Day of Decadence

17 February 2009 Anno Domini

Citizen of Wilmington:

As we approach spring, a new school-sponsored club, the “Gay Straight Alliance” (GSA) is planning its Day of Silence (with the help of its two Wilmington High School faculty “advisors”) for April 17, 2009. This is the second “Day of Silence” event which has occurred at Wilmington City Schools. Last year, Superintendent Ron Sexton announced the fact that the school did not sponsor or sanction the Day of Silence in his “eNewsletter” dated April 24, 2008 as follows:

“This event is not a school-sponsored or sanctioned activity. There will be no taxpayer dollars spent on this issue, no posters or fliers distributed around the school, and no teachers or administrators promoting the event. A small group of students has notified school officials that they will wear T-shirts that read ‘What Are You Going to Do to Stop the Silence,’ and will not speak unless spoken to by school officials. Neither wearing the shirts nor remaining silent during non-classroom activities is against the district or school student code of conduct.” (See ORC 3313.6011 at “C” under “Instruction in venereal disease education emphasizing abstinence.”)

Now that a club oriented around sex (involving mind-set or behavior) has been established with the oversight of faculty members, it can no longer be said that “there will be no taxpayer dollars spent on this issue.” (See Wilmington High School’s GSA web site here [removed]. The web site of the WHS newspaper, “The Hurricane,” features “both sides” of the “homosexual life style” issue (http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/view/frontpage/schoolid/1476/articleid/245550/Default.aspx) as if every issue had two legitimate sides. While there are those among the morally handicapped who might argue for two sides of a case for, say, pedophilia, and other sordid “life styles,” the state of Ohio requires (by statute, thankfully) that the schools teach sexual abstinence. That directive is written as follows: “Stress that students should abstain from sexual activity until after marriage.” We may presume that “sexual activity” includes all kinds unless we are to entertain the supposition that the Ohio State School system endorses all sexual activity except for that which is traditional reserved for married couples.

The proper response to this unfortunate turn toward decadence ought to take into account two things: 1) a club which would discourage any and all types of sexual activity would be more in conformity with state law; and 2) the fair assumption that most of the people of Wilmington do not want to pay for this club.

If administrators do not shut this club down or the school board does not direct administrators to do so, and if church and civic organizations do not raise a loud enough objection, parents might be left with their only recourse: withdrawing their children from attendance on April 17 and redirecting them to alternative productive or charitable endeavors such as community service with Your Father’s Kitchen.

Epilogue: The foolishness came to an end and there is no such decadence club in the Wilmington City Schools. Thanks be to God, there abides some moral sanity in the City.