George Wallace was governor...

...of Alabama and a presidential candidate in the 1960s and '70s. He was famous for stoking fear, ignorance and hatred of African-Americans. In the 1968 general election, Wallace carried five states for a total of 46 electoral votes, not a bad showing for a third party candidate. (Massachusetts, by the way, was not one of the states Wallace carried.)

In hindsight, the civil rights era was a strange time for America. Although African Americans eventually won many of the basic rights of citizenship, it was not without a fight -- and much violence. I'm sure many of my fellow white Americans who lived during that time wish they had acted differently. (Even Wallace had a change of heart by the late 1970s and publicly regretted his actions.)

I'm reminded of all this by a front page article in the Times today, "In Suburb, Fight Over Silence On Bullying of Gay Students" (my emphasis):

ANOKA, Minn. — This sprawling suburban school system, much of it within Michele Bachmann’s Congressional district, is caught in the eye of one of the country’s hottest culture wars — how homosexuality should be discussed in the schools.

After years of harsh conflict between advocates for gay students and Christian conservatives, the issue was already highly charged here. Then in July, six students brought a lawsuit contending that school officials have failed to stop relentless antigay bullying and that a district policy requiring teachers to remain “neutral” on issues of sexual orientation has fostered oppressive silence and a corrosive stigma.

Also this summer, parents and students here learned that the federal Department of Justice was deep into a civil rights investigation into complaints about unchecked harassment of gay students in the district. The inquiry is still under way.

Through it all, conservative Christian groups have demanded that the schools avoid any descriptions of homosexuality or same-sex marriage as normal, warning against any surrender to what they say is the “homosexual agenda” of recruiting youngsters to an “unhealthy and abnormal lifestyle.”

Adding an extra incendiary element, the school district has suffered eight student suicides in the last two years, leading state officials to declare a “suicide contagion.” Whether antigay bullying contributed to any of these deaths is sharply disputed; some friends and teachers say four of the students were struggling with issues of sexual identity.

In many larger cities, lessons in tolerance of sexual diversity are now routine parts of health education and antibully training. But in the suburbs the battle rages on, perhaps nowhere more bitterly than here in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, just north of Minneapolis. With 38,000 students, it is Minnesota’s largest school system, and most of it lies within the Congressional district of Ms. Bachmann, a Republican contender for president.

Ms. Bachmann has not spoken out on the suicides or the fierce debate over school policy and did not respond to requests to comment for this article. She has in the past expressed skepticism about antibullying programs, and she is an ally of the Minnesota Family Council, a Christian group that has vehemently opposed any positive portrayal of homosexuality in the schools.

And it makes me wonder, Is Michele Bachmann the George Wallace of our time?