Pro-Homosexual Play Zanna, Don’t! Causes Controversy in High School

I’m beginning to wonder if there are any public school administrators who understand the concept of hubris. LifeSite News reported that Hartford Public High School in Hartford, Connecticut is embroiled in a controversy following the administration’s decision to allow the homosexuality-affirming play Zanna, Don’t! to be performed. The play is set in a high school in the inverted (or perverted) world of Heartsville where homosexuals are the socially dominant group and heterosexuals are closeted social pariahs. One of the central characters is Zanna, a Puck-like “fairy,” who uses his magic to match-make. The play includes girls intramural mechanical bull-riding, lesbian infidelity, and a musical within the musical in which the ban on heterosexuals serving in the military is challenged. Apparently, this puerile inversion passes as a clever conceit in our contemporary literary scene.

Hartford Public High School is divided into multiple “academies,” two of which attended the first performance. When two teenage male characters kiss, a group of high school students attending the play audibly expressed their disgust and walked out of the performance. Subsequently the play, which was scheduled to be performed two more times for other groups of students, became a source of community and national outrage.

A local Connecticut news report stated that the principal of one of the school’s academies “noted the importance of accepting homosexual intimacy as society accepts heterosexual intimacy.” What right has a government employee acting in his official capacity as a school official to decide or state that students should accept the unproven, non-factual belief that homosexual intimacy is equivalent to heterosexual intimacy?

Well, at least he’s honest — not even a pretense of neutrality on the topic of homosexuality. School administrators who were committed to neutrality on the contentious moral issue of homosexuality would never even implicitly suggest that schools have the right or obligation to promulgate the subjective moral assumption that homosexual “intimacy” is ontologically or morally analogous to heterosexuality. Their specious comparison of homosexuality to heterosexuality exposes the absurdity in such comparison in that no one could ever rationally argue that heterosexual acts or relationships are inherently morally flawed. Clearly, the Hartford HS administration has come to the moral conclusion that homosexual acts are good and right, and are determined to inculcate other people’s children with their moral conclusions.

Nursing Academy principal, David Chambers, explained that “It’s a balancing act of individual values and the expectations of the school.” It’s curious that the “individual values” of parents and students who believe volitional homosexual acts are immoral rarely coincide with the “expectations” of schools.

It’s curious that diverse views on this controversial topic are rarely explored in academia, which so self-righteously espouses “diversity” and “tolerance.” It’s curious that students in public high schools rarely if ever read the work of scholars who oppose adoption by homosexuals, or who oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage, or who challenge the soundness of the comparison of race to homosexuality. It’s curious that the prevailing liberal views held by hubristic academicians and their student proselytes are so rarely challenged.

According to CitizenLink, Chambers “said he considered sending an opt-out letter home with students, but decided not to because in the health care field, they’ll be exposed to all kinds of people.” The problem is not that the school is exposing students to different “kinds of people,” but rather that the school is exposing them to a particular moral view –only one moral view — of homosexual relationships. The problem is not that different “kinds of people” are present; the problem is with which kinds of actions and ideas are presented and how these actions and ideas are portrayed.

The phrase “kinds of people” is deceitful rhetoric employed to conceal the espousal of particular ideas. It’s easier to make a specious civil rights argument if you attempt to base it on a purported heritable identity or ontological foundation rather than a subjective feeling/volitional behavior foundation. Principal Chambers, however, unwittingly opens a Pandora’s Box of problems once he implicitly argues that subjective feelings and volitional acts constitute a “kind of person.”

Here are some questions for Chambers et al at Hartford HS:

• Should high school students who may pursue healthcare careers be exposed to affirming depictions of every kind of behavior they may encounter in the future?
• Should students be exposed to positive portrayals of pedophilia — or “minor-attracted persons” as they prefer to be called — since surely healthcare workers will be exposed to them in their healthcare professions.
• What about positive portrayals of consensual adult incest, paraphilias, and drug addiction?
• To be intellectual consistent, should school administrators seek to have students accept polyamorous intimacy in the same way that they accept intimacy between two people?
• Since health care workers often encounter theologically orthodox Christians, Orthodox Jews, and Muslims, should students be exposed to positive portrayals of them, including their views of volitional homosexual relationships and acts?

Homosexual “kinds of people” are actually heterosexual people who experience disordered attraction to their same sex and often act out those disordered attractions sexually. Every human is objectively heterosexual in that their bodies are designed for heterosexual activity; they procreate heterosexually; and only heterosexual activity is moral sexual activity.

Minor-attracted “kinds of people” are people who experience a disordered attraction to children and sometimes act out those disordered attractions sexually. Aggressive “kinds of people” are people who experience aggressive impulses and sometimes act out those impulses. Apotemnophiliac “kinds of people” are people who experience the disordered desire to be amputees (i.e., they wish to align their bodies with their self-conception) and sometimes act out those impulses by amputating healthy limbs. Perhaps Chamber wants to positively portray all of these “kinds of people,” their desires, and their actions.

I suspect he would not want to positively portray such “kinds of people,” or more accurately, he would not want to expose students to positive portrayals of such desires, actions, and/or relationships. And why not? If he were honest, he would likely say that these desires, actions, and/or relationships are unhealthy and immoral, which is precisely the salient point. Many people believe that homosexual acts and relationships are unhealthy and immoral. In order for school administrators to allow a controversial play that positively portrays homosexual acts and relationships, they had to have concluded that such acts and relationships are moral.

Government employees like Chambers are using public funds in public schools to promote their particular moral conclusions. They did not choose this play for aesthetic reasons, or to foster critical thinking, or to explore diverse viewpoints. They chose this play for ideological reasons. School administrators allowed this play to be performed in the hope that it would result in students adopting liberal moral and political views, which is decidedly not the right of government employees.

Too many “educators” have become self-righteous about their own moral and political views and puffed up with pride in their perception of their role in the lives of other people’s children. They arrogate to themselves the right to preach their moral and political views to children on the public dime; to censor absolutely all resources that challenge their views; and to conceal both their proselytizing and their censorship.

One final point needs to be made in light of the students’ expressions of disgust at a homosexual kiss: People are entirely justified in feeling disgust at images of homosexual intimacy, including kissing. Government-paid “educators” have no business communicating that such feelings are inappropriate or morally wrong. The belief that homosexual acts are analogous to heterosexual acts is not a fact. Rather, it is a disputable assumption that no public school teacher has the right to promote in his capacity as a government employee. And if homosexual acts are, in reality, perverse, revulsion is as legitimate an emotional response to them as it is to polygamous intimacy or pornography.

It is entirely appropriate for children, teens, and adults to feel disgust at images of two teenage boys kissing. What the Hartford HS administration and homosexual activists seek to do is use publicly funded schools to eradicate the moral disapproval of students and the feelings that accompany moral disapproval. Whereas, loud disruptive expressions of disgust in the middle of a play are not civil expressions of moral opposition, walking out of play in which profoundly immoral behavior is being depicted positively is entirely appropriate.

Choosing to invite students to positive depictions of morally corrupt sexual behavior is the greatest offense of all in this regrettable incident.