The Washington Blade reports that PFOX has been distributing ex-gay propaganda fliers at Albert Einstein High School in Rockville, Maryland.

According to district policy, any organization that can prove that it is a non-profit “community entity” can send materials home with students quarterly when report cards are distributed.

It isn’t mentioned in the article, but there’s a reason they have that policy: this isn’t the first time PFOX has done this, not by a mile. Montgomery County Public Schools and PFOX go back a long and unfortunate way, at least to 2005, when PFOX and Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum won a federal lawsuit against the school board that claimed the school’s new sex-ed curriculum promoted homosexuality. Their victory surprised even them.

CRC President Michelle Turner, who has five children in public schools, has led the effort to stop the curriculum since November, when the county school board voted unanimously to approve it.

“This is beyond our wildest dreams. Who could ever have imagined this?” she said. “The board totally capitulated. We won big-time.”

Capitulated is right, and it emboldened the ex-gay activists big time. Another lawsuit in 2006 led the school to develop the aforementioned policy and allowed PFOX to distribute these fliers. In 2007, PFOX filed an Appeal and Request for Stay to block pilot testing of a new sex-ed curriculum because it didn’t include PFOX’s views on “ex-gays.” The resulting settlement compelled the school to rebuild its curriculum from the beginning, and the group has continued to distribute fliers over and over. Looks like they’ve circled back again, just in time for Valentine’s Day, lest any gay kids get any ideas about kissing their crushes.

TeachTheFacts.org, a MCPS-based group of parents who are appalled by PFOX’s attempts to introduce hatemongering and pseudoscience to their children’s public educations, keeps a blog containing a passionate history of these battles. In one widely-read entry from February 14, 2010, written after yet another flier distribution, the author entreats the school district to grow a pair:

Some schools set up special trash cans on PFOX flyer days, which coincided with report cards, so students could throw their anti-gay materials out immediately.

Let the school principal, the Board of Education, the Superintendent of Schools, and home-room teachers be responsible for what they give the children. Consider the quotes from principals who have said things like “If I had my druthers, [the flier] would not have gone out.” Why is the principal not held responsible for the literature his school is giving to the students entrusted to him? Give the guy his druthers! Take the disclaimer off all the flyers, and let the school district take responsibility for the information it is giving to our students.

Ah, you say, they’re afraid of lawsuits. Yes, there is an inevitable lawsuit if they refuse to distribute the PFOX hate literature. The schools have a little problem with bullying, I wonder where the kids picked that up? Okay, PFOX is going to sue, the school district will have to fight back. If there is a legitimate reason that the school district should have to give anti-gay materials to schoolchildren then PFOX will win and the case will only be wasted money. Is it really possible that distributing hateful literature is a legitimate function of a public school? Okay, back if down a step or two, is it really possible that distributing every group’s opinion is a legitimate function of a public school? Of course not, the school is there for education, it is patently absurd for them to be giving children a message that is the direct opposite of what they are taught in class.

This is a moment when we need leaders. Somebody at the top needs to identify this as something indecent and wrong and put a stop to it. The school district is hiding behind a legal opinion instead of acting like grown-ups and confronting the issue.

In light of news suggesting that Exodus is discussing its reorganization, Box Turtle Bulletin’s Timothy Kincaid wrote this open letter to its director, Alan Chambers, to “propose a few recommendations.” Highlights:

Surely you would not go about the country telling people about Mount Everest and the success that Sir Edmund Hillary had in conquering the mountain and encourage them to fly right off to Nepal and start climbing. That would be cruel and irresponsible and result in disappointment, wounded bodies and disillusioned spirits.

Yet Exodus has for many years testified of the reported success of some people who have struggled with unwanted same-sex attraction in terms that suggested that this could also be reality for those listening. It has been a cruel and irresponsible behavior and has resulted in disappointment, wounded souls and disillusioned spirits. It needs to stop.

…an increasing number of churches – including conservative evangelical churches – are reaching the conclusion that ones sexual orientation is not, in and of itself sinful or wrong or flawed or even intrinsically disordered.

It’s time for Exodus to join the rest of the world.

It would be ridiculous and offensive to tearfully lament a poor soul “trapped in an Asian American lifestyle.” And you would feel petty for doing so.

It is no less offensive or illogical to talk about being “trapped in a homosexual lifestyle”. There isn’t such a thing. And using language such as “trapped” implies that one can “change” into a heterosexual lifestyle. It shames and demeans a person for what they are. It’s “sissy boy” and “look at that pansy” and “why are you so girly” all over again, just repackaged as “Christian concern”.

When Exodus repeatedly denies the evidence in favor of the biological origins of homosexuality, it places your organization further in enmity to the mind. It build a dichotomy in which objective study, scientific research, and thoughtful analysis are pitted against unsubstantiated dogma and “faith”.

It is unnecessary and even blasphemous to insist that faith – real faith – needs to denounces the senses God gave us and to ignore what is evident. And, ultimately, it isn’t a battle that Exodus can win.

Exodus members should just accept their orientation and get on with finding out what to do about it.

So, in closing, I’d advise you to give Exodus a purpose that is theologically consistent, demonstrably possible, and which celebrates the Exodus member without trashing others.

At the University of Toledo in Ohio, administrators apparently made the mistake of hiring a bigot to administer university hiring policies which forbid discrimination on the basis of race, religion and sexual orientation.

In an April 18 article in the Toledo Free Press, Crystal Davis Dixon, associate vice president for human resources for the university, declared her support for discrimination on all three counts:

• she was willing to enforce her own antigay religious views upon university employees and students possessing less-homophobic, more-genuine religious beliefs,
• despite university hiring policies to the contrary, she denied that gay people have civil rights or that discrimination victimizes them, and
• she implicitly denigrated gay African-Americans.

Dixon also denied the natural existence of intersexed and gender-variant people who might apply for jobs at the university — and threatened God’s wrath against such people:

She concluded: “My final and most important point. There is a divine order. God created human kind male and female (Genesis 1:27). God created humans with an inalienable right to choose. There are consequences for each of our choices, including those who violate God’s divine order.

Dixon was fired for flouting the policies that she was hired to enforce, and religious-right media have been in an uproar ever since — accusing the university of discriminating racially and religiously against Dixon because it would not permit her to deny religious freedom to others, nor to arbitrarily violate campus hiring and employment policies with impunity.

Two ex-gay activists have now leapt to Dixon’ defense with a bizarre assertion that antigay African-Americans somehow enjoy a special racial and religious right to discriminate against others on the basis of victims’ religion and sexual orientation, whatever local laws and employer hiring policies may say to the contrary.

(Read More)