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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"Tolerance Training" = liberal brainwashing. I love the Orwellian spin they put on the phishing of their partisan agenda at taxpayer expense.
Isn't it time to sue the ACLU? Or bring some kind of criminal charges of terrorism against it?
They're a Liberal Mafia. I'd love to see a RICO charge filed against them.
Gays once used to argue all they wanted was to be left alone in peace. Now they have enlisted the ACLU to get social approval they will never get. See, the ACLU may change the laws, it may be able to terrorize and coerce government officials into being gay friendly but their tactics will never get a majority of Americans to view the gay lifestyle as a normal and healthy way to live a life.
Jesus said: "And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." -from THE BIBLE: Matthew 19:4-6
Tolerating a man that bleep his bleep in another man's bleep, and then prances around in lavender, is already over the line. Accepting him, and teaching my kids to embrace his sin, is not an option.
I'd like to move to Kentucky just so I could pull my kids out of these classes.
Oh to be a student today. No one would make me watch a film I did not want to watch, even if I agreed with the subject or the cause. As soon as they said I had to watch, I would say CYA.
First of all, the schools' "great latitude" is challenged all the time by the likes of the Anti-American Commie Liberal Union and their fellow travelers, and secondly, Esseks has given away the strategy of the group -- they want to make the public schools a place where parents must choose to either allow their children to be indoctrinated with their brand of moral relativism or flee to religious schools at their own expense.
When are people going to sue the ACLU for harassment?
Exactly. In this situation, its about ensuring conformity to the gay agenda. "Tolerance" here is a code word for making sure no one expresses a different view about the subject. Disagreeing that homosexuality is just as moral and natural as heterosexuality is enough to brand one as "intolerant" and guilty of committing a "hate crime." The ACLU can no more tolerate a genuinely free perspective on the subject nearest and dearest to them than the Soviets could tolerate people who disagreed communism was a beautiful thing. See, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
More like put that infernal mob of busybodies out of business for good. See my post #23 on the recommended course of action.
From taxpayers and the Lawsuits that get settled
Everyone should check this out! We must get rid of
these evil-doers.
http://www.stoptheaclu.org/
I'd rather not live in a Politically Correct America. The ACLU has become our national PC Police, watching like a hawk for the slightest sign of deviation from approved liberal orthodoxy.
They claim to have 400,000 members. In addition to those contributions, they also get money from unions, corporations and foundations. They are "non-profit," so they also get breaks from the government. Somehow, they manage to finance roughly 6,000 legal actions per year and a permanent DC lobby.
I wouldn't put the ACLU in the category of PC
To me, PC means not to offend others by choosing correct words
That is not what the ACLU is doing
What the ACLU is doing is forcing their will on the people by threats of lawsuits
IMO .. That is a civil rights violation
Well... my friend, the "correct words" are really a euphemism for the right values. The ACLU isn't so much concerned with how its said but rather with WHAT's said. Liberals claim they're worried people's feelings will be hurt if people say things they shouldn't but its never the language that at issue, its the thought that's the source of the upset. To folks who believe in PC, the right language is basically a means of straitjacketing forbidden thoughts. If you don't know how to say them, they don't get expressed. And liberals feel better knowing every one around them at least goes through the motions of agreeing with them. That's the whole point of making sure the country doesn't violate the PC canons of language... er, thought.
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