Health Textbooks in Texas to Change Wording About Marriage

Published: November 6, 2004 (NYTimes Online)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/national/06texts.html?th

There is a door in Texas, and it has been slightly ajar. There has traditionally been the tiniest space for free thinking–even in Texas. The reddest of the red states. But, that door has been slammed shut, and locked from the outside.

The language in the textbooks of Middle and High Schools have had to use something to describe marriages. And, now, thanks to the close-minded adults running that state (and spineless book editors), two major book publishers have replaced the open-ended language with closed terms. Specifically, the text books must replace any slippery language with specific terms like “man and a a woman,” and “marriage.” It is as if the lawmakers believe that they have the right to control how we think–whether they understand it that way or not.

My real issue here returns to language. We think within the constructs of our language. So, right now there is this construct called “civil unions.” Just the very concept of civil unions allow some discussion of same-sex marriages in the classroom, or an internal dialogue about difference. But, that construct is being eradicated from the minds of Texan children. I thought that the institution had banned the same-sex relationships–not give law-makers the authority to ban the right to talk about same sex marriages, or acknowledge that 39 states (at last count) recognize or might possibly recognize the institution, or that there is an entire segment of the American population that wants to be in a civil union.

In their defense, the editors that made the decision to alter their textbooks did not lose their contracts with the State of Texas.

Texas has been a sore spot for this country for quite some time–a bastion of self-determnation, racism, and close-minded-ness. There is a photo from the early 1900’s that shows a Texas ranger sitting proudly on a horse posing before a whole slew of dead Mexicans. It was part of the Texas Ranger’s infamous purging of Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and newly naturalized Americans that was the agreement in the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. It is a sickening photograph that rekindles my own memories of the pics as a kid where I would hold up a stringer of fish after a long day in the boat. The problem is that these are PEOPLE! And, an even bigger problem is that this was on ONE such photograph.

Then, we have the lovely tale of the three Texans who tied the African-American man up to the bumper of their truck and drug him down the road to his death. All of the people who sat on their front porch and watched a HUMAN-BEING tied to the bumper of a truck and drug down the street to his death should be held accountable for crimes against civilization. How do you keep sipping your lemonade and rocking in your chair after you witness something like that?

But, perhaps I have answered my own problem. How is that people can continue a terrible string of abuse, not value even basic freedoms, and openly practice racism? The answer very well could lie in language. By controlling the langauge of young thinkers, you can shape or control the very ideas of the future generations. You can control how the next wave of thinkers will behave. Hitler used a lot of language control, and his youth organization was extremely pro-active. In one swoop, the lawmakers that “encouraged” this to happen, and the spineless editors (who earned their Christmas bonuses for saving the contract) have allowed future generations of Texan children to go on believing that civil unions may actually be “crimes against nature,” “unnatural,” or “just, plain wrong”– three very appropriate terms for controlling the language and the thoughts of children.