CRC Submits Signatures
The Ex-Recall group got a little publicity yesterday when they brought petitions with 3,500 signatures to the Board of Education meeting. As The Times put it:
I was imagining how that happens. You're at church. A nice lady gets a chance to speak. She says, "MCPS wants to put a new sex education curriculum in place. It encourages sexual experimentation among minors, it encourages students, beginning in 8th grade, to "develop your individual sexual identity," it's an invitation for students to begin sexual exploration. Why, this curriculum suggests to adolescents as young as 13 that a sex life is necessary for a good self-image, virtually inviting them to engage in premature sexual behavior!
"Brothers and sisters, this curriculum normalizes homosexuality and presents it as morally equivalent to heterosexuality! It is designed to impress on teens that homosexuality is normal, healthy, and inborn! Under this curriculum, students and teachers are taught how to change the school environment to affirm homosexuality by explicitly discussing sexual behaviors, prohibiting any talk of abstinence until marriage, posting "safe zone" stickers for gay youth, and inviting homosexual speakers to address students.
"It violates the moral and religious convictions of many families -- in effect, it leads students to play Russian roulette with sexual practices that dramatically increase the likelihood of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases..."
Yeah, man, who wouldn't jump up and sign one of those petitions? I sure wouldn't want something like that in my schools! By the way, those were all direct quotes of Ex-Recall president Michelle Turner, this is actually what they do tell people this curriculum is about. I very much doubt they actually pass out the scool district's materials, which can be found HERE. Because ... it would be very much harder to get signatures of people who find the actual curriculum offensive.
So Tuesday they brought in petition signatures gathered all over the state, not just in our county, at churches and mosques. Those petitions show that the Ex-Recall group was able to find a number of people equalling four tenths of one percent of the population of Montgomery County who felt strongly enough about this curriculum to sign a petition at church.
For that, they earn a great big tally-mark on the scoreboard next to their name. As David Letterman always says, "Good job, kids."
The signatures "represent a growing concern over your recent decisions to introduce materials and topics to our schoolchildren that many families find objectionable, with no reasonable or acceptable alternative," said Michelle Turner, president of Citizens for Responsible Curriculum (CRC).
She said many signatures were collected at Catholic and evangelical Christian churches and that the group also is working with area Hindus and Muslims. Petition opposes sex-ed program.
I was imagining how that happens. You're at church. A nice lady gets a chance to speak. She says, "MCPS wants to put a new sex education curriculum in place. It encourages sexual experimentation among minors, it encourages students, beginning in 8th grade, to "develop your individual sexual identity," it's an invitation for students to begin sexual exploration. Why, this curriculum suggests to adolescents as young as 13 that a sex life is necessary for a good self-image, virtually inviting them to engage in premature sexual behavior!
"Brothers and sisters, this curriculum normalizes homosexuality and presents it as morally equivalent to heterosexuality! It is designed to impress on teens that homosexuality is normal, healthy, and inborn! Under this curriculum, students and teachers are taught how to change the school environment to affirm homosexuality by explicitly discussing sexual behaviors, prohibiting any talk of abstinence until marriage, posting "safe zone" stickers for gay youth, and inviting homosexual speakers to address students.
"It violates the moral and religious convictions of many families -- in effect, it leads students to play Russian roulette with sexual practices that dramatically increase the likelihood of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases..."
Yeah, man, who wouldn't jump up and sign one of those petitions? I sure wouldn't want something like that in my schools! By the way, those were all direct quotes of Ex-Recall president Michelle Turner, this is actually what they do tell people this curriculum is about. I very much doubt they actually pass out the scool district's materials, which can be found HERE. Because ... it would be very much harder to get signatures of people who find the actual curriculum offensive.
So Tuesday they brought in petition signatures gathered all over the state, not just in our county, at churches and mosques. Those petitions show that the Ex-Recall group was able to find a number of people equalling four tenths of one percent of the population of Montgomery County who felt strongly enough about this curriculum to sign a petition at church.
For that, they earn a great big tally-mark on the scoreboard next to their name. As David Letterman always says, "Good job, kids."
posted by JimK at 9:18 AM
17 Comments:
Jim dear, you were are the CRC meeting honey. So you should know that two of the main handouts passed out were "Myths and Facts" - quoted exactly from the curriculum, and 6 pages of the MCPS curriculum. Hmmm, and none of the 250 people at that meeting got up and left. Instead, after reading the ACTUAL curriculum they were more disturbed.
Now why would that be, if no one was bothered by the ACTUAL curriculum.....
Hmmm..... since I don't read Scientific American maybe you can help me figure out the logic of this apparent contradiction...
The 'actual' curriculum has been available on the CRC website since its inception and we have always encouraged people to read it. We have nothing to hide.
And we know that TTF has had petitions floating at certain churches as well -- I can just hear THAT plaintive cry for signers at a church -- 'yes, we'd really like for you to sign our petition. We support MCPS and their choice to overide parents' decisions about how and what to teach their kids about homosexuality. We support the decision of the BOE to teach 8th graders that the sexual organs they were born with does not necessarily determine their sexual 'gender' and identity. (The BOE left out the part that trans-genderism is a mental disorder, but we don't want anyone to feel bad about themselves, do we?)And all of you in those pews, you must help us fight against the hatred and intolerance, blah, blah, blah...
It always comes back to hatred and intolerance, doesn't it Jim?
Funny. So much hatred and intolerance for the CRC quite evident on this TTF blog. I am sure I am not the only one who sees it.
The outline of the curriculum was made available at the front desk of the town hall meeting, you're right. And then you went inside, where for three hours their spokespersons ranted about the "gay agenda," showed gay porn implying that it was part of the curriculum, exaggerated every homosexual stereotype, and presented arguments that the new curriculum encourages sexual experimentation and everything else (the quotes I included in this post are actually from Michelle Turner's talk at that meeting). Then you were asked to sign petitions -- I didn't see anybody reading during the speeches.
And by the way, when people came up to us at the end of the meeting and wanted to sign our petitions, CRC members tried to stop them, but security wouldn't back them up.
I say: go read the materials. You will find none of these allegations supported there. The CRC has taken a very moderate curriculum and tried to depict it as an assault on their values, when in fact the content of the sex-ed courses is very innocuous. I can't believe that anyone would sign a petition opposing the course as it is written. As it is described by CRC? Yes, it sounds frightening, threatening, terrible.
Your statements about sexual identity and biological sex prove that you have not read, or at least conmprehended, the materials yourself. It's not a hard thing to understand, even eighth graders can figure out that sexual identity is more than sex organs and sexual intercourse. And your comment about trans-gender and mental disorder shows that you have no understanding of the biological factors that lead to gender ambiguity, and would rather marginalize people than understand them.
And as far as your comments about my "hatred" of the CRC. I love my country and the American way of life. I love our freedom, and our rights, and I stand against anyone who wants to take them away from us. I oppose CRC -- they have the right to hold their anti-gay beliefs, but I will not sit still while they try to coerce the public schools into teaching their bigotry as fact. You can call that hatred, if you think it makes your position look better, I can't stop you.
Anon(good name)
I was at the CRC meeting as well. I felt the bigotry and hatred and intolerance from the speakers and the audience that cheered them on. You can teach your children anything you want-as I can teach mine. You can feel free to tell your kids to "hate the sin, not the sinner" and I will tell mine that we are all created equal and to hate someone is not a moral or religious value-because the people there did hate.
If you want to demonize gay people to your children- as the speakers most certainly did- I cannot stop you. The hatred I felt and heard at that meeting stayed with me- I will not forget it.
Andrea Kline
You are both nuts. Talk about exaggeration! Please people, get a grip.
And as far as anyone stopping anything you did or said or keeping you from talking to ANYONE at the meeting, well -- you are flat out lying. The CRC was very gracious to you and provided a forum for everyone to listen and talk and ask questions. Something the BOE never did.
"And as far as anyone stopping anything you did or said or keeping you from talking to ANYONE at the meeting, well -- you are flat out lying."
Were you there? Are you telling us that the same lady that was passing on the mic did not come to us to ask us to leave when people came to us to sign petitions???
She even said "do you want me to call somebody?" And we said "Yes". And so she went, and then came back and apologize because, yet again, we were right, we had the right to... breath.
They weren't gracious at all! When we first got there, two security guys came out to meet us, and said they'd been told we were there to make trouble.
And I do not appreciate being called a liar. I was standing right there when we were told that people couldn't sign our petition. We weren't asking people to, somebody came up and wanted to sign it, because they knew what we stand for. And the person from CRC said we couldn't do it, and went off to get a security guard.
But guess what. The security guys already knew us, from before the meeting, and as they'd been there for three hours of bigotry and venom, they knew what CRC was about. And they refused to support them.
Yes, I was there Jim and it is a lie.
Hmmm. Okay, so the lady with the mic (Jeannie) did challenge whether you could collect petitions at the CRC townhall meeting - you are correct. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
CRC is an organization with over 200 active members. We do have a defined management structure. Jeannie was just checking with management about TTF collecting signatures before she came back and apologized, as you have already indicated.
Again, we apologize for any inconvenience and look forward to seeing you at future CRC public meetings Jim !
Anon, it's easy for you to slander us hiding behind a fake name on the Internet. Why don't you sign your comments with your name?
This really happened, others who have posted here were present. The CRC person told us that people couldn't sign our petitions, and went to get security, and security wouldn't come.
It's interesting to see what you do when you encounter an unpleasant fact. You accuse us of lying.
You may have been at the meeting, but you weren't everywhere. You might have missed something.
Theresa, I'm sorry I missed your comment, the Blogger comment system crashed on me several times and I wasn't sure I was going to get it to work at all.
I'll tell you, it was pure torture for us to attend that meeting. But we have to. It's too easy for us to forget just how serious this situation is. All of us were sickened and shocked, even before the lovely Don Dwyer spoke.
Well then to say this was a "Town Hall Meeting" could be looked at as a lie if people who disagreed with CRC were bothered by security (at directions of CRC) and a CRC representative impeding on the right of others to do what they choose....such as sign an opposing petition for TeachTheFacts.org.
We might as well go further to say that those people who wanted to sign the opposing petition did that AFTER listening to CRC run their spin machine.
That would be a telling thing to say the least.
Kay R.
Well speaking of Dwyer...where are his comments posted on CRC site as well as Knight's?
Why post other speakers but not those two?
Kay R.
John Hopkins University does not allow picketing Jim.
I believe there was some concern that you might be picketing and thus security was suppose to warn you that this was against the university policy - actually to prevent any incidents.
When we announce our next public town hall meeting, please feel free to contact me at mcpscurriculum@worldnet.att.net and we can discuss any potential issues ahead of time.
Deal ?
Thanks
CRC Secretary
Listen, Theresa, the security guys were not a problem, and the person trying to tell us we couldn't get a signature was not a problem. We shouldn't have to make any "deals" to be treated decently.
The problem is the stuff that your speakers were saying. Can't you see that it's wrong to hate people like that? Is your campaign really organized around the shared hatred of gay people? If so, tell me, how do you get like that? What's behind it?
Several reporters recently have asked me what motivates you guys, and I don't have an answer. "Hate" as an explanatory concept doesn't satisfy me intellectually, but that's all I've got to go on.
Theresa, maybe you can explain what it is about Don Dwyer, or Peter Sprigg, even, or the other speakers,that represents your cause, and why you choose to attack the school board and this curriculum on this issue.
Jim,
CRC does not hate gay people. We think the curriculum is not balanced, in that the BOE is presenting the subject of homosexuality in extremely one-sided fashion.
There are clear examples of this throughout the curriculum and the teacher resources. Our objections are clearly outlined on our website. You and I are never going to agree, so getting into a debate here would be pointless - plus I have to go get my two public school kids to their soccer games :-)
Make sure you get out and enjoy this beautiful day and when CRC announces it's next public meeting feel free to drop me a note and we can clear up any logistics about the facilities' rules ahead of time.
Have a great day !
Just to clarify a few things, I am the person from Teachthefacts.org who collected petition signatures in the auditorium after the three hour hatefest ended and was asked to stop. Jeannie was pushy but not rude. When she asked if she needed to call security to force me to stop my collection, I laughed and said, "Yes, please do!" About 10 minutes later, Jeannie returned to apologize to me and told me it was fine for me to collect signatures. Thank you, Theresa, for being honest.
You may also rest assured that members of Teachthefacts.org will attend future CRC meetings even if they continue to be as hate-filled as this one was. The diverse community that is Montgomery County needs to know we are here, fighting the hatred, fear, and intolerance you solicit from non-Montgomery County groups every step of the way.
Chris Grewell
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