Committee Wants Expert Medical Opinions: CRC, PFOX Oppose Them

Last night MCPS staff presented the citizens advisory committee with the results of the pilot testing of the new Montgomery County, Maryland, sex-ed lessons for 8th and 10th grade. The committee heard the results and learned that the school district is not planning to add materials from the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association to the curriculum.

The committee then voted to adopt a resolution urging the Superintendent and Board of Education to add the materials. The vote was 8 to 2, with the members representing the Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum and PFOX voting against it.

In the pilot testing, students were asked to write questions on index cards at the end of the class period and submit those anonymously to the teacher. Teachers reported that questions were asked verbally during class, too, but those were not recorded.

Most of the complaints about the classes had to do with the fact that they are tightly scripted, and teachers were not allowed to answer questions about the course content. According to MCPS staff, the teachers could have answered more questions than they thought they could, and some training will be conducted in order to make it clear to teachers that they can answer some questions -- "What is behavior?" was an example of a question they could have answered.

The school district staff noted several times the presence of a reporter, the threat of a lawsuit reiterated in yesterday's Gazette, and the fact that several committee members were taking notes -- this is an intense process, and everyone sympathizes with their sense that they need to be very, very careful. It also became apparent during the discussions that there will not be any opportunities for substantial changes, once the new classes have been implemented. So even though the school district understandably does not want to risk controversy or criticism or lawsuits, it is important to get this right. The instinct might be to pull back, to be extra conservative -- everybody knows that feeling. But the reasonable thing is to produce an excellent curriculum the first time out -- and how can there be any risk in including materials from the experts in medicine and mental health?

The committee had recommended inclusions of statements from these three documents:

• The American Medical Association
  
  • Health Care Needs of the Homosexual Population
  
  
• The American Academy of Pediatrics
  
  • Sexual Orientation and Adolescents (pdf)
    Sexual Orientation and Adolescents (HTML)
  
  
• The American Psychological Association
  
  • Answers to Your Questions About Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality

The information in these documents is secular, mainstream opinion from the authoritative organizations representing physicians in general, pediatricians specifically, and psychologists. If teachers had the knowledge contained in these few, easy-to-read pages, they would be able to answer almost all non-silly questions in the classroom.

Even giving students a handout with the statements from these documents would go a long way toward clarifying some important points. Students who have questions about their sexuality will be especially likely to look these things over outside the classroom.

The statements that the committee wanted to include were these:

Children who have fleeting same-sex attractions may assume incorrectly that they are gay or lesbian. Mere fleeting attraction does not prove sexual orientation.

All mainstream medical and mental health professional associations have concluded that homosexuality is not a disease or a mental illness.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says that most experts have concluded that "one's sexual orientation is not a choice; that is, individuals do not choose to be homosexual or heterosexual." Moreover, according to the American Psychological Association, sexual orientation is not a "conscious choice that can voluntarily be changed." Similarly, the American Medical Association opposes "therapies" that seek to change sexual orientation that are premised on the assumption that homosexuality is an illness and that people should change.

Homosexuals can live happy, successful lives; they "can be successful parents."

Children raised by same-sex couples do just as well as those raised by heterosexuals, and are no more likely to be homosexual.

It's simple, it's straightforward, it's authoritative, it answers the important questions that students are likely to have.

It is telling that the CRC and PFOX both voted against inclusion of the expert opinions. The CRC's representative on the committee is actually a physician -- you would think she would have supported inclusion of AMA policy statements. They complain when some little sentence, taken out of context from an antiquated government web site, is not included, but oppose the public policy statements of the most prominent organizations in the fields of medicine and mental health. Go figure.

The pilot test results will go to the school board on Tuesday, and they will vote on whether to implement the new curriculum in the fall. Somewhere in that process they will also be informed of the committee's resolution. The Superintendent's office could decide to add the professional organizations' statements to the curriculum before presenting it to the board, or if that doesn't happen the board could vote to add the materials.

It's a last chance to do the right thing. The curriculum as it is developed is a step in the right direction; things will be discussed in the classroom that are long overdue. There can be nothing wrong with making the message very clear, and there is nothing to gain by keeping the information vague. The fact is, the doctors have spoken, without ambiguity, and students deserve to know what the expert medical opinion is on these important questions.