South Carolina lawmakers advance college cuts for promoting gay-themed books

[Miles]

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/south-carolin...-gay-books

Money can’t buy you love, but that doesn’t mean love – if it’s between two people of the same sex – can’t cost you money.

That’s the lesson two public universities in South Carolina learned this week when state lawmakers moved to cut funding in response to the schools’ promotion of gay-themed literature.

Last summer, the College of Charleston included in its “College Reads!” program a memoir titled “Fun Home,” in which the author writes about growing up with a closeted father as well as coming out as a lesbian herself. Meanwhile, the University of South Carolina Upstate assigned the book “Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio,” which tells the story of South Carolina’s first gay and lesbian show on the airwaves.

After receiving an email from a concerned parent whose daughter was attending the College of Charleston, Republican state Rep. Garry Smith proposed to cut what the universities spent on the books – $52,000 for the College of Charleston, and $17,142 for USC Upstate.

Smith told CNN he was “trying to hold the university accountable.”

“I think the university has to be reasonable and sensible to the feelings and beliefs of their students,” he said. “That was totally ignored here.”

Both schools maintain that they were not forcing the reading material on anyone.

“The College of Charleston has never required students to read the books in the College Reads program,” said Michael Robertson, spokesman for the school, in an email to the Post and Courier. “If students were opposed to the book, they were not forced to read it. If the course they were taking required them to read the book, they had the opportunity to drop out of that class and enter another class that did not have that requirement. At no time did the College of Charleston inform students that they were required to read the College Reads book.”

USC Upstate has also noted that students could choose to take English 101, for which “Out Loud” was assigned, in a different year with a different book, according to CNN.

The cuts, included in the 2014-2015 state budget, cleared the Higher Education subcommittee and the House Ways & Means committee last week, before heading to the full chamber for debate. There, the Republican-controlled House rejected four separate attempts to put the money back into the universities’ budgets. Even though the proposed cuts amount to a small percentage of the school’s overall funding, they still took up most of Monday’s floor discussion. The House is expected to vote on the budget later this week.

“Are we saying we don’t trust the college students enough to expose them to something they may not have seen before? We can’t let you read anything other than what we believe?” asked Democratic Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, according to the Associated Press. “What about the notion of freedom to have different views? Isn’t this what we go all over the globe fighting for?”

Lawmakers did not go so far as to withhold $1 million from all public colleges in the state unless they both banned “pornographic content” in the classroom and implemented required courses on the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights – an amendment that was also part of the budget package. Republican Rep. Mac Toole, the amendment’s sponsor, withdrew his provision on Tuesday,The State newspaper reported, though he said he did not see any irony in sponsoring an amendment that called for teaching the Constitution while simultaneously censoring content.

“Anybody who supports pornography in an education process has got to have a sick mind,” he said.

This is my state. People with sick minds accusing normal, decent human beings of having sick minds. Mac Toole, kindly suck a tailpipe.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

This is what happens when we let politicians to thrive unchecked, instead of having them all clustered at the bottom of the ocean like God intended.....

[nfisher1226]

This is one of my biggest complaints about certain religious people. There's this notion that all humans are so week their behavior will be influenced by what they read, see, or hear. It shows they actually have a lower opinion of their fellow man than the average atheist. I mean, I personally don't really believe in god at this point but still manage to treat my fellow human beings decently, which is the fundamental basis of morality in my opinion. Treat other people decently.

The organized religion take is often more along the lines of, we have to protect people from materials which would cause them to become evil, because they're too weak to make their own decisions and form their own views based on their own morality.

Honestly, even children are worthy of more respect than that.

[Woollyhats]

Wow, assuming each student pays something like $10k or even 5K for tuition, I'm sure that these universities are just suffering.

What is really suffering from a non-sarcastic viewpoint is these politicians respect for education, and the other more important things they should have been worrying about instead of this. The utter morons...

[Sylph]

Wherever you go, Politics should suck a whale dick :|


They need to stop penetrating people with their ideals and beliefs, this is 2014. Ain't nobody got time for that :I

[southbiochem]

Aren't colleges supposed to be secular by law? Meaning, no single religiously oriented political law can be placed on education?

This would be quite an example of that no?

Am I off base here?

besides the "king cotton" thing, the Murlz, Charleston and Myrtle Beach I know squad about SC.

[Lilitu]

What strikes me as weird is that a 'concerened parent' apparently had the ability to comment on the college?

I thought that parents have virtually no say in tertiary education institutions, since the vast majority of students are legal adults? Or is that different in Sth carolina?

And even if they did, shouldn't it be the student who would be concerend rather than the parent?

its just that that sounds like a high school situation rather than a tertiary education thing. It sounds weird.

[747XL29]

What strikes me as weird is that a 'concerened parent' apparently had the ability to comment on the college?

I thought that parents have virtually no say in tertiary education institutions, since the vast majority of students are legal adults? Or is that different in Sth carolina?

And even if they did, shouldn't it be the student who would be concerend rather than the parent?

its just that that sounds like a high school situation rather than a tertiary education thing. It sounds weird.

Parent pays adult "child's" tuition, parent knows politician and is most likely a donor and politician makes big production out of something idiotic in order to appease parents/church. College of Charleston is a traditionally liberal school in a beautiful city. This will not fly in the long run and is most likely nothing more than a pseudo-conservative (not in my view of conservatism) kissing the ass of some local Southern Baptists that most likely think way differently than their kids do.

South Carolina State politics

While I do not live there my avatar is from the city of Charleston on the Battery, pretty much where the civil war began. Love that city.

[Miles]

Woolly's right, substantively the cuts are a drop in the ocean for these schools. It's the fucking principle of the thing that pisses me off. Suds, public universities can't have religious affiliation, but I don't think the bill explicitly mentions religious reasoning (even though it's obvious what kind of reasoning went into it), so it slips by. And Lil, pretty much what 747 said. It blows my mind the utter mindlessness that gets by in our state house while actual problems just sort of fester...

[Chase]

“Anybody who supports pornography in an education process has got to have a sick mind,” he said.

Correct me if I am wrong, but in the Judaic Christian religions, a proper Bible education is demanded among the Christian children.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+23

Ezekiel 23:17-21 NIV
17 Then the Babylonians came to her, to the bed of love, and in their lust they defiled her. After she had been defiled by them, she turned away from them in disgust. 18 When she carried on her prostitution openly and exposed her naked body, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister. 19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. 21 So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.

I also suggest going to that same biblegateway.com and reading that passage in the King James Version.

So... Representative Smith, harlots lusting after men with donkey genitals and emissions the size of horse emissions... .........................................................
well if a story about a lesbian is too pornographic for college students then the word of God, is just as pornographic for elementary students yet Christians continue to make their children read it and demand us secularists read it too.
So, I'm just a little perplexed.