Sometimes They Just Make It Up

This is not the kind of site I usually read, it's called Right Faith (motto: "Where Everything Favors the Stewardship of Patrimony"). (No, I didn't make that up, and it doesn't appear to be a joke.) But they've got a post there about "Gay Activism in Public Schools," and they talk about us.

First, they say a little bit about the controversy here in Montgomery County, using the Eagle Forum's description of the situation, block-quoting a big chunk. Sample: It's hard to believe, but this offensive curriculum criticizes "fundamentalists" and specifically singles out the Baptists as "theologically flawed" and as "unenlightened and Biblically misguided." I won't even try to say how many things are incorrect in that one sentence, I guess if Phyllis Schlafly says it, it's not considered lying, is it? Anyway, so they take the story up to the lawsuit.

Then, listen to this:

Don't expect this one ruling to thwart their efforts. The gay advocacy-in-education group in Maryland, Teachthefacts.org, is well organized and stand ready to influence Maryland public schools. This same group also refuses to permit research, performed by Dr. Robert Spitzer (a pro-gay marriage advocate), in the sex ed. curriculum showing that homosexuality is a self-determined lifestyle that can be changed. I suppose that free-speech and balanced perspectives are only applicable when it is convenient.

I especially like the way we are a "gay advocacy-in-education group." We could have been a "gay-advocacy in education group," but no, they seem to be saying we're actually gay, and promote "advocacy in education," whatever that means.

Uh ... you're wrong, dude.

There are American flags all over this web site, so I guess they're more patriotic than us, and I suppose that means that when they make stuff up, too, it's not lying, it's just, I don't know, making a point. The hint would be the "Rally for Bush Blogroll" on the side of their blog.

And man, the one thing we are proud of is that we are "well organized," just like they say. We don't spend one hour and fifty five minutes of a two-hour meeting joking around and going off on tangents ... do we? We do? Oh, yeah, that's right, we do. But for five minutes we are definitely well organized. We just never know when those five minutes are going to come, that's why it takes us two hours. And they never come all at once, it's like ten seconds here, thirty seconds there. Once we went a whole minute staying on-topic.

And, y'know, the school board has to run everything by us before they can make any decision at all. Oh yeah, that's true. Like, we refuse to permit research, performed by Dr. Robert Spitzer or anybody else, into any curriculum. And if we say no research, that's it, there's no research. We put our foot down. We are in control of the whole process -- just ask these rightwing paranoids.

For the record, nobody in their right mind believes that Spitzer's informal research showed that "homosexuality is a self-determined lifestyle that can be changed." Spitzer's badly designed and poorly implemented study found a few people, after a year and a half of searching, who convinced Spitzer, in telephone interviews, that they had "gone straight" after being gay. Even Spitzer himself says, "I suspect the vast majority of gay people would be unable to alter by much a firmly established homosexual orientation."

This statement on the Right Faith blog links to a truly ridiculous story by Jon Ward in the Washington Times, written after our forum last year, where the reporter ignored everything that was presented by the expert speakers, and wrote instead about what the executive director of PFOX said about Spitzer's study. It was bizarre, but Right Faith is eating it up, five months later.

This guy goes way off the deep end. You might have heard about "Fistgate," an unfortunate event in Massachusetts where a group brought some inappropriate literature to a convention at a high school. The wingnut web sites just love to quote this juicy stuff, in all its gory detail, and they love to link to the book, just to make sure their readers can be suitably titillated horrified. The Right Faith blog links to it, of course, but just in case their readers can't figure out how to click on the link, they include some quotes about fisting and watersports and stuff, just to show their readers how totally stimulating offensive it really is.

Then, a classic, they say, I simply can't believe that our public school students are being taught this; it is unfathomable and outrageous.

Of course, the truth is, nobody is teaching this, and nobody -- I mean nobody at all -- says they should.

I've been having fun with these idiots, but let me explain.

TeachTheFacts.org advocates a comprehensive and inclusive sex-education curriculum for Montgomery County public schools. There will be a couple of classes on sexual orientation, and there will be some discussion of proper condom use (as there has been for years). The curriculum that will be implemented will have lots of discussion of abstinence and why it is the best policy, including not only stuff about pregnancy and STDs but also discussions of how being sexually active affects a teen's social life, self-esteem, reputation, relationship with the other person, and everything else. We're not proposing or promoting anything radical, not trying to force anything on anybody. This is the kind of education that people all over the country want, as shown by numerous surveys. The schools will teach about sexual orientation and sexual identity, and we want to make sure that the classes are consistent with the opinions of the scientific and medical experts, and we do not want to see the schools stigmatize sexual minorities.

That's not much to ask. The "Right Faiths" of the world want to blow it out of proportion, but we're not asking for very much at all.