Friday, April 5, 2019

How sex ed in Worcester really died

A tour de force of a public documents request via Bill Shaner walks through what went on via email that killed comprehensive sex ed in Worcester, at least for this year.
Keep in mind that most of the messages are among a small group of people who have known each other for decades--good point by Lance Harris this morning--

--and that it is still the case in Worcester that there are those who believe (in some cases correctly) that some emails or calls to the right places will get things done. Thus that piece doesn't entirely surprise me.

I am very concerned, however, about this exchange, and the perspective it offers on Worcester's longest serving member, Brian O'Connell:

On Jan. 24, Mullaney connected the fight to national issues.
“The world is a stupid, stupid place,” she said. “Look at what happened in the NY Senate yesterday re: abortion. Covington Catholic. Brett Kavanaugh – all these things go back to abortion and the infiltration by the left of the American nuclear family.”
O’Connell agreed.
“Like you, I worry more with each passing year about truly frightening developments like the proposed New York legislation, Covington Catholic and so much of the deliberation surrounding the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh,” he said. “Catholic anti-defamation initiatives truly need to highlight implicit or explicit anti-Catholic bias when it occurs, calling it what it is.”

That would be frequently-incorrectly-characterized New York change in the abortion laws (no, it does not legalize infanticide), the students of Covington High School harassing a Native American man at the anti-abortion march on Washington, and the Justice Kavanaugh deliberation which turned on a question of sexual assault, none of which, of course, were "Catholic anti-defamation initiatives."
But it is telling if you think it is.

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