Nov 24, 2006  |  By: JOSHUA LYNSEN  | COMMENTS     

After years of debate and revision, Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools are poised to approve a gay-inclusive sex education curriculum.

A committee tasked with reviewing the lessons for eighth and 10th grade students approved it Wednesday. District officials must still review the curriculum, which was praised by pro-gay activists.

“I’m perfectly happy with it,” said Jim Kennedy, co-founder of Teach the Facts, a coalition of Maryland parents and supporters of the gay-inclusive curriculum.

“A conservative person might think that it’s a liberal curriculum,” he said, “but I think an ordinary person would think it’s just an ordinary curriculum.”

Kennedy said the lessons, titled “Respect for Differences in Human Sexuality,” explain concepts like sexual identity and orientation using nonjudgmental language.

“The fact is that some people are gay, and some people are straight,” he said. “It lays it out there, and it doesn’t make a judgment one way or the other.”

But curriculum opponents are lobbying district officials to reject the proposed curriculum.

Parents & Friends of Gays & Ex-Gays, along with Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, argue that students are not properly cautioned about the dangers of anal sex. They also protest the exclusion of “ex-gay” topics in the curriculum.

Neither organization responded this week to Blade requests for comment.

The curriculum — which has gone to district Superintendent Jerry Weast for administrative review — is scheduled for board action Jan. 9.

District spokesperson Brian Edwards said board members could approve the new curriculum at that meeting.

The new curriculum is the district’s second attempt to rewrite the sex education program. The first rewrite triggered a courtroom showdown when conservative groups objected to the new content.

To settle the lawsuit, school officials agreed to restart the curriculum revamp process. The committee’s Nov. 15 vote was the culmination of that effort.

‘Mind control’

According to the proposed curriculum, lessons are structured to broaden student vocabulary while stressing respect.

Students in eighth grade are taught to recognize healthy relationships, and how to define human sexuality, gender identity and other terms.

The lesson also examines “the harmful effect of making generalizations or stereotyping” people based on gender or sexual orientation.

Students in 10th grade receive a more robust curriculum, including an examination of topics such as coming out. It also asks students to consider the challenges a transgender student might face.

But curriculum opponents decried the focus on empathy.

In a letter to district officials, Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum President Michelle Turner said the lessons are an affront to children with strong religious convictions.

“When schools start telling our children what they must think and how they must feel about others … aren’t the schools getting out of education and into mind control?”

Turner and other curriculum opponents are asking the school board to reject the lessons Jan. 9.

In one letter, Maryland psychologist Dean Byrd says the lessons are “anchored more in activism than in science or health.”

In another letter, Grace Harley, a local grandmother who identifies as “a former transgender,” says the curriculum is discriminatory.

“The lesson plans for our children and grandchildren are entitled ‘Respect for Differences in Human Sexuality,’ and promote acceptance for homosexuals, transgenders and the intersexed,” she wrote. “Yet the only sexual orientation in our school system which receives no respect are ex-gays and former transgenders like myself.”

Kennedy said the curriculum has no mention of “ex-gays” because 12 of 15 committee members were against its inclusion.

“It was just voted down,” he said. “The group didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”

Kennedy noted that current medical and scientific evidence does not view “ex-gay” as a codified sexual orientation.

“It’s not a kind of sexual orientation — that’s really all it comes down to,” he said. “If you used to be gay, and now you’re not, you’re heterosexual, right?”

But the omission could trigger yet another lawsuit.

“I would say I’m about 99 percent sure there will be a legal challenge,” Kennedy said.

Edwards declined to comment on the potential lawsuit, or how the district might respond.