I had an awesome teacher for fifth grade who did a Shakespeare play each year with his class. Elementary kids can really understand Shakespeare in the original language, but I think that is the way to do it--spending a whole year on one play so they really have time to delve in, get to know it and love it.

I really identified with Eowyn from the Lord of the Rings as a kid.

Here are mine: The Bible and the Book of Mormon The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings The Chronicles of Narnia The Screwtape Letters Watership Down Harry Potter The Bronze Bow Shakespeare: Macbeth, a Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, sonnets Longfellow: The Song of Hiawatha, The Ride of Paul Revere, and especially Evangeline A Christmas Carol Oliver Twist The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables Little Women Heidi, The Secret Garden, The Little Princess Treasure Island poetry by Robert Louis Stevenson, Emily Dickenson, Robert Frost, Robert Burns Jane Eyre Pride and Prejudice & Sense and Sensibility Island of the Blue Dolphins Uncle Tom's Cabin Beowulf Cry the Beloved Country ETA: And Where the Red Fern Grows One I actually really deeply hated was Brave New World, but on the other hand, it led me to so much deep introspection and considering of my thoughts on human nature and historical/cultural trends that it feels like maybe it belongs on a list of books people should read.

I normally drive my family crazy by not wanting anything in particular, but this year I'm very excited to be getting a couch! Our comfy little love seat that I bought on sale at Salvation Army for $27.50 over seven years ago is really, really done in. My parents offered to put some money towards a couch for our Christmas gift, and I am paying for the rest of it out of some personal/birthday money. I found a really cute sectional on sale. It will be the first time we have ever had a piece of furniture new from the store. And we will all be able to sit on it together at the same time!

I'm still working my way through the Snopes articles and the sources. I haven't forgotten, just want to be thorough.

Neither one had any facts that contradicted the other, at least not that I noticed. The commentary in the two articles was obviously slanted very differently.

Have they? https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/28/morris-dees-splc-trump-southern-poverty-law-center-215312 "The SPLC has included Senator Rand Paul and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson among the neo-Nazis and white supremacists on its extremists lists (Paul for suggesting private businesses shouldn’t have to adhere to the Civil Rights Act and criticizing the Fair Housing Act; Carson for his views opposing same-sex marriage). The group did back down after it put Carson on the 2014 “extremist watch” list—removing his name and issuing an apology that earned a lot of coverage in the conservative media. “This week, as we’ve come under intense criticism for doing so, we’ve reviewed our profile and have concluded that it did not meet our standards,” the organization’s statement said, “so we have taken it down and apologize to Dr. Carson for having posted it.”" "William Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell and critic of the SPLC, says the group has wrapped itself in the mantle of the civil rights struggle to engage in partisan political crusading. “Time and again, I see the SPLC using the reputation it gained decades ago fighting the Klan as a tool to bludgeon mainstream politically conservative opponents,” he says. “For groups that do not threaten violence, the use of SPLC ‘hate group’ or ‘extremist’ designations frequently are exploited as an excuse to silence speech and speakers,” Jacobson adds. “It taints not only the group or person, but others who associate with them.”

Huh, interesting. I’ve never heard of a school that used locker rooms but the students didn’t change. However, it is apparent that was not normal practice at this school, or the boys wouldn’t have been undressed when the transgender student walked in for the first time.

This right here is exactly what this thread was about.

Thanks, Bill, I will look into it.

Thanks, SanDiegoMom! I will definitely look into this, but it will take me a while to do so and respond, as I have somewhere to be this afternoon.

I am aware of an instance when the guy who runs it was gone and the person left in charge put some racist satire junk up, but when the editor who was gone heard about it he had it removed and issued an apology. That’s all I’ve turned up. Lots of people railing against the Daily Wire, but I can’t seem to find anything where it gives examples of incorrect information. Do you have any suggestions for what stories to look for?

Oh, certainly, I don’t have a problem with people calling sources “fake news” if they have been shown to knowingly report false information, or leave out relevant information they have been made aware of.

I am aware it is very right biased. I am not aware of instances of dishonest reporting.

I’ve heard so many claims of “fake news” fly from people on both sides, I’ve become pretty skeptical of such claims unless there is some example of the source giving incorrect information or leaving out relevant information, and not printing a retraction when informed of their error. If writing a story with preconceived biases makes a news story “fake”, I don’t think I’ve ever read a “real” news story. Just because I think a journalist is wrong in how they interpret and present a story doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

I know that I would not be at all okay with a man watching my biologically-female child undress. I also wouldn’t feel very comfortable with that child changing with pubescent boys, supervised or unsupervised. So I guess that leaves the girls’ locker room or a private space to change. I would advocate for a private space if that was what my child felt more comfortable with. Maybe not a perfect solution, but it seems the safest while trying to be accommodating. If it were my son who’d been surprised in the locker room with this, I would be pretty upset. It seems like if the school administration feels it would infringe on the transgender child’s rights to dictate which locker room they could use, they should at least let the boys know, so that if they were uncomfortable being undressed in front of a person of the opposite biological sex they at least had the option to use a bathroom stall to change. No one should be forced to be in a situation where they are undressed in front of anyone they don’t want to be, ever, in my opinion.

I’d be interested to hear how parents here would want a situation like this handled if it were affecting their children (either imagining your kid in the position of the transgender child or the other boys using the locker room).

I am not trolling. I honestly wanted to have a conversation and hear people’s thoughts on this current event. You were provided a different news source where you could have read about the issue if you were here to engage in discussion rather than to attack people. I have asked anyone with any knowledge of this source providing incorrect information to let me know, which you have chosen not to do. On what basis do you label me a bigot? Solely because I read an article on a website you disapprove of? Seriously, man, you come here with no intention of actually finding out what we’re talking about or engaging in the conversation, start throwing around names, and say that I’m trolling?

Let’s be fair to Bill. Just because he is a man and was speaking rudely to women does not mean he was rude because we are women. That would only hold water if you had reason to believe he would not have spoken that way if we were men. I don’t think there’s any evidence to that assumption—I rather imagine he would have been just as brusque in his ad hominem attack and as unwilling to support his statements, whoever he was talking to. It’s unfair to label him a sexist without reason to believe that was his motivation.

Here’s the local source.

But what about this story? There haven’t been any instances of transgender students being bullied or disrespected. What about the article on the local news source? You don’t have to actually read the Daily Wire article to respond to the topic.

Actually you haven’t. You have made no comment on either article, from either source. I like you, Bill. I’ve enjoyed your posts a lot over the years. I know you have strong opinions, but I’m not sure why you feel the need to be rude instead of just sharing them.

May I ask those objecting to the source, are you opposed to the bias, or have you found instances in the past where it engaged in incorrect reporting? It definitely has a very strong conservative bias, but I am actually okay with that in a news source so long as they are open about it, don’t try to pass off their reporting as objective, or try to obscure facts. Some years back I despaired of finding an unbiased news source, and instead settled for reading from a variety of sources from both sides that are open about their bias. It seemed like the only way to get a somewhat balanced picture of what was going on in the world. It’s really a fascinating study, comparing which stories each side highlights and which each tries to sweep under the rug, and how each can spin the same story with the exact same facts to provide a different conclusion. But I have two different categories; those which need to be read with a grain of salt for bias, but whose facts are generally reliable, and those I have found to be dishonest, which I glance at very occasionally in order to get an idea of where people on either extreme are getting their perspectives from.

Do you have any thoughts you’d like to share on the story?

Not that at all, I just hadn’t seen that link yet when I wrote the post you quoted—I responded as soon as I saw the first objection to the Daily Wire, without reading the rest of the responses first.