The Washington Blade reports today that an outfit called the Thomas More Law Center has replaced the much stronger and better-known Liberty Counsel in pursuing a battle against sex education in Montgomery County, Maryland, public schools.
Thomas More is assisting the national ex-gay advocacy group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and the local group Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum in a lawsuit to prevent suburban Washington, D.C., schools from teaching age-appropriate information and tolerance regarding sexuality — homosexuality in particular.
Thomas More’s online About Us statement positions the organization as a “sword and shield” of religious conservatives in a war against the advocacy of civil liberties. Among its advisory board members are Alan Keyes and other activists who advocate the governmental imposition, across the United States, of their own interpretation of Biblical law.
According to Wikipedia, the Center claims to be handling more than 120 legal matters in at least 27 states, and has a team of about 300 pro bono attorneys. The Center was co-founded in 1999 by Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, a conservative Roman Catholic, and Richard Thompson, who helped prosecute Dr. Jack Kevorkian for his role in assisted suicides. The Center has focused on advancing court cases on behalf of anti-abortion, anti-gay, and Creationist political activists.
Jim Kennedy, a member of a local coalition of parents and teachers called Teach The Facts that favors the sex-education curriculum, points out to the Blade that the More Center’s press release contains misinformation about the content of the Montgomery County sex-ed curriculum.
In a press release, the Law Center said the lessons wrongly teach that homosexuality is “innate,” anal sex is “just another sexual option” and students who hold “traditional religious or moral beliefs about homosexuality” are labeled homophobic.
Kennedy said the lessons do not label as homophobic those who object to homosexuality and note only that condoms should be used for protection during anal sex.
It is interesting that one of the other board of advisor members is retired admiral Denton. His son and namesake was in law school with me and advertises his legal services on several legal marketing sites for civil rights issues for members of the LGBT community. Wonder what his dad thinks of this? See: ttp://pview.findlaw.com/view/3250047_1
Via Good As You:
Sorry, PFOX: The curriculum does not say that people are born gay. And it does not discuss ex-gays, because PFOX representatives 1) failed to demonstrate to the school system that true change of sexual orientation is possible, 2) submitted statements to the curriculum panel that were proven to be false, and 3) attempted to impose a religious agenda upon the curriculum even as it criticized the school system for a previous curriculum that made inappropriate (but gay-tolerant) religious judgments.
I encourage PFOX to drop its political campaign of ignorance and self-persecution, and learn the facts about the curriculum from well-informed groups such as Teach The Facts.
Though Liberty Counsel is an advocate of theocracy and a dedicated opponent of equality and civil rights for gay people, they aren’t complete loonies. So I can see how they might not be the best fit for PFOX and the CRC.
The CRC is not some concerned group of families worried that curriculum is age-inappropriate. No, they are blatant and unhesitant homophobes willing to say anything, no matter how vile. (For example, their blog site shares this gem: “When will the parents start suing for children when they contract AIDS, and other stds? Hopefully, each of the board members and Weast will be sued personally by trial lawyers for tort claims”)
And PFOX is, well, not exactly comprised of parents of ex-gays. In fact, their closest experience with ex-gays is Richard Cohen, the kindliest description of whom would be “peculiar”.
So now that they are represented by Thomas Moore, its just one big pile of crazy. I can hardly wait to see what they say next. (Perhaps Michael Glatze will be joining them as spokesman)
I just saw this on the Thomas Moore Law Center website and nearly died laughing.
They really are off the deep end equating WND with anything of note.
Using PFOX’s logic, teaching about other religions and tolerance of their adherents should be banned, because after all the ‘poor defenseless children’ would learn that, hey, not everyone believes what you believe and the world isn’t the all-Christian place you thought it was. When are PFOX and company going to realize that in a free society, they are in fact going to have to tolerate different opinions and views on sexuality whether they want to or not? And when are PFOX and company going to stop using people’s protective instincts towards their children as weaponry in the culture war? I can think of few things more cynical than making shameless appeals to people’s easily inflamed protective instincts. Yet time and time again I see the mighty moralists in the Christian Right use this blatantly manipulative technique to get what they want. Obviously the lesson about avoiding the ‘ways of the world’ didn’t stick for most in this political movement. One wonders what other commandments and teachings they’ll break to get what they want.