. . . at least not in states bordering Kansas. Today Spatula writes of a Missouri drama teacher forced to resign over such controversial fare as Grease, The Crucible and A Midsummer Night's Dream. For those who worried that this might be just an isolated case and not the tip of an emerging iceberg, fear not. From the other end of the U.S. heartland's axis of moronity, we now hear of the plight of Tresa Waggoner.
Waggoner, an elementary school music teacher in Bennett, Colorado, is a Christian, a gospel recording artist and a church choir director. She believes that teaching "is what God put me on this earth to do." She is also, according to some Bennett parents, a devil worshiper promoting homosexuality to her young (first-, second-, and third-grade) students.
Waggoner's sins? In advance of an Opera Colorado visit to Bennett, she played her students part of a children's video, "Who's Afraid of Opera?", which she found in the school's library. In the video, the famous soprano Joan Sutherland joins a cast of sock puppets in a scene from Gounod's Faust. She also introduced them to several basic opera facts, such as the classification of men's voices into bass and tenor, the use of props, and the concept of "trouser roles" (male characters played by women).
Waggoner claims she was just trying to do her job. Of all things.
But Bennett parents know better. They're no fools. They know that opera is just the leading edge of the secularist, socialist, homosexual-agenda wedge. All that talk of "trouser roles" was just to introduce the idea of women acting masculine (and let's just not talk about who played Juliet in Shakespeare's day!). And that "pact with the devil" business speaks for itself, notwithstanding the fact that in this case, at least, it turns out badly.
According to columnist Bill Johnson of the Rocky Mountain News, there is a subtext. Last Christmas Waggoner showed herself to be not just a lesbian devil worshiper, but a warrior against Christmas. Parents objected when the school Christmas play failed to include Christian songs. Waggoner, you see, believes in the separation of church and state. When she put on the same program in her church, she included explicitly Christian music. It was, after all, a church. But Waggoner feels that the public school setting is somehow different. "[I]n a public school, you really can't do that", she says. Yes, Tresa, you can, and in Bennett, Colorado you apparently must.
In response to the community outcry over "Who's Afraid?", Waggoner was suspended with pay until the end of the school year and forbidden to return to the classroom. Bennett mayor Karen Grossaint then resigned in protest; now Waggoner has followed suit. She explains that she didn't feel right being paid not to work, especially when the school district was also paying a substitute to do her job.
No indeed, we can't have teachers who will set that kind of example of personal integrity for their students, now, can we?
