I am tired of hearing about how “good” people who act like cruel assholes are. How much they care.
Guess what? If you tell gay kids that they’re going to hell and that they aren’t welcome in your high school, you aren’t good.
If you tell pregnant teenagers that their lives are over and that they’re going to be homeless, you aren’t good.
Tiny Cat Pants 
I’m kinda fed up with the educational establishment, period. I’d like to see a lot more educating and less moralizing by all parties. That said, this lady is outrageous.
My three youngest kids are 15 (h.s. sophomore), 18 (college freshman) and 23 (college jr). They have straight friends, gay friends, black, Hispanic, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, etc friends. Pregnant friends, etc.
They know the difficulties of teen pregnancy, partially from watching others and partially because I told them of my experiences and difficulty from getting married at 19. (But, my life wasn’t over and neither was her’s. I got an M.S. degree and she did OK and lives in a nice house in West Knoxville.)
If you’re worried about these people and compassionate, at worst you’ll pray for them. You’ll do what you can to “help” although I question what kind of help this woman has to offer gays. Even if you don’t approve, shoplifiting of being gay? I say shoplifting.
Yeah, I’m completely tired of people acting like teen pregnancy is the end of the world and the downfall of society.
Being a teen parent is difficult. But millions of people have kids in their teens and they are fine parents and their kids turn out just fine. It doesn’t end your life or doom you to homelessness. It just makes that part of your life more difficult than it otherwise would be.
I wouldn’t advise anyone who wasn’t pregnant to have a kid in high school, but this abuse of teen parents has got to stop. There’s something really sick about a society that doesn’t teach any form of sex ed but abstinence, that makes abortions difficult or impossible to get (not to mention vilifies them), and then takes such glee in abusing teen parents.
And that’s leaving all my obvious problems with picking on gay kids unsaid.
My previous neighbor got pregnant as a teen (a young teen at that). She now has two degrees and works as a paralegal. Like you said, it makes life harder, but so do alot of things. And it’s alot easier to manage if you don’t have people trying to convince you that it’s impossible.
But one quibble, good people can be cruel. I am thinking of two family members of mine in particular. One of whom cheated on, then left, his wife while she was pregnant with their second child. That is absolutely morally reprehensible beyond words, but he’d lay down his life for a total stranger if such a situation arose. Is he a bad person or a decent person who did something horribly cruel and unimaginably awful? I don’t want to come off as ever justifying cruel or wrong behavior, nor do I think this woman should keep her job (which her behavior as made her unfit to do at this point), but she may possibly be a decent person who is just really wrong on this and could use some educating. I just grow nervous about saying people “aren’t good” because I think of times I’ve behaved less than admirably and the people who I know who have done things and said things that I truly find abhorrent and shudder to think that my or their “goodness” could be judged on one or two things alone.
I have religious reasons to believe that what she’s done is so bad for the spiritual well-being of the kids she has power over that we shouldn’t hesitate to affirm to them that something terrible has been done to them by a person they should have been able to trust to at least be neutral, so that they can take steps to counter it.
But I also believe, just in a secular way, that it puts people in danger when we try to promote a standard in which we all believe everyone is good and that we shouldn’t judge.
If you harm innocent people, I guess I don’t care what’s in your heart or whether there are other innocent people you help.
I’m not trying to judge the worthiness of your soul, you know? I’m trying to judge whether you’re safe to be around. And this woman is not safe for teenagers who are outside of her little moral box to be around.
I totally agree with your first two paragraphs. I guess, I just know that I’ve made mistakes in my life that have harmed innocent people to one degree or another and I care about people who have made mistakes in their lives that have harmed innocent people. I’d hate for those mistake to be the end all, be all of how my life is judged.
Perhaps it just comes down to how we’re interpreting being a “good person.” I guess I think actions (as well as beliefs, biases, etc.) can be good or bad, and people should absolutely face consequences for those things, but ‘m uncomfortab judging their overall goodness as a total person on the basis of a very small sample of what makes them them