Matthew and Ruth, Mostly Matthew

So, listen, my friend called me yesterday. He was going to go see the Who at the Verizon Center with somebody, and they backed out. So he had an extra ticket for tonight. Good seats, he said.

And what did I say?

No man, I gotta go to this meeting about the sex-ed thing.

Yes, it's true, I turned down good seats at a Who concert to listen to a series of evil people saying horrible things. The Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum held a meeting at the Marriott conference center at Rio, in Gaithersburg, and some of us went.

I hope the papers in the morning have details of John Garza's legal plans. Well, it was late, they might have missed their deadline, maybe next day. He wants to spend a lot of money, depose a bunch of people, bring in experts from Harvard. But he doesn't have any money. Or enough lawyers. Anyway, a lot of journalists were there, and TV crews, I imagine somebody will have it.

The more interesting thing was my friend Matthew. When Matthew showed up at this thing, I told him he was "inappropriately cheerful." He said, "I'm always cheerful."

And actually, I can't think of a time when he wasn't making a joke or laughing about something. He is always cheerful.

But then, I've been to several of these CRC things, and he hasn't.

I'm not going to go through the whole nightmare meeting, just want to focus on one thing, to show you how this works.

One of the speakers was Ruth Jacobs. Ruth is an infectious disease specialist, a doctor, the CRC's rep on the citizens committee, and she l-o-o-v-v-e-s to talk about anal sex and AIDS. We've known her for years, and she just doesn't let up. She tells the school board, the PTA, she'll talk to anybody about anal sex and all the germs it spreads. Especially gay anal sex.

She gave the same talk she gave at Magruder a couple of weeks ago. She had the same unreadable slides, lots of white text on a white background, five or six different fonts on a screen, colors clashing.

I'm going to quote a couple of passages from her talk, to set a context for what followed.

She showed the Holt text, and said, "These lessons were written by a woman, as best I can tell, who had twenty years of special education teaching experience to qualify her for the tenth grade lesson..."

Later she showed a slide and said:
"The condom use lesson was taken from several FDA web sites, and this FDA web site was utilized by Montgomery County Public Schools. Right smack dab in the middle, what does it say? "Are condoms strong enough for anal intercourse?" Mmmm. The Surgeon General, this was Everett Koop, 1988, has said, "Condoms provide some protection but anal intercourse is simply too dangerous to practice." Why? It might be more likely to break, then the tears and bleeding allow disease to pass more easily."

A little later, we were back to this ...
"OK, as I've said, the lessons were written, the tenth grade lesson, Judy Chiasson, she's an employee, she's [unclear] Project 10, which is a gay advocacy group, she's not a health care professional, she's not a health care educator. Their mission is to ensure a safe, supportive, and welcoming campus, free from discrimination and harassment for sexual minority youth. I make a point -- we agree with this, we want everybody to be safe from discrimination, but their mission does not include protection against health risks of sexual activity and importantly, when you opt out, you have a new discrimination ... set ... you know? So, my concern is, let's have no discrimination for anyone in the school. Not ... just ... for ..."

And she tailed off.

I'm not going through all the speakers, just getting to one part that nailed it for me.

The evening ended with a Q&A session, and people in the audience -- there were between fifty and seventy-five people there, some were us, a lot were journalists, and about ten people left in the middle -- were outraged and shocked etcetera to learn about the gay agenda in our schools and so on.

And wouldn't you know, Matthew held up his hand. Immediately, Theresa from CRC went over to John Garza, who was managing the microphone, and they whispered back and forth, and Garza worked the other side of the room with the microphone.

Eventually he used up that side, and let a couple of people on our side talk. Soon he was standing right in front of us, but with his back to Matthew. Matthew kept his hand up, patiently.

It got ridiculous, Garza couldn't turn to his side because it would make it impossible to pretend not to notice Matthew.

Garza stood right in front of him, holding the microphone, wouldn't look at him, wouldn't pass it to him. He tried to wrap up the Q&A, and started walking away. Finally, somebody said something.

Garza looked around as if he were surprised. He hesitated, and Matthew just started talking. He said "I have a question, please."

Somebody said, "C'mon, John, don't be a coward, let Matthew speak."

Matthew said, "You stood right here for three minutes and you didn't acknowledge me."

Finally they decided to take one more question, and Garza passed the mike to Matthew. Matthew said, "Thank you, I want to ask a couple of questions here that it's important for us to hear some real answers to. Doctor Jacobs, you know full well that the Surgeon General never made that statement. And you know full well that the FDA web site that says that the statement was made is not proper. It was actually the Sugeon General's Understanding AIDS brochure that was sent to all Americans. And that statement about anal sex is not included in that brochure and you know that, so I'm not real sure why you continue to promote that statement.

"The other thing you also know full well is Project 10, that group in California that you so like to disparage, is an official organization of the Los Angeles school board, it's not a private organization. It is a function of the school board and it's important for people to know that.

"You also know that sixty five percent of all AIDS patients in Maryland are heterosexuals, but the vast majority of your time spent on the committee was talking about HIV and homosexuals. And I don't understand the disconnect there.

"And you also note there are whole sections on the health curriculum that talk about HIV and AIDS but yet every time we had a discussion about homosexuality you wanted to bring in HIV and AIDS, if for no other reason that I could tell, to try to teach people that HIV and gays are together and all gays are going to come up with HIV.

"And finally I thought it was interesting in one of the videos that you brought up had an African American man talk about Martin Luther King's civil rights movement. I doubt most people in here know that the man who organized the march on Washington for Reverend King was a gay black man."

Yes, I was proud of my friend. And did I mention, he is Director of the Office of Program Operations and Scientific Information in the Division of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome at the National Institutes of Health? And that he's eternally cheerful? Ah, yes, maybe I did mention that.

So how do you think Ruth Jacobs responded?

"You've been listening to Matthew Murguia, a member of the committee, who was a member for nine months before he did inform us that he was gay. And I don't believe ... [inaudible, somebody is saying "Oh my God, what does that have to do with it?"] ... full disclosure you can go to the FDA web site, the petition is on it, and on the petition is the access for the web site."

Matthew said, "If anyone wants the citation I have it right here for you so you can look it up yourself."

[Note: the FDA web site is HERE. See if you can find the Surgeon General's quote in the document they link to.]

Ruth kept going: "The citation is there, it is an up-to-date web site, it's in the middle of the web site. Mister Murguia when he was defending this said, y'know, smoking is a Surgeon General's statement and I really don't think that that has ever helped Americans."

Matthew hollered out, "Context Ruth, put it in context."

Ruth said, "Whatever it is necessary for him to say to match his gay agenda, he will say. And I have been very careful to stick to the CDC, the FDA, because I've known that there would be concerns."

And that wrapped up the Q&A section.

And that, in a nutshell, was our night at the CRC's meeting. On the way home I sang along with "Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dancer" at the top of my lungs, and my wife called me on my cell phone from Iowa, and it was great -- great -- to hear from her, even though her dad is pretty sick. And I was really glad to get home to those problematic, confused, self-conscious and perfectly terrific teenagers of mine. Dirty dishes and all.

Oh, and when I got home, I watched the news, and they interviewed Matthew, and in his ridiculously cheerful way he told them just what he thought about it all. And it was good.