NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–Students in the Maryland public school system are taught about the Pilgrims and Indians, but they are discouraged from any notion of giving thanks to God during the national holiday.
“We teach about Thanksgiving purely from a historical perspective, not from a religious perspective,” Charles Ridgell, St. Mary’s County Public Schools curriculum and instruction director, told Fox News.
But some educators, like Lissa Brown, the Maryland State Teacher’s Association assistant executive director, believe that complete censorship of religion is not beneficial to students.
“Schools don’t want to do anything that would influence or act against the religious preferences of their students,” she told Fox News. “But the whole subject of religious toleration is a part of our history and needs to be taught.”
Brown said teaching about a secular Thanksgiving counters George Washington’s intention in his Thanksgiving Day proclamation: “It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.”
Joel Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a constitutional rights defense organization, told Fox News that schools need to stop running from religion.
“School administrators need to get a backbone,” he said. “We are in real danger of throwing out cultural heritage in our country if we don’t know what Thanksgiving is really about.”
Whitehead added that education is inevitably going to offend someone, and educators must get beyond being politically correct.
SENATE HEARS DANGERS OF PORNOGRAPHY — Sen. Sam Brownback, R.-Kan., organized a panel discussion in the Senate Nov. 18 to consider the dangers caused to society by pornography addiction.
Mary Anne Layden, co-director of a sexual trauma program at the University of Pennsylvania, compared pornography’s effect on the brain to addiction to heroin or crack cocaine, according to the Associated Press. Layden asked Senators to push for billboards and bus ads warning people to avoid pornography, strip clubs and prostitutes.
“We’re so afraid to talk about sex in our society that we really give carte blanche to the people who are producing this kind of material,” James B. Weaver, a Virginia Tech professor who studies the impact of pornography, told the senators.
Weaver noted that studies show prolonged use of pornography leads to “sexual callousness, the erosion of family values and diminished sexual satisfaction,” the AP reported. He also said research “directly assessing the impact of pornography addiction on families and communities is rather limited.”
The panel discussed a variety of issues ranging from hardcore, violent pornography to complaints about the recent Monday Night Football opening featuring a naked woman enticing a football player, the AP said.
‘KINSEY’ DRAWS PROTEST — “Kinsey,” the film that celebrates the life of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, is drawing criticism from conservative groups such as Focus on the Family and Concerned Women for America.
Instead of using tactics that would attract more attention to the film, the groups are approaching the issue with a more subtle strategy.
“For those who think of people of faith as poor, uneducated and easy to command, I’m sure it would be amusing to see people praying outside of theaters,” Focus on the Family spokeswoman Kristi Hamrick said, according to The Washington Post. “But we want to have a serious intellectual conversation about who Kinsey was and what he did.”
Focus on the Family has been working for two years — since it learned the Kinsey film was being made — to enlist scholars outside the Christian community to help discredit Kinsey’s research.
Concerned Women for America has tapped Dr. Judith Reisman, who wrote a 1991 book called “Kinsey, Sex and Fraud,” as a prominent voice against Kinsey’s legacy, The Post said. CWA, the nation’s largest women’s group, has encouraged its members to hand out leaflets at theaters that accuse Kinsey of committing child sexual abuse and scientific fraud.
“Kinsey” was shown in just 36 theaters nationwide the weekend of Nov. 19-21 and grossed $569,000, according to boxofficemojo.com. That’s compared to the weekend’s top film, “National Treasure,” which opened in 3,017 theaters and grossed $35,298,000. The top four films for the weekend were rated either PG or G, while Kinsey is rated R.
GIBSON TAKES HIGH ROAD WITH ‘PASSION’ — Oscar marketing has become a multimillion-dollar task with major studios and production companies spending lavishly on advertising, parties and publicity campaigns in order to sway members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to give their film a coveted award. But as he did with the release of “The Passion of the Christ,” Mel Gibson is opting for a different promotion method, according to Reuters.
Gibson and his Icon Productions partner Bruce Davey have decided not to spend money on television, radio or print ads promoting The Passion but plan to distribute thousands of DVD copies of the film to members of the academy and to present promotional screenings, much like the screenings they employed before the film’s release.
“This film should be judged on artistic merit, not on who spends more money for advertising,” Davey said in a statement, according to Reuters. “That’s really what the academy was meant to be and to celebrate.”
The Passion grossed more than $600 million in worldwide ticket sales since its February debut and has now been released on DVD.
Frank Pierson, president of the academy, told the Los Angeles Times he appreciates Gibson’s decision to buck the system.
“This kind of aggressive, competitive campaigning is really destructive, and it’s destructive in every sense,” he said. “It puts the less well-heeled at a disadvantage the same way a political campaign does for less well-heeled candidates. But I also think it wearies the public and it cheapens the whole process.”
Nominations for the 77th Academy Awards will be announced Jan. 25.
BEER IN RETURN FOR BABY JESUS — An Australian beer company is offering six cases of beer for the safe return of the baby Jesus figure that belongs in its traditional nativity scene.
Officials at the South Australian Brewing Company, which sits along the River Torrens in Adelaide, said security tape shows a man climbing a fence and lifting the baby Jesus from the manger that has been part of the brewery’s Christmas display for 45 years.
“The Christmas riverbank display has been an icon event in South Australia and this is the first time that anything of this kind has happened,” Mark Powell, managing director for the brewery, told The Australian. “We are very concerned about the well-being of baby Jesus and we are calling for his swift and safe return.”
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