The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080600943_pf.html) and 365gay.com are reporting that the Arlington County Virginia School Board will allow PFOX - a puppet of Christianist organizations like Focus on the Family - to distribute materials in middle schools. School Board Chairman David Foster is pictured at left. Anyone wishing to provide their comments to the school board my do so via this e-mail address:schoolbd@arlington.k12.va.us Here are some high lights of the Post story:
McLEAN (AP) -- An organization that advocates therapy to convert gays has settled a lawsuit with Arlington County school officials over their refusal to distribute its fliers to high-school students. As a result, the group is now considering targeting its message to even younger students in middle schools.
Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, or PFOX, sued school system administrators and board members earlier this year in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, claiming that they improperly blocked their request to send out fliers to high school students.
A settlement, reached last week, specifically states that PFOX will have the same access given to other groups and can submit fliers for distribution to middle and elementary school students if it wishes, said PFOX's lawyer, Timothy Tracey.
PFOX, based in Fairfax County, has been controversial for its support of conversion or reparative therapy, which many mental health experts say is harmful. It has also opposed sex-education curriculum in Montgomery County, Md., and elsewhere that it believes advocate a homosexual agenda. Tracey said Monday that PFOX is considering distributing its fliers at middle schools but has no plans to do so at elementary schools.
Not surprisingly, I beleive the School Board decision was idiocy and potentially harms numerous students and opens the school system up to potential law suits. In fact, here is the letter that I sent to the members of the school board and superintendent of schools:
Ladies and Gentlemen:
It was with great distress that I noted your decision described in the linked article (http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/08/080707school.htm). As one who has studied the fraudulent nature of these “conversion” programs in depth and helped expose “ex-gays for pay,” I believe that you have opened a Pandora’s Box of potential liability on the part of the school division in respect to youth who may be harmed by these programs and/or pushed to suicide.
It was with great distress that I noted your decision described in the linked article (http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/08/080707school.htm). As one who has studied the fraudulent nature of these “conversion” programs in depth and helped expose “ex-gays for pay,” I believe that you have opened a Pandora’s Box of potential liability on the part of the school division in respect to youth who may be harmed by these programs and/or pushed to suicide.
In 2006, the American Psychological Association issued a stinging rebuke of the so-called ex-gay movement following a demonstration by members of several organizations that claim homosexuality is a choice that can be cured. In fact, the APA is now considering a total ban on conversion therapy under the APA’s ethical and clinical guidelines. In short, if the school division gets sued, the legitimate mental health experts will testify against these programs. I hope you have discussed this issue with the school division’s liability insurance carrier. I suspect your carrier will not be pleased. Whether or not you endorse these programs, the fact that the school division allows the materials to be distributed will give them an appearance of legitimacy that they do not deserve. Unsuspecting youths and/or parents may be misled accordingly to their detriment.
I know I would happily represent a youth in your school division or his/her family who is harmed as a result of these fraudulent programs. Perhaps Arlington County will have the opportunity to provide the “test case” that will put these bogus “ministries” out of business once and for all.
I truly hope you will rethink this extremely foolish decision.
The Clerk of the School Board confirm receipt of my letter and that it would be distributed to the baord members.
1 comment:
Sirs/Madam:
Pulitzer Prize Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson insists homophilia (GLB) is "biologically normal." He wrote that observation in 1978. Wilson accused the Psyche Metaphysicians of Nazi death camp atrocities akin to Buchenwald by their "pathologizing and curing" a biologically normal fact. I think he would add PFOX and other homobigoted religious intolerants to the same psychosexually deviant class of Nazi-like aberrant persecution of homophiles.
Meanwhile, more than 450 different species, including Homo sapiens, have been observed and documented to engage in homoerotic behavior, confirming by evidence and natural fact that homophilia and homoeroticism is unquestionably normal biologically. To permit, facilitate, or otherwise foster the assault, opprobrium, and obloquy of homophiles is perverse, aberrant, and deviant. To terrorize those under age eighteen with homophobic screeds and intolerance is also cruel and inhumane.
Arlington, VA, has been my preferred city to use as my base when in the D.C. area. It also has never come across as bigoted, racist, intolerant, and deviant. But to foster such terrors akin to Buchenwald in the persecution of homophiles is morally, socially, and ethically reprehensible -- in addition to perverse, aberrant, and deviant.
I trust the good citizens of Arlington will not aid, abet, and facilitate such deviancy, bigotry, and perversity, once the light of truth shines on the promoters of hate, fear, and ignorance, but if it succumbs, Arlington will be avoided like the plague. Americans must never follow Nazi footsteps.
D. S. Heersink
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