Posted on 11/28/2004 12:21:56 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Sunday, November 28, 2004
If administrators of Kentucky's Boyd County school district can't find a way to force all students to attend sexual orientation and gender identity "tolerance training," the American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to take them to court – again.
Ten months ago, the district settled a lawsuit with the ACLU over the right of a student group, the Gay-Straight Alliance, to meet on campus. The year-long litigation strained relations in the conservative northeast portion of the state. In addition to allowing the group to meet on campus after school, district officials agreed that all students, staff and teachers would be required to receive "tolerance training."
The agreement stipulated all would attend "mandatory anti-harassment workshops," including the viewing of an hour-long "training" video covering sexual orientation and gender identity issues for middle and high school students.
But ten months on, one-third of Boyd County students have failed to see the video, and that has the ACLU threatening court action.
"It sounds like the training can't possibly be done," James Esseks, litigation director for the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, tells the Louisville Courier-Journal.
District figures show 105 of 730 middle school students opted out of the training video and 145 of 971 high school students did likewise. On the day scheduled for training, 324 students didn't show up for school.
The current legal snag arises from the fact the original consent decree had no provision for parents exempting their children.
"The schools have great latitude in what they want to teach, including what's in training programs, and the training is now part of the school curriculum," Esseks says. "Parents don't get to say I don't want you to teach evolution or this, that or whatever else. If parents don't like it they can homeschool, they can go to a private school, they can go to a religious school."
"Where are the parental rights in this whole thing?" asks Rev. Tim York, president of the Boyd County Ministerial Alliance and head of Defenders Voice, a community group formed to contest the decree.
According to the group's website, Defenders Voice "incorporated due to the need for protection of both the physical and mental health of our students and citizens." Its members place blame for their current distress squarely on the ACLU:
"We have seen an onslaught of aggressive homosexual activism sweep across our country. In many cases, these activists are supported by the ACLU in their attempts. ... Defenders Voice believes that an organization like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) should not be allowed to tell parents what their children must learn."
The Alliance Defense Fund, a religious-liberties public-interest legal group, has signed on to help Defenders Voice, pledging to sue the school district unless it adopts an opt-out policy for parents this week. Alliance was formed in 1993 with the guidance of several well-known Christian conservatives, including the late Dr. Bill Bright, the late Larry Burkett, Dr. James Dobson, Dr. D. James Kennedy, and the late Marlin Maddoux.
Joe Platt, a Cincinnati attorney representing Alliance, says mandatory training on tolerance for homosexuals violates the right of conscience of parents and students who believe such behavior immoral.
But school district attorney, Winter Huff, insists to the Courier-Journal the decree does not violate parental rights: "Students certainly have the right to believe in what they want to believe, but they don't have the right to act out in inappropriate ways. The point is you don't treat people disrespectfully, you don't pick on people, you don't bully them, you don't make them afraid to come to school."
Meanwhile, only one of the seven plaintiffs in the 2003 lawsuit still remain in school. Six have graduated, and the teacher-adviser for the Gay-Straight Alliance club asked to transfer to another campus.
The ACLU's Esseks is now questioning whether the mandatory video meets the decree's required hour of anti-harassment training. Like one-third of the students in Boyd County schools, he has yet to view it.
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BUMP!!!
I wonder if it can be argued as a matter of conscience this tape violates the establishment clause.
The state is establishing the worship of the same sex recreational orgasm as the official state religion/philosophy. The Federal courts have found environmentalism to be a religion, thus this could be applied here.
Love thy neighbor.
If the material required is of a financial interest to the ACLU that makes this entire shakedown even more intolerable.
American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) - http://www.aclj.org
Thomas More Law Center - http://www.thomasmore.org
Alliance Defense Fund - http://www.alliancedefensefund.org
The Rutherford Institute - http://www.rutherford.org/
The ACLU must be destroyed: Joseph Farah supports Boy Scouts, urges Americans to fight back
Citizens mobilized to stop ACLU (seeks to consign group to 'ash heap of history')
| What We Can Do To Help Defeat the "Gay" Agenda |
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| Homosexual Agenda: Categorical Index of Links (Version 1.1) |
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| Myth and Reality about Homosexuality--Sexual Orientation Section, Guide to Family Issues" |
Tolerance is not the only way to prevent hazing, make hazing illegal, (oh, it is) well make beating people illegal (Oh it is). Well now, everything you want people not to do to homosexuals is illegal. All that is needed is to punish offenders. You see?
The homosexual lobby wants kids to see tolerance videos like they want workers to see diversity programs. The intention is not to stop some crime, the intention is to normalize over time homosexual behavior and allow homosexuals to do what they do with less social negativity. Kids can grow up and respect all people, regardless of who he takes to the prom. They want full acceptance, they have found a political and legal way of forcing it. But they do not understand that no one in society has a right to not be offended and society has the right to accept what it wants to, it can and in this case should reject the training. Its brainwashing. The school can say no, lose the funding and get over it. (Believe it or not, schools can exist without federal dollars.)
American Criminal Liberties Union.
BUMP AGAIN!
Ping
Pray for W and Our Troops
Could someone tell me why someone is not suing the ACLU?
Exactly what I mentioned in my post earlier. If that local ACLU chapter had been infiltrated we would probably know that the local chapter first got a call from the school officials so that they could pretend to be sued and pretend to capitulate. I really, really believe this is another secret, no fuss, no muss method that these liberal school administrations, boards and local governments use to impose their agendas through the back door. By conspiring with the ACLU (and other "public interest" litigators) to be sued by them, settle, then reimburse them for their billable hours under the aforementioned 1976 law that is the big, dirty little secret of "pro bono" activism. It would certainly go a long way towards explaining why there seems to be so much of this going around and why these locales always seem to fold in court.
I still remember a Forbes article of ten years ago about the EPA under Bubba's appointed administrator Carol Browner. According to the article this was a standard tactic. The EPA (and probably other fed agencies) would conspire with the greens to be sued by them and then settle ("memorandum of understanding") so they could undertake especially outrageous regulation without having to take responsibility for it.
Now that the electorate is really turning against the liberal agenda we can only expect more and more of these varied methods of end running around the legislative process. I do wish some author could do an in-depth study of this then make the talk show rounds.
"I don't understand where this lawsuit came from to begin with.
If the tape is not appropriate, I don't see how it can specifically be required watching. This is not the government mandating its schools to meet particular guidelines but some legal stick-up!
In theory, a level of "tolerance training" is appropriate in any good faith effort to prevent hazings and so forth of certain groups of students. But this tape may not be the best way of doing it. I'm at a loss to understand how the ACLU can demand a particular tape be shown. Can we sue to have "Silent Scream" shown in public school's sex ed?"
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I sure didn't think much of "Silent Scream when I saw it as a proper, liberal-raised kid all those years ago. But consider what could be put out now given the recent amazing improvements in ultra-sound imaging we've all heard so much about.
Yes, no school would tell me or my child that they have to view a homosexual film no more than they would tell me or my child that they have to view a pornography film, hollywood movie or anything else that I felt was not of the acedemic world. If that were the case, I would say fine. The kids view that film and after that...all the other kids have to stay and view "The Passion" or "The Ten Commandments" or "The Robe" or any number of other excellent religious/christian films. Watch them all run the other way for sure. Nope, no one would tell me or my child that they have to view anything non-academic. NO WAY! NO HOW! It's time for parents to stand up and DEMAND that kind of activity be removed from the schools just like the opposition DEMANDS all things with GOD be removed. It's that simple. Let's take our schools back so the kids can learn the three R's like they used to and advance from grade to grade on academic merit instead of being pushed through school not being able to read or count. But...they sure will know plenty about sex, abortion, condoms, homosexuality and all other things that have no place in the classrooms. What a sad situation for the kids and what a sad commentary on the educational system in this country and how they are maniuplated. It's time it stops. AMEN!
Yes, no school would tell me or my child that they have to view a homosexual film no more than they would tell me or my child that they have to view a pornography film, hollywood movie or anything else that I felt was not of the acedemic world. If that were the case, I would say fine. The kids view that film and after that...all the other kids have to stay and view "The Passion" or "The Ten Commandments" or "The Robe" or any number of other excellent religious/christian films. Watch them all run the other way for sure. Nope, no one would tell me or my child that they have to view anything non-academic. NO WAY! NO HOW! It's time for parents to stand up and DEMAND that kind of activity be removed from the schools just like the opposition DEMANDS all things with GOD be removed. It's that simple. Let's take our schools back so the kids can learn the three R's like they used to and advance from grade to grade on academic merit instead of being pushed through school not being able to read or count. But...they sure will know plenty about sex, abortion, condoms, homosexuality and all other things that have no place in the classrooms. What a sad situation for the kids and what a sad commentary on the educational system in this country and how they are maniuplated. It's time it stops. AMEN!
Sorry...didn't mean to hit the button twice. :)
One of these days the ACLU is going to push until the breaking point is reached, and no law, lawyer or court will be able to help.
Ping to the Bluegrass folks, if you could. Thanks.
Well Mr. Winter Huff, Esquire, if you make students watch this homosexual promoting propaganda you are treating them disrespectfully and picking on them (and their values) you are bullying them into accepting perversion and making them not want to come to school.
School is for teaching growing youngsters the basics of education, not converting them to liberal thought processes.
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