Talk:Joseph Estabrook School

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[edit] Controversy

I've tried to make the discussion as neutral as possible. This section:

Ever since his arrest for trespassing, he and his family have been the victims of a pro-homosexual smear campaign in Lexington. In this latest attack, Parker’s first grader was assaulted on the playground by eight to ten children on the second anniversary of the imposition of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts by the Supreme Judicial Court.

These young hoodlums surrounded Parker’s son on the playground, threw him against a wall and began punching him in the chest, stomach, and genital area. As he fell to the ground, one of the thugs said, “Now you can finish him off.” Fortunately, one girl ran to get a playground aide to stop the beating.

I had to remove because it really needs to be sourced. If whoever wrote this has first-hand knowledge of the events, that unfortunately is not good enough for inclusion in wikipedia, which requires that content be verifiable and contain no original research.

I also removed this:

Lexington boasts that it is among the most "tolerant" and "welcoming" towns in Massachusetts, but a wave of intolerance and hostility met a group of parents who had peacefully assembled to air a grievance. At least 200 pro-gay counter-demonstrators supporting his ban from school property first gathered at the nearby Visitor's Center, and then lined Bedford Street (bordering the Battle Green) with anti-Parker signs and slogans. Participating in the counter-demonstration were Helen Cohen, Chairman of the Lexington School Committee, and Tom Griffiths, a School Committee member. Also identified in the crowd were Jeanne Krieger, member of the Lexington Board of Selectman, Rabbi Howard Jaffee of Temple Isaiah, Rev. Judy Brain, Pastor of Pilgrim Congregational Church, and Rev. Bill Clark, Senior Pastor of the First Unitarian Parish in Lexington.

Calling a demonstration "intolerant" is POV and needs to be done in a more objective way. Aren't all protests implicitly refusing to tolerate the opposing point of view? Also calling them "pro-gay" is helplessly simplistic and almost meaningless, I think. At the very least it needs to be clarified a lot. And I'm not sure what all that about the visitor's center is about... it's "nearby" to what? I know it's not near the school.

Naming names on the demonstrators is certainly not appropriate (I suppose their jobs might be, but I doubt it), as it could only possibly be relevant to locals. This is an encyclopedia for general consumption. Staecker 21:00, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Those all seem like good removals. I reduced the amount of text given to Fred Phelp's group. Odious as Parker is, he's no Phelpsian, and the presence of Phelps and his eight or so worldwide followers was not contemplated or welcomed by Parker and wasn't a big part of the controversy. Herostratus 04:21, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Those two sections appear to be copied directly from articles on the Traditional Values Coalition and Article 8 Alliance websites . . . which might explain the "nearby" thing. Good removal, especially because the playground incident turned out to have nothing to do with Parker's politics.

In 2006, David Parker, his wife, and another couple sued Lexington Public School officials over the book. - This isn't quite accurate. The other couple (the Wirthlins) actually sued over a different book that was read in their son's 2nd grade classroom. I'm not sure how much detail the article needs, though . . . White-hot-smoking-electric-fireworks-jellyfish 03:55, 8 November 2006 (UTC)