CVUSD trustees praised for making he right decision

Elaine McKearn was right about one thing: it is a sad day in Thousand Oaks––but for very different reasons than she spells out in her letter to the editor several weeks ago (T.O. Acorn letters, July 7, “School board’s vote on textbook an embarrassment”).

Mike Dunn and others who righteously contend that there can be only one narrow definition of marriage seem to forget that the Judeo-Christian ethic is to lead life by example––not by bully pulpit––demonstrating tolerance, forgiveness, truth and love toward fellow humans.

As long as the state is involved in regulating marriage–issuing marriage licenses, offering tax breaks for married couples, regulating health benefits, etc.–then according to our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and Bill of Rights that followed, those rights and benefits need to extend to everyone equally, regardless of race, sex or creed.

There was a time in this nation’s history, when the exact same “traditional family values” arguments that Dunn, McKearn and other “compassionate” conservatives are making to protect the institution of marriage from same-sex couples, were used in an attempt to protect the institution of marriage from interfaith and interracial couples.

Those arguments did not hold up then, and unless we are a nation of hypocrites, they will ultimately not hold up now.

It is ironic that one benign sentence in a textbook about health that would have otherwise gone unnoticed has now become an issue so public that even the students that Dunn and Co. were trying to “protect” can’t help but be involved.

If ever there was a place that both the majority and minority points of view need to be represented, then that place is public education, and I’m thankful that a majority of the school board agrees. There are plenty of excellent private, parochial schools in the area that are (and should be) free to define things in any manner they see fit.

So it is a sad day indeed when we are guided by intolerance, untruth and an unhealthy dose of fear. Richard Butler Thousand Oaks