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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Just goes to show why we must get more conservative judges apointed to the courts.
The ACLU would not have so much power if not for the liberal activist judges that have been controlling the judiciary for so long.
This 'prescription' supposedly needed to assure the common good and assure the 'safety' of homosexuals is based upon the faulty studies and subsequent straw man arguments that: "numerous homosexuals are being 'abused', 'assaulted', and 'discriminated' against by fellow students...--"We Must Stop School Violence Against Homosexuals!"
-my question: Where is all this systemic and or inherent violence?
Hate crime and many other obtuse agendas are pushed this way based upon the faulty assertions made by the various groups pushing their agendas...
In my opinion, if this stuff is going to continue to be handled judicially -the best way to counter this stuff is to pull the rug out from under there sorry posteriors by proving their 'data', 'studies' and subsequent assertions flawed...
Homosexual Agenda Ping. Shaking head - ALL the children in this school district must attend pro-homo TRAINING? Training? They're actually using the word training...
RIP - I repeat, RIP your kids out of public school. The indoctrination goes on all day, every day. Read kids' textbooks. I have seen some lately. Anti-family, anti-morality crap seeps throughout all subjects. Revisionist history and leftist socialist type stuff sneaks in all over the place.
But this takes the cake. Mandatory homo-training.
Let me and ItsOurTimeNow know if anyone wants on/off this pinglist.
Good Lord!
You have to be kidding.
Here in the UK, my kids school showed a video to my daughters class (11 year olds), all about puberty and the changes they could expect,
Every parent got a letter explaining the film and was given the option for their child to be excluded from the viewing. Only a couple actually did.
But the point it, we were given the choice.
No way would this be tolerated in the UK. Parents wouldn't stand for it and the conservative press would be all over it.
Every parent in that school should keep their child off on the day that video is to be screened.
And a fighting fund should be set up to fight the ACLU in the courts.
It's a national disgrace in my opinion.
If Free Republic becomes liberal - that will be the day DU will close shop and the ACLU will start defending the few conservatives left. <sarcasm
LMAO -I like your style!
Do a FR search on "ACLU". There have been several encouraging articles about pro-active anti ACLU action lately. I'm too tired and a techno dunce anyway to check right now.
But I think there is starting to be a groundswell about this. Look into it and add to it!
If they really want tolerance - let's screen a typical porno movie in the school. It has a dose of both heterosexual and lesbian sex to leave both sides happy. Although I have a feeling that's not what the ACLU is really after.
This absolutely staggers the mind.
Hey - what are you doing up so late?
I'm just too tired to go to bed.
Regarding porn movies, they probably show them already. Or act them out in sex ed. Actually at school dances they do - there was a thread about that tonight.
I hope I live to see the day the UN is kicked out of the US and the ACLU closes up shop.
I caught a couple of hours sleep tonight and woke up and decided I want be up for awhile. Speaking of the devil, I'd be delighted if both would go away to France never again to bother us normal Ameticans.
Ameticans = Americans.
yes... there is a difference between training and education -compare the following statements:
Dad, I had Sex Education in school today
vs.
Dad, I had Sex Training in school today
hmmm....
More Militant Gayism
The use of the word "Training" indicates that they're taking their masks off. And the sooner the better, really. The more upfront they are with their agenda, the more fence sitters will be forced to choose which side they're going to take.
People really cannot be neutral about the homosexual agenda. By claiming neutrality they're outing themselves as Vichy-esque collaborators.
The ACLU communists need to be harassed and chastened at every opportunity. They are among the sickest and most contemptible organizations in the country. Mass murderers, Nazis, and homosexuals are their pet causes. Their chief hatred is of God and all things Christian.
They are the enemy. It's time to find out how they get their money and attack them at their Bolshevik source.
Where's the Right's version of the ACLU? Blackbird.
The appropriately named Mr. Huff is making the spurious leap from parents who want the right to opt their children out of homosexual "training" films all the way to kids bullying and intimidating students. Sounds like he should go back to law school. That's a hideously weak argument if you ask me.
If Mr. Huff wanted the right to refuse to attend church, could we automatically assume then that he will be involved in future church burnings?
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