Turn me on, dead man

Decades ago, when the Beatles were at the height of their popularity, an urban legend circulated that Paul McCartney was actually dead and had been replaced by a look-alike. Fans went so far as to say that the Beatles planted clues about Paul's death in their music. It was said that if you played Revolution Number 9 backwards, you'd hear the phrase "turn me on, dead man."

I never owned The White Album as a kid, so I never had the chance to spin the song on my turntable to see if it was true.

Regardless, it looks like I'll have a new weekly feature in my day job that has nothing to do with religion. Currently, I have to write a weekly parenting story for our features section on Sunday. But soon, I'll pass the parenting to someone else and write a weekly feature about someone in the community who has died within the last 7-10 days. I'll browse the obits, find a dearly departed that interests me, and start calling the relatives to probe into the deceased's life and tell his/her story. We'll see how it goes, but it has to be better than writing stories about how to pick a daycare, for example.
...
But speaking about parenting, perhaps you saw news accounts earlier this month about the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' (San Francisco, which explains a lot) ruling that determined that parents don't have the fundamental right to determine when their children learn about sex in school. If you haven't heard, and if you're a parent, this ruling should bother you.

The court ruled that "“there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children, either independent of their right to direct the upbringing and education of their children or encompassed by it."”

The ruling stemmed from a case filed by parents of students at Mesquite Elementary School in the Palmdale, Calif., school district after a survey administered at the school asked first-, third- and fifth-grade students questions of a sexual nature.

Seems the parents were told in a letter from the school that their first-, third- and fifth-grade students would be participating in a survey designed to establish a community baseline measure of the students' exposure to trauma, and to identify internal behaviors like depression and external behaviors likaggressionon.

Parents weren't told in the consent letter they were asked to sign and return that some of the survey questions would focus on sex, including questions about "“touching my private parts too much,"” "“thinking about touching other people'’s private parts"” and "“having sex feelings inside my body."

Needless to say, a few parents were unpleasantly surprised when their kids, ages 6-10, told them about the questions after the survey, and they filed a lawsuit against the school district. The 9th Circuit court rejected the claim, stating, "“We also hold that parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students."

Even though Oklahoma isn't under the jurisdiction of the 9th Circuit, Oklahoma Baptists this week passed a resolution against the court's opinion. You may not be under the 9th Circuit either, but if you're a parent of a child in public schools, this is a ruling you should be aware of. I'm only an adjunct parent at best to a five-year-old, and the last thing I want is him learning about sex in the first grade.