We Saved You The Pain of Going

Some of us went to the CRC's meeting last night so you wouldn't have to. Besides us, a Washington Post reporter, and the CRC folks themselves, twenty people showed up at a community center in Gaithersburg. Oh, and it looked like a TV crew, I didn't see what channel they were from. (This just in: somebody saw it on Fox News, said I looked bored.)

They went on for an hour. I'm not transcribing the whole thing. You wouldn't read it anyway, that would be excruciating.

John Garza talked about the court case -- they and MCPS have filed papers, back and forth, CRC trying to block implementation of the new curriculum, MCPS trying to get it going. But something has changed, he says:

We're please that the Maryland Court of Appeals, a couple of weeks ago, has ruled that homosexuality is not innate. In a case called Conaway versus Deane, which was the case to try to create genderless marriage in Maryland, the Maryland Court of Appeals said wait a minute, there's not sufficient scientific evidence to show that homosexuality is an innate genetic characteristic and if that were to come about it could come back to court but as of today the scientific evidence is just not there. Therefore homosexuals were not given the rights that they want. We can use that case now in our case because what the county school board is saying to students, if you feel you are gay, tenth grade or eighth grade, then you're gay, you're stuck being gay for the rest of your life, there's no changing.

OK, this is interesting, he's telling us what strategy he intends to use in the upcoming case. We always like to hear that, hopefully MCPS's lawyers are reading this.

We can look at the ruling in Conaway v. Deane. It's a pdf file, so we can click on the little binoculars and search the file for certain text. Like, since this is going to be the cornerstone of the CRC's case, let's see where they used the word "innate."

There's nothing. The word doesn't appear once. Garza lied.

That ruling never talked about whether homosexuality or anything else is innate.

The curriculum says sexual orientation is innate, uses that word. Conaway v. Deane does not address the subject.

Let me explain what happened. The opinion in Conaway v. Deane discusses immutability. Immutability means that a characteristic can't change. Innateness means you are born with a predisposition for a trait, which may be expressed later in life (for example, baldness). The CRC is going to go into court and try to pretend these are the same thing. The school says sexual orientation is innate, not that it is immutable. The court discussed immutability, not innateness.

An example will make it clear. Let's take an obvious innate characteristic like hair color. You're born to have your color of hair: it's innate. But there's a whole row in the drug store devoted to changing your hair color: it is not immutable. Get it? Lots and lots of innate traits are mutable.

He continues:

This new case from the Court of Appeals we think will give us a lot of the ammunition we need to win in the Circuit Court and if not we'll win when we get up to the Court of Appeals. Hopefully the same judges will still be there.

So he really thinks he can hallucinate some wording into a court document, wording that's not there, and convince other people that it is there, and that it proves his side should win.

He can tell his people what that ruling says, and they'll trust him, and he's lying and they'll never figure that out. They'll believe him and then feel persecuted when the argument gets laughed out of court.

Here's how Garza describes that doctor's petition. He says:

We approached two hundred seventy medical doctors in Montgomery County, doctors right here in Rockville, Gaithersburg, all two-hundred-seventy of them signed our petition. And school board just laughed it off.

That's a new twist, not only did 270 sign it, but every single person they asked to sign it, did.

Like the one who wrote the school board and said she wanted to remove her name, that the petition had been presented under false pretenses. And like the ones I talked to who said they had been deceived, and never would have signed it if they knew what was really in it.

Peter Sprigg from the Family Research Council spoke next. His first slide followed the same line. It said that the curriculum...

Proclaims homosexuality to be innate despite the recent Maryland Supreme Court ruling that it is not

They are really investing a lot in this. It is incredible that they can quote this court ruling without reading it.

He complains about the tenth grade text.

The textbook that was chosen for the tenth grade lesson was drafted by this person from, uh, Los Angeles, is that correct? [Displays Judy Chiasson's name: she works for the Los Angeles Unified School District] who is an advocate for the acceptance of homosexuality so this is the resource that they used as their outside textbook. This is an actual photocopy from the book that is used as the textbook for this lesson, giving acknowledgement to this woman, Judy Chiasson.

Listen, do you ever know who writes your kids' textbooks? Does it matter? This woman has a PhD, she works for the LA schools, we've talked about her before HERE.

Here's a point they love to make:

Every adolescent experiences confusion about their sexuality, that's the normal course of things and our concern is that those who experience any same sex attraction are effectively being encouraged to identify themselves as homosexual for life by this curriculum.

Sprigg is smarter than the rest of them, he disguises his lies. "Effectively being encouraged" lets him avoid saying that they "are being encouraged," because the curriculum does not encourage anyone to "identify themselves as homosexual for life." It isn't there, it isn't implied, but you can tell a room full of worried people that it does that, and they'll believe you. Saying it "effectively" says this is a Get Out Of Jail Free card for Sprigg, because he didn't say it "actually" encourages blah blah, he only said it "effectively" encourages blah blah. You have to prove what is and isn't between the lines to prove he's lying. Also, saying "our concern is..." means that he's not even saying it "effectively" blah blah, they're just worried that it might. Very sly.

The next speaker was Rosemarie Briggs, head of the local Family Leader Network, a Mormon group that has joined up with CRC and PFOX in the most recent legal actions.

Now this was good. She said this same thing recently and was torn to shreds in our comments section by someone who actually read the study. Listen:

[unclear] liberal organizations, Harvard University, National Public Radio, and the Kaiser Family Foundation, and they asked parents nationwide in this survey, Do you feel it's appropriate that homosexuality be discussed in the middle school, or high school? Now, fifty percent of parents nationwide said they thought it was OK for it to be defined, brought up and defined. Three fourths of high school parents felt the same way. However, when the survey went a little bit deeper, asked Do you feel that schools should teach that it is acceptable? Now, here is where the statistics are incredible. Four percent of middle school parents said Yes, schools should teach that [inaudible]. Eight per cent of high school parents said this. With a margin of error of plus and minus six percent.

So -- ninety six per cent of middle school parents nationwide think that schools go too far if they go beyond just defining. And ninety two per cent of parents at the high school level think that schools go too far. Ninety six per cent and ninety two percent don't sound like a small hysterical radical group.

OK, here, have some fun. Read the study she is citing HERE. We can check these things, you know.

First of all, when she says that some per cent of parents think "that schools go too far" she is lying. The study didn't ask that. It asked a hypothetical question about whether people would want a school to do something, not how they feel about what schools are doing. That's a big difference.

Second, her point is irrelevant. The MCPS curriculum doesn't say anything about homosexuality being acceptable. The new curriculum is an excellent example of just what people do approve of, classes that give the facts.

But the truth is, the respondents didn't say what she says they said.

Here's how this result was described in the survey report:

For the most part, Americans want teachers to talk about homosexuality, but they want them to do so in a neutral way. Fifty-two percent said schools should teach “only what homosexuality is, without discussing whether it is wrong or acceptable,” compared with 18% who said schools should teach that homosexuality is wrong and 8% who said schools should teach that homosexuality is acceptable.

You could say that since only eight percent of people want the schools to teach that it's acceptable, that means ninety-two percent oppose teaching that. If the world were made up of only two kinds of people, if everybody was either against something or for it, this kind of logic might hold up.

I've talked about the excluded middle recently, haven't I? This is a perfect example of that way of obtaining falsehood from facts. You pretend you have a binary world, you can only believe A or B. Count up the number of people who believe A, and then for B you simply take the number left over.

But listen, I wouldn't have said I want the schools to teach that homosexuality is acceptable, because, like most people, I don't think that's the kind of thing schools need to take a position on. I think it's fine to talk about gay people as people, to show what their lives are like, to teach empathy and respect for them, but I don't think it would even occur to school administrators to produce a curriculum that says something like that is "acceptable." This survey found that eight percent of people said the schools should take an ideological position in favor of homosexuality, eighteen percent think the schools should take an ideological position opposing it, and most of us think they ought to just Teach the Facts.

Sorry, but Ms. Briggs' distortion of these survey results is a lie. She wanted to convince her audience that most people feel like them, but they don't. Most people think the schools should be objective. They want the schools to do what MCPS is going.

The next speaker was Ruth Jacobs, their doctor. She rushed through her talk, but we will want to look at a couple of things. She twice told us that the Surgeon General has said that anal sex is too dangerous to practice, without once mentioning that no recent Surgeon General said any such thing.

Ruth Jacobs quotes the condom video:

I was very concerned by the seven minute video, five times in the video, 'Just use your condom for oral, anal, vaginal contact.' Just use your condom oral-anal-vaginal contact.' Uh, over and over again.

If you came to this meeting and heard a physician say this in a talk, wouldn't you think that the video said, five times, "just use your condom for oral, anal, vaginal contact?"

Here's what the lesson says:

Condoms reduce, but do not eliminate the risk of STI/STD whenever there is oral, anal, or vaginal contact.

It doesn't say "just use it." This is a very accurate statement about why you should use a condom -- and you should -- for oral, anal, and vaginal sex. The medical profession agrees with this, the government web sites agree.

Nobody says that casual anal sex is okay if you use a condom. I don't have the video script in front of me, but it tells the viewer that if you are having oral, anal, or vaginal sex, you should always use a condom. It's not telling you that oral, anal, or vaginal sex are okay, it's not saying "go ahead and do these things."

Hey, listen to her explanation of the doctor petition:

The county, er, the school is not listening to me, the committee is not listening to me, I'll go out and get physicians. So I went out and got two hundred seventy physicians, I said look, we, because there's heterosexuals do anal sex as well, homosexuals this is not targeting anybody, just tell them the risk, that's what doctors do, we warn you. You gonna take aspirin you might have a stomach ache.

And uh, that uh, when the sex act, so that the [unclear] that the Surgeon General said that anal sex is too dangerous to practice.

Wow. The doctors didn't know what they were signing, any more than she knows what the next word to come out of her mouth will be. The Surgeon General she is referring to was C. Everett Koop, back in the eighties.

Would you call that a lie? "The Surgeon General said..." Would you know that was a Surgeon General from two decades ago?

Like imagine if I gave a talk and said, "The President of the United States said he cannot tell a lie..."

Now, Dr. Jacobs is rushing through her slides. She gets to a statement from the tenth grade Holt resource. Listen to this:

Encouraging coming out. Quote: "For many people, coming out is liberating and empowering and makes them feel whole, healthy, and complete."

Man, she got us with that one. The Montgomery County Public Schools are actually telling kids how great it is to "come out" and announce you're gay.

Except she lied. It doesn't say that. Well, those words are there, but she didn't tell you what it really says. Here's what the curriculum says:

"For many people, coming out is liberating and empowering and makes them feel whole, healthy, and complete. To identify oneself as gay or lesbian can be very difficult given that many people do not understand sexual minorities. Regardless of their sexual orientation, all students should use good judgment and wait to have intimate sexual activity until they are in a committed, permanent relationship.

And on the next page, the curriculum resource says:

Many people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender celebrate their self-discovery and feel relief and a new sense of joy when they can be honest with themselves and their loved ones. Others may feel isolated while coming out and my even turn to drugs, alcohol, suicide and other dangerous behaviors. Because many youths who come out are met with hostility they are at greater risk for engaging in harmful, damaging, and even life-threatening behaviors and for being the targets of violence and harassment.

Listen, if they have a point to make, why do they do this kind of stuff? Why do they lie, distort, misconstrue? She takes one part of a quote out of context, conceals the real quote from her audience to make a point, and says the schools encourage coming out. The curriculum does not do that, but discusses intelligently the pros and cons.

Imagine that the curriculum really does have problems. Somebody who became aware of those problems would, you would think, speak out and say what the problems are. But the people who spoke last night didn't do that. They couldn't point to problems in the actual, real curriculum, they had to make up stuff.

We sat through an hour of lies, the four or five people who make up the core of this group stood up there, one after the other, and distorted the curriculum contents, lying to their audience. And they had to know they were lying, they weren't just making mistakes, one after the other.

It's like they just can't stop themselves.