Contrary to what some might think, my one post on the issue of Blaine and Prop 8 was not about Prop 8 or Blaine, it was about the treatment given to members, Diana and Barb, who tried to explain what the issue was that led to dueling conferences. One poster said there had been no elephant in the room until they dragged it in. Nonsense. I’ve been vaguely aware of this situation for some time but understood only the base facts and nothing about the organizational issues.
I did not participate in the Blaine/Prop 8 debate b/c I am not a tprs-er. I do believe that tprs will sooner rather than later become the dominant paradigm for fl teaching in the U.S. and elsewhere and may even spread across the curriculum. Story-telling is the most ancient and powerful way of transmitting knowledge; when I received my training in counseling – an extensive 60 hour graduate program – story-telling a la Erickson and others was to me the most fascinating form of therapy.
We all owe a great deal to Blaine for recognizing the power of Asher’s TPR and making this leap into a new world of teaching languages known as TPRS. All the people who have been instrumental in spreading the news, some of whom I had the pleasure of meeting early on, deserve our gratitude.
In reading the many posts, incl those from Blaine, on this unbelievably painful subject – I almost teared up reading Blaine’s post on the pain he has endured and can just imagine how horrible this must be for him – I have noticed a certain afliction called “tin ear”. Let me put it as bluntly as I can:
I have been married for 45 years. When I started dating my wife here in AZ, our marriage would have been illegal. By 1964, when we married, this anti-miscegenation law (LOOK IT UP IF YOU ARE TOO YOUNG TO KNOW WHAT IT MEANS – DO NOT ASSUME IT IS NOT IMPORTANT) had been taken off the books here but our marriage was still illegal in 18 states, until the Supreme Court (yes, the liberal Supreme Court) struck it down in 1967.
Had the AZ legislature not acted out of shame and face-saving to remove this hateful law, my wife and I could have been subjected to the same fate as the Lovings in Virginia, awakened out of a sound sleep in the wee hours of the morning by the sherrif breaking into our bedroom to arrest us.
By now, you might have figured out that my wife is not the same sex as me but that one of us is White (me)and the other Black (her). Believe me, people advanced the same arguments against so-called “interracial marriages” then as they do against same-sex marriage now. It was as inconceivable and “unbiblical” then as gay marriage is now.
What has bothered me is what bothered Bob Patrick, this immoral notion that it’s OK to destroy someone else’s life as long as you hide behind religion or that excuse I heard growing up, “That’s just the way I was raised.” Well, how about if how I was raised was to take your children away from you if you gained too much weight? Half the kids would be in foster care and there’d be so many, they’d have to go to gay couples. Think about it.