Reply #108: Easy question

[torrentprime]

"Suppose that JROTC didn't discriminate against Jewish kids"
You've already answered the question for me--thanks! By your own hypothetical, the JROTC does not discriminate against Jewish people, and as such should not be banned. That was easy.

It's not the schools fault, nor the JROTC's fault, nor the individual kids capable of being helped the JROTC; it is the military's fault, and since the JROTC is not the military itself, and does not discriminate against gay people (or Jewish people), it should not be banned from school districts with a non-discrimination policy.

Thanks for the softball; I thought you were going to pose a hard one!

Further errors with your analogy: "told all participants that, if they were Jewish, they were wasting their time and would never, ever be allowed to serve in the US military." Wasting their time? Wasting their time? Your hypo assumes that serving in the JROTC requires a desire to serve in the military later, or that the time spent in the JROTC is not its own reward. Who are you to tell these kids, gay or not, out or not, that they cannot participate in a program which by all accounts from the GLBT community on this thread, is a wonderful, rewarding, rich experience. Who are you to tell these kids that years of service and benefits from this program are all for nothing due to the assumed lack of advancement opportunities AFTER the program is over. Once again, you defeat your own argument--the program itself is non-discriminatory; the problems are after the program is over, from a different parent organization!

Who just took this option away from the kids, gay and straight? Who just took a great program and killed it for an entire community as a political protest against the program's parents? The "liberals" on the school board. Great. If I need community programs killed due to an ideological disagreement, I'll vote for Republicans.