Health Book Editing

Its kind of fun once you start building momentum on a blog. People start emailing you with stuff saying "you have to blog about this!" Here is one such story from the LA Times that my girlfriend sent me. Registration is required unfortunately.

Long story short several members of the Texas State Board of Education are conservative Christians. This results in the following:

The board this month approved new health textbooks for high school and middle school students after publishers said they would tweak references to marriage and sexuality.

One agreed to define marriage as a "lifelong union between a husband and a wife." Another deleted words that were attacked by conservatives as "stealth" references to gay relationships; "partners," for example, was changed to "husbands and wives." A passage explaining that adolescence brings the onset of "attraction to others" became "attraction to the opposite sex."

I'm not sure if this a good thing or not. I'd like to uphold traditional values like this. For our society they are traditional. Sorry gay-rights folks. On the other hand I bet people are going to be pissed about this and there will be some backlash.

Fortunately right now its people in LA being pissed about what is happening in Texas. Don't they have their own news to report? More likely this is some sort of blue-stater attempt to make the Californians feel good about themselves because they aren't backwater hicks like those stupid Texans.

It would be nice to see a counterpoint argument to those presented by the gay rights advocates and New York based textbook groups, but there is no sign of one. I guess it would have required them to balance out the "Christians are hijacking Texas school boards" argument they want to make. Darn Christians getting elected and remaining popular (often running unopposed). Can't people tell they are evil? Stupid red staters...