On September 8, the Harvey Milk High School in New York City will begin educating 100 solely gay, bisexual, and transgender students who find the other city public schools too hostile. The school is accredited, the recipient of public funds, colossally wrong-headed and tolerated by a government willing to pander for political capital with taxpayer money in spite of the best interests of society. The curious notion that public schools should be for the public has gone down the toliet.
The overseers of our mighty federal and state constitutions have ruled over and over that schools based on creeds, or colors, or genders, or countries of origin or any rubric that might hint at exclusivity for unjust reasons, are discriminatory and disqualified not only from receipt of public funds, but frequently from accreditation altogether.
Whatever gay enmity manifests itself in New York's schools is deplorable and unfortunate. The safety of the students and their free, unsullied attempt at a decent education ought to be highly valued, but merely because the students' protection is furthering a compelling government interest doesn't mean the principle is constitutionally justified. As the penumbras and emanations of many a Supreme Court scrutiny have shown, only when a government act is the least restrictive means of furtherance should the act pass constitutional muster. So what social costs are at stake with a sexuality-based school?
For starters, weren't civil rights movements fought by blacks, women and other minorities who sought the same liberties, opportunities, and equal treatment that the white men of the "Establishment" enjoyed? The idea was equality, integration, and understanding.
What's the difference now? The core value that race and sexuality are important characteristics of distinction will never be evicted from the collective social mind if those who stand to benefit the most from eviction continue to use their differences as criteria to exclude themselves from the rest of us. As long as the pigeon-holes and classifications are politically relevant, they will be socially relevant.
The Harvey Milk High School is an escape, and it spawns from the same liberal mindset that tells us failing government programs just need more money rather than hard-headed realism to deduce who we can help, how, and to what extent. With social welfare, where we sought to give more to the poor, we inadvertently created more poor, and where we sought to tear down the barriers to flight from poverty, we inadvertently laid more traps. Likewise in New York, where we seek to respect differences and value diversity, we're stifling both; where we seek concord, we split people into groups.
Why turn from the real issue to the feel-good solution? Why are these students harassed? Who's harassing them? What's being done about it? Do we not have federal hate-crime legislation to deal with these haunting issues? Blacks marched through thrown stones to integrate the University of Alabama, and I would hope if the same fight was waged in today's political climate of cultural self-congratulation, they wouldn't instead hide behind government-sponsored segregation. Minorities once believed in equality and that the separate-but-equal doctrine wasn't good enough, but we are, in essence, now giving up on equality altogether; divisively conceding that some groups need to be treated differently from others.
I can't offer any hard facts to purport the benefits of diversity, but I've been herded into believing that it's worth something more than leverage for those who can use it to get what they want. Even so, in the name of diversity, a private organization like the Boy Scouts is a group of bigots to fire gay scout leaders, but gays are valuing diversity by keeping straights out of their public school. It is a nefarious affront to diversity that men try to keep women out of a private country club, but respecting diversity allows women to educate themselves with public funds free from male idiocy at all-female charter schools. A spade is still a spade no matter who's digging with it, and especially so when taxpayers are helping dig.
When these kids graduate and aren't treated the way they were treated in high school, to whom will they turn? Other gays, logically. That's social progress; de Tocqueville incarnate: the "ancien regime" in new britches. It all makes you see how Jim Crow laws were born in the first place: a few people who wanted to be with their own kind and protect their differences sticking together, keeping at a minimum any interaction with others, and thinking it's the right thing to do --diversity be damned.
If they must run, and I won't blame them if they must, taxpayer money ought not go with them to support this insidious and outmoded social engineering.
