Testimony before Montgomery County, Maryland School Board

PFOX testimony before the Montgomery County, Maryland School Board:

My name is Grace Harley. I speak as a member of PFOX, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays. PFOX distributed flyers to the high schools. Our flyers urged tolerance and understanding of the ex-gay community, of which I am a member. Yet our message of tolerance was met with intolerance from members of the school’s Gay Straight Alliance (“GSA”), a nationwide student club organized by Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (“GLSEN”), a gay advocacy group that promotes approval of gay and transgendered individuals while opposing tolerance for former homosexuals. There are 15 GSA student clubs in the Montgomery County public high schools.

GSA and GLSEN are the outside organizations that the proposed health education curriculum uses for statistical data and as a referral source for students. Yet GSA clubs show contempt for former homosexuals and urge their schools to do the same.

For example, the GSA at Winston Churchill High School organized a protest against PFOX flyers. GSA members placed trash cans in the school lobby and distributed trash bags labeled “PFOX” to students to urge them to throw away their ex-gay flyers. The school’s administration supported this action, with security guards and the principal standing by the trash cans to ensure that the protest against ex-gays would not be disturbed.

Two Gaithersburg High School teachers refused to distribute ex-gay flyers to their students, although they would have no problem distributing gay flyers.

A gay teacher at Wooten High School, who sponsors that school’s GSA club, warned PFOX to stay out of the public schools, compared sexual preference to a Black person’s skin color, and also compared us to the KKK.

No other sexual orientation in Montgomery County Public Schools receives the blatant harassment and intolerance that the ex-gay community gets. In this bullying environment, it’s impossible for students with unwanted same-sex attractions to reveal themselves to their friends or teachers.

This discriminatory treatment is not corrected by the proposed curriculum on teaching tolerance for sexual orientation, sexual identity, and gender identity because former homosexuals are not included in the curriculum, but gays, bisexuals and cross-dressers are included. Why are you approving a curriculum that is supposed to teach respect for diverse sexual orientations when it excludes the only sexual orientation that is actually subject to harassment by both students and teachers?

Until the curriculum is revised to include ex-gays like me, the Board must vote no and refuse to approve it. A yes vote is a vote for hypocrisy and discrimination.

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays
PFOX
P O Box 510, Reedville VA 22539
804-453-4737
pfox@pfox.org
www.pfox.org

June 12, 2007
Public Comment to Montgomery County Board of Education
By Peter Sprigg

Re: Health Education Curriculum

Good morning. My name is Peter Sprigg, and I have represented PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays) on the Citizens Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development.

Last week our committee was told that among the questions students asked regarding the field testing of this curriculum were, “Why are people so obsessed with this class?” and “Why is this unit such a big deal?”

Ironically, this unit is “a big deal” precisely because it does not tell the students why it’s “a big deal.” It is controversial because it fails to tell the students that homosexuality is a highly controversial issue in our society. It is divisive because it fails to tell the students that the American people are sharply divided in their views as to whether homosexual acts should be accepted or discouraged (and it fails to say that people with both viewpoints are worthy of respect).

Furthermore, this curriculum is harmful because it fails to tell the students that specific sexual acts can be far more harmful to them than other sexual acts. And this curriculum should be changed, because it fails to tell students that some individuals experience a change in sexual orientation in the course of their lives.

For all of these reasons, I urge you, as I did in January, to reject these new lessons on condom use and sexual orientation.

However, at the very least, you should postpone action on final approval of this curriculum today. As you know, a complaint against these lessons is now pending before the State Board of Education, and the states’ Superintendent of Schools has declared her view that the arguments are “balanced equally on each side.” It simply makes no sense for the Board to rush into final approval of the system-wide implementation of a curriculum that may be struck down by legal action as early as next month.

Please vote no on this curriculum.