May 13, 2005  |  By: EARTHA MELZE  | COMMENTS     

A plan to add gay topics and instructions on condom use as part of a health education curriculum for students in Montgomery County, Md., has developed into a legal battle that is drawing national attention.

U.S. District Court Judge Alexander Williams Jr. issued an injunction May 5 against the Montgomery County Public School system, ordering officials to put on hold plans to pilot the county’s new health education curriculum at three middle schools and three high schools.

The judge’s ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the conservative groups Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum and Parents & Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays, which argued that the new curriculum violates their freedom of speech because it doesn’t include discussion of “ex-gays” and that it violates the Establishment Clause by promoting some religions over others. The plaintiffs also claimed that the curriculum could endanger children by inducing them to become gay and to have unprotected sex.

Judge Williams found that “the imminent threat to Plaintiff’s First Amendment rights constitutes irreparable harm.” But the judge did not agree that the curriculum would lead to harm through increased sexual risk-taking and called the plaintiffs’ reasoning, “highly speculative and attenuated.”

“Indeed, as [the school board] points out,” wrote Judge Williams, “many studies conclude that lesbians are in one of the lowest risk groups for a variety of STDs, including HIV/AIDS.”

Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Jerry Weast responded to the ruling by canceling pilot testing of the new curriculum for the year. Weast also ordered that a video that demonstrates how to use condoms be removed from schools and asked the school system to look into questions raised about the curriculum by members of CRC and PFOX.

The school system removed its link to the new curriculum but www.teachthefacts.org, the Web site maintained by supporters has posted the curriculum. The Montgomery County Board of Education unanimously approved the new curriculum last year.

Falwell group claims victory
Mat Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel, said on the organization’s Web site that the judge’s decision granting a 10-day injunction was a major victory, calling it, “the most significant curriculum decision ever.”

“Yesterday’s decision snatched our youth out of the jaws of a radical homosexual agenda,” Staver said.

Liberty Counsel is a non-profit law firm that provides free representation for Christians. It is involved in the effort to introduce the teaching of creationism in public schools.

The Liberty Counsel is affiliated with Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, which was involved in stopping the manual recount in Florida during the 2000 election and was in the news recently for its involvement in the Terri Schiavo case and its arguments before the Supreme Court in favor of the public display of the Ten Commandments.

The plaintiffs in this case have said that because Montgomery County is a large and affluent school district, what happens in its curriculum will have wide-ranging effects.

There has been widespread media coverage of the controversy.

David Fishback was chair of the citizens’ advisory committee, a group of parents, teachers and community members that worked for two years to create the updates for the 8th grade and 10th grade health education curriculum after receiving reports from teachers that the old curriculum was inadequate.

“The judge is put in a difficult position,” Fishback said, “and the points that he makes have some merit.”

Fishback said that the plaintiffs filed 78 pages of legal and factual assertions and the Montgomery County School Board had less than 48 hours to respond.

Fishback said that it appears that the judge may not have understood that the discussion of religious views that the plaintiffs presented as part of the curriculum were actually part of a teacher resource section that is not distributed to students.

“There are 22 teacher resources,” Fishback said, “the objectionable material is in three of the 22 teacher resources we selected to accompany curriculum.”

‘Venom’ in the curriculum
The only statement about religion in the curriculum is one statement in the 8th grade curriculum that different religions have different views on homosexuality and that the views of individuals within a religion vary.

“In hindsight we should have selected different resources because they do express a viewpoint,” Fishback said. “But as a result of this controversy, people do understand that there are a variety ...