Good that the school moved to a secular venue but as someone who went to schools who don't hold graduation ceremonies the sheer amount of money spent on it when public schools lack funding is incomprehensible.
Public schools in the US waste so much money on not teaching children, it literally makes me nauseous sometimes. See Sko Hayes post somewhere here about the 35 million dollar *high school* football stadium.
I don't disagree about the idiocy of football in HS and the amount of money spent on it or the pampering of the football players at the expense of their and their fellow students' education but comparing that to HS graduation is apple and oranges.
Fair point, but I was more making a statement about priorities. It's not that I want them to spend millions on graduation, I just want them to put money into things that actually teach the students. Fuck, teenagers shouldn't even be playing football with what we know about CTE, but that's a tangent/rant I'll save for another day. ;)
Americans place a baffling amount of value on "rites of passage" The amount of money spent on weddings (both straight and gay) is downright obscene, the more so since the only function the overpriced shows have is to let some pampered woman (or guy) feel like a Disney princess for a day. The only thing more grotesque than American wedding rituals are American funeral rituals. Just burn the damn thing or plug it in the ground and be done with it, fer chrissake. It's not as if these damnfool rituals actually accomplish anything except to make somebody feel oh so special. Humbug!
I never thought I'd go to my college graduation. But it took me 14 years, a lot of it already working in my career. I decided it was important to mark the end of my life as a student, so I did it.
And dammit, I deserve to feel like a Disney princess. That's why I want to have it at Disney World. And at the rate I'm going Ronnie will be dead and buried before that happens.
What’s wrong with paying to make someone feel special, I could list tons of things worse than that that we could be and do spend ridiculous sums of money on. Since this world isn’t fair, and can be downright miserable, I think making people feel nice or special or even important for a day or just remembering who they were at the end is a worthy endeavor. There should be reasonable expectations associated with these things and I do see some weddings and parties going over the top, but if it doesn’t hurt someone else or put themselves into insurmountable debt, I’m cool with it. Life’s gonna shit on us the rest of our lives, might as well get a few special days in there if we can.
There are plenty of saner ways to make someone feel good than spending four figures on a silly dress they'll wear for one goddamned day. You can buy a friggin' ice cream maker for a hell of a lot less, and get a lot more use out of it. But of course in a consumerist society, wasting money on nonsense is a way of life.
About ten years ago I helped an old friend make the arrangements for her wedding. The cake alone cost nearly five hundred smackers. When she told me that and I gave her the side-eye, she told me, shamefaced, "I know it's silly, but I just can't help myself." A nice, paper-trained American consumer.
This is not a uniquely American thing, or a consumerist thing, most cultures around the world put a lot of effort and money into coming of age, marriage, and funeral ceremonies. Although I agree a lot of these activities can be wasteful, they are also important occassions where friends and families can come together and celebrate the life and death of a friend or family member.
I say, if you can afford to pay for a lavish thing, go ahead and do it if it's what you and your loved ones desire; if your economic condition doesn't allow for a big ceremony or you simply don't want one, you definitely shouldn't feel pressured into having one. We shouldn't judge one or the other.
We have something called "prize-giving", where students are given books for coming 1st in a subject or whatever, and are recognised for other things. But it's held in the school hall usually – except for maybe some elite schools who have more students than can fit in their school hall. But even so they often have a senior and a junior ceremony. Can't imagine paying $28,000 to hold one of these ceremonies. We pretty much did it for nothing. Aside from the cost of books, some of which I was denied because some arsehole got his university graduate sister to do his homework. You know who you were Terry.
This tradition existed in primary schools when DM was a child. In her town, the rewards were given by the mayor and his councillors. The mayor arranged for DM's grandfather to give hers (he should have been paired with another student).
We usually got the local MP. Once – amazingly because it was a very working class school – we got the governor general. In full fig. Still boring though.
For my graduation (back in the pleistocene), students of the school and 2 parents/graduate got free tickets and everyone else had to buy them. So the high venue price does not necessarily translate to a high taxpayer bill or civic budget being shifted from classroom to ceremony.
Still, that move from $28k to $64k is gonna hurt *someone*.
I think I had nearly a dozen family members at my HS graduation. And one of the points brought up in the article was the school did not want to set up some sort of ticketing system where not everyone who wanted to got to go to the student's graduation.
Our educational system needs a huge overhaul, no question about it. However, denying HS students a change to walk across that stage full of pride of accomplishment, most likely their first big accomplishment is not the answer. I graduated in San Francisco at our school auditorium, my sister five years before me graduated at the donated San Francisco Opera House out of a large family we were the first to graduate HS, it was a BIG DEAL.
Good for this young man. I will never understand why people delegate their thinking to anyone, let alone a homophobic mega-church. Churches like this don't welcome everyone so much as they welcome their money. Mega churches would be more aptly named, major league grifting.
We then carefully explain how you will be going to hell and doing whatever we can to make your life as difficult, dangerous, expensive, and unpleasant as possible. But really, we welcome everyone. we don't care if you're divorced.
We also don't care about supporting our community through providing our building at a vastly reduced rate, not the standard rate recharge everyone. Because this really is about money, isn't it??
Who said, it is easier for a Camel to enter the eye of a needle than it is for a rich church to enter the kingdom of heaven?
For those who are following the attempted book banning and threatened closure of a library in Dayton, WA: Rejoice. A judge has shut down that attempted closure bid and that sole library in Columbia County will remain open, those books still available.
Saw this on the front page of my newspaper this morning. Made my coffee taste extra good.
I should also point out that this happened east of the Cascades in Jesusland. Columbia County is situated near some of the most conservative cities in my state like Walla Walla, Kennewick, Richland and Spokane.
Makes me furious, honestly. "Welcoming" is becoming a word like freedom, family and patriotism. It's been coopted to mean something different and a lot of people haven't caught on yet.
Nope! ;) Although I'd suggest that any gay folks respond to their "welcome" with an appropriate hand gesture and then go on to live their best life. It's the best revenge I hear.
Well, where is the high school ceremony going to happen? It not like the high school has a large open area with bleacher seating already in place like say a high school football field or a high school gym.
It's all the football team's fault! If they were better they would attract more spectators; they could rationalize building a bigger stadium and VOILA! There's more room for graduation ceremonies! ;)
The petition also cites “crime statistics” in support of staying in the suburbs without any further details. (Guess what? If you’re worried about a carjacking, you can take the district-provided shuttle.)
I don't think 'carjacking' is the issue, it's that they might actually see - maybe even be *exposed to* - Brown People. (Ya sure, you betcha!)
It would have been nice if the petition alone had prompted the school district to change the venue, but pretty clearly it was the threat of a lawsuit that turned the trick.
I left a single comment to DG about his take on LGBTQs and how this church was like Auschwitz to Jews. I had to point out some realities to him about gays, Nazis and death camps and how those Nazis were devout Catholics and Lutherans. As expected, he stated "But, I would not agree that all the Nazis were necessarily devout."
Why am I not surprised? The Nazi leadership was very devout and said so. They despised atheists. Here's what Himmler, the head honcho of the SS and the camps had to say:
"We believe in a God Almighty who stands above us; He created the Earth, the Fatherland, the Volk, and he has sent us the Fuhrer. Any human being who does not believe in God should be considered arrogant, megalomaniacal, and stupid and thus not suited for the SS."
Hitler fought against atheism and believed he had stamped it out in Germany. The Nazis not devout? Where is he getting his information from? Christian apologist sources don't quite cut it. Goebbels was the only Nazi excommunicated by the RCC. Why? He married a Protestant, nothing more.
I was sent to Catholic School - kindergarten through h.s. graduation. Sigh. Well, the religion part didn't take, and my parents didn't care about that, so no pressure. However, my h.s. graduation was held in a large church. I was just grateful that they didn't include a Mass in the ceremony!!!
Even though Grace Church does not proselytize during the graduation event and they remove or conceal as much of the religious paraphernalia as they can, the air conditioning cannot remove the FOUL STENCH OF HATEFUL, IGNORANT BIGOTRY that is cooked up for the crowd in that building all the rest of the year. The place is a prejudice factory, and using it as a graduation venue is an insult to any student who doesn't share those prejudices, and hurtful to any student who is a victim of those prejudices. I applaud Eli Frost's courage, integrity, and tenacity.
Just waiting for Matt staver or Larry klayman to hear about this and have a tantrum over their FURST AMMENDMUNT FREEDUM OF RELIGION rights being infringed.
Prove it. Christian churches where I live hang huge LGBTQ flags on the fronts of their churches. Do that, and you might just have some legitimacy to your claim.
“… although Grace Church does "affirm the teaching of the Bible regarding gender, marriage, and divorce," it does not discriminate against anyone.
"We welcome everyone," he wrote.”
We welcome them so we can change everything about them by making them ashamed of their inherent qualities and differences. Giving them clinical depression and possibly PTSD with the tactics we use to make their lives miserable.
Good that the school moved to a secular venue but as someone who went to schools who don't hold graduation ceremonies the sheer amount of money spent on it when public schools lack funding is incomprehensible.
Public schools in the US waste so much money on not teaching children, it literally makes me nauseous sometimes. See Sko Hayes post somewhere here about the 35 million dollar *high school* football stadium.
Unfortunately, the lesson "education exists to support football" is altogether too accurate in many places.
So perhaps that's a case of (however involuntarily) teaching kids a valuable lesson about the US - it just happens to be a horrible lesson.
The headline says it all: How much is too much? Prosper ISD planning second football stadium with $94M price tag.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2023/09/20/prosper-isdaubreycelinamckinneyfriscoeducationschoolshigh-schoolfootball-stadiumbond-electiontexassportshigh-school-sports/?outputType=amp
I don't disagree about the idiocy of football in HS and the amount of money spent on it or the pampering of the football players at the expense of their and their fellow students' education but comparing that to HS graduation is apple and oranges.
Fair point, but I was more making a statement about priorities. It's not that I want them to spend millions on graduation, I just want them to put money into things that actually teach the students. Fuck, teenagers shouldn't even be playing football with what we know about CTE, but that's a tangent/rant I'll save for another day. ;)
Americans place a baffling amount of value on "rites of passage" The amount of money spent on weddings (both straight and gay) is downright obscene, the more so since the only function the overpriced shows have is to let some pampered woman (or guy) feel like a Disney princess for a day. The only thing more grotesque than American wedding rituals are American funeral rituals. Just burn the damn thing or plug it in the ground and be done with it, fer chrissake. It's not as if these damnfool rituals actually accomplish anything except to make somebody feel oh so special. Humbug!
I never thought I'd go to my college graduation. But it took me 14 years, a lot of it already working in my career. I decided it was important to mark the end of my life as a student, so I did it.
And dammit, I deserve to feel like a Disney princess. That's why I want to have it at Disney World. And at the rate I'm going Ronnie will be dead and buried before that happens.
You ARE a Disney princess (at least on this site, like all the rest of us).
What’s wrong with paying to make someone feel special, I could list tons of things worse than that that we could be and do spend ridiculous sums of money on. Since this world isn’t fair, and can be downright miserable, I think making people feel nice or special or even important for a day or just remembering who they were at the end is a worthy endeavor. There should be reasonable expectations associated with these things and I do see some weddings and parties going over the top, but if it doesn’t hurt someone else or put themselves into insurmountable debt, I’m cool with it. Life’s gonna shit on us the rest of our lives, might as well get a few special days in there if we can.
There are plenty of saner ways to make someone feel good than spending four figures on a silly dress they'll wear for one goddamned day. You can buy a friggin' ice cream maker for a hell of a lot less, and get a lot more use out of it. But of course in a consumerist society, wasting money on nonsense is a way of life.
Just asked DM. She spent 4000 Frs (610 €) in 1979 for the venue, the food and the drinks for 3 days. One of her friends bought the dress.
About ten years ago I helped an old friend make the arrangements for her wedding. The cake alone cost nearly five hundred smackers. When she told me that and I gave her the side-eye, she told me, shamefaced, "I know it's silly, but I just can't help myself." A nice, paper-trained American consumer.
It's not the case anymore but until the 90's croquembouches were more popular, and cheaper, than tiered cakes.
About the dress, the friend who payed for it didn't have a daughter.
This is not a uniquely American thing, or a consumerist thing, most cultures around the world put a lot of effort and money into coming of age, marriage, and funeral ceremonies. Although I agree a lot of these activities can be wasteful, they are also important occassions where friends and families can come together and celebrate the life and death of a friend or family member.
I say, if you can afford to pay for a lavish thing, go ahead and do it if it's what you and your loved ones desire; if your economic condition doesn't allow for a big ceremony or you simply don't want one, you definitely shouldn't feel pressured into having one. We shouldn't judge one or the other.
We have something called "prize-giving", where students are given books for coming 1st in a subject or whatever, and are recognised for other things. But it's held in the school hall usually – except for maybe some elite schools who have more students than can fit in their school hall. But even so they often have a senior and a junior ceremony. Can't imagine paying $28,000 to hold one of these ceremonies. We pretty much did it for nothing. Aside from the cost of books, some of which I was denied because some arsehole got his university graduate sister to do his homework. You know who you were Terry.
This tradition existed in primary schools when DM was a child. In her town, the rewards were given by the mayor and his councillors. The mayor arranged for DM's grandfather to give hers (he should have been paired with another student).
We usually got the local MP. Once – amazingly because it was a very working class school – we got the governor general. In full fig. Still boring though.
For my graduation (back in the pleistocene), students of the school and 2 parents/graduate got free tickets and everyone else had to buy them. So the high venue price does not necessarily translate to a high taxpayer bill or civic budget being shifted from classroom to ceremony.
Still, that move from $28k to $64k is gonna hurt *someone*.
I think I had nearly a dozen family members at my HS graduation. And one of the points brought up in the article was the school did not want to set up some sort of ticketing system where not everyone who wanted to got to go to the student's graduation.
Our educational system needs a huge overhaul, no question about it. However, denying HS students a change to walk across that stage full of pride of accomplishment, most likely their first big accomplishment is not the answer. I graduated in San Francisco at our school auditorium, my sister five years before me graduated at the donated San Francisco Opera House out of a large family we were the first to graduate HS, it was a BIG DEAL.
Good for this young man. I will never understand why people delegate their thinking to anyone, let alone a homophobic mega-church. Churches like this don't welcome everyone so much as they welcome their money. Mega churches would be more aptly named, major league grifting.
We welcome everyone...
Absolutely.
We then carefully explain how you will be going to hell and doing whatever we can to make your life as difficult, dangerous, expensive, and unpleasant as possible. But really, we welcome everyone. we don't care if you're divorced.
We also don't care about supporting our community through providing our building at a vastly reduced rate, not the standard rate recharge everyone. Because this really is about money, isn't it??
Who said, it is easier for a Camel to enter the eye of a needle than it is for a rich church to enter the kingdom of heaven?
No one important to modern Christianity.
𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑙 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 $28,000 𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟—𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑙𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑠—𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑏𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠.
At least they are open about the grift being a grift.
OT
For those who are following the attempted book banning and threatened closure of a library in Dayton, WA: Rejoice. A judge has shut down that attempted closure bid and that sole library in Columbia County will remain open, those books still available.
Saw this on the front page of my newspaper this morning. Made my coffee taste extra good.
I should also point out that this happened east of the Cascades in Jesusland. Columbia County is situated near some of the most conservative cities in my state like Walla Walla, Kennewick, Richland and Spokane.
"We welcome everyone" The motherfucker probably believes that shit.
He doesn't understand the difference between letting people in and actually being welcoming.
Boom. This.
Makes me furious, honestly. "Welcoming" is becoming a word like freedom, family and patriotism. It's been coopted to mean something different and a lot of people haven't caught on yet.
They don't kill LGBTQI+ people on sight. Isn't this not welcoming enough for you ?
Nope! ;) Although I'd suggest that any gay folks respond to their "welcome" with an appropriate hand gesture and then go on to live their best life. It's the best revenge I hear.
We welcome everyone,.... **taps the collection plate.**
Well, where is the high school ceremony going to happen? It not like the high school has a large open area with bleacher seating already in place like say a high school football field or a high school gym.
It would be sacrilegious to hold an education related event in a sports arena.
Even my Catholic high school just held graduation in the school auditorium (the same venue where the Marianist brothers made us stage drag shows).
From the description, it sounds like the HS field is not big enough to hold the entire student body + teachers + parents.
But yes one option is to limit attendence. I gues they thought that was worse than the other options.
It's all the football team's fault! If they were better they would attract more spectators; they could rationalize building a bigger stadium and VOILA! There's more room for graduation ceremonies! ;)
The petition also cites “crime statistics” in support of staying in the suburbs without any further details. (Guess what? If you’re worried about a carjacking, you can take the district-provided shuttle.)
I don't think 'carjacking' is the issue, it's that they might actually see - maybe even be *exposed to* - Brown People. (Ya sure, you betcha!)
Somalians? It's all that god damn instigator liberal Omar's fault. Ruining a perfectly good, Jesus-enriched educational event in Christian Minnesota.
Significant Hmong population there, too, don'tcha know!
Them Muzlins too?
Asian, so some kind o' heathen or something'.
It would have been nice if the petition alone had prompted the school district to change the venue, but pretty clearly it was the threat of a lawsuit that turned the trick.
I left a single comment to DG about his take on LGBTQs and how this church was like Auschwitz to Jews. I had to point out some realities to him about gays, Nazis and death camps and how those Nazis were devout Catholics and Lutherans. As expected, he stated "But, I would not agree that all the Nazis were necessarily devout."
Why am I not surprised? The Nazi leadership was very devout and said so. They despised atheists. Here's what Himmler, the head honcho of the SS and the camps had to say:
"We believe in a God Almighty who stands above us; He created the Earth, the Fatherland, the Volk, and he has sent us the Fuhrer. Any human being who does not believe in God should be considered arrogant, megalomaniacal, and stupid and thus not suited for the SS."
Hitler fought against atheism and believed he had stamped it out in Germany. The Nazis not devout? Where is he getting his information from? Christian apologist sources don't quite cut it. Goebbels was the only Nazi excommunicated by the RCC. Why? He married a Protestant, nothing more.
"But, I would not agree that all the Nazis were necessarily devout."
Graf playing bagpipes? Must be one of those days that end with y.
Man knew his stuff.
I was sent to Catholic School - kindergarten through h.s. graduation. Sigh. Well, the religion part didn't take, and my parents didn't care about that, so no pressure. However, my h.s. graduation was held in a large church. I was just grateful that they didn't include a Mass in the ceremony!!!
Even though Grace Church does not proselytize during the graduation event and they remove or conceal as much of the religious paraphernalia as they can, the air conditioning cannot remove the FOUL STENCH OF HATEFUL, IGNORANT BIGOTRY that is cooked up for the crowd in that building all the rest of the year. The place is a prejudice factory, and using it as a graduation venue is an insult to any student who doesn't share those prejudices, and hurtful to any student who is a victim of those prejudices. I applaud Eli Frost's courage, integrity, and tenacity.
Bad juju in those buildings.
Just waiting for Matt staver or Larry klayman to hear about this and have a tantrum over their FURST AMMENDMUNT FREEDUM OF RELIGION rights being infringed.
Their tears of anguish sustain us.
"We welcome everyone."
Prove it. Christian churches where I live hang huge LGBTQ flags on the fronts of their churches. Do that, and you might just have some legitimacy to your claim.
As has been stated likely multiple times, they welcome the MONEY. The people? Not so much and it depends, of course.
“… although Grace Church does "affirm the teaching of the Bible regarding gender, marriage, and divorce," it does not discriminate against anyone.
"We welcome everyone," he wrote.”
We welcome them so we can change everything about them by making them ashamed of their inherent qualities and differences. Giving them clinical depression and possibly PTSD with the tactics we use to make their lives miserable.
…And their money is also green.