Could those who want to debate "abstinence" please set up a new thread or go to one that already is oriented to that topic.....please???
This thread is about the signs of detrimental influence on society of the rising political power and the financing of legal challenges to public policy by the religious extremists in the U.S.....continuing on that note, here is a rebuttal to challanges faced by the Montgomery, MD county school district, when it tried to take the easy and responsible way out.....it adopted a health education policy that was firmly rooted in established scientific determinations...and the religious extremists repsonded with their unscientific message....and litigation:
Quote:
http://www.gazette.net/stories/05170...47_31947.shtml
Because of lawsuit, students not provided with accurate information on STD
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
David S. Fishback, Olney
The writer is former chairman of the Montgomery County Board of Education’s Citizens Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development.
In one of a group of letters (‘‘People must care about gay lifestyles’ consequences,” April 28 Gazette of Politics and Business), Michelle Turner asserts that Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum ‘‘filed a successful lawsuit in May 2005 opposing a Montgomery County Public Schools attempt to present homosexuality as happy and healthy to students,” and implies that the MCPS curriculum does not provide adequate information on sexually transmitted diseases.
The fact is that the CRC lawsuit — filed by Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Counsel and in a context in which MCPS did not have an adequate opportunity to respond <b>— attacked health education curriculum additions that would have provided the following accurate information:</b>
*”All major professional mental health organizations affirm that homosexuality is not a mental disorder.”
*”Most experts in the field have concluded that sexual orientation is not a choice.”
*”Fleeting” same-sex attraction ‘‘does not prove long-term sexual orientation.”
*”Different religions take different stands on sexual behaviors and there are even different views among people of the same religion.”
*”Having homosexual parents⁄guardians does not predispose you to being homosexual,” a conclusion reached by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
*There are families in our community headed by same-sex couples.
The curriculum revisions also provided definitions of sexual orientation from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Psychological Association.
Because of the CRC lawsuit, this information is not currently being provided in the secondary school health education curriculum.
Contrary to CRC’s repeated assertions, the MCPS health curriculum does provide comprehensive discussion of the disease risks of sexual activity, information our children need. CRC’s position has been that any mention of homosexuality must repeat those risks in an effort to demonize homosexuality. CRC has not sought to repeat those risks any time heterosexuality is referenced.
In fact, CRC’s goal is to legitimatize ‘‘therapies” that purportedly ‘‘cure” people of homosexuality. But the American Medical Association has condemned such approaches as dangerous, stating that it ‘‘opposes the use of ‘‘reparative” or ‘‘conversion” therapy that is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that the patient should change his⁄her homosexual orientation” (AMA Policy Number H-160.991).
Fortunately, MCPS is in the process of developing new revisions to the health education curriculum, with the assistance of experts from the National Children’s Medical Center and the American Academy of Pediatrics. CRC may well bring another lawsuit when the process is completed. This time, our school system will be prepared to combat CRC’s guerrilla warfare legal tactics. Our community is not being intimidated by those who would marginalize and closet our children who happen to be gay.
Likewise, Lynn Brite’s statement that ‘‘Gay lifestyle is a choice regardless of attraction” makes the error of equating a so-called ‘‘gay lifestyle” with living life as a gay person. Anyone, straight or gay, who engages in promiscuous sexual activity places himself or herself at much greater risk.
Our goal as a community should be to encourage stable, monogamous relationships — relationships that strengthen our society and certainly lessen disease.
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Can anyone argue that public schools should not respond to STD epidemic conditions, harrassment and violence in schools that is directed at non-hetero sexual students, high rates of teen suicides, in the face of official studies that document these conditions in the U.S., by educating students with curriculum that is founded on scientific findings and determinations?
If not....is it responsible for schools, although they must deal with the grief of suicide, the effects of STD's, and of violence and harrassment that disrupts the learning environment, to avoid these issues...to leave them to parents to discuss with their children?
If schools choose a path of trying to determine what science to embrace, and what science to challenge, how would they determine what science to challenge, and on what grounds? Should entire sections of the country, if the community "standard" is religiously influenced belief in "young earth", "intelligent design", and gender preference is a choice, theory, do states allow these ideas to be taught in public schools on the taxpayers' dime?
Do the rest of us just sit back and watch as these regions turn out "professionals" with degress in specialties like, "young earth geology"? Oil and mining expolaration companies don't hire these grads....so maybe they can get jobs teaching young earth "science" in the public high schools that they attended?
Don't those of us unaffected by religious extremism at least have an obligation to expose it, rail against it, try to keep taxpayer funds from supporting it, and from keeping it's militancy from influencing public school curriculum, and policy, and endangering the mental and physical health of our young people?