California kindergartners now, by state law, must learn about homosexual history and accomplishments. Columnist Michael Medved says it’s political correctness run amok. Writing in The Daily Beast, an internet news site. he writes:
Thanks to California’s newly enacted “gay history” law, William Rufus Devane King will finally receive the comprehensive classroom attention that previous generations of educators had so cruelly denied him.
This thoroughly obscure Dixie politician left behind no major accomplishments or stirring speeches, but he represents precisely the sort of forgotten figure the Golden State legislation means to emphasize in retelling the story of America for an enlightened new generation. Many experts believe that King might well qualify as the nation’s first gay vice president.
In signing the bill last week, Gov. Jerry Brown denounced “discrimination in education” and insisted “history should be honest.” According to the governor, the legislation now “ensures that the important contributions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in our history books … It represents an important step forward for our state.”
The new law requires that public-school textbooks and curricula, beginning with kindergarten, should feature “the accomplishments of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans.”
Vice President King, who served as a congressman from North Carolina and senator from Alabama prior to his election to the nation’s second-highest office in 1852, may have qualified in two of the new protected categories: as both a “gay” and “transgendered American.”