Today in "It Boggles the Mind"

The Thanksgiving weekend lulled me into a pleasant sense of safety. Surrounded by the creamy vanilla steamer of human niceness, grateful for all that I had, while aware of work still to be done, I drifted in a high-carb haze, oblivious to how things apparently are.

I was, apparently, in great need of some serious mind boggling, and the universe delivered.

Two things. One terrible to the point of being nearly unbelievable. This first story laid out the spewed-forth words of Joe Rehyansky, a part-time magistrate in Hamilton County, Tennessee, who seems to really believe this whole idea of sexual-orientation conversion, only he apparently thinks that keeping lesbians in the military would be a good thing, cause male GIs would get a crack at converting them back to being good little straight ladies.

So they (the they in question being the folks who rally fiercely round the anti-LGBTQ flag and certainly Mr. Rehyansky) really think like this, don't they? They really think that the LGBT community is out to convert people because they seem to think that they can convert the LGBT community back. I suppose I knew this in theory, that they believed it. But it seemed so mind boggling of a false premise that I couldn't know it, until I saw it's mirror view flashed right back at me in bold letters…

If gays can convert straights, straights can convert gays!

I'm just sort of gobsmacked. Smacked right in the gob, people, and you know that don't feel right.

There is so much to break down in the story (from the LGBTQ angle, from the feminist perspective, from the human view) that I don't know where to begin, but luckily the amazingly talented and amazingly amazing Amanda Hess went ahead and did that for me. Read her and enjoy the smack-down, while I continue to sputter.

The other boggle moment has to do with bullying in Texas valley schools. The story is good in theory. School districts taking bullying seriously is a good thing, and I'm happy to read it. But, as I was reading this sentence, "We’re trying to create a culture within our schools where bullying is not allowed and to replace it with a culture of kindness," said Michelle del Castillo-Davis, a counselor at Stell Middle School. I kind of felt all wrong. I read it several times. I thought, what's wrong with this statement? Why am I reacting. I realized that it wasn't the reduction of bullying that got me, but question; Why wasn't there already a culture of kindness in the schools from the get go?

I admit I don't know anything at all about the culture of Valley schools, so my disbelief could (and probably does) indicate flat out naivete and Austin entitlement, but given that they are building a culture of kindness I am suspicious that there is currently not one. Which seems weird to me (as a parent) that schools wouldn't be inculcating kids with that kind of "do right by your fellow student" kind of thing from Pre-K.

And so I must go and investigate now, because the phrase just discombobulated me to the point of wondering A) What's going on outside of Austin (which already has it's problems) and B) Is it just part of the human experience to be an big mean jerk until someone forces you to be otherwise? Or C) Is it just the combination of the economy, impending class warfare, and under-resourced teachers and parents that has left the district to come up with PR strategies to solve a very complex problem?

All, likely. And so back out onto the Internets I go to figure some of this out, and get my head back on in the right direction.