I saw the news online, and made the mistake of reading the comments. My disillusionment in the intelligence of the Australian public made me resemble this woman.
Here's the thing, and I'll admit I'm not a doctor or psychiatrist, but I'm pretty certain you can't catch gay. It's like being Chinese or French - you can't catch it. Either you are, or you aren't. When the new French kid turns up at your school, and they speak French at home, if they lend you a pencil and you take the pencil, you don't suddenly become French when you touch it.
If you're learning Greek or Mandarin at school, and you role play a shop scene, you don't get confused and think you are actually shopping for fruit in a market in Athens.
I would say pretty much all kids in the Drama group are aware that the scenes they're preparing for the school play don't mean they've somehow changed personalities and are now their character.
Given the budget of the School Chaplaincy program is in the $243+ million ballpark, and Safe Schools is $8 million, I find it weird that it is the Safe Schools program that you're worried about re indoctrination. You also seem to miss the point that if it is indoctrination, it's indoctrination on how not to be a bullying, insensitive dick, not how to be gay.
The angry, crazed comments on Facebook were often misspelled, had poor grammar and at times, showed no presentation of logical argument. These were written by products of the Australian school system. If you have a concern with Education, that should be it. Perhaps looking at additional funding for schools is needed to make sure that if you go to an Australian school, you come out at the end with the ability to spell and to write a coherent argument.
Our schools are gravely underfunded and it is the community at large who suffers as a result. The pittance used to run Safe Schools is not the problem. The lack of funding for teaching, equipment, texts and everything else means our national standard is not where it should be. I hope you are prepared to fight for an improvement on funding education, seeing as you've highlighted a national level of ignorance, that can only be fixed at the school level.
(My favorite comment was that 'no red blooded male would tolerate gays'. I live in Sydney so I found this confusing at first. But lets break it down (and I'll use the comment's terminology, as it's amusing me) - There's about 2 billion red blooded males who tolerate gays on the planet. Then there's 'the gays' themselves, who, while I admit I'm not a doctor, I am pretty sure are red blooded and male, So take out the women, and reassess your figures. What I believe the person meant was that there is a small percent of the global population who have issues with the LGBTQI community, either for religious reasons, homophobia or some other reason, possibly because their school didn't help them understand diversity or lacked a Safe Schools program.)
You are free to disagree with my opinion but as always, I will delete any rude comments aimed at me, Cory Bernardi or the Liberal Party in general. Keep it civil and polite. We are better than that.
The petition by the Greens in Support of Safe Schools is
here
