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Insight News: Should gay teachers stay in the closet?














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Insight News: Should gay teachers stay in the closet?
















Teacher tells 2nd graders he is gay...Minneapolis School Board candidates weigh in http://www.insightnews.com/articles.asp?mode=display&articleID=2672

The above Insight News article did not include a statement by the Gina Bounds to which the Minneapolis School Board candidates responded: The candidates are being quoted out of context. And only one side of the story was presented to the school board candidates.

The Insight News article went even further in quoting my response out of context: The article did not include a part of my response indicating that I do not have a problem with teachers being gay, and that in sharing personal information with students, we should not have one standard for straight teachers and another standard for gay teachers.
There is also an interesting error in the transcript of Chris Stewart's initial comment:

"...The third thing that I want to say about this, and the last thing that I want to say about it, is that we have to be careful that we are not co-opted into a movement to become bait..."

Chris actually said "...we have to be careful that we are not co-opted into a movement to become bigots..." and goes on to say:

"Faith can drive us a lot of places, but what we have to understand as African Americans is that the same spirit that dragged us down for years, that spirit doesn’t die; it finds another group of people to do the same thing to. So we have to be careful not to be co-opted. We have to be careful to know what we want for our kids and for our families, and make schools do that, but not to get co-opted into a larger movement."

Below is the full quote from my response to the testimony of Gina Bounds as published in Insight News. (which is not my full response.)

"DOUG MANN: It strikes me as being inappropriate for the teacher to do that – not because of it being a gay lifestyle or anything, but sharing his personal information. I think that teachers have to be a little more sensitive. I think the administration should have seriously discussed that issue." [from the Insight News article, "Teacher tells 2nd graders he is gay...Minneapolis School Board candidates weigh in"]

The editing of my response gives a distorted and inaccurate portrayal of what I actually said at the forum regarding gay teachers sharing personal information with students at the Shiloh Temple public policy forum on Sept. 28. 2006
















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