SC teacher compares gay-inclusive curriculum to witchcraft, pedophilia

South Carolina teacher Ira Thomas is a main reason why South Carolina has such a nasty reputation for being a backwards state.

Quite recently, he has been on religious right radio programs denouncing the National Education Association's gay-inclusive curriculum. Apparently he claims to have made a show out of objecting to it at the NEA's recent convention in Atlanta and is now going "on tour" talking about how he stood up against the so-called gay agenda.

Last week on one radio show, he compared gay-inclusive school curriculum to teaching children how to smoke crack. Over the weekend, he attempted to outdo this awful slander on another religious right radio show, hosted by Linda Harvey.

Harvey, who once advised parents to not allow their children to be seen by gay or lesbian physicians, gave Thomas carte blanche to just say some of the most awful things about NEA's gay-inclusive curriculum:

Transcript:

Thomas: There was another item about showing a video and I can’t remember what video but it was something dealing with the gay and lesbian [sic], but after sitting through several of those I decided it was time to let the voice be heard instead of sitting by and saying nothing.

 Harvey: So what did you eventually say?

Thomas: In short I told them as a person I do not have a right to discriminate, but by the same token they do not have a right to disseminate what I consider to be harmful material to children. I do not have a right to tell them what to choose but they also do not have a right to choose a curriculum for me that I feel is biblically wrong. It’s like with prayer, it’s not right for me to put my Christian beliefs on anybody, it is right for me to share the Gospel, but even Christ gave us the choice. If we’re going to go there then the next thing we know we’re going to have everybody forcing things on us in school that we don’t believe in from witchcraft to even the molestation from children. …

Thomas: I don’t want to take this analogy too far but the best one I can think of is the incident that happened at Penn State. So many people knew what was going wrong but no one spoke out for whatever reason. Even with this, we can believe it in our heart but if we don’t ever speak out we are allowing things to go and to keep going on and on. 

While Thomas has a right to his personal beliefs and I certainly don't want this situation to end up with him playing the martyr, I have to call him out on his self-righteous, sanctimonious tone.  Never have I heard such blatant ignorance wrapped up in false piety.

What's even worse is that he makes the decision that this curriculum is dangerous to children based upon his own personal religious beliefs. Thomas doesn't have that right.  And based upon his words, he certainly doesn't have that knowledge.

Lgbt-inclusive curriculum is not harmful to children. That's a common sense fact, just like the fact that Thomas and others in the teaching profession will be, if they have not already, encountering lgbt students whose very lives may depend upon that curriculum, which lets them know that they are perfectly normal being who they are.

What's dangerous in situations like this are teachers like Thomas who are willing to potentially sacrifice the lives of our lgbt children based on their own personal ignorance and ego.

Huge hat tip to Right Wing Watch for providing the material for this post.