Today is the birthday of Garrett Augustus Morgan.  He was born in 1877, the son of former slaves. He invented the traffic signal and the gas mask, and is possibly the first black man to own a car.

More evidence to show what you were given means less than what you do with it. Some people have everything and do nothing; some have nothing and do everything. And some have everything and will do anything to keep others from doing anything.

 Two headlines caught my attention this week. (Okay, more than two, because I have the attention span of a gnat and am always going off reading articles that have nothing to do with what I'm supposed to be looking for.)  One was on the Supreme Court's determination that the "Baptist" church from Kansas (that shall remain nameless because I don't want them getting any more publicity), that bastion of radical nutcases, had the right to picket military funerals with anti-gay signs. The other was about a principal of a high school in Corpus Christi, Texas, that cancelled ALL of the extracurricular activities and clubs at the school so she wouldn't be obliged to permit a Gay-Straight Alliance club to form at the school, as she would be on the basis of federal law. (I think it was federal law. I not only have the attention span of a gnat, I have the memory of one, too. I do know that some law or other was in question. Sorry.)

 The fact is, the Constitution specifically allows wack-job cultists to spread messages of hate, as long as they don't do it in a way that incites violence. Okay, so far the wack-jobs have been lucky in that their victims haven't gotten physical with them, but it is only a matter of time. I suspect that they are targeting military funerals in specific for that very reason; they're hoping that someone will attack them, and then they can go on record as being the "victims." Military funerals are, even more so than the average regular funeral, hotbeds of grief and suppressed anger, and sooner or later someone's going to snap. These are men and women who have died in the service of their country, who of all people deserve a graceful and loving send-off, and it is heartbreaking to see evil people with an agenda of hate using the grief of a family and a nation to push that agenda forward. They should be struck by lightning.

 But it's still their right to do so. Even if they are terrorists of the emotional sort. I think it was Voltaire (or maybe Balzac; I get them mixed up) who said "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

 The principal in Corpus Christi needs to hear that message. Rather than follow the spirit of the law and permit a club that she personally may not want to join (and who's asking her anyway) and that maybe goes against her personal beliefs, to form at a public school (and one, therefore, that must follow the laws of the government that funds it), she prefers to take away the privileges of all the students at the school. She is imposing her personal viewpoint on a public institution. This is not a matter of the principal's free speech. She is welcome to speak against the organization at any time: that is her right. But it is equally the right of the students to form the organization, as long as it complies with the accepted regulations of the school, and as long as this country does not permit discrimination on the basis of age, race, gender, or sexual orientation or any of the other things that are on the list, she is obliged to conform with that. She is a public employee, working at a public institution. She is paid by the taxpayers, and while administrators have a lot of leeway in decision-making, they must take into consideration what is not only in the best interest of the students, but what is the legal responsibility of the school in furthering those interests. She may not consider a Gay-Straight Alliance in the best interest of some of her students, but to cancel all clubs or student organizations is in the best interest of NONE of her students.

 In doing so, she has failed in her responsibility to her students, to her community, and to her employers.

 Sigh.