Montgomery County's Right--Media's Wrong

Early in May, a Maryland District Court judge granted a temporary restraining order blocking a revised sex education curriculum in Montgomery county schools. The proposed lesson plan plainly sung from the secular hymnbook while simultaneously scornful of conservatively-oriented Christian faiths, particularly when preaching about homosexuality, thus violating First Amendment freedom of religion. Writing in the Weekly Standard, Hadley Arkes says the decision,

jolted the local liberal establishment in Montgomery County by blocking a pilot program in sex education. . . Judge Alexander Williams Jr. put the kibosh on this plan, and the jolt has had a deeper resonance, not least because Williams happens to be a Clinton appointee. But the lasting tremors come from the fact that the decisive strands in his May 5 judgment are lines of argument that have been used most often by the left: The judge invoked the concern for an establishment of religion, and beyond that, he raised the charge, under the First Amendment, that people with discordant views were being blocked from the public square.

Lest you suspect overreaction, the lessons included this:

Religion has often been misused to justify hatred and oppression. Less than a half a century ago, Baptist churches (among others) in this country defended racial segregation on the basis that it was condoned by the Bible. Early Christians were not hostile to homosexuals. Intolerance became the dominant attitude only after the Twelfth Century. Today, many people no longer tolerate generalizations about homosexuality as pathology or sin. Few would condemn heterosexuality as immoral — despite the high incidence of rape, incest, child abuse, adultery, family violence, promiscuity, and venereal disease among heterosexuals. Fortunately, many within organized religions are beginning to address the homophobia of the church [and] support full civil rights for gay men and lesbians, as they do for everyone else.

The lesson also contain a myth/fact list, one of which read, "Myth: Homosexuality is a sin." It's quite a stretch to insist school-defined "sin" is secular. Moreover, omission from the curriculum isn't discrimination; a revised approach might be lawful if disentangled from hostility to religion. It's amazing liberals can't visualize their reaction were the tables turned, as Federalist Journal editorialized:

Can you imagine if a public school in America started a curriculum that said "Fact: Homosexuality is a sin"? Can you imagine the outcry changing that single word would cause?

All the usual suspects - the ACLU, PFAW, etc. - would be having a collective stroke. They’re already screaming "THEOCRACY!" every time someone with views informed by traditional religious doctrine merely speaks publicly about any political issue. They’d be demanding the courts throw out that curriculum immediately.

Heeding the implicit message of Judge Williams' TRO ("you're gonna lose!"), the Montgomery County school board this week voted 9-1 to scrap the prepared materials and start over. Some lefties are still squawking. Such as Janice Irvine, a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts an author of a history of sex education, who personifies liberal tolerance and blamed the kerkuffle on -- I know; what a shock -- the religious right:

[C]onservatives have become emboldened by today's political climate, including the current debate over evolution and creationism in Kansas.

"We have a lot of different things happening at this moment," she said. "We've had a growing political Christian right movement that since the 1960s has used sex-ed as an important battleground, and that movement has only gotten stronger and stronger with Bush's re-election."

So the school board obviously made the right choice.

Yet many in the MSM disagree, and -- as MaxedOutMama noticed -- press spin succumbed to leftist cheerleading.

• The Washington Times played fair:

  Curriculum supporters had argued that the board could remove a handful of supplemental materials and move forward with the course, but last night, the board voted 9-1 to approve Mr. Weast's recommendation that they start over.
  
  The board expressly forbade the use of the supplemental materials, which taught that Jesus Christ said nothing about homosexuality and that homophobia is a disease. They instructed Mr. Weast to "research, develop and recommend" a new curriculum that discusses "sexual variations" using "professional educators within the school system." The board also ended the terms of every member of the 27-member Citizens Advisory Committee that crafted the course, even though some members' terms ran through 2006.
  
  The board will appoint a new committee. The CRC had said the old committee was stacked with homosexuality advocates.

• The AP says the sky is falling:

  Maryland's largest school district is scrapping sex education materials that have come under fire for implying that homosexuality is a biological trait and for demonstrating how to put on a condom. The Montgomery County school board voted Monday to rethink its curriculum, weeks after a federal lawsuit was filed by two groups who said it did not do enough to stress abstinence or give opposing views on homosexuality.

  Had AP bothered to read Judge Williams, it would have known that his opinion contained neither the word "condom(s)" nor "abstinence." Even after the Jason Blair fiasco, AP apparently still lets reporters phone-in stories from "mahogany ridge."



• The Advocate, a gay-oriented paper, wants public schools to endorse gays:

  The sex education curriculum in Maryland's largest school district will be overhauled and materials that had come under fire from two community groups and a federal judge will be tossed out. The Montgomery County school board voted on Monday to rethink its approach in the face of charges that teacher resource materials for the new curriculum implied that homosexuality is a biological trait, not a lifestyle choice, and excluded the viewpoints of so-called ex-gays and those who believe that same-sex attraction can be overcome. The board said it would not use those materials. . .
  
  The system had planned to launch a pilot program on May 9 designed to teach eighth- and 10th-grade students about the dangers of unprotected sex and about human sexuality, including homosexuality. Previously, health teachers could discuss homosexuality only in response to questions. Under the program that had been approved in November, teachers would have been able to bring up the issue on their own.

  Again, mentioning homosexuality in public schools isn't unconstitutional--endorsing it (and reprimanding religion) is.



• The Washington Blade, D.C.'s gay paper, thinks hetros are squaresville:

  Christine Grewell, Madeleine’s mother and co-founder of Teach the Facts, a grass-roots group of parents who support the curriculum changes, said Madeleine used to come home from school complaining that aspects of her health class were hopelessly outdated. “In the movies they actually used the word groovy,” Madeleine Grewell said, laughing. “This is an antique curriculum.”. .
  
  Grewell said she attended a town hall meeting organized by opponents of the curriculum and thought, "Circle the wagons — here comes Jerry Falwell."

  This is lunacy squared: it's hardly "tolerant" to turn Falwell into a pre-modern boogie man, or call a Clinton-appointed District Judge preserving First Amendment freedoms anti-intellectual.

Conclusion: In the next-day's press, conservative victories are signs of the theocracy to come--even when invisible to the rest of us; even where Constitutionally required.