Dear Mister Editor,

What can I say? I was so saddened to see our beloved Talon Marks purveying an ill-constructed argument against gay rights being taught in schools online as what appears to most readers to be a news article.

The root of the issue is not just that this article appears to be newsworthy (which it isn’t), it is, however, that out of all the opinion pieces I read online not one used such incendiary rhetoric as

Patrick Dolly’s piece titled, “Gay Rights Education Should Stay Out Of Public Schools.” When I Googled, “talon marks gay rights,” this so-called “opinion” piece came up without designation that it was indeed an opinion.

I read on to one fallacy after another, red herrings and straw men arguments equating gays’ fight for equality to a “protest specific platform” and the relationship between gays and straights to that of, “groups of white supremacy and extreme minorities.” Tell me, when did you attend your last straight Klan rally?

Lets review Mr. Dolly’s unsound fallacies in order from start to finish… don’t worry, to spare you, I will paraphrase.

Unfortunately let’s begin with, to borrow Dolly’s word, this

“preposterous” idea that if gay rights were taught in schools, it would somehow lead to rebellion “from the same laws and restrictions that the heterosexual community has to adhere to.”

What? I am not even sure what laws he is talking about. We all tend to break the same laws; maybe it’s just me but I can’t think of any laws and restrictions that gays would begin rebelling against.

Next is his idea that the teaching of figures like Harvey Milk, a man whose life embodied the struggle for equality that gay rights have faced, is us somehow wanting “our youth to be corrupted with meaningless banter.” It should go without saying that we learn from our mistakes and that history should be taught so that we may do so.

Dolly then proceeds with the smoke screens and slippery slopes that no one can take seriously. Like teaching gay rights in schools would lead to marijuana consumption and Ebonics classes on campus and we have taken “God” out of schools and replaced it with gay.

The last paragraph baffles me, “we also don’t like, nor are we willing to accept being solicited sexuality either.”

No that’s not my typo. I hope you aren’t comparing gay rights to sexual solicitation, we’ll assume you mean gays are selling their lifestyle.

Really, I can’t even give credence to his “meaningless banter” when I try.

On to Dolly saying that no group should be catered to more than any other; hypocrisy at it’s finest. Mr. Dolly, would you say then, we shouldn’t have black history month or teach the history of abuse Native Americans suffered? History is history.

With respect to comments Mr. Dolly engaged with on the web page, to deny the similarities between the civil rights movement and that of gay rights is narrow-minded.

Aside from blacks not choosing to be black as an argument, consider the blacks who chose to date whites and vice versa. They were choosing to live and love freely in a society in which interracial couples weren’t the norm and they suffered unjustly for it.

Gays may be seen in mainstream media but many gay people are forced to live in secrecy because of the climate of hate in their communities.

For the same reasons we have a whole month dedicated to black history we should teach children that it is wrong to deny people, human beings, their God given right to live and let love.

It takes the minority having a voice, no matter how loud the opposition.

Andrew Ramirez