Depends on the ROE.
Not much, other than a free ride to and from.
Anyway, I slept on it and told them to pound sand. Long story short, our daughter's school has the audacity to want to promote a reality based education. In their unit on families, they actually admit that families with "two moms" or "two dads" exist. Some people in town prefer that our education system takes a more selective approach, and when dealing with topics that might make them uncomfortable it would be better to pretend that those uncomfortable things do not exist. In fact, many of them have been quite vocal about it (read "vocal" as: insane screaming at a district meeting that was so off the wall the police had to be called). All-in-all the environment has been quite intimidating.
My wife and I have made the "mistake" of supporting of the film. My wife is driven by the out-and-out hatred that is spewed by people who were speaking against the film, in part due to her feeling defensive about a little girl with two mom's who is in the Brownie troop she leads, but mostly by her sense of what is right. I am mostly driven by the desire to have my kid's taught the truth, and the need to address the logical fallacies being advanced by the opposition (i.e. no sir, saying that homo****ual couples exist does not undermine your ability to teach abstinence. And no maam, your argument that this is just like when they said we can't have an nativity scene in the school lobby doesn't really hold water. And yes maam, I know what the Bible says about homo****uals, do YOU know what the Bible says we should DO to those homo****uals?
Maybe we should leave the Bible out of it...and so on). We're both driven by a sense of academic honesty and a desire to avoid a witch hunt mentality of those who are different than us, we are lefty-libs afterall. Anyway, it's been on the news and in the papers and O'Reilly tracked us down and wanted one of us on his show tonight.
We're not going to go, even though on some level I feel like I should go and confront this issue. However, there are a bunch of reasons not to go and they override my desire to have a go at O'Reilly.
1. My daughter is my #1 priority. She's a straight A student without an enemy in the world, and I don't want her becoming the focus of the offspring of some of these maniacs, or of the maniacs themselves. I'm not suggesting that everyone against the film is a maniac, far from it; most of them were calm and polite. But there was an element there that gave off that abortion clinic bomber vibe. In fact, we think some of them may have snuck in and didn't even have kids at the school because none of the teachers recognized them. These issues can bring some scary people out of the woodwork.
2. After the events of the last few days I've almost expected to walk outside in the morning and find my house egged or spray painted. I was mentally prepared for it. Thankfully it hasn't happened and I really don't want to push my luck. I'm concerned for my family, myself, and my stuff. This whole thing can blow over.
3. Voicing your opinion on an issue doesn't make you the de facto spokesperson for the issue.
4. You aren't going to convince anyone in the Fox audience anyway, and you know O'Reilly is there not to moderate on an issue like this. His position on the subject is well known, he's there to trip up the person on the left.
5. I don't trust that Fox, and O'Reilly in particular, will give us fair treatment. The local Fox affiliate did an absolute hatchet job in covering this story. All the other networks framed the issue as parents being upset at the video, but it wasn't all parents who were upset. All the other networks showed interviews of two parents who were against, and two who were in favor. Fox, on the other hand, said that parents were outraged, showed only parents who were against the issue, and did not make a single mention that even one single person was in favor of the issue. They knew that wasn't the case because they interviewed my wife, but they never used that footage. Instead they framed it as an out of control school board that had the parents of a district up in arms; the coverage was a disgrace. I'd expect that, or worse, from the "Factor".
6. I can't believe that this is as big of an issue as it has become and I don't want to feed it anymore. As it stands the video will be shown and parents who do not want their kids to see it can opt out. I think that is a reasonable outcome so why continue to fight? I'd never suggest that kids should be forced to see this against the will of their parents, so as far as I'm concerned it's a done deal already. Soon it will be shown and this will be over (I hope, but we'll see). I don't want to toss fuel on the fire and bring the national religious coalitions with their money, man power, and legal teams, into this little town. Since there were so few people who were willing to stand up against the screaming mob at the meeting, if we don't go I'm not sure how many other parents they'll be able to find to speak in favor of the film. The show and the controversy might die if we take a pass, and I'm ok with that.
Ultimately I don't want to help O'Reilly target us in his "culture war", and that's what he's trying to do. I have other reasons too, but I can't even remember them at this point.
Anyway, it's been a crazy week. If any of you lefty libs want to buy me a beer in a completely hetero****ual way, I'd much appreciate it.
