Reason three hundred and seventy-two

...why my children will NEVER be educated in the public school system. Particularly here in California, home to increasingly moldy batches of fruit and nuts.

"LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE, Calif. (AP) - Parents are already giving bad reviews to La Canada High School's spring production "Bat Boy: The Musical."

Opposition is building because of themes of incest, rape and murder in the original stage production_ and the play doesn't even debut until June.

During a packed meeting of the La Canada Unified School District board last week, concerned parents asked that the production be canceled. Supporters of the musical decried the effort as censorship.

The satirical comedy is about a half-human, half-bat creature who faces alienation and bigotry. The off-Broadway production includes scenes depicting several dark themes, including incest, rape, bestiality and murder.

No action was taken by the school board, but several members said they supported the production as long as it is made more appropriate for high school students."

(Look it up - Google BAT BOY and LA CANADA. Wanting to know what the ruckus was about, I read the libretto. It is every bit as bad as it is reported to be. It was actually sickening for me to READ, much less imagine watching teenage children acting out live on a high school stage)

So, saying a prayer in school is illegal.

But bestiality, forcible rape, murder, and copulation scenes performed live on the stage of a public high school by 14-18 year old students is apparently hunky dory?

The depraved, ugly, sexually perverse content of this musical has no place in a public school system which is meant to foster the character development of and "educate" our American children. Is this what we want our children to 'learn' and be influenced by?

Really?

When 'Bat Boy' satisfies the criteria to be considered appropriate for consummation in a public high school, the words "hell" and "handbasket" spring readily to my mind. When our loftiest aspiration is to achieve the enlightened state of complete tolerarance, we do exactly that: tolerate EVERYTHING. This is amoral and destructive, allowing all sorts of unmitigated trash to stand on equal ground for access to our children's minds, psyches, and souls with Shakespeare, Keats, Socrates, Newton, Sondheim, Einstein, Rogers and Hammerstein, or Mozart. What a criminal disservice we are doing to our children with this kind of "education". The putrid content of the musical 'Bat Bay' is inappropriate for children of any age, period. The fact that it is welcomed openly when any notion of God or morality is legally and forcibly shunned in our public schools makes me literally heartsick and nauseous.

I begin to wonder how we allowed ourselves to get this far lost. Then I remember: when we remove God from the equation, we operate without benefit of any universally established moral compass whatsoever. Therefore, we are never lost - because there is no basis for that assessment. There is no north or south, no good or evil, no applied litmus tests for anything. Everything simply becomes part of the human experience, tolerated, acceptable, equal, allowable, OK. Nothing is evaluated on its merits because to do so would be judgmental ~ gasp ~ which is apparently the very worst trait attributable, in some circles (evidently including those with decision power over the choice of public high school musicals in southern California).

We are going to reap what we're sowing now for generations to come.

The public school system is never going to get their hands on my innocent, precious, sweet children. Not ever.