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."