Fishback Testimony to BOE, 6/12/07

                             Presentation by David S. Fishback

Member, Board of Directors, Metro DC Chapter of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)

Montgomery County Board of Education
June 12, 2007

         I have spoken with you many times about health education, noting that every mainstream medical and mental health professional association has concluded that homosexuality is not an illness. 

         In November 2004, the Board unanimously voted to include this statement in the health curriculum. In the curriculum you will consider today, Dr. Weast recommends inclusion of this statement as a resource teachers may use to answer questions.  This is a good step.

         The curriculum also explains that it is important “to be educated about homosexuality [because such education] . . . is likely to diminish anti-gay prejudice. Accurate information . . . is especially important to young people who are first discovering and seeking to understand their sexuality.”

         Today, I really want to talk with you parent to parent. My sons both happen to be gay. They are marvelous young adults, and my wife and I are very proud of them. But the years before they came out were hellish. They kept their secret from everyone, including from each other, fearing that there was something wrong with them. Our younger son contemplated suicide, and our older son had anger we could not understand.

         Mr. Abrams, you know our older son, Mike, and how accomplished he was at Richard Montgomery, where he was a classmate of your daughter. But what you may not know is that after he came out before his junior year at Yale, he told us that when he was in high school, he could never envision a happy life for himself. He told us that if, in health class, it had been explained to him that the medical profession had found that being gay isn’t a mental disorder and that gay people can lead happy lives, it would have made all the difference in the world to him.

         Your Citizens Advisory Committee recommended inclusion of several other important statements that are not in the proposal before you.  I urge you to take the opportunity, following the first year of  implementation, to evaluate the need for that information, as well.

         Many community members look forward to helping in this endeavor.