Via E-Mail and First Class Mail
Dr. Nancy S. Grasmick, State Superintendent of Schools
Members, Maryland State Board of Education
200 West Baltimore Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21201
RE: Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum et al.v. Montgomery County Board of Education
Dear Superintendent Grasmick and Members of the Maryland State Board of Education:
I write this letter as a member of the Board of Directors of the Metro DC Chapter of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).
It has come to our attention that three groups, including a James Dobson-founded group called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), have asked you to stop the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) from field testing health education curriculum revisions. It has also come to our attention that the notoriously homophobic American Family Association (AFA) of Tupelo, Mississippi, has sent out e-mails urging people to write and call, urging you to halt the MCPS field testing. See http://www.teachthefacts.org/2007/03/donald-e-wildmon-aims-national-heat-at.html
Of course, the purpose of health education classes is to present the wisdom of the mainstream medical and mental health community regarding important medical and mental health issues. But what groups like PFOX and AFA are seeking to do is to impose their medically-rejected views upon the students of MCPS.
The message of PFOX is that homosexuality is a disease that can and should be "cured." This message, however, is directly contrary to the official conclusions of the American Medical Association, which "opposes the use of ‘reparative’ or ‘conversion’ therapy that is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual orientation." AMA Policy Number H-160.9916 Health Care Needs of the Homosexual Population, available at at http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/14754.html. http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/14754.html).
Here, MCPS relied upon experts presented by the Maryland Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in developing and reviewing its curriculum materials, which are all consistent with the wisdom of the mainstream medical and mental health professional associations. For your information, here is what some of those organizations say.
The AAP, in its Guidance for the Clinician on Sexual Orientation and Adolescents (published in PEDIATRICS, Vol. 113, No. 6 (June 2004), available at http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/113/6/1827), notes with approval the fact that in "1973, the American Psychiatric Association reclassified homosexuality as a sexual orientation or expression and not a mental disorder" (p. 1828). In this same Guidance, the AAP goes on to note that "the current literature and most scholars in the field state that one's sexual orientation is not a choice; that is, individuals do not choose to be homosexual or heterosexual." Id. Indeed, the AAP (a) encourages its members to "[b]e supportive of parents of adolescents who have disclosed that they are not heterosexual, (b) informs its members that "[m]ost states have chapters of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) to which interested families may be referred," and (c) encourages its members to "[r]emind parents and adolescents that gay and lesbian individuals can be successful parents themselves." Id. at 1830-31.
Similarly, the American Psychological Association, in its on-line publication Answers to Your Questions About Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality (available at at http://www.apa.org/topics/orientation.html http://www.apa.org/topics/orientation.html<current document>), states that sexual orientation is not a "conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed;" that homosexuals can "live successful, happy lives;" that "homosexuality is not an illness, it does not require treatment and is not changeable;" that both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association urge "all mental health professionals to dispel the stigma of mental illness that some people still associate with homosexual orientation;" and that "[s]tudies comparing groups of children raised by homosexual and heterosexual parents find no developmental differences between the two groups of children . . . . [and] that a parent’s sexual orientation does not dictate his or her children’s" sexual orientation.
Attached, for your convenience, is a Fact Sheet setting forth the conclusions of the mainstream health professional associations.
PFOX’s assertion that MCPS may not legally limit the curriculum to the conclusions of the mainstream medical and mental health professional associations is ludicrous. Their legal theory – that MCPS has violated what they call the principle of "viewpoint neutrality" in curriculum – was roundly rejected by the United States Supreme Court in Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of the Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 833 (1995). There, the Supreme Court held that "[w]hen the University determines the content of the education it provides, it is the University speaking, and we have permitted the government to regulate the content of what is or is not expressed when it is the speaker." Those determinations are fundamentally different from the factors at play when a school establishes a "public forum." That clear distinction was reaffirmed just last year by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit: "Of course, when the government alone speaks, it need not remain neutral as to its viewpoint." Child Evangelism Fellowship of Maryland v. Montgomery County Public Schools , 457 F.3d 376, 381 n. 2 (4th Cir. 2006).
In addition, we note that the PFOX Complaint is replete with factual misrepresentations. For example, the Complaint incorrectly asserts, at p. 30, that failure of a student to opt-in to the lessons discussing sexual orientation "precludes graduation," citing only a newspaper article. In fact, MCPS makes it abundantly clear that students need not take those lessons in order to satisfy the High School Health Education requirement, as MCPS Superintendent Weast explained in presenting the revisions to the Montgomery County Board of Education on January 9, 2007. See http://www.teachthefacts.org/Curricula.html , Memo from Superintendent Weast at p. 4. See also MCPS Regulation IGP-RA (Implementation of Programs on Family Life and Human Development).
Another example is the Complaint’s assertion that the relative risks of certain sexual behaviors must be discussed in the curriculum revisions to be field tested. What the Complaint ignores is that that topic is more appropriately discussed in the unit on Sexually Transmitted Infections. The revisions at issue here do not include the unit on Sexually Transmitted Infections.
In sum, MCPS has taken excellent first steps in dealing with the important issues covered by the revisions and has done so in close consultation with medical experts. Health education curriculum revisions that are developed, as here, in close consultation with mainstream pediatricians need not, and should not, also include contrary, discredited "viewpoints" of groups like PFOX.
Sincerely,
David S. Fishback, Member
4913 Continental Drive
Olney, MD 20832
Attachment
cc: Nancy Navarro, President, Montgomery County Board of Education
Dr. Jerry Weast, Superintendent, MCPS
FACT SHEET
The American Medical Association (AMA):
"[O]pposes the use of ‘reparative’ or ‘conversion’ therapy that is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual orientation." (AMA Policy Number H-160.991 Health Care Needs of the Homosexual Population, available at http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/14754.html).
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP):
Notes approvingly that the American Psychiatric Association reclassified homosexuality in 1973 to state that "homosexuality [is] a sexual orientation or expression and not a mental disorder" (Guidance for the Clinician on Sexual Orientation and Adolescents, published in PEDIATRICS, Vol. 113, No. 6 (June 2004) at 1828), available at http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/113/6/1827).
Encourages its members to "[b]e supportive of parents of adolescents who have disclosed that they are not heterosexual," noting that "[m]ost states have chapters of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) to which interested families may be referred," and urging clinicians to "[r]emind parents and adolescents that gay and lesbian individuals can be successful parents themselves." Id. at 1830-31.
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." Id. at 1828.
The American Psychological Association:
States that sexual orientation is not a "conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed," and that gay men and lesbians can "live successful, happy lives." Answers to Your Questions About Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality (2007), available at http://www.apa.org/topics/orientation.html.
States "that "homosexuality is not an illness, it does not require treatment and is not changeable." Id.
States that both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association urge "all mental health professionals to dispel the stigma of mental illness that some people still associate with homosexual orientation;" and that "[s]tudies comparing groups of children raised by homosexual and heterosexual parents find no developmental differences between the two groups of children . . . . [and] that a parent’s sexual orientation does not dictate his or her children’s" sexual orientation. Id.
Prepared by Metro DC Chapter of PFLAG
No comments:
Post a Comment