Monday, June 18, 2007

Here's a Disturbing Picture...

What's wrong with this picture? After all, it's just a little kid, right?

Wrong. It's a picture of a little kid at the protest against the Gay Pride Parade set to take place in Jerusalem this Thursday.

I can't speak for kids in the US, but when I was this kid's age (probably somewhere between 8 and 12) I had no concept of sex in and of itself, much less of homosexuality. It is EXTREMELY inappropriate to bring children to a protest such as this, children who shouldn't really understand what this protest is about. It just goes to further prove that none of this was done L'Shem Shamayim...

6 comments:

Orthonomics said...

Agreed. Leave the kids at home.

If you won't take your kids to the ballet, why in the world would you take them here?

Am Kshe Oref - A Stiff-Necked People said...

SL,

I don't know about you, I had no there was such a thing as sex at that age and when someone told me (after I turned 13:)), I didn't believe them at first. And that's me. Imagine these kids!! How could they possibly know?!

It just goes to prove my point that this wasn't done L'Shem Shamayim. It was done specifically to create a Chilul Hashem.

Head over to DovBear's blog, post titles "Punked" and read the thread. YIKES!!

Anonymous said...

Do you also think that it is appropriate to shield the kids in cheder when the parsha tells the stories about Lot, Yehuda & Tamar, Reuven & Bilha, Yoseph & Potifar's wife, etc etc, not to mention all of the sections that deal with arayos, niddah, zavah...

Am Kshe Oref - A Stiff-Necked People said...

At that age? Cheider kids? Yes. And having attended a "Cheider" in Israel, they really didn't expound on those areas until much later. In fact, sections having to do with sex in the gemara were skipped. When we asked why, we were told because it's not for us...

When we did learn those parts, we were given weird, nebulous reasons, not sexual ones.

What I'm saying is dealing with appropriateness for Cheider kids. It happens to be I personally disagree completely with this stance.

Orthonomics said...

I remember the first time I heard the word. . . . 3rd grade (9 years old) the boys were looking up the word in the dictionary and laughing. I didn't have a clue what was so funny, but laughed too.

In 5th grade (11 years old) we had an exercise where we needed to find words that were both adjectives and nouns. The shamazel I am, I suggested a word and was laughed at. The word I suggested was slang for a contraceptive. Innocent as I was, I smiled and said oops, but it took me until 8th grade to "get it." I was 14 at the time.

By 15, I think I actually comprehended what sex was. . . . the girl behind me in one of my classes was suffering the consequences of such.

So, there you have it! I have no idea what a Chareidi kid would be doing at a rally.

Speaking of teaching chumash, some BY schools won't use the word adultery. For me this is going too far. My parents taught the aseirot hadibrot and somehow the context made it understood you should not be hanging out with someone else's wife, although relationships were a blurry concept.

Anonymous said...

This was one of the things that really bugged me about the anti-gay-marriage protesters in MA. A lot of them brought little kids along, and had little kids chanting about sexual stuff that no little kid should know about, or holding signs with such things. Yes, the "pro" side brought their kids too, but in a much more innocent fashion, like "See, we are families too." And I have to say that in terms of sheer parenting skills, the gay couples were miles ahead of the antis at things like knowing when their kids needed a break, not yelling at them etc.