This is beyond pathetic: A well respected high school art teacher suggests that his students take life drawing classes to further their skills and now he’s been suspended and faces firing over it…

In his discussions with students Mr. Panse mentioned several options for advancing their figure drawing skills; the local community college, a nearby frame shop that sponsors art classes, and the prestigious New York Academy of Art. He also described pre-college figure drawing programs at several other New York City art schools, and a highly successful art college prep program called the Mill Street Loft.

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Specifically, Mr. Panse was charged with making “comments that students could construe as being of a sexual or personal nature…or using [his] position as a teacher to put students into any situation reasonably likely to make them feel uncomfortable because of the injection of sexuality into…the substance of [his] comments”.

One parent complained and the shit hit the fan.  Oh for chrissakes…it’s a goddamned art class!  What’s it going to be next…they demand art museums put fig leaves on all the nude sculptures and paintings before anyone under 18 years old will be allowed to enter?

Nudity.  Flesh.  Skin.   You know what this is all about?  It isn’t sex. Over in the Netherlands, they’re talking about showing images of gay couples kissing to new immigrants as a way of testing whether they’ll adapt to the open and tolerant culture over there.  But they don’t even have to do that.  Just show them Michalangelo’s David (or better still, Donatello’s David and his Narcissus), Rodin’s "The Kiss", Picasso’s "Blue Nude", Lord Leighton’s "The Fisherman", Anne Swynnerton’s "Cupid and Psyche", Chavannes "The Little Fisherman" and just to make things fun, Broc’s "The Death of Hyacinth" and if they get red faced just tell them to take the next boat back home.  It’s not that they hate gays, it’s not even, that they hate sex.  The fundamentalist radicals hate the human species, and nothing makes that plainer then the way they react to the sight of the human body itself.  It’s not that nudity is obscene, it’s that taking an awed appreciation for and pride in our physical selves is horrifying to them.  It’s not sex they think is dirty, it’s the human race they think is dirty.