{"id":8898,"date":"2015-01-16T11:20:21","date_gmt":"2015-01-16T16:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=8898"},"modified":"2015-01-16T12:18:21","modified_gmt":"2015-01-16T17:18:21","slug":"what-would-mlk-think-of-knechts-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=8898","title":{"rendered":"What would MLK think of Knecht’s comments?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is never right<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Mike McGann<\/strong>, Editor, The Times<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"MartLutherKingJr\"<\/a>

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/p><\/div>\n

As we approach the weekend of celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we will undoubtedly hear the inspiring quotes of his famous 1963 \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech.<\/p>\n

Even now, more than five decades later, the word resonate \u2014 I get a little chill every time I hear them, and a renewed hope that we can live in a country where we are judged by who we are as people, not by a label.<\/p>\n

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!\u201d Dr. King said.<\/p>\n

So I wonder what Dr. King might make of comments by Coatesville Area School District Board of Education member Laurie Knecht this week that, while it\u2019s bad to discriminate against folks for their ethnicity, religion or color, the school district doesn\u2019t really need to worry about preventing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.<\/p>\n

\u201cRace, sex, religion are just things that happen. Sexual preference is a behavior,\u201d said Knecht, during Tuesday\u2019s meeting, according to our Kyle Carrozza. \u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of pressure to be politically correct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s set aside the entirely too rich irony that these comments came on the night that the state NAACP and Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission signed off on a plan to recover from the Richard Como texting scandal \u2014 the ex superintendent who texted various racial and ethnic slurs about students and staff \u2014 and the fact that these comments were made at the final board meeting prior to Dr. King\u2019s birthday and a weekend of celebrations of his legacy of equality and justice or that Chester County\u2019s own Bayard Rustin, a close associate of Dr. King\u2019s, was a proud gay man.<\/p>\n

If these comments were made in the middle of July, they\u2019d be no less ignorant and worthy of derision.<\/p>\n

By most estimates, somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of of the population identifies as homosexual. The tired argument \u2014 largely disproved by science \u2014 that it is a choice, rather than a hardwired function only still has relevance in certain right-wing echo chambers, where science and fact are routinely dismissed as left-wing propaganda.<\/p>\n

That means that somewhere between 350 and 700 Coatesville Area School District students, dozens of staffers and thousands of residents of the school district were just informed by a school board member that they are inferior people. That they are wrong. That they should be shamed for who they are and it is all right for others to treat them as less than a human being.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a pile a horse manure.<\/p>\n

The only one who should be shamed \u2014 not because of creed, race or religion, but a lack in the content of her character \u2014 is Knecht.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t about \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d but about human decency and using an alleged \u201cideology\u201d to encourage hate against one group or another. It is deplorable, despicable and at the end of the day, unacceptable.<\/p>\n

We call on the greater Coatesville community to step up and say \u201cno\u201d to those who would embrace hate and ignorance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is never right By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times As we approach the weekend of celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we will undoubtedly hear the inspiring quotes of his famous 1963 \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech. Even now, more than five decades later, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,7],"tags":[100,187,5263,2624,5264],"class_list":["post-8898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-featured","tag-board-of-education","tag-coatesville-area-school-district","tag-discrimination","tag-laurie-knecht","tag-sexual-orientation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8900,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8898\/revisions\/8900"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}