Democratic Candidates Say They’re OK With Second-Grade Teacher Reading Gay Prince Fairy Tale

(FOX) – A fairy tale about two princes falling in love sparked a backlash — and a lawsuit — against a teacher and a school last year when it was read to a second-grade class in Massachusetts.

But the three frontrunners in the Democratic presidential race suggested Wednesday night at their debate in New Hampshire that they’d support reading the controversial book to children as part of a school curriculum.

Moderator Tim Russert asked John Edwards, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton whether they’d be comfortable having the story — called “King & King” — read to their children in school.

Edwards gave the first and most definitive answer — a resounding and instant “yes, absolutely” — although he added that it “might be a little tough” for second-graders.

Obama agreed with Edwards and revealed that his wife has already spoken to his 6- and 9-year-old daughters about same-sex marriage.

Clinton said she believes it’s up to parents to decide how to handle such topics, but added that it’s important to teach kids about the “many differences that are in the world.”

Same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts, and, as Russert pointed out Wednesday, most of the Democratic candidates have said they oppose it. But though they don’t back the legislation, they apparently think it’s OK to teach elementary-school students about gay marriage.

“I want my children to understand everything about the difficulties that gay and lesbian couples are faced with every day, the discrimination that they’re faced with every single day of their lives,” Edwards said. “I suspect my two younger children, Emma Claire, who’s 9, and Jack, who’s 7, will reach the same conclusion that my daughter Cate, who’s 25, has reached — which is, she doesn’t understand why her dad is not in favor of same-sex marriage.”

The 2004 vice presidential candidate and former North Carolina senator said he doesn’t want to influence his kids’ opinions about the issue.

“I don’t want to make that decision on behalf of my children,” he said. “I want my children to be able to make that decision on behalf of themselves, and I want them to be exposed to all the information, even in — did you say second grade? Second grade might be a little tough, but even in second grade to be exposed to all those possibilities, because I don’t want to impose my view. Nobody made me God.”

Obama told Russert that his sentiments are similar to those of Edwards, and, when asked whether he’d sat down to talk about same-sex marriage with his young daughters, he replied that his wife had.

“The fact is, my 9-year-old and my 6-year-old I think are already aware that there are same-sex couples,” the Illinois senator told the debate. “One of the things I want to communicate to my children is not to be afraid of people who are different. …. One of the things I think the next president has to do is stop fanning people’s fears. If we spend all our time feeding the American people fear and conflict and division, then they become fearful and conflicted and divided.”

Clinton said she respects the viewpoints of Obama and Edwards, but she sidestepped the question of whether she’d be comfortable having a storybook like “King & King” read to her own child at that age.

“With respect to your individual children, that is such a matter of parental discretion,” Clinton said. “Obviously, it is better to try to … help your children understand the many differences that are in the world. … And that goes far beyond sexual orientation. So I think that this issue of gays and lesbians and their rights will remain an important one in our country.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who is vying for the Republican nomination for president, weighed in afterward with a statement accusing the Democratic candidates of being “out of touch” with America.

“Not one candidate was uncomfortable with young children learning about same-sex marriage in the second grade,” Romney said in the statement. “This is a subject that should be left to parents, not public school teachers. We need to strengthen our families by passing a federal marriage amendment and also insisting on marriage before having children. Change in Washington requires Democrats with the courage to stand up to their ultra liberal base and do what’s right for our children.”

Some Lexington, Mass., parents were livid that a Joseph Estabrook Elementary School teacher read “King & King” to their second-grade children in class.

The Dutch tale, which has been translated into English, is about a prince whose mother pressures him to find a princess but who ends up falling in love with and marrying the brother of one of the prospective brides instead.

Last year, a judge dismissed a federal lawsuit brought by two sets of parents of students in the class who objected to the introduction of homosexual themes to their 7-year-olds without alerting them first, on the grounds that it was a violation of the state’s sex-education parental notification clause.

School officials stood by their decision to teach about different kinds of marriage and said that Massachusetts law requires them to do so.

And now Barack is denying that he never said that children should be taught in kindergarten about same sex marriage. Evidently he can’t remember the stances he takes nor can he remember his lies, gaffs and mistakes – and he’s running for the highest office in the land – WTF.

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick Belongs in Denver

Shame on Barack Obama, Howard Dean, and all of the other “inclusive” liberals for ripping the Welcome mat out from under Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick at the convention site in Denver.

According to an AP report, “Barack Obama doesn’t want Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his legal troubles to be a distraction at the upcoming Democratic National Convention.”

What a hypocritical outrage!

All of this scorn heaped upon Da Mayor just because he faces eight felony charges in a perjury case and two felony charges in an assault case.

Why should “alleged” behavior prevent the Democrat mayor of a major American city from serving as a superdelegate during the crowning of America’s presumptive 44th president and First-ever Messiah?

After all, the Democrats have cleared the way for former President Bill Clinton, a perjurer and sexual predator, to address the assembled masses.

Democrats are mostly felons and liars anyhow, so what is the point?

Why not show the same level of respect for Mayor Kilpatrick as is being extended to an impeached president?

What is that you say? By court order, Kilpatrick must wear an electronic monitoring device as part of his bond in an assault case?

So just what the hell do Democrats have against poor black dudes manacled to electronic monitoring devices by racist judges?

In truth, that electronic monitoring devise is all the more reason for welcoming Kilpatrick to the festivities since he will be a living, breathing testament to the shackles still enslaving black Americans.

A shackled Mayor Kilpatrick would be a perfect illustration of why change, ALA Barack Obama, is so vital to America!

Two words of wisdom for team Obama:

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick Belongs in Denver! and,

Let Kilpatrick be Kilpatrick!

Trivial Pursuits

Enough sniping. Barack Obama should accept John McCain’s offer on town hall meetings.

“WE’VE HAD about as positive a presidential campaign that we’ve seen in maybe a generation,” Barack Obama told Fox Business Network yesterday. Perhaps, but that’s not saying much. The gravity of the issues — war and terrorism abroad, an economy struggling with soaring energy prices and mounting foreclosures at home — is belied by the triviality of the campaign debate. The political discourse is dominated by misleading sound bites and blistering e-mail accusations. Each campaign pounces on a misstep — or alleged misstep — by the other, or someone loosely associated with the other, and seeks to inflate it into the telling faux pas of the day, or at least the hour. In this, the campaigns are aided and abetted by a 24-7 news mentality that needs fresh, and easily digestible, material to keep the audience entertained without taxing its attention span.

This is not, as Mr. Obama‘s comments suggest, a new development, yet the velocity, ferocity and constancy of the assaults have intensified in this cycle. The uproar over Obama vetter James A. Johnson gives way to the uproar over John McCain adviser Charles R. Black Jr. Neither faux scandal offers particular insight into how either candidate would handle the weighty issues facing the next president. Little matter. No shot remains untaken, no derogatory adjective goes unused. Why debate health-care policy when you can attack a surrogate? The theory seems to be that the victor is whichever campaign can yell “flip-flop” the loudest.

The sad part is that the country will be choosing between two presidential candidates who can do better — and who, as Post reporter Dan Balz correctly noted the other day, have said they want to run a different, more civil and more substantive campaign. Indeed, underneath the volleys of vicious triviality, the candidates are engaged in serious discussion, and serious disagreement, about important issues, from tax policy to treatment of detainees to health care. On energy, for instance, Mr. McCain wants to lift the ban on offshore drilling; Mr. Obama does not. Mr. McCain pushes for an expansion of nuclear power; Mr. Obama is more skeptical of nuclear energy and attacks Mr. McCain’s support for a storage facility at Yucca Mountain. Both men support a cap-and-trade regime to address climate change, but there are important differences between their approaches.

The sooner the sniping stops and the serious discussion starts, the better off the country will be — and the best way to achieve that would be for the candidates to meet, one-on-one, as often as possible. Mr. McCain’s proposal to hold weekly town hall meetings was — as the Obama campaign said — “appealing.” That was more than three weeks ago. Since then, the Obama campaign has countered with the offer of a single town hall meeting, on nobody-will-be-watching July 4, and a second debate on foreign policy — this in addition to the three traditional fall debates. Mr. Obama has written that “one of my favorite tasks of being a senator is hosting town hall meetings.” He launched his campaign decrying “the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial.” Now, he should seize the opportunity to practice the change he preaches.

Obama as You’ve Never Known Him!

Here are some things we can look forward to learning about Barack Obama:

· That he was mentored in high school by a member of the Soviet-controlled Communist Party.

· That he launched his Illinois state Senate campaign in the home of a terrorist and a killer.

· That while serving as a state senator, he was a member of a socialist front group.

· That his affiliations are so dodgy that he would have trouble getting a government security clearance.

· That there is reason to doubt his “loyalty to the United States.”

These and many other implausible accusations were offered by a group of conservatives yesterday — including a living relic from the House Committee on Un-American Activities — in a Capitol Hill basement. The charges ranged from the absurd to the merely questionable, but anybody who watched the Swift Boat campaign of 2004 make John Kerry look like a war criminal knows that’s not the point.

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy took a blow with Hillary Clinton‘s collapse. But it is regrouping, and finding plenty of sinister things to say about Obama — even if he didn’t trade cattle futures.

The group, assembled by something called America’s Survival Inc., gathered in the basement of Ebenezer Coffee House at Second and F streets NE. They shared the stage with a big drum set, and posters documenting items they would seek to tie to Obama: an SDS newsletter from 1969 (when he was 7), and a police killing from 1970 (when he was 8).

“We believe that any public figure with links to foreign and hostile interests should be asked to explain those associations,” the organizer, Cliff Kincaid, told about two dozen conservatives and a few reporters. “In the case of Obama, a relatively new figure on the national scene, we submit the facts suggest that he would have serious difficulty getting a security clearance in the United States government. An FBI background check was once used to examine one’s character, loyalty to the United States, and associations.”

“He’s a member of an organization [that is] openly a front for two socialist groups,” reported another participant, Trevor Loudon.

“Obama was raised and educated in a very Marxist-rich environment, which often would limit his worldview,” reported a third, Max Friedman.

But the star of the show was the ancient Herbert Romerstein, who once plied his trade for the Un-American Activities committee. “We decided to start going back and seeing what things influenced him even before he was born,” Romerstein announced without a trace of irony, before tying Obama to the Communist Party of the 1930s in Hawaii and Soviet spies on the island. “This is the atmosphere that young Barack Obama grew up in.”

The smoking gun? Obama’s “mentor” during his teens, according to Kincaid, was “a key member of a Soviet-controlled network that was sponsored by Moscow and active in Hawaii.”

These accusations fall somewhere between guilt by association and guilt by invention, but the accusers were just getting started.

In college, Obama “admits selecting Marxist professors among his friends and attending socialist conferences,” Kincaid went on. In Chicago, he said, “Obama launched his political career back in 1995 at the home of communist-terrorist Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn,” the two Weather Underground figures who have already made a cameo in the campaign. Kincaid then made the unilateral decision to accuse Dohrn of the 1970 killing of a policeman, a charge no prosecutor has made.

“The Weather Underground terrorists,” Romerstein added, “were instrumental in getting him to office in the first place.”

Those charges were relatively benign compared with the questions. One inquired about the link between “the American left and Islamofascists.” Another asked about nefarious influences on Michelle Obama. A third raised the possibility that Obama’s “change” slogan is based on the 1961 communist “Movement for Change.”

“It’s clear that the communists and the socialists are backing him,” Kincaid confirmed.

The questions continued: “The Obama-Muslim connection . . . the background of Michelle Obama . . . How he gave $23,000 to this church . . . Was it connected with Tony Rezko . . . the results from Gary, Indiana, which were so late in being released.”

It was beginning to sound like a UFO convention. But the panelists took it seriously, firing questions back at the audience. “Was Barack Obama working for Bill Ayers?” Kincaid wondered aloud. Romerstein demanded: “How come for 20 years he sat in the pews and listened to a raving anti-American racist? How did he bring his two young children to this church to hear Wright rave on?”

The evidence was compelling enough for participant Friedman. For him, the Rosetta Stone was Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, who Friedman alleged was the protege of a man with “a Communist Party-front record” in Chicago. “The more I look at this, I’m seeing there are a lot of red-diaper babies around here,” he deduced. “By putting these pieces of the puzzle together, I’m beginning to see something much bigger.”