From Fox News.
Excerpt:
An honors student in Fort Worth, Texas, was sent to the principal’s office and punished for telling a classmate that he believes homosexuality is wrong.
Holly Pope said she was “absolutely stunned” when she received a telephone call from an assistant principal at Western Hills High School informing her that her son, Dakota Ary, had been sent to in-school suspension.
“Dakota is a very well-grounded 14-year-old,” she told Fox News Radio noting that her son is an honors student, plays on the football team and is active in his church youth group. “He’s been in church his whole life and he’s been taught to stand up for what he believes.”
And that’s what got him in trouble.
Dakota was in a German class at the high school when the conversation shifted to religion and homosexuality in Germany. At some point during the conversation, he turned to a friend and said that he was a Christian and “being a homosexual is wrong.”
“It wasn’t directed to anyone except my friend who was sitting behind me,” Dakota told Fox. “I guess [the teacher] heard me. He started yelling. He told me he was going to write me an infraction and send me to the office.”
Dakota was sentenced to one day in-school suspension – and two days of full suspension. His mother was flabbergasted, noting that her son had a spotless record, was an honor student, volunteered at his church and played on the school football team.
[…][Liberty Counsel attorney Matthew] Krause called the incident “mind blowing” and said the teacher had frequently brought homosexuality into ninth grade classroom discussions.
“There has been a history with this teacher in the class regarding homosexual topics,” Krause said. “The teacher had posted a picture of two men kissing on a wall that offended some of the students.”
Krause said the picture was posted on the teacher’s “world wall.”
“He told the students this is happening all over the world and you need to accept the fact that homosexuality is just part of our culture now,” Krause said.
The school district would not comment on why a teacher was discussing homosexuality in a ninth grade German class.
Wow, this happened in Texas? But in a way, it’s not surprising because the public education segment of society is so liberal. (It’s a public school) I find the fact that the boy’s parents are forced to pay taxes to support this school alarming. I find the power differential between student and teacher and the power of the marking pen alarming. If people are going to discuss these issues, they should have a free choice of where to go to school and speak about these issues without fear of being graded down by activists. This is a case where you have the government forcing their opinions onto individuals using the individual’s own money to pay for the indoctrination.
I do think we can learn something from this, though. I think you can have a lot more success talking about moral issues like this if you don’t say “The Bible says” or “X is wrong”, but instead just talk about what social science says about what children need growing up, and the health risks of the homosexual lifestyle, and so on. If you’re going to talk about anything like this with non-Christians, you’re exposing yourself to persecution, because they are not accustomed to discussing morality objectively. So the best thing to do is to talk about the evidence, and worry more about how behaviors can harm children, society, and even the person who is choosing to do the behaviors. Start with a simple example like fatherlessness and no-fault divorce. It is easier and safer to talk about evidence, and whether the evidence is true or false, than to make judgements without evidence, and to erect barriers. The student has not been well prepared by his parents for the world as it is, and he is in for a world of hurt because of his ignorance.
Be sure you are aware of the secular case against gay marriage before you start to talk about things like this. I can also recommend excellent books about homosexuality to anyone who is interested, which explain what causes it and how it affects a person’s health.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
While I understand your point, I disagree that we must worry about how inserting our Christian influence into such discussion might be problematic. Rather, I believe it’s important to continue to speak out from a Christian perspective as well as from a purely secular one. Part of the reason we’re having such trouble with rampant defense of depravity is due to suppression of religious perspectives. A comprehensive plan of attack must include morality as well as the secular case.
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I hear you Marshall, here’s my approach:
On moral/policy issues: argue for conclusions consistent with Christianity using evidence, statistics and so on.
On apologetics issues: argue for Christian theism using philosophical arguments and evidence.
So I have a both/and approach, but I keep policy separate from Christianity. Christianity is not a premise, it’s a conclusion you argue to.
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A couple of things come to mind.
Despite how this appears – this is a really good thing.
Allow me to explain myself.
– Kudos to the 9th grader for taking a stand for Jesus.
– Why is a teacher was discussing homosexuality in a ninth grade German class ?
This happened in TEXAS, USA which is the “Bible Belt USA”.
This will hopefully be a “wake up” for the Body of Christ to really take a hard look at the need for actual righteous behavior from Christians and not imputed righteousness.
Expecting morals from the secular system isn’t going to happen. Righteous / morality has to be seen in the behavior of Christians first.
This is a fantastic wake-up call
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The abandonment of traditional teaching on sexual morality is a mere symptom of the abandonment of a rational approach to ethics in general. I fear that you concede too much if you accept that the only alternatives are relying directly on divine fiat, or sociology. The former, I think, is apt to appear like mere religious prejudice, but the latter doesn’t quite make the case, either, because you’re trying to live down to modern secular culture’s debased conception of harm. I think, in this case, that you can argue philosophical principles without resorting (directly) to divine fiat.
Historically, homosexuality has been viewed as condemned not only by Scripture, but by Reason, and Nature as well. The traditional case proceeds from the concept of harm as a disruption or disordering of one’s capacities from that capacity’s characteristic end, or the “goal” that makes that capacity what it is. The ends towards which our capacities are characteristically directed constitute wellbeing or flourishing for humans, so voluntary participation in a disordered capacity is a voluntary assault on one’s own human nature and wellbeing(and, in the case of homosexuality, one’s partner’s human nature as well), and on that account is it a harm, and therefore an evil.
If a capacity is disordered when it is not directed toward its characteristic end, the moral implications for homosexuality are obvious. The overall defining, distinctive feature of sexual functions in general is the directedness of that family of functions toward reproduction. All the sub-functions of sexuality- sexual and romantic desire and love, the physical functioning of the sexual organs, the deep bonding of male-female relationships, and so forth, are part of the functional family of sexuality because they are all characterised by the role they play in reproduction. Heterosexuality is the characteristic sexual orientation because it, rather than homosexuality, is innately directed toward reproduction. Indeed, it is hard to see how homosexual activity is a form of sex at all, if it is not a perversion of heterosexuality. Therefore, homosexuality, as a perversion of heterosexual desire directed not at the reproductively complimentary opposite sex, but at the same sex, is a harm, and voluntary participation in it is morally culpable harm, or evil.
Even sterile heterosexual copulation, or a married heterosexual couple copulating for pleasure, are at least deriving their pleasure and facilitating their romantic bonding in a properly-ordered way, out of romantic and sexual desires which are at least directed at their proper ends. Whether they consciously intend it so or not, the processes generating their desires and pleasures are fulfilling their proper reproductively-derived function.
Such an approach to contemplation of what constitutes harm, if consistently denied, has disastrous effects on the practice of ethics rivalling the denial of the existence of God. If sexuality is not characterised by directedness toward reproduction, then brain function is not characterised by its directedness toward body control or rational thought, and therefore destroying rational thought or bodily control cannot be harm, which is clearly absurd. The only way to avoid the functional analysis of harm, and its implications for homosexuality, it seems to me, is to abandon reason altogether, and surrender ethics to mindless subjectivism. If there is no such thing as recognizable proper functions, then harm itself is a subjective notion, about which no one can in principle be objectively right. This would undermine almost all morality, including the secularist’s own case.
We need to familiarise ourselves with the traditional natural law analysis of homosexuality, and learn to contrast it with the shoddy, shallow nihilism of the popular culture if we wish to win this war of principle.
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We are seeing these types of things happening more and more.
Basically – if you are conservative and have something to say – you not only may not voice it in public, but you cannot even say it in private to a friend of yours.
On the other hand, if you are a liberal… boy … someone please pass the mike.
A 14 year old cannot tell his friend what he believes as regards this issue, but his teacher can voice his opinion to the whole class.
This country needs a revival. We need to pray about all this.
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Hmmmm. Thinking that I would file a lawsuit if that was me. That seems to be restricting freedom of speech to the nth degree.
It by no means surprises me that something like this happened or happens, but it does outrage me because the people that act in such a manner(the teacher here) are supposedly the open-minded, non-dogmatic, accepting people. Clearly that is not the case in most situations, and it’s sad that people buy into it as the more accepting and socially acceptable position, even though it leads to things like this.
If I can’t bring up why homosexuality is wrong in my OPINION, then he most certainly can’t indoctrinate (oh, wait, that’s supposedly what Christians do) students by voicing his opinion, yet alone denying them their right to disagree with an OPINION that he holds.
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