Well, there is that battle we keep referring to in this blog. The article Evolution Shares a Desk With 'Intelligent Design' points to the many dimensions this issue takes. The battle of fundamentalism and beliefs against science. We have said many times that this site got started to lend our support to the BOE decision to approve the new Health Education curriculum, that has turned into the "sex education curriculum" because lately sex has gained some prominence in our minds. But we have also said many times that this is not about "sex," "a condom demonstration," or even defend the rights of homosexuals to life their lives to their fullest and of our kids to now that, in case they have not noticed yet, there exist people that are homosexuals, and nuclear families who are constituted by two mothers, or two fathers... This is not ONLY about any of that, this is about the rights of our children to be educated in a scientific environment that leaves "beliefs" aside, and focuses on facts as we know them now, and as the scientific community have come to a consensus on them.

We have already discuss here that the word "theory" as understood by the scientific community is not just a conjecture or hypothetical proposition - actually, hypothesis are proved or disproved and the proved ones becomes theories - that can sit next to another bunch of suppositions, but theories in sciences are considered the truth until proved otherwise.

The theory of relativity, the theory of evolution.

Now the Board of Education in a small town in Pa. has decided to approve the teaching of the theory of evolution, next to the teaching of the belief in intelligent design -something that even the leaders in the proposition of that are against because they consider it does not have enough scientific backing as it stands now:

The Discovery Institute in Seattle, which is regarded as a leader in intelligent design theory, also opposes the Dover school board's policy in part because it seems to take three steps into old-fashioned creationism. "This theory needs to be debated in the scientific sphere," said Paul West, a senior fellow. "It's much too soon to require anyone to teach it in high school."

What's more impressive here is the fact that it seems we are now willing to vote in what should be considered science and what should be taught in schools, etc.
This lady says she would prefer to believe, but when did it happen that one could prefer what the truth is in matters of science?

DOVER, Pa. -- "God or Darwin?"

Lark Myers, a blond, 45-year-old gift shop owner, frames the question and answers it. "I definitely would prefer to believe that God created me than that I'm 50th cousin to a silverback ape," she said. "What's wrong with wanting our children to hear about all the holes in the theory of evolution?"

Then, others say that the "majority" don't believe in evolution. Well, my daughter would love that the majority do not believe in maths so she could opt out of it, but as of now, she has a tough luck with that one. Science, regardless of what Bush opinion may be on the matter, can not be decided on election day...(Thanks GOD for that one!!)

Many here speak of a personal relationship with Christ and of their antipathy to evolutionary theory (A Gallup poll found that 35 percent of Americans do not believe in evolution). Steve Farrell, a friendly man and owner of a landscaping business, talked of Darwin and God in the Giant shopping center parking lot.

"We are teaching our children a theory that most of us don't believe in." He shook his head. "I don't think God creates everything on a day-to-day basis, like the color of the sky. But I do believe that he created Adam and Eve -- instantly."

Back in the town center, Norma Botterbusch talks in her jewelry store, which has been a fixture here for 40 years. "We are a very lenient town," she said. "But why should a minority get to file a lawsuit and dictate school policy? Most of our kids already know who created them."

One thing I hate is how the word "morality" has been hijacked by religious hypocrites. Once it referred to the distinction between good and evil, and navigating the tricky waters between them. Now it just means sex. Sex education is bad because it has the word "sex" in it. Homosexuality, same thing. You notice how rarely anybody has sextuplets? You know why, don't you?

This writer in the St. Petersburg Times has fun with the whole thing:

When it comes to sex, Americans act like adolescents: simultaneously confused, titillated, scandalized, drooling, obsessed and grossed-out. Maybe it's because we are a comparatively young nation. Maybe it's because our mythic founders - the Puritans - were the most unfun people in Europe.

It doesn't take much for us to get our knickers in a twist. A promo for the nighttime soap Desperate Housewives appearing on Monday Night Football treated viewers to a creamy-skinned blonde, dropping her towel in front of a fully-padded player in a steamy locker room. The family values nation rose up, peppering ABC with complaints. They weren't offended that this low-rent seduction scene played into stereotypes about black men and white women. They just don't like nekkidness. Children could be watching!

Of course, it is a scientific fact that the mere sight of a nice set of female thoracic vertebrae can corrupt the minds of the young. Better to focus on the game, in which a bunch of steroid-crazed, wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires harm another bunch of steroid-crazed, wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires while fans with faces and torsos painted blue or with giant pieces of plastic foam cheese on their heads cheer them on. Football is good clean all-American fun. Sex is dirty; violence is okay.

...

"Values" voters claim to be all about "spirituality," but they are really fixated on the body. The Religious Right regards sexuality as dangerous, anarchic, an enemy of the orderly state. For progressives, expressions of sexuality (like religion) among consenting adults are a matter of individual liberty. In other words, not that big a deal... Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex

Click on the link and go have fun reading this nice article. It'll do ya good.

South Carolina is, as this article in The State notes, "as solid a red state as you will ever find." The Bush administration is pushing for abstinence-only education, but the people of South Carolina don't want it:

The 2005 federal budget contains $168 million for abstinence-only education. The theory behind such an approach is that telling kids how to prevent pregnancy will encourage them to have sex.

The theory is debunked by research performed by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, which found that sex education that includes information on abstinence and contraception delays the onset of sexual activity and increases the use of contraception once young people do become sexually active.

You might read that and think, fine, but not in South Carolina, as solid a red state as you will ever find. But it turns out that voters’ attitudes here on teen pregnancy prevention run toward a comprehensive approach.

When the South Carolina Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy surveyed Palmetto State voters about sex education in schools, 81 percent of them answered “yes” to the question, “Do you think that sexuality education which emphasizes abstinence, but also teaches youth about the benefits and importance of contraception, should be taught in South Carolina public schools?” Seven out of 10 of the registered voters also agreed that “comprehensive sex education in the schools decreases rates of pregnancy and disease.” S.C. supports comprehensive approach to stem tide of teen parents

Now, as we'll learn the hard way if we're not careful, you don't always get what you want. Hardline conservatives have been very crafty about implementing programs that the majority of people in an area don't want. They organize, they raise money, they campaign -- we're seeing it right here in Montgomery County.

The State opines:

The approach our state has taken through its laws and policies supports this idea of instruction tailored to the home and the community. It is a rational and reasonable method to work toward the important goal of reducing the number of teenagers who become parents too soon.

Our school board has also taken a "rational and reasonable" approach. Let's support the board in this, and stop the extremist minority now.

My kids went to a religious school for a few years, and now they go to public school. In the religious school they learned how to pray, they studied the scripture, and in the public school they acquire secular knowledge. It's not a hard concept to grasp. Religion is appropriate in a religious school, run by a church or synagogue, where everyone is paying tuition and has chosen that school for whatever reasons, probably including the religious stuff. It is not appropriate in a public school that the taxpayers are supporting.

Many of the religious right are choosing to home-school, and I think that's a good idea for them. If you have really, really strong religious convictions, it is unlikely that any teacher, even at a church-run school, can match your fervor. And there is no sense sending them to a public school, because, well, they won't get any religious education at all there.

I just came across a web site where they give advice on home-schooling: Classical Homeschool Curriculum.

Again, if you want children who will not merely survive in this culture, but will overcome and take captives for Jesus Christ, then they will need a distinctively Christian education. One of the most dangerous aspects of public schools is not the drugs, guns, ungodly sex education or even the lie that homosexuality is an acceptable alternative. It is the lie that our children can be properly educated without reference to God.

...

When our children attend government schools, they are told to learn math, but not to learn the central thing about math-that God is a God of order and that in Him all things consist. They are told to learn history, but not the most important thing about history-that Jesus Christ lived a perfect life, died an efficacious death, rose powerfully, and ascended majestically to the right hand of the Father.

When God is excluded from the classroom, we are not merely remaining silent about God. We are teaching children that they may safely disregard Him. Whether or not God exists, the lesson goes, His existence is irrelevant to what we are doing here. So when God is omitted, we are not silent about Him; rather we are teaching the children in the most convincing way possible that God is irrelevant. They can safely omit Him when it is convenient to do so.

So ... good. It's settled then.

You teach your own kids the values and beliefs you hold dear, and quit trying to "overcome and take captive" our public schools.

Deal?

The second author of a report that has been posted at the Recall the School Board web site has written a summary of it, which I see is making the rounds of the conservative web sites. I will insert a few comments.

As Goes Montgomery County, So Goes the Nation?
The Story of how Social Policy Crept into a Sex Education Curriculum

By David Blakeslee, Psy.D

What are parents and educators to do when they are presented with a curriculum touted as "scientific" and asserts that it will help reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases in adolescents and the incidence of bullying and harassment of gays and lesbians? Such was the situation for parents and educators when the Montgomery County School Board presented to them last month their Annual Report of the Citizen's Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development. The results of this two year project were about to be implemented county wide to 8th and 10th graders.

The author tries to imply that someone pulled a fast one here. In fact, a citizens' advisory group worked out this curriculum over a period of years. Then they submitted it to the Board of Education, who asked for revisions, which were made. The citizens' committee voted by a large majority to accept everything, and the school board's vote was unanimous.

The curriculum is still quite conservative. It teaches objectively about homosexuality, not that it is evil, but that some people are just gay. As a consequence, a group formed, with the aim of removing the entire school board. Those who had voted in the minority have now apparently decided that, since they were unsuccessful in forcing their hateful "family values" on the county from within the system, they would have to attack it from without.

Many parents were appreciative of the schools efforts to help protect and educate their children. They were concerned, however, that the actual curriculum designed during this two year process may have unintended consequences that would undermine the very purpose of the proposed changes. And so they decided to look closer.

This is pure fiction. The leader of the "recall the school board" group was on the committee. She and another committee member just didn't like the way the vote went.

What they found was a curriculum that makes five critical errors in sex education. In a recent report titled, Health Education as Social Advocacy, co-author, Warren Throckmorton and I critique the proposed curricular changes and examine problems in detail.

And we note that the "report" does not mention anywhere in its text who paid for thirty five pages of criticism.

First, the curriculum may present too much too soon. As in many schools, material is offered to 8th and 10th grade students. We have an observation and concern about this practice. Durex, the condom manufacturer, did a world-wide survey on sexual behavior and sex education. In analyzing their data, we came to a startling conclusion: there is a statistically significant linear relationship between onset of sex education and onset of sexual behavior. Simply stated, the earlier an adolescent is educated about sex, the earlier he is likely to engage in sex. This observation is so remarkable because it remains true across a worldwide tapestry of cultures which have different political systems, ethnic makeup and religious systems. This disturbing finding raises the provocative question: Are there unintentional negative consequences from merely the presentation of sexual education programs?

The change introduced in the eighth grade is that students will learn about homosexuality. Until now, the rule was that a teacher could only talk about it if someone asked. Now, kids will be taught that there are various sexual orientations, and will learn what they are.

In tenth grade, they will be taught about condom use, including a video that shows how to put one on. The statistics that Dr. Blakeslee forgets to mention in this section show overwhelmingly that knowledge of contraceptive techniques reduces the rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease (STD).

Second, adolescents are not adults. There is a growing body of research which indicates that the adolescent mind is undergoing a huge renovation: from thinking concretely to thinking abstractly. During this renovation, however, research suggests that adolescents process their decision making in a highly emotional and impulsive manner. Material in the curriculum which educates about condom flavors and creates an artificial line between sexual behavior of adolescents and high risk sexual behavior in adolescents overlooks this central feature of the adolescent mind. While this is not news to anyone who has one or was one, adolescents are predisposed to think and act impulsively when contemplating sexual behavior because that emotionally driven behavior easily overwhelms their compromised decision-making ability.

Blakeslee is here referring to the findings of a professor at Binghamton Univerity, who has done much research on changes in the brain during adolescence and their effects on behavior and development. When asked in email about the conclusions as they were applied by Throckmorton and Blakeslee, she wrote "How that relates to sex education -- or what should be taught in sex education (and when developmentally) --seems to be more a matter of interpretation. It could be argued that the more hard facts and strategies for dealing with emotional situations, the better armed adolescents would be..."

Third, biology is not destiny. When discussing sexual orientation, the curriculum is permeated by a world view which sees same sex attraction as determined by one's biology. This "born-that-way" position is used by advocacy groups to strengthen their arguments for civil rights in the current political climate. It is not a position supported by research into same sex attraction. Furthermore, the curriculum ignores a competing view in academia which holds that sexual attractions are acquired via an interaction of environment and temperament. Why would the Montgomery County school board present only one view on this topic when the actual research picture is so much more complex?

There is no serious debate in the scientific community. There is wishful thinking by some conservative groups, whose world-view remains consistent if sexual orientation is simply another choice that a person makes. An individual can choose whether to engage in sexual behaviors of any kind, there is no argument there, but in that place called reality, some people "just are" gay.

Further, his argument that the curriculum ignores the interactions of environment and predispositions is simply false -- he's hoping you won't read the report itself. A section called "Interactions Between Psychological and Physical Development" outlines a section on:

B. Factors Contributing to Sexual Identity as Part of Total Personality

1. Physical (genetic, anatomical)

2. Psychological

3. Environmental

4. Other

This clearly contradicts his argument.

Fourth, health education is not an appropriate venue for social advocacy. The curriculum cites resource materials which come from advocacy groups and completely overlooks peer reviewed scientific studies which present more educationally sound material. This is one of the saddest parts of the curriculum, because it so clearly undermines the most cherished value of every educational system: credibility. Credibility leads to trust and trust accelerates the learning experience by defeating unnecessary skepticism and cynicism. This is especially harmful to adolescents who are just learning to think critically. Why would Montgomery County allow their credibility as an educational system to be needlessly undermined by advocacy based education?

The minority on the citizens' committee wanted to include "advocacy" literature, too -- this argument is transparent. Would you object to some facts from the Heart Association if your child was studying the heart? There are groups who promote sex education in America and around the world, and they produce literature. Most of those groups try to teach tolerance, which is what this group can't stand -- our children may grow up thinking that homosexuals are just people.

This point cannot be made too strongly. Blakeslee and those who pay him believe in teaching social advocacy. They wouldn't mind if the school district taught that homosexuality was a disease, or a form of mental illness, or a sin. You can be very sure they wouldn't complain about that. They can't stand your kids learning that some people are gay, without also learning that it's evil.

Fifth, tolerance does not require distortion of facts. The curriculum, in an effort to teach tolerance completely obscures the overwhelming benefit of the two parent family. It defines family in a nearly meaningless fashion: "two or more people who are joined together by emotional feelings or who are related to one another." It implies that those who have significant concerns about the destruction of the family over the last 40 years are "intolerant:" The curriculum states: "American families are becoming more complex and the greater variety of households encourages open mindedness in society." There is no discussion of the significant and still growing body of evidence that shows that these "complex" and "various" households have significantly higher negative outcomes for children and women. This is education, in service of tolerance, becoming a vacuous exercise in social persuasion.

There are many kinds of families. Some homes include the grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins; some homes have adults without children, for one reason or another; and some kids have two daddies or two mommies. It is impossible to see any real way that a gay couple threatens the traditional family.

And note, further, that the notion of a "family," as used by hate-groups such as American Family Council, is a pure fabrication. Look it up. The dictionary doesn't say how many people it takes to be a family.

A family is defined by love. Blakeslee's rhetoric, quoted here, is motivated by hatred of what it does not understand.

Despite recent attacks on abstinence education in the media and by politicians licking their wounds from the November election, recent data suggest that this type of education is making a difference. Teen pregnancies during the last ten years have declined over 20%. Furthermore, children who take virginity pledges delay their first sexual experiences by 3 years (from 16-19 years). Older children making decisions about sexual behavior is likely going to lead to more mature, responsible decision-making. Finally, significant risks for gay identified adolescents and young adults persist: although gay men account for only 2-3% of the general population, they account for 44% of the new cases of HIV. Maybe virginity pledges for gay identified adolescents will help lower the incidence of HIV for these vulnerable adolescents?

Yes. teen pregnancies are declining, and condom use is increasing. Coincidence?

Everybody on both sides of this debate hopes that their children have the good sense to abstain from sex in their teens years. But the facts are that approximately half of teenagers do, in fact, have sexual intercourse. We can't stop them, but we can teach them what to do so that they don't get pregnant or spread disease.

The sexual revolution has been a tremendous success for adults who did not contract incurable STD's and for publishers of sexually explicit material. For nearly everyone else it has had devastating consequences. Let us make sure that during this process of educating our children that we tailor our information to the tried and true and to the developmental needs of our children.

Somebody needs to tell this guy that the sexual revolution was a long time ago. It ran into a brick wall when herpes became epidemic, and rolled over and died with AIDS. Teenagers need to have information, so they can make the right choices, even when they're making the wrong choices. Maybe your kid is one of the few who gets the facts at home, but what about the kid that your kid is going out with?

David Blakeslee, Psy.D. is a Clinical Psychologist in Lake Oswego, Oregon. He is co-author, along with Warren Throckmorton, PhD is Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the College Counseling Services at Grove City College (PA) of the recent report, Health Education as Social Advocacy, which is available at _http://www.drthrockmorton.com/montgomery.pdf._
(http://www.drthrockmorton.com/montgomery.pdf.)

In sum, Dr. Blakeslee has a story he wants you to believe. It's right in the title -- he wants you to think that "Social Policy Crept into a Sex Education Curriculum." But no, that isn't what happened. The well-established processes for curriculum change were followed. After years -- literally, years -- of discussion, it was decided that the curriculum needed to be brought up to date. All the t's were crossed, the i's were dotted, votes were taken, citizen input was plentiful. The school board made the right choice, but some people can't stand it.

It is extremely important for the people of Montgomery County to take a stance against those who would force their narrow preferences on us. We need to support the board in this.

Turkey, as you know, is working toward becoming a member of the European Union. It is also largely a Moslem country. An emerging problem is noted in this article in the socially-conservative news source, The Daily Standard (web version of The Weekly Standard):

... Before the formal accession process could be begun, the European Union required that Turkey make its laws congruent with European standards. Turkey passed 218 laws which reformed its penal code. Among them were laws making marital rape a crime and treating honor killings of adulterous wives as seriously as other cases of intentional murder.

But as we celebrate, it is worth remembering that Turkey almost didn't make it. Through much of the summer and fall there was one big sticking point. Turkey's government wanted to pass a law that would make adultery by either spouse a crime.

Europe was outraged. The E.U. Commissioner for Enlargement, the German Guenter Verheugen, said the proposed law "can only be a joke." He proclaimed that a law banning adultery would suggest that Islamic law was entering Turkish law, and his spokesman said such a proposal was "alien" to the European way and would indicate "a fundamentalist mentality that the state runs your bedroom."

The Standard article, which is written by a UVa professor of politics, goes on to report some statistics about adultery and its effect upon marriage, which is, as you can imagine, negative.

Europe is in no position to lecture anyone about sexuality whether in or out of marriage. It seems incapable of creating families and societies that meet the most rudimentary criterion for good health--reproducing themselves.

BUT WE MAY have here an opening for America. A 1998 survey of 23 nations by the University of California at Irvine's Eric Widmer found the United States more disapproving of adultery than 15 European nations. Eighty percent of Americans said adultery is always wrong. Only Ireland and Northern Ireland seemed as adamant.

So we can tell Turkey and the rest of the Islamic world that we would never wish to rule out of the company of civilized nations a country whose only offense was taking marital vows seriously. We can remind them that the Bible--as well as the Koran--has something to say on the subject. And we can pledge to work together toward creating societies with laws that strengthen families.

So The Standard sides with the Turks on this one. They think it's a good idea to outlaw adultery, which those effete and dissolute Europeans think is so funny. Dutch blogger Jasper Emmering takes the ball:

In other words, they [The Standard] want the freedom to write Holy Verses into law.

It is important to keep this in mind when reading (social) conservatives on Islam. They hate Islam, but they don't really disagree with Islam on a lot of stuff.

They think it's right for society to demand that women dress demurely, even if they think that the hijab is out of line. They believe in abstinence the way Somalians believe in clitoridectomy, it enhances virtue. They think crime ought to be punished harsher, like in the olden days, even though the chopping off of hands is a bit too much for them. And they think government has a right, nay a duty to regulate the bedroom-behavior of consenting adults. They even got their own bunch of terrorists.

Well, that might be going a little far, don't you think? Mmm, but it is something to think about.

These Christian social conservatives would earnestly like to do everything they can to eradicate Islamist terrorism. Everything, that is, except promote liberalism. But, to paraphrase Tony Blair, to do so would require them to be "tough on terrorism, and tough on the causes of terrorism".

The problem is that these Christian social-conservatives share a lot of values with orthodox Muslims, but at the same time Muslim orthodoxy (fundamentalism if you will) is the basis on which the current batch of -mostly Arab- terrorists have built their organisations. They recruit in Mosques and divert money from Muslim charities to fund their cause. Promoting a more liberal Islam would obviously be in the interests of the United States.

The Unitarian-Universalist web site UUWorld has a clear and interesting article describing religious fundamentalism, Moslem and Christian: The Fundamentalist Agenda. This post is long enough already, I won't quote sections from that article, but the reader may find it very informative.

How would the Taliban feel about the new sex education curriculum? An educated guess: they'd want to recall the entire Board of Education.

Parents are fighting back, after local religious extremists in Dover, Pennsylvania, forced schools to begin teaching "intelligent design" instead of scientific theories in biology classes.

Highlighting the growing national debate over the role of religion in public life, 11 Pennsylvania parents Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging a local school district's order to teach "intelligent design" to public high school students.

The requirement, they said, violates the religious liberty of parents, students and faculty and the constitutional separation of church and state.

On Oct. 18, the Dover Area School District Board voted 6-3 to make biology students at Dover Area High School "aware of gaps/problems" in the theory of evolution and include in ninth grade curriculum the theory of "intelligent design," which holds that the universe is so complex it must have been created by some higher power.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg on behalf of the parents, say intelligent design is a disguised, more secular form of creationism -- a Bible-based view that God, not evolution, created all species. Parents sue schools over 'intelligent design:' Teaching about 'gaps' in evolution theory violates church-state separation, they claim

If this is what you have to do, people, then this is what you have to do. Take it to court.

"There is a small group of people trying to push a particular religion on everybody," said Joel Leib, a parent who participated in the lawsuit. "It is basically a way of teaching creationism. ... It doesn't belong in science class, just the same as evolution doesn't belong in comparative religion class. "

And listen to what the school district's argument is:

[attorney] Thompson acknowledged that intelligent design "has religious implications" because its proponents can't identify the "transcendent being that created species. But there are religious implications to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution as well. If man was an accident and not a directed thing, then you do away with God. The implication of the theory of evolution is, there is no God; it's all forces of nature," he said.

Sad to think that some people feel that God can't exist in the same world with the facts of science. To them, if there's evolution, there can be no God. Can it possibly be that simple?

Hey, here's something the gang that wants to kick out the MCPS school board hasn't thought of yet. They could do like the American Family Association (motto: "Promoting Traditional Family Values") did, and send letters with explicit descriptions of gay sexual behaviors to 65,000 people's homes.

A sexually explicit letter sent to 65,000 homes in Jefferson County is causing outrage, not only in neighborhoods where it was distributed, but also among members of the Louisville Metro Council. The letter urges people to ask their council representative to vote against the "Fairness Ordinance." And as WAVE 3's Maureen Kyle reports, the letter also targets a religious group.

The language is explicit and the message is clear. "I think its very vindictive -- hateful," says Karen Carpenter. She's one of the 65,000 people who received the literature from Frank Simon with the American Family Association of Kentucky. Residents Outraged After Sexually Explicit Letter Sent To 65,000 Homes

See, the Louisville Metro Council is discussing a local civil rights ordinance, and the issue is whether to include reference to homosexuals in it. Interestingly, Martin Luther King's niece, Alveda King, who is shown in the picture here at the left, argues that gays should not be protected. She:

told the council that gays and lesbians don't deserve the civil-rights protections because homosexuality is not "an immutable characteristic" like skin color or ethnicity.

"I feel it is unfortunate to put these two issues (civil rights based on sexual orientation and civil rights based on skin color) together," said King, who came from Atlanta to support ordinance opponents. 'Fairness' fight is in spotlight

It should be noted that King's wife, Coretta Scott King, has said that King himself would have supported the fight for gay rights, if he were alive: Snatching A Piece of King’s Legacy

Hey, this is kind of interesting:

Those who oppose the provisions that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity brought in four people from out of town to talk about the ordinance.

Besides King, they were a former lesbian who now works for the conservative group Focus on the Family, a lawyer from Cincinnati affiliated with social conservative groups and a counseling professor from Pennsylvania who said homosexuality is a choice.

I'll bet I know who that counseling professor was. I'll bet he's the same guy that wrote a 35-page "white paper" criticizing the new MCPS sex education curriculum, which is now posted prominently on the RecallMontgomerySchoolBoard.com web site. The newspaper doesn't say, but I'll just betcha. This guy is on a mission.

The language in this letter also leaves some Metro Council Members asking which group will be targeted next?

"It definitely shows that bigotry is alive and well in the city of Louisville," Weston said.

Well, folks, sorry to say, but it's not exactly unique to your area.

Every year I attend a conference or two on "evolutionary computation." This is where researchers write computer programs based on the principles of Darwinian evolution, and use them to solve really hard mathematical and engineering problems. The thing is, you can have a problem with lots and lots of variables, all interacting with one another, all nonlinear and hard to figure out, and you want to find some optimal combination of them, so you feed your data set to the computer program and it evolves the solution. This is mostly done using methods based on random mutation and sexual recombination, plus "selection," which is like "natural selection" except it's not natural in a computer program -- it's survival of the fittest.

One thing you come away with is an appreciation for the raw power of these simple processes. The problems these guys solve are analogous to the adaptations that organisms make to their environment, like the development of eyes, and camouflaged coloring, and preference for particular foods. Following a few simple steps in a computer program, these computer scientists can find solutions to problems that are way beyond what ordinary mathematical methods can do.

This has given me a special appreciation for evolution itself. It is one thing to look at the complexity of the world and say, this could not have happened by chance, but it is another when you understand the simple elegance and raw power of the evolutionary process itself. Life is constantly changing, organisms adapt over generations, and the complexity of the biological world is, indeed, within the scope of evolution. Randomness and all.

Across the US, there are today religious groups who oppose the teaching of evolution. They believe it is a challenge to their beliefs, and promote the teaching of some alternative "creationist" belief system instead of the scientifically supported one. These groups have had a lot of success around the country, getting school systems to present their fictional theories as if they were actual scientific contenders. Since most people are not evolutionary biologists and cannot expertly evaluate the literature, they take at face value the information that is given them. And when that information comes from religious proselytizers disguised as scientists, it is extremely difficult for the lay person to know what to think.

A website called unscrewing the inscrutable (motto: "I'm not angry, I just don't agree with you") has been posting a very interesting series of biographies of individuals who promote these creationist and "intelligent design" perspectives. The series is called "Know Your Intelligent Design Creationists."

Today's posting is a little different. They call it "Know Your (Honest) Intelligent Design Creationists," and it is about a real scientist who really believes in God, and who also agrees with biologists that life evolves according to Darwinian principles. This evangelical Christian, Glenn Morton, is a petroleum geophysicist with a belief system he calls theistic evolution.

This is the faith based position that the universe, the solar system, the earth, and the history of life up to and including the evolution of anatomically modern humans from earlier primates, were created by God using processes created by same which humans can understand and explain to some degree through careful scientific investigation. In this view there is no contradiction possible even in principle between believing in a Creator and any valid facts gleaned from studying that Creation. Technically this could be considered a form of Creationism as it assumes a Creator Deity which produced the universe and everything in it. But if so, Theistic Evolution is the only form of creationism which is 100% fully consistent with modern science.

Over the centuries there have been numerous collisions between religion and science. Copernicus, Galileo, and their contemporaries were labeled heretics for their findings, but over time the persuasiveness of scientific research overwhelmed the church, and we are now comfortable understanding that the earth moves around the sun, for instance. Darwin brought a shock to the modern world, proposing out loud that humans are simply another species in the animal kingdom, evolved as apes, subject to the laws of nature that affect all species.

Indirectly, Darwin's challenge underlies the controversy over the Montgomery County sex education curriculum. Is it better to think of human beings as physical organisms, with natural emotions they don't understand and can barely control, or to think of us as spiritual beings, created by God with a special blessing to win the struggle against the temptation of the flesh? It is a hard question, and of course your answer will determine not only how you feel about this specific curriculum, but how you manage your own life.

More directly, we should expect a religious challenge to our county's biology curriculum. My daughter tells me her biology teacher already says "some people believe" in front of any statement about evolution; in fact, it would be accurate enough to say "all biologists believe" in the validity of evolutionary theory.

The example of Glenn Morton shows us that it is possible to hold deep religious convictions and accept the findings of modern science. The two are not opposed, really. Because America is a country where religion is very important, it would be foolish to cast this debate as a war between religion and science. A "win" by the religious side leads us directly back to the Dark Ages. The more enlightened outcome is the development of Christian beliefs that are not challenged by evolution and by the observation that humans are part of nature. People need their faith, but it cannot, in the long run, be a faith that is contradicted by fact.

This study came out earlier this year but is right now getting a wave of attention around the Internet, especially on the right-leaning sites. A researcher at RAND did two studies that conclude that, well, as the RAND site puts it:

Exposure to TV Sex May Hasten the Initiation of Sexual Activity Among Teens Does Watching Sex on Television Influence Teens’ Sexual Activity?

A sample of 1,762 teenagers were interviewed about their sexual experiences and what TV they watched, and then a year later they were asked again. The paper is available in PDF form online: HERE

When you study inferential statistics, the very first rule you learn is: Correlation does not prove causation. This RAND study could have been written by a textbook author seeking an example to demonstrate the point.

This study, as it is described in this RAND report, simply does not show what the authors say it shows.

Let's say you have two measures on a sample. You see at Time 1 that some respondents watch sexier TV than others, and you grade them on that. Then, at Time 2 you find that some of the teenagers have had, uh, some degree of sexual activity, and you grade them on that. Raise your hand if you're surprised that the kids who watched sexier TV at Time 1 acquired more sexual experience by Time 2.

The full explanation about correlation and causation is that the two correlated variables (in this case, sex-on-TV and sexual behavior) might have the hypothesized causal relationship, or as is often said A might cause B (TV-watching might cause sex), they may have the opposite causal direction, e.g., desire for sexual experience causes interest in sexy TV, or there may be a third variable at work (C causes both A and B), for instance, there might be personality factors, environmental factors, even physiological factors that cause a kid to be curious about both sex on television and sex in real life.

But these authors entertain only one possibility: that TV watching causes kids to go out and have sex:

Reducing the amount of sexual talk and behavior on television, or the amount of time that adolescents are exposed to them, could appreciably delay the onset of sexual activity.

I can just imagine what the moralists will do when they get hold of this one. America, already the most prudish country in the Western world, is still too libertine for some people. Most people are just not in the position to evaluate this kind of research -- how would they know? Why wouldn't they take these morsels of jargony-sounding stuff as real science? When fake-science "proves" what people hope is true, it's very, very hard to argue against it.

Awhile back we wrote a little bit about the Alabama legislator who introduced the law to ban novels with gay characters from the libraries, and prevent any university from presenting a play with a gay character, and other stuff. He says he does not want taxpayers' money to support "positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle". The British online newspaper The Guardian has an interview with this character. There are some insights to gain from it.

I ask Allen what prompted this bill. Was one of his children exposed to something in school that he considered inappropriate? Did he see some flamingly gay book displayed prominently at the public library?

No, nothing like that. "It was election day," he explains. Last month, "14 states passed referendums defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman". Exit polls asked people what they considered the most important issue, and "moral values in this country" were "the top of the list".

"Traditional family values are under attack," Allen informs me. They've been under attack "for the last 40 years". The enemy, this time, is not al-Qaida. The axis of evil is "Hollywood, the music industry". We have an obligation to "save society from moral destruction". We have to prevent liberal libarians and trendy teachers from "re-engineering society's fabric in the minds of our children". We have to "protect Alabamians".

Huh? Alabamians??? Is that what they call themselves? Alabamians?

I ask him, again, for specific examples. Although heterosexuals are apparently an endangered species in Alabama, and although Allen is a local politician who lives a couple miles from my house, he can't produce any local examples. "Go on the internet," he recommends. "Some time when you've got a week to spare," he jokes, "just go on the internet. You'll see."

Actually, I go on the internet every day. But I'm obviously searching for different things. For Allen, the web is just the largest repository in history of urban myths. The internet is even better than the Bible when it comes to spreading unverifiable, unrefutable stories. And urban myths are political realities.

...

Since Allen couldn't give me a single example of the homosexual equivalent of 9/11, I gave him some. This autumn the University of Alabama theatre department put on an energetic revival of A Chorus Line, which includes, besides "tits and ass", a prominent gay solo number. Would Allen's bill prevent university students from performing A Chorus Line? It isn't that he's against the theatre, Allen explains. "But why can't you do something else?" (They have done other things, of course. But I didn't think it would be a good idea to mention their sold-out productions of Angels in America and The Rocky Horror Show.)

Cutting off funds to theatre departments that put on A Chorus Line or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may look like censorship, and smell like censorship, but "it's not censorship", Allen hastens to explain. "For instance, there's a reason for stop lights. You're driving a vehicle, you see that stop light, and I hope you stop." Who can argue with something as reasonable as stop lights? Of course, if you're gay, this particular traffic light never changes to green. 'We have to protect people': President Bush wants 'pro-homosexual' drama banned. Gary Taylor meets the politician in charge of making it happen

People like Allen think they're just making the world a better place for decent people. To them, this is not censorship, it's just common sense. Gay people are evil -- why would anybody need to see a play about them? It's not hate, it's just common sense.

There was a fascinating pair of letters to the editor in The Post this week, one from the current and past leaders of the Montgomery County School Health Council explaining why MCPS approved the curriculum, and one from a representative of an "ex-gay" group, complaining about it. Let's reprint both in full, for the record:

Tuesday, December 14, 2004; Page A26

From listening to the small but loud group of misinformed and fearful parents and other county residents, one might think that the Montgomery County Board of Education has spearheaded drastic and radical changes to its health education curriculum ["Writing on the Rightness of Sex-Ed Changes; Curriculum Prompts Hundreds to Protest or Voice Support," Metro, Dec. 5].

What the board did was actually twofold:

First, it ensured that health teachers will be able to provide a consistent message to students, through the use of a compelling video about the importance of abstinence, the dangers of unprotected sex and the proper use of condoms.

While these issues have been discussed in health classes since the 1980s, consistency and accuracy were lacking. Parents still have to opt in to this segment of the health class, and they have the right to bar their children from participating. This has not changed.

Second, the board approved a small pilot program, the results of which will be evaluated next summer, to teach students about the importance of tolerance and acceptance of sexual variation. The aim is to dispel stereotypes and bullying.

While we must respect the views of parents who do not want schools to provide this information to their children, those who oppose this curriculum for their children must respect the wishes of the majority of Montgomery County parents who favor it.

TRACY FOX

Co-Chair

HENRY LEE

Past co-chair

Montgomery County School Health Council

Rockville

Short, to the point, Fox and Lee's letter says what was done, says you don't have to agree with it, and notes that the majority of Montgomery County parents are okay with it.

The second letter was from the Executive Director of a group called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays. They don't like the curriculum:

Regarding the article about the controversy surrounding the new sex-education curriculum for Montgomery County public school students:

As part of the curriculum, the Montgomery County Board of Education voted for materials published by gay advocacy groups while censoring other points of view.

For example, one of the board-approved materials urges schools to refer students to select religious groups such as Lutherans Concerned, Dignity for Catholics, Rainbow Baptists and More Light Presbyterians. Advocating certain religions is discriminatory. Nor should teachers be instructed to refer students to religious groups, especially without parental permission. This "resource" has no place in a school setting.

Another board-approved resource discusses whether AIDS is God's judgment on homosexuals and whether homosexuality is a sin. Some of the answers are offensive to people of faith. "Religion has often been misused to justify hatred and oppression," says one.

The source of that information, Maricopa Community College of Avondale, Ariz., took the material off its Web site in response to our inquiry. Although we advised the board of the college's action, it approved this discredited "resource" anyway.

The board refuses to explain why it approved these and numerous other materials as school resources while rejecting materials with other points of view. It should hold a public hearing to explain its actions.

REGINA GRIGGS

Executive Director

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays

Fort Belvoir

This group, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays, called PFOX, is an interesting one. The concept of an "ex-gay" person is very helpful to those that would argue that homosexuality is either a choice or a disease, and PFOX exists to tell you that gay people can change. But as the joke goes, there are lots more ex-ex-gays than there are ex-gays -- this bandwagon is famous for the number of people who have fallen off it.

I had never heard of PFOX before the December 4th meeting of the group that wants to recall the school board, but they mentioned them pretty often. You can visit the PFOX website to learn about their activities -- I found that a Google search on "Regina Griggs" turned up many interesting articles, as well. I won't spoil it for you: this is one busy lady.

If you're serious about understanding this issue, there are two other groups you should check out. First is Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays (PFLAG), a group of people who accept their gay family members and love them. This group claims a quarter of a million members and is sometimes referred to as the "rival" of PFOX.

Not surprisingly, there is some strong opposition to the promotion of "ex-gays." The interested reader is pointed toward the Ex-Gay Watch web site, and especially their ABOUT page as a starting point with an overview of this phenomenon. Scroll down, and on the righthand side of their site you will see topics listed. Many of them are very informative.

These are very confused times we live in. It seems that America is undergoing an interior debate about whether to follow the path to scientific knowledge or one that leads to enforced religious obligation. Along the way, the facts get slandered and distorted. Thin strands of evidence carry the weight of great, ponderous conclusions, while mountains of scientific data are brushed off as unimportant or misleading. People reach their conclusions first, then look for anything that will support them. And our schools are right in the middle of it.

We who maintain this site advocate that public school students should be taught empirically-supported facts, as well as they are understood by a consensus of the scientific community, and that topics of faith and values be taught somewhere besides the public schools. The question is not whether people should cherish their faith and live according to their beliefs, but whether religious beliefs should be allowed to overwhelm the teaching of facts in the public schools.

The Washington Times had a reporter at the Board of Education meeting yesterday. Not too surprisingly, that conservative paper led with a statement that kinda made it sound as if there were a mass movement opposing the new curriculum. They open with this:

A group of Montgomery County parents yesterday asked the school board to delay implementation of a pilot sex-education program this spring that teaches homosexuality is genetically predetermined and that same-sex couples are one type of family. Montgomery set on pilot sex-ed class

In fact, the "group of Montgomery County parents" against the sex education program was only one person, and there were two speakers in favor (see their statements in the post below this one). The speakers supporting the school board were well received by both the board and the audience. There was also at least one protestor who came with a sign to support the school board's decision, in case there were speakers opposing it.

An error in The Time's lead should also be noted. The curriculum does not teach that homosexuality is genetically determined. The Times was kind enough to interview Chris Grewell and Maryam Babed, who are both associated with this site, after the meeting, and they published some nice quotes.

The Times then went on to describe a "white paper" that is posted at the web site of the people who want to recall the whole school board for adopting the new curriculum.

Warren Throckmorton of Grove City College has published a 35-page scientific critique of the new curriculum that says the portion on "same-gender attraction is based on a theoretical orientation, called essentialism, which does not represent a singular consensus of opinion in the social sciences and research community."

The report also states that the curriculum uses documents "provided by advocacy organizations" and omits "scientific information, published in peer-review journals, which differ from the positions of these political advocacy organizations."

Mrs. Grewell called Mr. Throckmortion's findings "junk science" because it was not published in a "peer-reviewed, scientific journal."

Actually, it does not appear that Throckmorton is a researcher at all, so much as a clinician and conservative advocate. In the word-game presented in The Times, he states that a certain viewpoint can be called "essentialism," and then notes that not all social scientists are essentialists. Without going into the philosophical traditions underlying his argument, we can simply note there is, in fact, a "singular consensus" among social scientists that people do not simply choose to become homosexuals. Throckmorton stands in disagreement with the scientific community in his belief, for which he has only shreds of empirical support.

From a New York Times story we wrote about below. This particular section is getting talked about a lot on the Internet.

State Representative Cynthia Davis of Missouri prefiled two bills for the next session of the Legislature that she said "reflect what people want." One would remove the state's requirement that all forms of contraception and their potential health effects be taught in schools, leaving the focus on abstinence. Another would require publishers that sell biology textbooks to Missouri to include at least one chapter with alternative theories to evolution.

"These are common-sense, grass-roots ideas from the people I represent, and I'd be very surprised if a majority of legislators didn't feel they were the right solutions to these problems," Ms. Davis said.

"It's like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn't want to go," she added. "I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we're going to take it back."

Texas is, not very surprisingly, a place where religious conservatives have their way a lot of the time. This LA Times article, reprinted in the Philadephia Inquirer, paid a visit to Spring, Texas:

This is the home and power base of Terri Leo, a state Board of Education member representing 2.5 million people in East Texas. At the urging of Leo and several other members - who describe themselves as Christian conservatives - the board in November approved new health textbooks for high school and middle school students after publishers said they would tweak references to marriage and sexuality.

One agreed to define marriage as a "lifelong union between a husband and a wife." Another deleted words that were attacked by conservatives as stealth references to gay relationships; "partners," for example, was changed to "husbands and wives." A passage explaining that adolescence brings the onset of "attraction to others" became "attraction to the opposite sex." Texas conservatives mount more schoolbook challenges

Publishers end up making these changes to textbooks to sell in Texas, but of course they print thousands of them, and the same changes end up all over the country.

"I have very little use for this religion-driven curriculum," [director of the American Textbook Council Gilbert] Sewall said. "This confuses sex and moral education."

Texas is the second-largest buyer of textbooks in the nation, after California. Books purchased here wind up in classrooms across the nation, because publishers are loath to create new editions for smaller states. As a result, five social conservatives on the 15-member Texas board, frequently joined by five more moderate Republicans, have enormous clout - and often control the content used to teach millions of children.

Publishers have no choice but to heed many of the group's wishes, said Don McLeroy, a dentist, Sunday school teacher and Texas Board of Education member.

"They've got to sell books," he said. "It's business."

Here's a peek at what your kids will be learning in school before long:

In a nod to those who believe God created the Earth 6,000 years ago, a sentence saying the ice age took place "millions of years ago" was changed to "in the distant past." Descriptions of environmentalism have been attacked as antithetical to free-enterprise ideals; a passage describing the cruelty of slavery was derided as "overkill."

The pace of such efforts to alter the curriculum is expected to increase because Christian conservatives are "emboldened" by the Republican gains on Election Day, Leo said.

This is a theme we're going to hear more and more: they think they have a mandate.

Maybe they do in Texas.

The New York Times this morning has a brief but informative analysis of the Christian right's movement to affect policies at the state level. Many of them took the Bush victory in the presidential election as a mandate, a sign that they are the majority and that laws at the federal and local levels should reflect their religious views.

Energized by electoral victories last month that they say reflect wide support for more traditional social values, conservative Christian advocates across the country are pushing ahead state and local initiatives on thorny issues, including same-sex marriage, public education and abortion.

"I think people are becoming emboldened," said Michael D. Bowman, director of state legislative relations at Concerned Women for America, a conservative Christian advocacy group based in Washington. "On legislative efforts, they're getting more gutsy, and on certain issues, they may introduce legislation that they normally may not have done."

It is on the state level "where most family issues are decided," Mr. Bowman said. And it is there that local advocacy groups hope to build quickly on the momentum from the election when legislatures convene in the new year.

In Texas, conservative Christians are backing an amendment to prevent human cloning, a measure that would also block the kind of cloning used in embryonic stem-cell research. In Georgia, advocacy groups hope to win approval this year of two measures limiting abortion, after redistricting helped Republicans take control of the state legislature. In Kansas, conservatives have won a majority on the State Board of Education, which is expected to introduce changes this spring to the high school science curriculum challenging the theory of evolution. And in Maryland, some black churches have joined with a white Republican state delegate to push for a ban on same-sex marriage. Christian Conservatives Press Issues in Statehouses (free registration required)

Issues such as gay marriage, cloning and stem cell research, and abstinence-only sex education are defined in the press these days as "moral values" issues, as the word "moral" seems to have lost its original meaning -- it has taken on a new definition like, "Conforming to the beliefs and practices of certain religious groups." Right and wrong have become more or less irrelevant to the term.

While Christian conservatives say the most promising legislative and policy efforts are in states that went for Mr. Bush, they are also optimistic about ballot issues they are championing in traditionally Democratic states like Maryland.

Are you okay with that? Are you willing to give these people free run in the legislature, the city council, the school board? Do you know what you have to do? You have to fight back.

Liberal advocacy groups say they plan to fight many of these efforts. But Mr. Romero of the A.C.L.U. said that beyond filing legal challenges, liberals needed to appropriate the language of morality from Christian conservatives to capture the popular imagination.

"Lawsuits are about telling stories, and we need to talk about why we picked this case and why it's important," he said. "For instance, we need to ask, where is the morality when a partner of 20 years is denied hospital access because a state doesn't believe in gay marriage? Where is the morality in forcing a teenage girl into a back-alley abortion?"

Mr. Romero is referring to the old definition of morality, that old-fashioned stuff about doing the good and avoiding the bad. Are there still people in Maryland who think that's important? How far will the religious right get, as far as forcing Marylanders to play along with their amoral agenda?

This blog is mostly about the controversy in Montgomery County over the new sex education curriculum. But it's about more than that, of course. It is imperative to defend the school board's decision now, on this case, because there is no doubt that the religious right plans to intrude further and further into our lives. We need to stop them now.

Yesterday's Richmond Times - Dispatch has an excellent article about the movement to teach creationism in public schools. As they say:

... roughly 40 states face some kind of challenge to the teaching of evolution. Such is the case just up the road in Charles County, Maryland, where a majority on the board of education supports teaching creationism alongside evolution. In the words of one board member, "I believe that if we are teaching evolution, we should have a section on creationism as well, and any other theory. Let's motivate our kids to be creative thinkers." Creationism Might Deserve to Be Taught - in Religion Class

This is not far from us, it's not down in the deep South somewhere -- this is right here in the state of Maryland.

Such creativity, alas, would lead children to the conclusion that two plus two equals five and that when it rains, it does so because angels are crying. There is, in fact, a place for creationism in the classroom - the religious-studies classroom, that is. It does not belong in the science classroom any more than astrology or exorcism does. Yet more than a century after the publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species, many Americans seem intent on putting it there.

We will see something in the sex-ed debate that we see in the evolution debate, and it is necessary to understand what it is. The religious conservatives will try to argue that there is a "debate" in the scientific community, or they will say that "scientists are not in agreement" about whether God made the universe in a week, or if gay people choose to be that way, or whatever argument they want to win.

To support this, they will find some oddball professor or author somewhere who will be willing to argue, with suitably obscure jargon, maybe even with charts and equations, that whatever the faithful believe is indeed scientific fact. Or if not fact, at least there is a "debate" in the scientific community.

Sometimes these individuals are associated with universities, sometimes with Christian schools, and sometimes less than that. Some of them hold doctorates (and some have less-than-respectable credentials), sometimes even in a relevant field. You can imagine that putting an academic face on the extremists' arguments would be very lucrative, especially since there aren't many academics willing to do it.

This is a matter of obfuscation of the highest degree. The ordinary person cannot tell what the real scientific community believes, and as the Christian conservative movement has no shortage of cash they are able to fund publications and media appearances. The illusion can be created that someone is a real scientist, when in fact they are simply using technical jargon to justify their religious beliefs.

Evolution does not contradict theism - God could have directed the process, and Darwin himself concluded his magnum opus with the comment that "there is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one."

But perhaps the strongest argument against the view that evolution and creationism are merely two different faiths is this: Were someone to collect sufficient objective evidence to disprove evolution, science would be radically changed - and the disprover would be hailed as a genius of our age. In short evolutionists, like all scientists, are open to the possibility that they might one day be proved wrong. Is there a committed creationist willing to say the same?

Of course I have cut a lot out of the article -- I recommend you follow the link and read through it. We who hope to have scientifically-supported facts taught in the public schools will need to prepare a coherent defense against this technique of slandering science by putting forth phonies.

I was planning on making some comments, but this article says it all, so why bother?

The article is The Plot Against Sex in America by Frank Rich.

In the case of "Kinsey," the Traditional Values Coalition has called for a yearlong boycott of all movies released by Fox. (With the hypocrisy we've come to expect, it does not ask its members to boycott Fox's corporate sibling in the Murdoch empire, Fox News.) But such organizations don't really care about "Kinsey" - an art-house picture that, however well reviewed or Oscar-nominated, will be seen by a relatively small audience, mostly in blue states. The film is just this month's handy pretext for advancing the larger goal of pushing sex of all nonbiblical kinds back into the closet and undermining any scientific findings, whether circa 1948 or 2004, that might challenge fundamentalist sexual orthodoxy as successfully as Darwin challenged Genesis. (Though that success, too, is in doubt: The Washington Post reports that this year some 40 states are dealing with challenges to the teaching of evolution in public schools.)

Go check it out, it's worthy.

Tomorrow's Post has a very well-written, sensible article on abstinence education. The author, Deborah M. Roffman, has taught sex ed for thirty years and has written a book about it; she makes a lot of points in this story, the main one being that kids know when you're jerking them around.

After learning about a congressional report offering evidence that many widely used abstinence-only courses grossly overestimate the failure rates for condoms, the seventh-grade students at one of the schools where I teach were perplexed.

"Well, if these courses are supposed to be health education," asked one, "why would anyone want to give wrong information about something as important as preventing AIDS?" Another added, "Are they trying to tell kids not to bother using condoms when they need them because they're useless anyway?" "None of this makes sense!" said a third. "Condoms can save lives." To which another retorted, "Well, maybe it's sex they're against, not AIDS!"

Many educators and parents I work with scratch their heads, too, when they learn that hundreds of millions of federal and state dollars are being spent on abstinence-only programs, in which contraception may be mentioned only in the context of its failure rates. They'll Abstain If They're Given Good Reasons

It seems that the federally-funded programs are intended to persuade kids to adopt a certain behavior, whether or not facts are entirely accurate.

If 30 years of experience in this field has taught me one thing, it is that when talking with our children about sex, we need to make sure that we educate rather than dictate and that our approach is based on scientific evidence. Only then can we hope to arm young people against the escalating social and cultural pressures they face.

It is odd, adults don't really have any trouble understanding the mixed message of "don't have sex, but if you do, be careful." The reasoning seems kind of obvious to us. But the kids are trying to figure out what we're up to -- why tell us one thing, if you expect us to do the other?

But there is another way to counsel teenagers that I know they don't find confusing at all: "First and foremost, we love you, and we want you to be safe. The best way to be safe is to abstain. And, for people who choose not to abstain there are steps they can take to lower the risks." Teenagers don't hear that as a Do/Don't message, but as straightforward evidence of how much adults care about their well-being and about how we expect them to take these decisions very seriously.

Of course, all of us parents joke about how much our kids know already. Ah, yes, we know it, partly because we were their age once. One thing that makes sex education difficult is that kids are learning from one another already. An important part of the program is correcting some fallacies that get passed around.

The thing that gets missed in a lot of these discussions is the fact that teenage kids are not dumb. It's really not like they just take whatever they learn in school and accept it as absolute fact. Especially on a topic like sex, you know full well they are trying to figure out what our motives are -- why are you telling me this stuff? If it's because the grown-ups want all the cookies in the cookie jar for themselves, then ... duh, any reasonable kid is going to try to figure out how to get that lid open. And keeping them in the dark does create that impression.

Ms. Roffman makes a most interesting and subtle point, a distinction between abstinence and chastity:

Don't get me wrong: I think the emphasis on abstinence in recent years has gone a long way toward making it a more acceptable option for young people. There is no question in my mind that abstinence -- as in the delay or postponement of sexual intercourse -- is the prudent choice for anyone not yet ready to take on the physical, social, emotional and moral responsibilities inherent in the act of intercourse, or for anyone whose personal or religious values dictate that the proper place for this behavior is only within the context of marriage. I have yet to meet a responsible health educator who does not make these points clearly in his or her teaching.

However, the mandatory guidelines in the federal abstinence-only program reveal a very different agenda. Teachers in schools where these federal dollars are accepted are not permitted to frame abstinence or postponement as a recommended choice in the service of one's health, but as an obligatory state of being until marriage. In other words, abstinence is not to be portrayed as a means to an end (good health) but as an end in itself. The ultimate goal of the program is to promote premarital chastity rather than premarital health.

And, y'know, there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't belong in a school. It belongs in the family, in the church.

There is much concern in the public health community that abstinence-only programs leave those young people who ultimately choose not to abstain in a dangerous information vacuum. I see an equally dangerous moral and ethical vacuum, because they are also left without guidance on how to apply the values they have absorbed to the sexual situations in which they will find themselves. How ironic that in the name of "morality" we may diminish young people's ability to think and behave ethically.

There are a lot of nuggets of wisdom in this article, and I recommend you go read the whole thing, slowly, thoughtfully. The question of abstinence education is not black and white, it's very complicated, but if we approach it with empathy and honesty, we just might be able to get these kids of ours to adulthood safely.

The anti-curriculum people made it into the paper again today. The Gazette reports that they demonstrated outside the school system's headquarters. The photo shows two people, and numbers are not reported: Parents protest classes covering condoms, gay issues. The story contains a followup from last week's meeting.

Michelle Turner, former president of both the Montgomery County PTA and the Einstein High School PTA, was elected president of Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum. Turner was a dissenting member of the Family Life and Human Development Advisory Committee, the group that recommended the new curriculum to the school board.

Turner, who has four children who attend schools in the Einstein cluster, said her major concern is the lack of scientific support for the discussion of sexual variations.

"There is nothing scientific about this new curriculum," Turner said. "There have been individuals who have been able to leave the gay lifestyle through therapy."

Nothing scientific.

Lay people often think of science as a cold, crisp, deductive process, something like proofs in mathematics, where some hypotheses are proven, and theories rise from the level of propositions to facts. In this case it could happen, as John Horgan suggested in The End of Science, that someday everything will be known, and there will be no need for scientific research.

This is not how scientists think of science however. More likely, scientists conceptualize their work as occurring within a large-scale effort called a paradigm, or "normal science", both terms attributable to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Normal science is an extended social, collaborative phenomenon, comprising not only a body of shared knowledge knowledge but research techniques, terminology, and other features such as participation in approved peer-reviewed journals, competing for academic tenure and funding, etc.

Researchers working outside the paradigm may contribute to the scientific effort. For instance, James Gleick's book Chaos: The Making of a New Science had influence far beyond the popular readership it was published for; scientists in various fields were introduce to chaos theory through that book, and it led them into the literature of the paradigm itself -- the point being that paradigmatic science is open to outside influences, and is not a closed box.

Ms. Turner's comment that "there is nothing scientific about this new curriculum," however, reflects something entirely different. Normal science has researched the psychology, biology, sociology, and even the economics of homosexuality now for decades. The paradigm is firm, consensus has been attained on many questions. And -- this is important -- the facts represented in the school board's new curriculum do reflect the finidings of scientists working within the normal paradigm.

There are a couple of writers who insist that the paradigm is wrong, and that homosexuals can change their sexual orientation. A couple of the more prominent of these are Warren Throckmorton, Director of College Counseling at Grove City College who publishes widely in Christian magazines and newsletters and has a Christian music CD, and Elizabeth Moberly, a British theologian. These writers, who promote the practice of converting homosexuals to a heterosexual orientation, do not base their beliefs on scientific research, but on religious beliefs. These writers are outside the scientific paradigm.

Paradigmatic scientists, that is, those who publish in respected peer-reviewed journals, have not concluded that homosexuals can change their orientation. Professional and scientific groups that oppose the practice of "conversion therapy" to change the orientation of gay patients include:

• American Academy of Pediatrics
  
• American Counseling Association
  
• American Medical Association
  
• American Psychiatric Association
  
• American Psychological Association
  
• National Association of School Psychologists
  
• National Association of Social Workers
  
• National Education Association
  

In sum: the beliefs of the anti-curriculum group are not based on scientific research, and in fact are directly opposite the beliefs of reputable scientists who study the topic of homosexuality.

Turner and many of the other attendees Saturday said they object to their children being taught that homosexuality is genetically predetermined.

This is an odd comment. The new curriculum does not teach this. You will very rarely find a biologist or psychologist saying that a behavior predisposition is "genetically predetermined," and there is no use of this phrase in the curriculum. Almost certainly the phenotype emerges through complex interactions of a genotype with environmental stimuli. In the curriculum, genetics is introduced in a section on "Interactions between Physical and Psychological Development:"

B Factors Contributing to Sexual Identity as Part of Total Personality

   1. Physical (genetic, anatomical)

   2. Psychological

   3. Environmental

   4. Other

This is a wholly appropriate outline for discussing the factors that scientists in the field theorize result in "sexual identity."

"I have no problem with them teaching some amount of tolerance," she said. "What we have a problem with is telling kids it's normal."

Another odd comment. The new curricululm says nothing about what is "normal" and what is not. It only teaches that certain phenomena exist. Further, it should not be necessary to "teach tolerance." That should be the parents' job. But she does have a point: if students are given the facts, it is likely that tolerance will be increased.

Turner and others at the meeting said members of the Family Life and Human Development Advisory Committee, formed in 1970 as a result of state regulation, was composed of people who supported "the gay agenda."

From this we should be able to discern that we are not talking about scientific findings at all, but about conspiracy theories. The gay agenda?

"The advisory committee had a mindset of promoting homosexuality," said Retta Brown, who represented the Daughters of the American Revolution on the committee and said she is concerned about what students will glean from the sex ed classes. "These children will not learn that sodomy will kill you. They'll think it's wonderful."

First, "sodomy" does not kill you. Second, the physical acts performed by homosexuals are not described in the curriculum, but only sexual orientation. If this is what she means by "sodomy," that a person falls in love with someone of their own sex, then this hate group should be ignored, just like the Klan and others are.

It is interesting to follow their logic. They believe, as a matter of faith, not science, that people choose to become gay. If that is true, then two kinds of conclusions can be drawn. First, it means that people can choose not to be gay, and as they -- again, as a matter of faith -- take homosexuality to be entirely a negative, evil thing, it would only make sense to persuade people not to choose it.

Second, and I think the thing they are most worried about: if people choose to be gay, then someone could come into our schools and persuade our own children to prefer members of their own sex. If this were communism, or thievery, or some other bad thing, I think everyone would be in agreement -- we should not teach thievery in school, because thievery is a choice.

But no one who knows the field believes that sexual orientation is a choice. Therefore, it seems reasonable that people who nature has made gay should learn to accept their own feelings, and others should learn to tolerate them -- and, most importantly, our kids are not going to be swept up by the "gay agenda."

I don't want to take any business away from the Gazette, which is driving home a terrific point today in their editorial section, but I am going to quote most, well, all of their message. Be sure to go to their web site, The Gazette, buy lots of stuff from their advertisers, send them chocolates...

The most important function the school system can perform in sex education is to clear up misinformation. Kids in the 10th grade already know a lot about sex, but often what they know is just wrong.

Most parents do a good job of telling their children about sex, answering their questions and helping to shape their children's attitudes about sex. But sex "education" does not stop at the front door of the home; it continues on the playgrounds, at the mall and in the hallways and locker rooms of schools. And much of what children "learn" out there is simply not true.

That is where the school can step in. A good sex education program at school should help reinforce the instruction children are receiving at home, supporting the parents in their role as the primary teacher. The best program will provide unbiased information, and leave value judgments up to the parents.

A group of parents believes that the Montgomery County school system has gone too far in substituting its judgment for the parents in new curriculum for health classes. They are especially upset about plans to include discussions of homosexuality and a video discussing the value of condoms and demonstrating (on a cucumber) how to use one.

The school board has voted unanimously to show the video -- discussing how condoms can reduce the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases or becoming pregnant -- to all 10th graders.

That seems an appropriate age to provide straightforward information to young people. The system tried out the video at three county high schools in the spring, and feedback from students was positive.

As always, if parents are adamantly opposed to having their child informed on the subject, for moral, religious or any other grounds, they can opt out of the program and their child will be excused from that class. Few parents do so, according to the school system, but the option is available.

More controversially, the board has also approved a discussion of "sexual variations," to be tried in eighth- and 10th-grade classes at three middle and three high schools in the spring. It will be the first time the system has initiated discussions of homosexuality, although teachers have been permitted to answer students' questions on the subject since 1970.

Since homosexuality is a much more open topic in society today than it was 30 years ago, with openly gay characters portrayed on television and the movies, it stands to reason that children will have more questions about it than they did in the past. Devoting a few sessions of the health class to information about homosexuality makes common sense.

Yes, common sense, that's how it seems to us, too. The funny thing in this controversy is that the materials seem so appropriate. The group has tried to make it sound like an assault on the family and everything that is good, but really the curriculum is just a little bit of factual information.

Parents should be having their own discussions with their children about homosexuality, and imparting their own moral judgments. Only they have the right to teach their children right from wrong. But it seems entirely reasonable that the school system take some time to give young people unbiased information about the topic.

The school system cannot be seen to promote homosexuality, nor should it condemn it. The school's role is to provide factual information on a subject about which young people are very likely to be curious.

Parents should make themselves aware of the content of the curriculum, and if they have concerns about language or emphasis, they should communicate with the schools and seek changes.

In the end, if the parents are still not satisfied with the content, they are entirely within their right to withdraw their child from the class. And they should do so. If large numbers of children were removed from the health classes, it would send a strong signal to the board that content does not have community support.

The criticism of the new sex education curriculum merits serious discussion. The parents certainly have every right to express concerns and to fight for unbiased content.

We tend to believe, however, based on what we know now, that the parents are overreacting. And we completely disagree that discussions of homosexuality or demonstrations of condom use should be off-limits in schools.

I apologize to The Gazette for reproducing their entire editorial, but it was perfect. They are advocating, as we would, that values be taught in the family, and that facts be taught at school.

So, whaddya make of this? Even as the United States rushes to embrace intolerance, our next-door neighbor is going the other way:

The Supreme Court of Canada gave the federal government the go-ahead Thursday to legalize gay marriage, but stopped short of saying that this was required by the Constitution.

Ottawa had hoped the court would require it to allow gay marriage across Canada, making it politically easier to push draft legislation through Parliament. The high court refused to give an opinion on this issue.

Instead, it declared only that the government had the authority to legislate on marriage and that its proposed definition of marriage as "the lawful union of two persons" would not violate the Constitution. Canada's high court clears way for gay marriage

The web site where I found this story, a high-traffic site called MetaFilter, titled this story: It's like America, only with freedom!. Ouch.

It sounds like, now that this is out of the way, it will probably pass in Parliament:

Canada would join Belgium and the Netherlands in allowing gay marriage if the government acts to make it legal nationwide. To pass in the House of Commons, the legislation needs the approval of about 44 of the 95 Liberal backbench members of Parliament to obtain a 155-vote majority.

One top Liberal predicted the legislation should pass easily after its introduction, likely early next year. It already has the support of the 38-member Liberal cabinet and virtually all the 54 Bloc Quebecois and 19 New Democrat MPs. Canadian Court Approves Same-Sex Marriage

This has been one of those issues where you just shake your head and wonder -- why does anyone care? If two people want to grow old together, sit in Laz-E-Boys in front of the TV and argue about whose turn it is to walk the dog -- how can that be "evil"? How can it not be a good thing? How can two guys marrying each other, or two women, "threaten" anybody else's marriage? Why would a gay couple with kids make some other family any less meaningful? How can people in Canada be so different from people in the US?

The opposition to Montgomery County's sex education curriculum, and the promotion of abstinence education and similar programs, is often -- correctly -- attributed to Christian groups. A lot of the organizing, for instance, is done in the churches. But it is important to note that these are only particular religious groups, particular churches. It is entirely possible to have faith in God, to adhere to Christian Scripture, and to take a nonjudgmental attitude toward people who are unlike yourself. In fact, the gospels quote Jesus many times saying that we should "judge not lest ye be judged," "let he who is without sin cast the first stone," and similar things, and not once saying anything about homosexuality. One could conclude that the churches who teach that homosexuality is an abomination are the ones who have deviated from Jesus' words.

The United Church of Christ welcomes everyone to its services, and wanted to advertise the fact. They put together a television ad that showed a gay couple, a Latina woman, and some poor people being invited into the church.

But the networks are afraid to show it:

CLEVELAND -- The CBS and NBC television networks are refusing to run a 30-second television ad from the United Church of Christ because its all-inclusive welcome has been deemed "too controversial."

The ad, part of the denomination's new, broad identity campaign set to begin airing nationwide on Dec. 1, states that -- like Jesus -- the United Church of Christ seeks to welcome all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance or sexual orientation.

According to a written explanation from CBS, the United Church of Christ is being denied network access because its ad implies acceptance of gay and lesbian couples -- among other minority constituencies -- and is, therefore, too "controversial."

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks."

Similarly, a rejection by NBC declared the spot "too controversial." CBS, NBC refuse to air church's television advertisement

So, if it seems that Christians are full of hatred toward gays, it just might be because you're only allowed to hear one side of the story.

Today UCC announced they are filing a petition with the FCC:

The United Church of Christ today (Dec. 9) is filing two petitions with the Federal Communications Commission, asking that two network owned-and-operated television stations in Miami be denied license renewals for failing to provide viewers "suitable access" to a full array of "social, political, esthetic, moral and other ideas and experiences."

WFOR-TV (a CBS station) and WJVT-TV (an NBC station) -- whose operating licenses are currently up for FCC review -- are being challenged because "there is substantial and material question" as to whether the stations' parent companies, Viacom, Inc., and the General Electric Company, have operated the stations in the public interest, the petitions state.

The action stems from a much-publicized decision by both networks to deny an advertisement that makes clear the church's welcome of diverse, even marginalized, segments of the population. CBS and NBC have said the all-inclusive ads are "controversial" and, therefore, amount to "issue advocacy," something the networks have said they do not allow.
...
"Who would have guessed that it would one day be our voice that was silenced?" Chase said. "When CBS and NBC refused to air our commercial because they considered it 'too controversial,' we found ourselves in the very position as other groups for whom we have historically been advocates."

Gloria Tristani, OC Inc.'s managing director and a former FCC commissioner (1997-2001), said, "NBC and CBS and their stations must be accountable to the communities they are licensed to serve. How can it be in the public interest for television stations to exclude a church's message of inclusion?" United Church of Christ files petition with FCC over networks' refusal of church advertisement

Whoever controls the information available to people also controls the decisions those people will make. You might have thought that the Christian church uniformly believes that homosexuality is an abomination, that gay people will rot in hell -- as you can read at the Baptist web site God Hates Fags.

Turns out some Christians believe in forgiveness, in understanding, some believe that God loves everyone. But you won't be seeing their message on TV, no ... that's too controversial.