Letters to should be sent to:
Board of Education, Central Campus, 1800 Grand Ave., Des Moines, IA 50309. The Des Moines School Board's fax number is 515-242-7579. ]

THE DES MOINES REGISTER
Des Moines, Iowa
Monday, June 19, 1996

REKHA BASU COLUMN

The Des Moines board of education will decide later this month whether to prevent the hiring of transvestites, pedophiles, exhibitionists, voyeurs,
drug abusers, kleptomaniacs, pyromaniacs and compulsive gamblers in the school district.

Sometimes truth really is weirder than fiction.

I guess the prospect of this rule change makes you feel a lot more secure. After all, who wants pedophiles and drug addicts prowling the school grounds? You probably figure the city's schools have until now been welcoming thieving, fire-starting, Peeping Tom teachers and staffers.

Well, if the district plans to define undesirable employees, I have a few to add. Why make exceptions for stalkers, domestic batterers or child abusers? What about cheats, including tax cheats, and liars? Nor should schools be employing carjackers, serial killers, hostage-takers, snipers, ax murderers or slumlords -- or extend equal opportunity to pimps, bigamists or white supremacists.

Ridiculous?

No more so than this entire charade, which stems from a scarcely veiled attempt by board member Harold Sandahl to have the district back down from including gays and lesbians in its anti-discrimination policy.

Sandahl has taken up the cause of the Concerned Parents organization,
which has never made any bones about its anti-gay agenda. The group wants the reference to "sexual orientation" taken out of the policy.

Sandahl found a way to appease them without looking bigoted to the rest of the district. He called the current policy too vague. *Sexual orientation* as it now reads could be misinterpreted to suggest that pedophilia and the like are also protected, he argued. He even got some board support.

That's disingenuous. I'm not aware of any pedophile ever making a case for employment based on that clause. And anyway, had the object really been to clear up ambiguity, the solution would be to restate the policy to specifically state that the district can't discriminate against gays,
lesbians or bisexuals.

Of course, that's exactly what Concerned Parents doesn't want. So it becomes a matter of scrambling to spell out all the things sexual orientation could be misinterpreted to mean. Suddenly the board also finds itself in a contorted bid to specify other undesirable elements the school district shouldn't have to hire. Enter pyromaniacs.

Accommodating hate can get pretty complicated.

Everyone knows employers don't have to offer employment to criminals.
Show me one that has been forced to keep on the payroll someone caught stealing, because it hadn't specifically exempted "kleptomaniacs" from protection.

And therein lies the major flaw with the proposed wording change. It seeks to exclude people on the basis of what they *are* rather than what they *do*. The school district already has enough basis to fire people for unacceptable behavior (e.g. stealing or exposing themselves) without getting into mental-health diagnoses.

And as a practical matter, I'd love to know how the district would even begin to determine which potential employees might be prone to voyeurism, exhibitionism or cross-dressing in the confines of their homes.

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