Parents, interest groups fight over new health curriculum

Nearly everyone seems to have a different view of the new Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) health curriculum, and the battle over this front in the culture conflict is more vicious than anyone dreamed it would be.

At the heart of the conflict is a seven-minute video demonstrating how to put a condom on a cucumber and a policy that, for the first time ever in MCPS, will allow health teachers to initiate discussions about homosexuality. Since last December, two distinct special interest groups have sprung up in Montgomery County, one wholeheartedly in favor of the new curriculum and one vehemently opposed. Both have ties to scores of similar groups nationwide.

The groups fighting this war are nebulous, organizing their troops on websites with names like www.teachthefacts.org, www.equalitymaryland.org, www.exgaywatch.com, and www.takebackmaryland.org. Their thousands of pages of endless blogs (every group has to update them daily, it seems), hundreds of links and dozens of petty attacks and reprisals traded in emails make the actual issue seem disconnected from the schools and the students; this war is being fought in the digital age, on a front nobody could have imagined a decade ago.

The combatants and their conflict

Steve Fisher is the spokesperson for Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum (CRC), a group with religious roots that is fighting for a reversal of the curricular changes. If you believe him, the organization Teach the Facts (TTF), supporters of the proposed changes, are "absolutely phenomenal in their hatred of us. I think I'm supposed to buy a sheet with 'KKK' written on it to fulfill their dreams."

Jim Kennedy is a spokesman for TTF, and if you believe him, the members of CRC "hate [homosexuals]. They're motivated by hate."

If you believe neither of them, both of the groups sound like worried parents with different beliefs, who want the best for their kids.

These two groups are a small snapshot of the thousands of people trading virtual barbs with each other in the faceless world of cyberspace about the issues of homosexual acceptance and contraceptive instruction raised by the curricular changes.

So far, the MCPS Board of Education has remained firmly in support of the changes it passed. "As far as the board is concerned, the pilot is going to take place as it was approved," says Sharon Cox, at-large member of the Board. She maintains that the condom video is not a radical change and that the homosexuality discussions are not meant to teach values, only facts. "[The video] is not really all that different; it is in keeping with our curriculum that says abstinence is the only sure way to prevent pregnancy and STDs. We're not trying to teach any value except the value of understanding the wold you live in. Obviously, on the condom video side, the benefit is the kids will have correct information," Cox says.

Fisher, who speaks with a soft Southern accent and sounds like everyone's favorite grandfather, disagrees. "That to many parents is like saying, 'You're not supposed to drive, you won't drive, but if you do drive, here's the keys, map, money for gas," he says. Fisher feels that "The young, attractive teacher [in the video] is saying, 'Sex is cool!'"

He also thinks that the Board is also overstepping its bounds by putting discussions of homosexuality in the curriculum. "Obviously, there are a significant number of parents who feel their religious values are being discriminated against. The changes imply that their beliefs are wrong," he says, pointing to the fact that the new curriculum stresses acceptance of homosexual people while not emphasizing the number of religions that teach homosexuality is a sin. "You cannot ignore the elephant in the living room – the mainstream religious groups who believe homosexuality is sinful," he argues.

The CRC is actually more towards the moderate end of the spectrum than many of the other groups, including www.recallmontgomeryschoolboard.com, which is dedicated to holding a recall election for the entire school board. "We felt demonizing the Board of Education would not be helpful," says Fisher.

Still, the CRC shares the views of many groups people would call more extreme, such as Take Back Maryland, whose "sole purpose is to return the state of Maryland and the United States of America back to the Biblical foundations that made Her great and free!" according to their web site. Spokesman Tres Kerns speaks quietly but passionately about what he feels to be the evils of homosexuality. "When you just study the research, the acts that homosexuals engage in are not healthy for the human body. The average homosexual is not going to have as healthy and happy a life as the individual who will settle down and have a family. What does work is a man and a woman," he asserts.

Kerns, like many of those opposed to the new curriculum, feels that there is a "homosexual agenda" at work behind the Board. "To say that they are not trying to push [a homosexual agenda] into the school curriculum and the children is ridiculous. Your society can't sustain itself when you go down that road of sexual anarchy," he says.

A case of conflicting morality

Though both groups oppose the introduction of homosexuality into the curriculum on moral grounds, both spokesmen strenuously argue that they are not homophobic. "If that was true, why would I go out and engage the homosexual community? I talk to them," says Kerns.

Fisher, who says he has two gay family members he loves greatly, says, "We are not anti-homosexuals, we are not anti-lesbian; what we are for is fair and balanced info - even though we're not endorsing FOX news channel."

"They tend to distort a little," chuckles Christine Grewell, one of the founders of TTF. "I think its good not to marginalize [gay] students," she says, adding that the opposition's fear of "normalizing" homosexuality is unfounded. "We study World War II, but we don't normalize the Nazis." Grewell also thinks that religion has no place in the classroom. "Sex-ed is about sex, not religion," she states.

Kennedy also fears the religious motivations behind opposing groups. "I think they want to impose their religious values on the rest of us," he says, but "morality is about good and bad. Learning to be tolerant and knowledgeable, those are good things." He thinks the idea of a "homosexual agenda" driving policy is ludicrous. "They seem to think that gays are trying to recruit kids and impose their 'perverted morality' on the rest of us," he says sarcastically. "Seems to me, gay people just want to be treated fairly," he says.

The two sides of this values clash are unable to agree on even the most basic parameters of the issue they are fighting over. "Psychologists and therapists do not believe homosexuality is a disease. They don't think it's a choice, they just think it's the way some people are," says Kennedy.

Fisher and the CRC couldn't disagree more. "There is no such thing as a gay gene. There is no medical way of discerning a biological predisposition to [homosexuality]. But the current curriculum accepts as a fact that this is proven," he says.

Though TTF and the MCPS Board of Education believe that the new condom video emphasizes abstinence, Fisher says that it is misleading. "The famous cucumber video implies that condoms are 98 percent effective. What it doesn't say is that that number only applies to preventing pregnancies. That is not true for many diseases for which condoms provide no protection at all," he says.

Grewell counters by pointing to a study in which MCPS students who watched the video were asked what the most effective form of protection is and consistently answered abstinence. "I think that's your proof in your pudding right there," she says.

The bitter, often anonymous fight

One thing that all the parties involved can agree on is how rancorous the debate has become. "The most disgusting thing about getting involved in something like this has been the degree of bitterness, hatred and anger directed at us," laments Fisher. "We've been called some very vicious names on blogs – knuckle dragging, Neanderthal, Bible-thumping, religious zealots," he says.

"That seems to be the rule rather than the exception nowadays," agrees Cox. "Its almost to the point on any of the issues that we're getting pilloried on, whether it's the sex education or African American Parents of Magnet Student Applicants [a group that used email lists to call the Board's programs racist], the rhetoric is always pretty vitriolic," she says.

Cox also points out that the advent of the Internet's use in the fight has led to a dramatic increase in the scope and scale of such disagreements. "It is a new twist on how many people have access. Some gentleman called me from Virginia, laid me out on the phone, and gave me his number to call him back," she says.

Fisher is not shy about spreading his group's message through the news media, asserting that "CNN, FOX news and at least half a dozen Internet media sources" have contacted CRC for interviews. His group, along with at least one other web site, has posted portions of the condom video online, generating a great deal of interest.

Both CRC and TTF believe that their numbers are growing, and that they will eventually prevail. "Instead of us going away, we're getting stronger, more people joining us, and we think that we will be a force to be dealt with by the Board in the future. And that's not a threat, but a wonderful affirmation of American democracy," says Fisher.

Grewell asserts that every event held by CRC only aids TTF more. "Every time the CRC has a meeting, I know for a fact that I have gotten more membership," she says.

As spiteful as they might be while battling each other online, neither group seems disposed to carry their tussles into everyday, real world interactions. Grewell works on the prom committee at Einstein High School with a parent fighting against the new curriculum, but manages to get along with her just fine. "We're perfectly civilized, we just don't talk politics that much," she says.

Fisher thinks that the highly bitter nature of the fight is because of the ease people feel expressing themselves anonymously online. "I told one person, if you were standing behind me in Starbucks, would you say the same thing?" he says, referring to a particularly insulting online message. "They don't realize that we are their neighbors, and we share the same values as many of them," says Fisher.