The Citizens For Responsible Curriculum (CRC) don’t like the newly proposed human sexuality curriculum for Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools, specifically as how it approaches sex education for eighth and tenth graders. The Washington Blade’s Joshua Lynsen reports that…
…Montgomery County Public Schools are poised to approve a gay-inclusive sex education curriculum.
Objection to the curriculum, especially regarding GLBT-related lesson plans in the curriculum, isn’t particularly surprising — this is the second go around for this curriculum fight. Montgomery County’s human sexuality curriculum includes material that many of the county’s parents could find objectionable. Per the CRC website, some of the objections include:
• Proactively teaches that the lifestyles of homosexuals, bisexuals and lesbians are to be embraced and celebrated:
– “Many people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender celebrate their self-discovery and feel relief and a new sense of joy when they can be honest with themselves and their loved ones”
• Half a lesson is dedicated to students to reading undocumented “personal” stories of students who discovered they were lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, or transgender. After reading the stories, students break up into groups to analyze the stories and answer detailed questions.
• Includes a new focus on the concept of transgender and sex change operations, while not informing students that all reputable medical organizations classify transgender persons as mentally ill.
A NARTH Connection To This Story.
The new president of NARTH, Dr. A. Dean Byrd, sent a letter to the CRC in support of their position on the human sexuality curriculum. In the letter, he states about the curriculum:
Nonscientific terms like homophobia are used (actually are masqueraded as science). A phobia is a serious mental illness which requires psychological care. Homophobia is a social constructed (sic) term with no grounding in science. As a construct, homophobia may be used to describe fear or disapproval but it is also a politically correct term used for name-calling, to intimidate, to discourage dialogue. A better term to teach students is cultural humility — acceptance of people who are different without necessarily embracing their belief systems or lifestyle choices.
If homophobia didn’t already have dictionary definitions defining the term, perhaps he may have a point.
Dr. Byrd further in the letter also states:
There are two great dangers posed by these…health lesson plans. First and perhaps foremost is that the lessons encourage self-labeling. Research is very conclusive in this area: the risk of suicide decreases by 20% for each year that a young person delays homosexual or bisexual self-labeling (Remafidi et al, 1991). It’s prudent to encourage adolescents to avoid self-labeling and to postpone decisions about sexual identity during adolescence. The second major danger is the stark omission of health risks associated with homosexual practices, particularly during adolescence (American Journal of Public Health, June, 2003).
Schools should be safe places where respect for all people must be taught. Many students are victims of taunting and cruelty(this is not limited by any means to sexual orientation). Such acts should not be tolerated and problems should be compassionately addressed. However, premature foreclosure on sexual identity may encourage risky behaviors and place adolescents, many of whom already struggle with impulsiveness and self-restraint issues, at further risk for both physical and mental health problems such as sexually-transmitted diseases.
Rather than affirming teenagers as gay or bisexual through self-labeling, educators should affirm them as people worthy of respect and encourage them to wait until adulthood to make choices about their sexuality. Dr. George Rekers, Professor of Neuropsychiatry at the University Of South Carolina, summarized this point nicely: “No service is done to our children by offering them lifestyle options before they are properly able to make informed choices about them.”
Indeed both educators and parents should be concerned about health lesson plans that encourage premature self-labeling. The associated consequences should concern schools because of legal liability and parents because of potential harm.” (link, emphasis added)
Pierre J. Tremblay has a different take on why GLB youth commit suicide when they come out younger, and it’s not self-labeling. He states:
The 30 to 50 percent of gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents who attempt suicide are in a very low self-esteem category, and this is partly the result of feeling hated by almost everyone. The majority of youth have been taught to hate homosexuals and this hatred becomes self-hatred for about 60 to 80 percent of youngsters who are recognizing their homosexual natures. Because of this lethal socially created situation, some of these youth will kill themselves, thus accomplishing what murderers of gays and lesbians do in other ways.
Feeling hated at home, at school, and in society is certainly an extreme form of anomie’ Durkheim (1997) presented to be one of the three major causes for suicide … Homohating school environments are also, in great part, responsible for the high rates of declining academic achievement, truancy, and dropping out of school reported by researchers who have studied gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth.
The bottom line for Tremblay is that concern doesn’t kill kids – lack of concern does. From Better dead than queer: Youth suicide and discrimination in a heterosexual world:
“Put [LGB] identity into the human potential, like it’s no big deal,” suggests Tremblay. This includes teaching it in sex-education classes in the same way that heterosexuality is taught, rather than discussing it as an alternative. Accurately representing LGB identity in popular culture is another way to normalize non-heterosexual orientations. “We need to make it a non-issue; let’s make it go away by simply being fair,” suggests [Dr. Ritch Savin-Williams, chair of the Department of Human Development at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York].
Dr. Warren Throckmorton’s and Dr. David Blakeslee’s Connection To This Story
NARTH’s website includes the article Psychologists Analyze Pro-Gay Curriculum Considered In Montgomery County, Maryland. The article references a paper submitted to the Montgomery County Public School Board of Education entitled Health Education as Social Advocacy: An Evaluation of the Proposed Montgomery County Public Schools Health Education Curriculum. The paper was authored by Warren Throckmorton, PhD, and David Blakeslee, PsyD. An except from the paper:
The curriculum could be more aptly titled: Presenting a Value Free, Essentialist Perspective on Human Sexuality. The key word here is perspective. If this material were presented as part of a debate class, or even as an article in the school newspaper it would be understood that it was just one point of view. When the MCPS unwittingly uses a biased approach to teach children about sexual behavior, children assume that this is scientific and balanced. Restricting children’s information to a biased point of view interferes with their full knowledge of what options are available to them in setting their life goals and managing their personal behavior to reach those goals. This seems completely contrary to the mission of the Montgomery County Public Schools.
It’s interesting to note that Dr. Throckmorton and Dr. David Blakeslee believe that a “value free” presentation would be biased. It would seem that changing the curriculum to reflect their’s and the CRC’s religious right Christian values would definitely add a strong viewpoint bias to the curriculum.
Essentialism is referenced (per Broido, E.M. (2000). Constructing identity: The nature and meaning of lesbian, gay and bisexual identities. In the Handbook of Counseling and Psychotherapy with Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Clients, Eds. Perex, R.M., DeBord, K.A. & Bieschke, K.J. p. 13-33. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association) and defined as:
Fundamentally, essentialists believe that homosexuality and same-gender desire are the same thing and that homosexuality has existed, with fundamentally the same meaning, across many different cultures and historical eras, regardless of whether people defined themselves as homosexual.
Dr. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, stated in Radical Sex Education–Is Your School Next? (written with regards to the Throckmorton and Blakeslee paper):
…Blakeslee notes simply that “adolescents are not adults.” That brilliant observation seems to be missing among those leading the Montgomery County schools. Blakeslee and Throckmorton remind these educators that the adolescent mind “is undergoing a huge renovation.” In shifting from concrete thinking to more abstract forms of thought, “adolescents process their decision making in a highly emotional and impulsive manner.” The material in this curriculum–including the presentation of flavored condoms–will lead to high-risk sexual behavior. “While this is not news to anyone who has one or was one, adolescents are predisposed to think and act impulsively when contemplating sexual behavior because that emotionally-driven behavior easily overwhelms their compromised decision-making ability.”
…Blakeslee insists that “biology is not destiny.” As he explains, the Montgomery County curriculum “is permeated by a worldview which sees same sex attraction as determined by one’s biology.” As he knows, the “born-that-way” argument is employed by homosexual advocacy groups in order to present their arguments and shape public opinion. Nevertheless, “It is not a position supported by research into same sex attraction.”
A PFOX And Ex-Transgender Connection To This Story.
Perhaps a surprising element of the CRC objections is found in Rev. J. Grace Harley‘s advocating against the curriculum changes. She’s someone who identifies herself currently as ex-transgender — a former female-to-male transgender person.
Salon.com previously has profiled her in Getting Straight With God. How she identifies is confusing. Besides currently identifying as a “former transgender,” Harley alternately has described herself as “the manifestation of Christ Jesus’ truth on homosexuality (2 Corinthians 4:2) which describes same sex attraction disorder (S.S.A.D.D).” She…
… confesses that she is a former lesbian who dressed and lived as a man for 18 years. She registered as a man on a Maryland marriage application and wed another woman. At the time, the “J” in her name stood for Joe. When the marriage ended, it was “the worst day of my life,” she says. But it ended because of her own infidelity, fueled by what she describes as a voracious appetite for sex with other women. And a voracious appetite for cocaine.
Harley currently affiliates with PFOX, which has been passing out anti-gay handouts at Montgomery County Public Schools. In a talk before the Montgomery County Public School Board of Education, Harley stated
I speak today because I am concerned that your proposed lesson plans for students on sexual orientation do not include former homosexual or former transgenders like myself.
The lesson plans teach children about homosexuals bisexuals, lesbians, transgenders, coming out for gays, gender identity, homophobia, and intersexual (sic), but no ex-gays. Why is the ex-gay community being censored in the lesson plans when every other sexual orientation is discussed and supported?
It’s an interesting point that Harley, representing ex-gays / ex-trans people, considers ex-gay and ex-transgender sexual orientations. It’s also interesting that while PFOX, the CRC, and others are on one hand arguing against youth being taught about any sexual or gender identities, they want to get a second point across to dilute the message that youth can identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender by adding ex-gay and ex-transgender to the list of sexual orientations/gender identites.
Conclusions
There are probably a multitude of conclusions one can draw from this ongoing debate and battle over human sexuality curriculum for Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools. I’m not going to try to identify all possible conclusions, but I’ll point out two.
– PFOX, NARTH, the CRC, religious right organizations, and doctors in both the medical and psychological communities who believe homosexuality is sin, have banded together to fight revamping Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools Human Sexuality Curriculum.
– This isn’t just a local fight. The people of PFOX, NARTH, the CRC, religious right organizations, and doctors in both the medical and psychological communities who believe homosexuality is sin who are fighting the changes in human sexuality curriculum aren’t all from Montgomery County, Maryland. Montgomery County Public Schools have become a national focal point for elements of the religious right fighting immoral concepts being taught in sex education curriculum. As Dr. Moher stated in the previously cited article:
Sex education in the public schools is a topic of continual controversy. The reason for this is straightforward. There is simply no way that materials related to a subject as sensitive as sexuality can be presented in a value-neutral context. After all, the real issue here is not biology and reproduction–it’s whether teenagers will be encouraged to have sex or will be challenged to practice sexual abstinence until marriage…
…The worldview behind the Montgomery County curriculum is clear. Teachers are to present various sexual lifestyles as equally valid and acceptable.
Dr. Pierre J. Tremblay’s vision of accurately representing LGB people in sex-education classes is being fought with a full court press. PFOX, NARTH, the CRC, religious right organizations, and doctors in both the medical and psychological communities who believe homosexuality is sin don’t want material on homosexuality taught the same way that heterosexuality is taught — they don’t even want to see it discussed as an alternative. Tremblay and others believe teaching homosexuality the same way that heterosexuality is taught will minimize LGB youth self-hatred and suicidality; but for reasons equated with morality, teaching homosexuality the same way that heterosexuality is taught is being fought against by those who believe all expressions of homosexuality are morally wrong.
You’ve just got to love Dean Byrd. In one paragraph he claims it’s unscientific for the lesson plans to include bisexuality because he doesn’t think it exists, then in the very next paragraph he criticizes the lesson plans for not talking about how fluid sexual attraction can be.
OMG, there’s an even better line!
premature foreclosure on sexual identity may encourage risky behaviors
Don’t you just hate it when the bank prematurely forecloses on your sexual identity?
premature foreclosure on sexual identity may encourage risky behaviors
Does Byrd think that being “in the experimental stage” is likely to reduce risky behaviors? That’s just nuts.
I think it far more likely (based on what little I’ve read about kids who come out early) that once a kid determines his orientation there is less pressure to engage in sexual behavior to “figure things out”. I keep reading about kids who know what they are but want to wait for the right guy/gal to come along. It’s the ones who are told “you’re not really gay” that end up sleeping around with both boys and girls to try and figure it all out.
Restricting children’s information to a biased point of view interferes with their full knowledge of what options are available to them in setting their life goals and managing their personal behavior to reach those goals.
And what would those options be beyond the ones that have caused grief or destruction for nearly every gay person in history? Trust me, you don’t have to teach a gay teenager that he or she can be celibate if they want. You also don’t have to teach them that they can try to live their lives contrary to their feelings. The odds are they have already done the that.
The news for most of them is that it’s ok to not do those things and instead to live life as a gay man or woman. Teach them that and how to do so responsibly, and then you will be doing your job. Otherwise it is a bit like asking a school to teach the African American students how the option of living a second class life in a world full of prejudice is always an option for them. No, let’s not do them a disservice by holding back that wonderful point of view.
So since these people want everyone to be aware of the dangers “associated with homosexual practices”, they must also want full disclosure on the dangers of reparative therapy, yes?
I am sick and tired of sexual and pharmacological compulsives like Harley projecting their unhealthiness upon the rest of us.
Basket case before transition / coming out = basket case afterwards. And, basket case after conversion. She is just exchanging one set of compulsivity for another (religious bullying).
Read the Salon article and tell me I’m wrong!
I wouldn’t state it as strongly as you’ve worded it Sharon, but I would agree that first she went whole hog into drugs, now she’s whole hog into the fundamentalist vision of her faith.
There’s surely something positive to be said for moderation in all things.
SharonB, not all people remain so unchanged after a religious conversion, but I agree that many we see related to the ex-gay movement seem to have exchanged one set of bad habits for another.
The compulsive need to impress their new view upon everyone else seems to be part of the new compulsion (beyond simply evangelical) which helps keep them away from the old. If it doesn’t work, then they look bad and more people think God is unable to help. All this is only amplified when they are used by ex-gay groups as a proof of concept.
I wouldn’t state it as strongly as you’ve worded it Sharon, but I would agree that first she went whole hog into drugs, now she’s whole hog into the fundamentalist vision of her faith.
There’s surely something positive to be said for moderation in all things.
And isn’t it interesting that she mentions both her “voracious” appetites for cocaine and sex – do you think those could be related? Either in showing an addictive personality unrelated to her sexual identity, or as one being a byproduct of the other.
What really bothers me about all these responses, in general, is the sense that there should be two or more “sides” to the discussion of, basically, whether gay people exist. Although it is clear that the “pro-family” movement would like to ignore the facts, these kids in Montgomery County, not to mention the rest of the country, are living in a world with millions of openly gay people. We live, work, play, shop alongside them. Whether your religion teaches being gay is moral or not, the fact is we exist and are not going away. So how could you ever include any other “side” to the story? Isn’t it better that kids learn to truly tolerate one another – not a mere allowance to live, but an understanding and respect for one another’s lives.
After all, it is very true that every Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddist, etc. could convert to Christianity and meet another one of the “pro-family” movement’s definitions of morality, but I highly doubt they would support the inclusion of Anti-Semitic points of view (something along the lines of “Hitler had a point”) in a history curriculum.
In fact, the entire set of “facts” they want to include in a biology curriculum are, indeed, better suited for debate class or journalism. Biology lessons must be based on core scientific principles, not “moral” ideology. “Value-free” is indeed the way all classes must be taught, unless the “pro-family” movement thinks anti-evangelical points of view should be included in all lessons.
I find it particularly interesting and amusing that PFOX and others continue to argue for inclusion of ex-gay and ex-transgender when issues of sexual orientation come up.
The mere fact that they have to argue for ex-gay rather than heterosexual points to the fact that they themselves see ex-gays as different from heterosexuals. The same applies to ex-transgendered versus male or female.
Their ongoing descriptions of themselves just seem to confirm their own failures.
Mr. David Roberts said:
“….it’s ok to… live life as a gay man or woman. Teach them that and how to do so responsibly…”
“Otherwise it is a bit like asking a school to teach the African American students how the option of living a second class life in a world full of prejudice is always an option for them.”
Well said, Mr. Roberts.
If I had been shown in my adolescent years examples of two men living a monogamous, loving, mutually successful lives I would not have wasted so much time in harboring self-esteem issues and stymieing my natural progression. It might have seen a goal for myself.
It took me years before I was introduced to the concept of two men cohabitating in a fine suburban house with a yard, two trucks and participating in events as equals with their more traditional neighbors.
It was a foreign concept to me. I guess I should not be surprised. There was never anything said about two men living a monogamous life in my school or church.
‘Values’ intensive curriculum.
Well, that would depend on, as stated, coming into the classroom with built in biases..especially that are rooted in religious ideology.
The ex gay movement, and that of most strict religious belief, are hostile to women.
They are hostile too, to those males that don’t fit their ‘gender normal’ profile.
That is aligning behaviors to be believed most appropriate to being male OR female.
One would also have to believe in the fundamental equality and moral goodness and strength in females as well as males.
But again, the bottom line is, females or those who resemble females in any way, are considered an inferior form.
To be subjugated and controlled.
So in the schools, REALITY based curriculum is refreshing.
A change in tradition, but a change for the good that addresses what we ARE as human beings, not what is a faith or fantansy based ideal that never existed.
Teaching children what the difference between social constructs are, as opposed to natural instincts equal to all people.
And learning what to expect, and also help as far as emotional support, hormonal changes and fluctuations in desire.
And respect and understanding expectations and abilities within relationships.
This is where gay youth especially have gotten short shrift.
That hetero/homo sexuality are two sides of the same coin.
That the two are different, but the needs and ability is the same is rightfully taught.
It’s LONG past due that youngsters…especially females and gay kids get the opportunity for full disclosure and support for their educational needs.
Otherwise the typical traps, low self esteem leads to personal disasters for girls and gay kids.
All kids can be taught the same things and how to address each other’s differences with respect, understanding…and most of all realistically.
Resisting this full and comprehensive teaching is baffling.
Schools are in the business of it. Archaic lessons and religious belief trumping the evidence is a bad business for a school to engage in.
Kids are curious, kids are intelligent.
They’ll know when they are being fed bullshit.
They’ll especially be the most vulnerable victims of betrayal and distorted information.
Most tragic of all, it’s unnecessary and serves nothing BUT bias to tell them anything other than the truth they will have to encounter anyway.
Preparation for life’s real issues is imperative to student success.
You’d think the parents, teachers and school authorities wouldn’t have it any other way.