the inclusion of LGBTQ education for middle and high schoolers.
One reason why we did it: Nationwide, as many as 70 percent of LGBTQ students report being harassed at school over their sexual orientation.
Advocates at Garden State Equality say they’ve since been inundated with requests by administrators psyched about the chance to pilot the new program, which will be implemented statewide in the 2020-21 school year.
It will include key historical figures like astronomer Frank Kameny, who could become for this topic what Harriet Tubman is for lessons on slavery in America.
Kameny sued after he was fired from his government job for being gay, and in 1961, became an early leader of the gay rights movement. But have you ever heard of him? Has your kid?
As we come up upon the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the prejudices of the past are still present-day news, which is why it’s so important to teach that kind of history.
Just this month, New York’s top cop finally gave an official apology on behalf of the department, for the way police behaved during the Stonewall uprising: “The actions taken by the N.Y.P.D. were wrong — plain and simple,” Commissioner James O’Neill said.
That’s what a real apology sounds like. Cogelja’s was more of an excuse. She said her disparaging comments about the law were simply intended to avoid lessons that “may be uncomfortable for my child.”
She insisted she “will never resign,” citing the “opportunity to exercise my First Amendment rights.”
She is welcome to homeschool her kids or enroll them in private school. But it is not her right, as a sitting member of the board of education, to refuse to comply with the law because of her personal prejudices.
You are not allowed to “opt out,” as Cogelja claimed. Can a racist parent get his kid excused from learning about Harriet Tubman? Not in a public school.
Cogelja must resign, because how can she be trusted now to fairly represent LGBTQ students and teachers? “Everywhere I turn, this alternative lifestyle narrative is being shoved done [sic] our children’s throats,” she wrote.
We’ve made great strides over the last half-century, but all it takes is one half-witted official to prove how far we still have to go. It brings to mind the words of presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, on the fight for marriage equality:
While some countries measure themselves by “territorial expansion,” he said, in America we measure ourselves by “moral expansion.”
“Narrative's a very powerful thing,” he’s argued. “And we need to make sure that everybody in America understands where they fit in this country's story.
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