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Just so no one in the audience had to risk catching a bad case of the gay during Cherry Knoll Elementary's Christmas concert, school officials decided to scrub the word "gay" from a performance of "Deck the Halls." Outrage ensued via Facebook and the school has since reportedly responded. Details follow.
First, according to a Slog source:
Cherry Knoll Elementary School, of which I am an alumna, is removing the word 'gay' from Deck The Halls at the children's Christmas concert. Please bring some attention to this issue! As far as I can find there has been no local press coverage, but you can see outrage from some community members at the school's Facebook page. Information to contact the school's administrators can be found here.
Folks were outraged over the de-gaying of the carol at the hands of the Traverse City, Michigan school and took to its Facebook page to convey their concerns.
Some comments included:
"I for one support this decision, and additionally express my concern at other salacious lyrics involving homonyms the teacher may have overlooked. For instance, geeses "laying," Santa "coming" and finding out who is "naughty," and of course any instance of the word "do" or "did." Also, singing is pretty gay in and of itself, the kids probably shouldn't be doing it at all. Seriously, is the music teacher snickering middle schooler? Did he watch too much Beavis and Butthead? What in blazes is wrong with them?"
"What a disgrace of a school. Honestly, teaching children in elementary school to discriminate? The world gay is not a dirty word. Just as straight is not a dirty word. Besides, in the context of the song, the word is simply using it's old fashioned meaning of 'happy' or 'cheerful'. It's hate and fear filled adults (who should not be teaching children ANYTHING) who instantly think of homosexuality when they hear that word. Children don't think anything of it. It's the frantic hand-wringing of homophobic teachers that are teaching these kids that perhaps there is something wrong with 'gay'. Way to go. Way to twist the minds of the youth to 'your' skewed views on human rights."
Following all the attention it is being reported that Cherry Knoll has decided, as of Monday morning, to let schoolchildren sing the original lyric.
Wonder what the music teacher was going to replace "don we now our gay apparel" with? Any ideas?
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