History is, as they say, history ... as in “totally and completely defunct”. That does not stop some activists wanting to disinter the corpse and put it in new grave clothes.

A bill that would require textbooks for California public schools to include the historical contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people passed the state Assembly on Tuesday by a margin of 49-25.

Sigh. Why does sexual orientation have to come into the picture at all when it comes to teaching history? Was Amelia Earhart a closet lesbian? Were any of the signatories for the Declaration of Independence secretly gay? Who cares? Don’t their contributions to history and civilization matter more than which gender they fancied?

The money quotation has to be from CA Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who is openly gay: "I don't want to be invisible in a textbook." He is also openly unintelligible, which is rather inexcusable for a politician who has presumably spent at least some time in school. If you are "in" a textbook, then you are not exactly "invisible". If you're not in a textbook, you are not invisible, just, well, not in a textbook. Maybe instead of “gay history”, schools should concentrate on giving kids the straight goods on grammar, syntax, logic and public speaking.

History as a school subject has become completely meaningless, because it has been so battered, abused, revised and re-interpreted. We live in a culture that has wholeheartedly embraced relativism. If there is no absolute truth, no right or wrong, then there is no way to tell children what “truly” happened (and why) in the past.

It’s all a matter of perspective: liberal, conservative, secular humanist, atheist, materialist, communist, feminist, gay and lesbian, downtrodden aboriginal, WASP imperialist, conspiracy theorist, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Catholic, fundamentalist Protestant—everyone looks at history from his own unique perspective. And in a milieu of (multi)culturalism and moral relativism, who’s to say which one is “right”? Should the state endorse any of them?

Say, here’s an idea: let’s think outside the box (or the boxer shorts, as the case may be) of state-mandated curriculum, and allow parents a choice of which version of history they want taught to their children. Oh, wait a minute, we already have that: it’s called homeschooling. And it’s still legal. For now.