Maryland Parents Fight
Homosexual Curriculum
What
People Who Care Can Do
If you are a parent in
Montgomery County Maryland, your help is vitally needed
to fight the introduction of a curriculum promoting
homosexuality in the public schools. Please come to
an information meeting where you can learn more:
DATE:
Saturday, November 19, 2005
TIME: 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
LOCATION: Summerfield Suites by Wyndham
200 Skidmore Boulevard, Gaithersburg, MD
Please
also sign up to receive ongoing information on how you
can make a difference and fight moral decline in your
state and in the nation at www.familyleader.net
Background
A year ago in November
of 2004, the Montgomery County School Board unanimously
voted to accept revisions to their existing Family Life
and Human Development program that made parents gasp.
The revisions included
the introduction and discussions of homosexuality and
transgenderism in the 8th grade and the use
of a condom video at the 10th grade level
with a very attractive blonde woman demonstrating its
use and introducing students to oral and anal sex. Not
only was the information explicit, but it was also flawed
— as it failed to recognize information from the Center
for Disease Control about the inability of condoms to
affectively safeguard its users from STDs and it failed
to stress the importance of abstinence.
One national columnist
called this the “cucumber curriculum,” as the demonstrations
about how to use condoms were so vividly demonstrated.
The revisions had been
recommended by the Citizens Advisory Committee on Family
Life and Human Development, a 27-member group that had
many representatives from both homosexual groups and
those that aggressively advocate sexual activity and
abortion. Members represented PFLAG, Planned Parenthood,
NARAL, the Unitarian Universalitst Church — and the
representative from the Mental Health Association was
a lesbian.
A Lone Voice
Michelle Turner, an LDS
mother of seven and a PTA president, also sat on that
committee, but her voice was not enough to turn the
tide away from this destructive curriculum. She said,
“I spoke about my concerns before the Board of Education
the day the curriculum was presented, but they were
completely ignored.”
Michelle Turner
Another Montgomery County
parent got wind of the curriculum and created a website
that grabbed a lot of attention where parents could
log on to post their concerns.
Michelle said, “When I
went to the website and saw the many posts of outrage,
I decided to host a meeting to look at our options.
I asked people to RSVP, and when I realized there were
so many people, I moved the venue from my home to the
community club house — where on a Saturday morning three
weeks before Christmas 75 people showed up.
“At the conclusion of that
meeting which lasted about 2-1/2 hours, Citizens for
a Responsible Curriculum (CRC) was born.”
Then began months of trying
to meet with the school board and the superintendent
— all who turned CRC down. They cited a pending lawsuit
with PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays)
as their reason for not talking — even though CRC was
not involved in the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, CRC volunteers
were making phone calls, fund-raising, recruiting members,
writing letters to the editor and attending and speaking
at the public comment period before the Board of Education.
Finally, after months of trying to get the board’s attention,
CRC decided to join in the lawsuit against the board.
On May 5 of this year,
Michelle Turner, and others walked into a Federal court
to plead the case for concerned parents, and 4-1/2 hours
later they left with a temporary restraining order against
the implementation of the curriculum.
The board scrapped the
revisions to the curriculum and disbanded the curriculum
committee.
As part of the settlement,
the Montgomery School Board agreed that on the new 15-member
curriculum committee CRC and PFOX would each be granted
a seat.
To this point, it all sounds
good — like concerned parents have triumphed in Montgomery
County. But as all stories go, it is more complex than
this. The plot has a twist — and it is a familiar twist
to anyone who has watched this ongoing cultural war.
A Seat on the Committee
Often in these cultural
wars, the rules are changed midstream to disadvantage
social conservatives. To a social conservative, both
your means and your ends have to be consistent with
moral action. It is not true that any means can be employed
to achieve your desired end. To use corrupt means to
achieve a desirable end is not reprehensible to many
of those forwarding a homosexual agenda. Instead, the
end is worth whatever means need to be employed.
Thus, CRC submitted their
name for the promised place on the new committee that
would revise the curriculum — and suddenly that was
not acceptable. After CRC’s submission, a new rule was
adopted to exclude the nominee, stating that nobody
could serve on the committee who had served before.
The new requirement also said that any organization
had to submit a nominee and two alternates, and the
board of education would choose from these names. This
new policy was supposedly to supersede any existing
policy that had been previously in effect.
This new policy excluded
both CRC’s and PFOX’s candidates. CRC went back to the
settlement agreement, which clearly said that they could
nominate their own representatives. Two weeks later,
the school board conceded and accepted PFOX’s sole nominee,
but not CRC’s.
Bringing in the Big Guns
Meanwhile three organizations
supporting homosexuality as natural and mainstream were
appointed to the new Citizen’s Advisory Committee —
some representing the same organizations that were on
the committee before.
The fight continues — and
family-centered citizens need to understand this. Parents
who care about what happens in the schools cannot run
out of political will.
Homosexuality advocacy
groups are targeting Montgomery County to bring in strategists
and resources and GLSEN founder, Kevin Jennings says,
“We’re going to win because of what is happening in
high schools right now.”
After last spring, many
who had been involved with the CRC assumed the battle
was over, but it isn’t. All concerned parents in Montgomery
County need to be involved.
The meeting this Saturday,
November 19th, from 10:00 until 2:00, will
bring parents up to date on what’s happening and allow
people to volunteer. CRC is looking for volunteers to
compile voter guides on those board members who will
be up for election this year, to outreach to community
groups and churches, to help fund-raise, to be part
of a legal committee and much more.
