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"The Actual or Perceived GLBT Student Protection Project"
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fwd from: Safe Schools Coalition-Washington

The Boston Phoenix
September 1999

School gays
Why the Christian right is opposed to public education, especially for gay and lesbian students

by Surina Khan

Beverly LaHaye thinks the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is dangerous. LaHaye is founder and chair of Concerned Women for America (CWA), the largest anti-feminist women's organization in the country. And she is just one of the many individuals and organizations on the right to attack GLSEN specifically, and the public-school system more broadly.

"GLSEN's goal is to end `homophobia,' which you and I know means to force everyone to accept homosexual behavior as normal," wrote LaHaye in a March 1999 fundraising appeal. "And one of the ways they aim to do this is by causing impressionable young people to question their own `sexual orientation' and the morality their parents teach them at home." This alarmist appeal was accompanied by a completed petition addressed to Governor Paul Cellucci and Education Commissioner David Driscoll. LaHaye asked her constituents to sign the petition and return it to CWA for tabulation. "We will send them to your officials to let them know you strongly oppose any attempt to promote the homosexual agenda in your state's schools," she said.

Although it's safe to assume that the CWA appeal and petition was sent to its national mailing list of 600,000 names, Massachusetts is the state that really has LaHaye and her friends in a tizzy. "In fact," writes LaHaye, "the Massachusetts Department of Education actually invited GLSEN to develop a training program for all state teachers called `Safe Schools for Gay and Lesbian Students.' GLSEN led the fight to make Massachusetts the first state to ban `anti-gay' discrimination in its public schools."

LaHaye is right about one thing -- since 1994, Massachusetts has pioneered an end to sexual-orientation-based discrimination in its public schools. This year, Cellucci proposed $1.5 million in funding for school and community programs to support g/l/b/t youth. More than 175 schools have used grants from the state to form gay-straight alliances.

But according to an August 28 column in the Boston Globe by David LaFontaine, chairman of the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, more than 300 school districts are still exercising their right to opt out of the statewide program -- which means that many kids in Massachusetts are isolated or suffering harassment in a hostile school system. This despite the fact that Massachusetts is a leader in recognizing and acting to prevent any and all forms of violence directed against g/l/b/t youth. We can only imagine what the climate in schools is like for queer youth in other states.

But even this small amount of progress is too much for LaHaye and others on the right who blame GLSEN, the National Education Association (NEA), and the Department of Education for many of the problems with public education. They believe that organizations such as GLSEN and the NEA are indoctrinating young children with liberal ideas.

"Homosexual activists have a vision for tomorrow, for an America in which their lifestyle is not simply tolerated, but celebrated. And to achieve that vision, activists have begun enlisting their foot soldiers for tomorrow's army: today's children," writes Ed Vitagliano of the American Family Association in the April 1999 AFA Journal. "Obviously, `homophobic' parents will not invite homosexuals into their homes to instruct their children that `gay is O.K.' Where, then, can activists obtain access to children in large numbers, away from the watchful eyes of their parents? The public school system."

Vitagliano, LaHaye, and others on the right believe that educators are usurping the rights of parents by exposing children to gay-straight alliances, sex education, counseling, psychological surveys, and self-esteem programs. These organizations also object to material in history and science textbooks that conflicts with a fundamentalist view of the world (such as information about evolution as opposed to creationism). And they're critical of modern teaching methods that include role-playing, journal-writing, and, perhaps most significantly, open-ended discussion designed to foster imagination and develop critical-thinking skills.

The criticisms leveled at public schools in right-wing literature reflect a belief that the schools, under the influence of a secular liberal "religion," are participating in a conspiracy to alter society by targeting children and their thinking. In his book The New Millennium, Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson writes, "This plundering of traditional morality and Christian values was never accidental. It has been a deliberate and methodical assault on the tenets of society . . . and has proliferated from the classrooms to the courtrooms, and from the newsrooms to the living rooms of America. . . . The end has not just been to supplant Christian values with humanism, but to weaken American sovereignty and supplant it with a one-world socialist government. . . . The great irony of this situation is that the very men and women we have entrusted to educate and challenge our children have been the corrupters."

The Christian right's influence on public education is best illustrated in Kansas, where the state board of education voted six to four on August 11 to remove the theory of evolution from its statewide science standards and to allow the teaching of creationism. A Family Research Council press release issued on August 20 quoted Kansas biology teacher Robin Jackson: "When we deal with young people . . . we have an awesome responsibility to stick to the facts and to teach them the truth . . . and the truth is simply that the theory of evolution is just that, it is a theory"

Yet another strategy used by Christian-right organizations is simply to dismantle public education. The National Association of Christian Educators/Citizens for Excellence in Education is calling on all Christians to take their kids out of the public-school system by the year 2010. "Deception in our schools is the rule, not sincerity; arrogance, not cooperation," writes NACE/CEE president Robert Simonds. "Therefore, after 15 years of sincere efforts to gain parental rights, a `safe passage' curriculum for our dear innocent children, the Lord has counseled me, and an impressive array of those associated in ministry have confirmed God's leading, that Christians must exit public schools as soon as it is feasible and possible."

Simonds, who calls the public-school exodus "Rescue 2010," wants to fill existing Christian schools and start a school in every church facility by 2010. "God has given CEE incredible victories in our efforts to save our Christian children in public schools -- and thereby guiding CEE to save America's public-school system from atheism, homosexuality, the occult, drugs, children having children, abortion, brainwashing, and crippling psychology."

Simonds believes that as Christians exit the public-school system, the "liberal establishment will see firsthand the massive problems that will run completely out of control without Christian influence. . . . America must not just get vouchers and tax breaks for parents in private schools -- these are good and necessary steps. We must go back to what worked best for America. The only way to do this is to privatize all public education," he writes.

Most people, both on the right and on the left, would agree that our public schools need help. But attacking public education and the organizations working to rebuild an equitable school system does nothing to solve the problem. The agenda of the right is not to support public education -- let alone g/l/b/t students within the system -- but to dismantle it and replace it with privatized schools that promote a fundamentalist Christian world-view in which only the "deserving" have access to education. And we all know that by Christian-right standards, homos don't deserve a thing -- even the right to attend a school where they are safe from violence and intimidation. It's a sad -- and terrifying -- commentary.

Surina Khan is an associate analyst at Political Research Associates, a Somerville-based think tank and research center that monitors the US political right.

Surina Khan, recently joined IGLHRC as their new Executive Director
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