Father-daughter dances, currently banned in Cranston, Rhode Island after the ACLU and a single mother threatened to sue under the state anti-discrimination law, are one step closer to reinstatement.
The Rhode Island Senate has approved language amending the law to allow single-sex events if comparable events are provided for the other sex, via ProJo:
The Senate on Thursday approved a bill aimed at removing potential legal barriers to gender-specific activities — such as father-daughter dances — in Rhode Island’s public schools.
The vote was 33 to 3.
The measure was prompted by an uproar in Cranston last year after the School Committee canceled a father-daughter dance in the face of a civil-rights challenge by the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The bill now headed to the House would allow a school to “provide extracurricular activities for students of one sex, including… father-daughter/mother-son activities,” as long as “opportunities for reasonably comparable activities” are provided students of the other sex.”
The ACLU issued the following statement, per ProJo:
“We are very disappointed by the Senate’s vote today,” said ACLU executive director Steven Brown. “By allowing schools to segregate by sex any extra-curricular activity — whether it’s the chess club, debate team, or science club — the state is taking a giant leap backward in encouraging the reemergence of stereotypes about the abilities and interests of girls and boys.”
So expect schools to offer Mother-Son Dances (which I’m guessing will be sparsely attended).
The unanswered question is whether under the statute Cranston and other schools also need to have Father-Son and Mother-Daughter Dances.
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Comments
Are they insane? Really? Organize a mother daughter dance if you wish?
I swear you really can’t even make this stuff up anymore. No kidding, this takes the crazy cake.
No kid I ever knew wanted to be seen in public with a parent full stop. Gender does not matter.
And dancing with them ?
That is surely crueller than death for a 11+ .
You aren’t a dad, are you?
My daughters looked forward to daddy-daughter events. My kids did not date until they were 16, and the rite of passage for my girls involved me taking them out on a “date”. Analog for my sons with their mother.
It was an invaluable way to teach kids about the norms and manners for dating, dining out, etc.
I get the value of these events but RI has the highest unemployment in the country and this is what their spending time debating?
Sure. Why not. We are also discussing homosexual marriage and elective abortion of human life, among other dysfunctional behaviors. If anything, preserving the first-level of social organization, the family, and its inherent value to normal human development, is actually a refreshing break from the other nonsense.
The ACLU has forced the issue. We’re also spending a lot of time on things like crosses in our brokest city, not because they figured it would be a good time to argue about it, but because somebody else did.
No dancin but I did get to accompany my boy to day surgery for a knee recon . Sum thin tells me it was because I had the $10,000 on my plastic .
My girl told me I was not going to her wedding which is an entirely mute point because there is no wedding.
Kids!
Hehe mute & moot. Thanks autocorrect.
My favourite memory of school dances was my kids in primary school. Once a term the Police held a disco ( police vetted music ) . One. 11 year old boy had a particularly attractive young 30ish mother whom he told ..
” mum just drop me off & pick me up but stay a long long way away . Parents had to personally collect the kids – so Mum explained her position to the Police . The officer grinned & said – Madame you go home & we will phone you . So when boy wanted to leave the police did not allow him & as no one turned up , they took him to the police station . There they made him sweat it out until Mum came .
He took a long time to live that down.
Since the ACLU disregards differences born from biology, can I assume that they also oppose homosexual marriage. That they do not arbitrarily and capriciously discriminate between unions based on sexual or platonic relationships, forms and kinds, number and combinations? Do they also oppose arbitrary discrimination by age and stage of human development. Specifically, do they oppose elective abortions from “creation”?
If they want to dabble in the very premise of reality, then they must be comprehensive, and consistent. Otherwise, I can infer from their selective words and actions, that they are uniquely prejudiced with ulterior, unstated motives. This is not a good place from which to argue for a moral high ground.
Anyway, the biological imperative requires, and evolutionary fitness demands, that men and women feel comfortable in heterosexual arrangements. The relation between a mother and son, a father and daughter, is the platonic introduction to a productive relationship between men and women.
The single-parent family undermines the naturally-engendered, first-level of social organization. While it may be tolerated, there is no redeeming value to normalizing it.
Traditional values are slowly becoming illegal.
Traditional values are a product of human evolution (not Darwin’s theory, but the process and principles). Evolution is verboten when deemed an inconvenient obstacle to dreams of material (e.g. money), physical (e.g. sex), and ego (e.g. self-esteem) gratification.
“By allowing schools to segregate by sex any extra-curricular activity — whether it’s the chess club, debate team, or science club — the state is taking a giant leap backward in encouraging the reemergence of stereotypes about the abilities and interests of girls and boys.”
I’m confused.
So the ACLU is saying that schools should NOT have (for example) separate boys’ and girls’ basketball teams?
Steven Brown is reason #83594 that I left RI back in 1990.
Insanity abounds…
“The Senate on Thursday approved a bill aimed at removing potential legal barriers to gender-specific activities — such as father-daughter dances — in Rhode Island’s public schools.
The vote was 33 to 3.”
Do you think the Senate would approve 33 to 3, of the gender specific activity of something called MARRIAGE? Hmmmm…..
DOWNWORTHY.
Not sure I understand the issue. Is it that some daughters don’t have dads, and thereby get left out? Or is it the fear that cooler stuff that excludes girls will be offered to the boys, like father-son camping trips?
That was the problem with the original plaintiff but the complaint has been expanded to an objection to any sex-specific events. Because why wouldn’t they, right?