Three Letters

People email us here at TeachTheFacts.org rather regularly. There are times, for instance after the NPR story aired, when we are inundated with people who just love us and want to send us money. Then there are times, when the rightwing sites pick up the story and present us as demons, when we get a lot of hate mail, usually religious in nature, and usually not very well spelled. We get notified when someone signs our online petitions, and lately those have been ticking along like clockwork, every day there are new signatures.

Recently we received three letters I thought I'd write about.

RSS
The first letter was from a guy who complained that he couldn't get the RSS feed for this site. If you don't know what that is, don't worry. I use an RSS aggregator (SharpReader), and it helps me get through hundreds of web sites in a few minutes, to see what's new, what people are talking about, to keep track of changes in the culture wars. Anyway, it has bothered me since we started this site, that we couldn't make the RSS feed work right.

Now you will notice on the top right side of this page, a link that says "Syndicate this site (XML)." Yes, I am proud to say, with some help from a stranger out there on the Internet (here's his web page: Welcome to America), I was able to get it working. Now I'm happy.

CRC Plotting
The second thing. A guy with an email address that looks like random letters writes us and says:

Hi,

I don't even live in your state but I found your site through a series of links while researching. With reference to the CRC, I thought you might be interested in another page I found in Google's cache during my search. It appears to be from a now removed forum from January 2005. If you are already aware of this content, then please disregard.

Good luck in your efforts.

And he posts a link.

Wow. What a gold mine. He gives us a whole online discussion among the CRC's inner circle, hundreds of messages from January and February. I haven't read it all -- there's just too much, but you can see them plotting their lawsuit -- this is way back in January, remember how it was a "last resort?" You can see them complaining about me and this blog: as our Spanish-speaking friend writes: "jejeje."

Why, looky here. On January 18th, you have John Garza writing:

The lawfirm that just whipped the BOE due to its unconstitutional conduct against the young men of the "Good News Club" has agreed to help us in our case. We a putting together quite a team of lawyers. If you know of any kids who have been discriminated against for their viewpoint, or religious beliefs please let me know. The BOE has a poor batting record in Court trying to defend its actions...

A quick Google search reveals that Liberty Counsel represented the Good News Club in some lawsuits. So here we are, all the way back in the middle of January, conspiring with those out-of-town lawyers to sue the school district. The suit was filed in May, and they were s-o-o-o sorry it had to come to this, they really didn't want to, it was simply a last resort.

Liars.

Ooh, it's fun to search for mentions of teachthefacts -- isn't that terrible? It's like Googling your own name. But, man, it does appear that we were getting under their skin -- jejeje.

We will have many hours of entertainment reading this stuff. I'll report to you occasionally, I'm sure, some of the nuggets that can be found on the Internet.

Thanks, whoever-you-are, for sending us that link.

Are We Too Hard on People?
The third letter we got was from a nice lady who agrees with our position and wishes that we (I) were nicer about it. She said she is concerned about the tone of our blog postings. I replied to her, but I think a public statement is in order. This is a fairly difficult concept to convey, and I will probably be misunderstood, but let me give it a try.

Here in Montgomery County, Maryland, the school district proposed a new sex-ed curriculum. It talked about sexual orientation, and some people -- very, very few -- decided to pretend it was an affront to their values. The Presidential elections were being interpreted as a mandate for the religious right, and some of them made a move to capture the MCPS sex-ed curriculum.

These people started whining that it promoted homosexuality. They made up stuff about how it forced children to "declare their sexual identity at an early age." They said it discriminated against "ex-gays." They said it encouraged sexual behavior in young people. It undermined their religious values. Blah blah blah.

The people who started TeachTheFacts.org were not looking for an activist cause, we were just some parents who started seeing postings on the high-school message board and grew concerned. Myself, I would rather goof around with the computer or play catch with the kids than do this. But somebody had to stop these lunatics.

Here's the tough part. Look, the problem was not that the curriculum encouraged kids to turn gay, or that it instructed them in anal sex, or that it taught students that Baptists were intolerant. Those allegations were absurd, and anybody could see they were absurd -- the 8th and 10th grade curriculum outlines are linked on the righthand side of this page, you can see for yourself. Nobody in their right mind would really believe any of that stuff.

The problem was that a bunch of nuts were trying to gain control of what the school district would teach our kids.

This web site is not here just to make sure that kids in our county learn about sexual orientation in class. It's not really here to defend the curriculum, which was just fine, a health class, nothing you'd drop everything to go defend. I mean, of course, we address the issues that come up. This is all interesting, this stuff about gay people and condoms and everything, the culture wars and all that. But we wouldn't be here if there was just a new curriculum, any more than web sites spring up when there's a new math curriculum, or a new textbook in a biology class, or a new teacher is hired.

We are here to stand up for common sense, which is under attack in an otherwise sensible county. The MCPS school board is not promoting any "gay agenda." The MCPS school board does not want teenagers to become sexually promiscuous. The school board does not want to cause an epidemic of sexually-transmitted diseases. The school board has no intention of discriminating against "ex-gays" or any other kind of ex-people. These are silly accusations, and nobody believes them. They are a distraction, and are not "the issue" at all.

And the only way that I can think of to fight this is to take it head-on. Sometimes here at the blog we post research results and statistics showing that the curriculum was in fact correct about things. But sometimes we have to take the crazy things that the anti-curriculum squeaky-wheels are saying, and deconstruct them a little bit. Take 'em apart. Show exactly how the reasoning fails. It's not a personal thing, really, members of our group are friends with members of theirs. Parents from both side work together on extracurricular school activities (in those few cases where CRC members have kids in the public schools), and everybody gets along. I know, it gets a little ugly sometimes when you have to show how somebody's logic is simply wishful thinking. But it has to be done. You cannot treat this sort of thing with the same respect you would give to someone who is at least trying to make sense.

I'm sorry if it gets harsh sometimes, but we are going to stand up for common sense here, and that means refuting the irrationality, and you can't do that without mentioning the person who made the statement. It's nothing personal.

Thanks to all of you who write us and sign our petitions.