The Science of Petition-Mongering

If you've been watching the controversy over the Montgomery County sex-ed curriculum starting in 2004, you will have heard a small group of "conservative" people trying to get the district to throw out some classes because they were going to teach about sexual orientation and gender identity in a fair, cool, objective manner.

One thing the anti-MCPS Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum did was to gather petition signatures from physicians at Shady Grove Hospital -- one of their people, Ruth Jacobs, is a doctor there. The signatures were taken as evidence that the medical establishment agreed with their anti-gay view and opposed the curriculum just like they did.

No less than Chuck Colson wrote in his column, "Dr. Jacobs put forward a petition signed by 270 doctors asking Montgomery County to warn kids of the health dangers related to homosexuality. Montgomery County ignored it." The site MassResistance said, "PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays) tells us that despite a petition signed by 270 PHYSICIANS, the Maryland Department of Education will forge ahead with an extreme and dangerous message to their children, that anal sex is an option just as valid and safe as vaginal intercourse!" And so on, you see how they tried to use this thing.

I suppose I should mention that the petition said none of that. It was a tepid statement that anal sex is relatively dangerous, with some journal citations and a couple of pages of jargonish text that doctors don't have time to read. Nothing at all about homosexuality.

So yesterday we got an email from one of the doctors who signed that petition. I will print his letter, but leave his name off, as I have not asked his permission and don't want to give him the publicity.

To those concerned,

I realize this may seem out of the blue, but I was alerted today to a Vigilance blog posting from February 6th 2007 which lists a number of physicians who are reportedly "anti-gay." While I signed the petition mentioned in the blog entry, it was under false pretenses. Nowhere on petition itself nor in the information provided to me by Dr. Jacobs was there ever any mention of homosexuality. As a resident of the District, I had no idea that there was even a curriculum debate within MCPS. I have contacted Michelle Turner, the spokesperson for CRC and have told her that they are portraying the petition differently to the public than they portrayed it to the signatories. I do not agree with the public portrayal of it as physicians who believe in "health risks associated with homosexual sex." When I signed it, I did so because it discussed the health risks of anal sex be it heterosexual or homosexual. I know a number of the physicians on the list and I can assure you that few if any of them intended to promote an anti-gay cause. As you can imagine, however, our unwitting use as pawns in a culture war could have very serious professional consequences. As easily as my friend "googled" me and found my name on that list, so could my patients and, in doing so, find me mentioned as part of a group that supports beliefs very different from my own. As such, I ask that you remove the list from that entry. I signed the petition because I was a victim of deception. Please do not allow that deception to propagate.

Respectfully yours,
***** , MD

He's worried about his business. He says he didn't know, and the others didn't know, what the petition they signed was going to be used for.

I wrote him back and said we won't be removing the list from our web site. Basically my feeling is that you shouldn't sign something if you don't know what it is.

This has happened before, you know. Back in February of last year we got a similar email, saying:

I am one of the physicians who signed the petition. When I signed I was not informed that this was a political issue, rather a medical one.

At about that time, I talked on the phone to another doctor who had signed the petition. He said, "It was irresponsible on my part. I didn't really have time to see what it was about. I wasn't aware of her organization and what its focus was. Really, I'm behind the school system on this."

Another physician whose name was on the list wrote to the school district to say that she hadn't known what the petition was when she signed it, and did not want her name to be listed as a signatory. Here's what she said:

To Whom It May Concern:

Dr. Ruth Jacobs circulated a petition at a Shady Grove Hospital Pediatric Department meeting recently after a brief presentation about changes to the sex ed curriculum for the public schools. Unfortunately the information she presented was one-sided and misrepresented the issues at hand. I would like to retract my signature on the petition in support of adding the statement that "anal intercourse is simply too dangerous to practice." This statement is not supported by scientific evidence and does not belong in the curriculum.

Sincerely,
***. MD

So listen, that petition was a hoax. It said some medical stuff about anal sex, and most physicians do believe there is a somewhat greater risk of disease transmission through anal intercourse, compared to vaginal sex. It didn't say anything about homosexuality, and anal sex is a practice that is overwhelmingly performed by straight people. But they went out and told the world that the physicians opposed teaching about homosexuality, because they'd signed those petitions.

The school controversy is pretty much settled. I expect them to try something else, stand outside the schools with bullhorns or something, put up billboards, whatever, the curriculum has been adopted, the classes have been taught, there's no problem, nobody turned gay.

Now the same group has moved on to another issue, with Ruth Jacobs as their President. Now they're outraged because the county passed a bill giving equal rights to transgender people. You might see where I'm going here. They are fighting this by trying to get a referendum, and they are using the same trick again. To get a referendum on the ballot, you need to get a lot of signatures, five percent of the registered voters, I think. You could never get five percent of registered voters in Montgomery County to sign a petition calling for the return of the right to discriminate against transgender people, but you can get people to sign a petition that "protects the children," or that keeps predators and pedophiles out of the ladies room, that "protects my privacy," as one guy's t-shirt said. None of these things have to do with the law in question, but if people aren't paying attention you can get them to sign a petition to keep sexual predators away from children, that keeps perverted men out of ladies locker-rooms. You might get five percent if guys sign for themselves and their wives, if the certifiers fill in a few names of people they "just know" would sign it, if certifiers certify their own signatures, stuff like that. If the Board of Elections doesn't look closely, and it turns out they don't, you might get that past them.

They turned in enough signatures to put the referendum up to a vote in November, and the Board of Elections certified them, but the Citizens for a Responsible Whatever's ways are going to come back to haunt them. We recently copied and pasted the list of offenses from a lawsuit that has been filed against the county Board of Elections for accepting those signatures, read about that HERE. There are twenty separate irregularities that can be seen on the petition documents themselves. The word "fraud" comes up, and a couple of names are mentioned. I've heard the numbers that are coming out of the office where people are going over the petitions, and they are big numbers, there are lots and lots of illegalities on those petitions. Not just people forgetting their middle initials, I'm not going into it but some of the things that were done are significant and intentional.

The petitions from Shady Grove don't matter any more. Those poor doctors signed something without thinking about what they were doing, and now this guy is wishing we would take the list down off the Internet. Sorry, I'm just not that sympathetic. The damage is done, they signed the petition and never did anything to take it back, the guy writes an email to TTF, like it's our fault Google finds his name on the Internet. Those signatures are public record, and his patients have the right to know he signed that petition and was part of several legal proceedings. Even if he can convince them he isn't anti-gay, it's going to be tough to argue that he pays attention to what he's doing. Which is a desirable quality in a physician.

The CRWhatever used that Shady Grove petition every chance they got. They told the papers about it, submitted it to the school boards and the courts. It was a good trick for them, it sounded good to say that hundreds of physicians agreed with them. Now they're saying that 32,000 registered voters support them in their anti-transgender effort. It just all seems a little too familiar.