An Optimistic Monday Post-Holiday Wrap-Up

Right now the MCPS health classes under contention are being developed by school district staff. Sounds like they've got some good people working on it, we're not worried about what they'll produce. The world being what it is, I imagine the new curricula will undergo an extra layer of review by the legal team. We hope that the school board has the fortitude to trust their experts without making any political adjustments to the course content.

The new citizens advisory committee will meet for the first time in a couple of weeks. I'm on that committee, and will try to walk a fine line blogging about the process while participating in it. The goal is to help the committee come to a consensus on a good curriculum, and blogging of course is secondary to that. That doesn't mean I can't talk about it, it just means that I may not say every little thought that comes into my head. If you know what I mean.

The Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, it seems to me, are running out of steam. They made a mistake last week by holding a meeting and having their featured speaker undermine the nutty parts of their agenda. The fact is, if you put the research on the table and look at it, there's nothing there to support their extreme opinions. When they invited Warren Throckmorton to speak at their "informational meeting," I think they expected him to support them, but he was very careful not to. Yes, he leans a certain way that favors them, but he was very careful in his wording, and frequently mentioned that you can't go beyond the research, and that if you don't have scientific evidence for something, you shouldn't teach it in school: our view, exactly. We may discuss how to interpret medical and scientific research, and we might not agree on everything, but this is no place to float off into theological judgments and speculations.

It appears to me that the CRC seems to be fracturing into the True Believers, who want to press forward their self-righteous ideological agenda no matter what, and those who are simply conservative. You can't talk to the True Believers, that's not what they do. They live in an all or nothing world, and to tell you the truth, they had their chance and blew it.

Other members of the group seem to be people who have conservative views. These are simply parents who are concerned about raising their kids too fast and exposing them to too much at too young an age. Some may want to protect their children from worldly influences or demeaning popular culture, and some are just a little modest about talking about sex.

And you know, the members of our group feel that way, too, we worry about what our kids are picking up. I wouldn't let my kid watch certain TV shows until he got big enough to take the remote control away from me by force, I just thought it was a bad influence. We all have some boundaries, and as the school district develops a curriculum and the citizens committee evaluates it, we should be grown-up enough to shift those boundaries back and forth. Some of us will insist on getting all the facts, and on being fair and respectful to the sexual minorities in our society. Others will insist on emphasizing the risks of sexual behaviors and on making sure teenagers aren't given the idea that casual sex is just fine if you wear a condom. Cool, let's talk about it and figure out how to do all that, or get as close as we can. We all want the same thing, we just emphasize different parts of it.

The history of this is that the CRC began as an attempt to recall the entire school board over the new curriculum that was adopted last November. After the 2004 elections, they thought they had a mandate. But over the months we -- and others in the community -- have consistently and firmly pointed out the ugliness of their message, the lies, the inconsistencies. In desperation they pulled off a last-minute legal maneuver that had the result of causing the school district to start over again. It was a cheap shot, they baffled the judge about what was in the curriculum and what was in some teachers' background resources, won a 10-day temporary restraining order, and then negotiated a deal with the school district to prevent further lawsuits. It was a very weak outcome to a long and contentious controversy. They got what they wanted, that is, the blocked the curriculum, but in doing it they lost what community support they might have had, and demonstrated that they could not win on the strengths of their arguments, but only by legal chicanery.

I expect the CRC will sue again, they've told the papers they would, and it's all they've got left. They have refused to comply with the school board's rules for applying to the citizens advisory committee, and want to put an ineligible person on it. They have actually said that they shouldn't have to follow the board's rules, only the terms of their legal agreement.

If they want to participate in the process of curriculum development, then they need to be willing to negotiate and compromise. If they want to hold the line on their nuttier ideas, and here I am thinking of the business about "ex-gays," then they will not be seen as participating in the process, but trying to wreck it. That won't surprise anybody, but it will not work for them, either.

Quickly, the "ex-gay" thing, for those who have not followed this discussion. There is a clever strategy by the religious right to claim as a fact that gay people can be converted to heterosexuals through prayer and psychotherapy. They like to call these people "ex-gays," and then pretend that this group of people are being discriminated against. In this case, they say you should "teach both sides," you should teach about gays and "ex-gays."

Well, it is not really clear that anybody has ever really changed their sexual orientation. You only know from self-report, a person is what they say they are, and most of the people who say they are "ex-gays" are religious activists who have a lot to gain by claiming to have changed, both financially and personally. If anybody has changed, there are not very many of them; it is an insignificant phenomenon.

The concept is a tool for evangelizing, for bringing religious ideas into the classroom. You won't find anybody who talks about "ex-gays" as a secular concept, there is no scientific support for the phenomenon. There is no place for this topic in the classrooms of Montgomery County, and I'm sorry, but if they insist on this kind of silliness they will be shot down again and again.

But if they want to actually develop a curriculum for our kids, to negotiate, persuade with reason and evidence, and compromise, I for one welcome that. With recent developments, I think we are coming to this point. The radicals are losing their place, their extreme views have failed to convince anyone. I am hoping that the moderate ones, the conservative ones, the ones who are willing to open a dialogue, will come to the front now, and we can move forward cooperatively.