Posted on 11/28/2004 12:21:56 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Sunday, November 28, 2004
If administrators of Kentucky's Boyd County school district can't find a way to force all students to attend sexual orientation and gender identity "tolerance training," the American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to take them to court – again.
Ten months ago, the district settled a lawsuit with the ACLU over the right of a student group, the Gay-Straight Alliance, to meet on campus. The year-long litigation strained relations in the conservative northeast portion of the state. In addition to allowing the group to meet on campus after school, district officials agreed that all students, staff and teachers would be required to receive "tolerance training."
The agreement stipulated all would attend "mandatory anti-harassment workshops," including the viewing of an hour-long "training" video covering sexual orientation and gender identity issues for middle and high school students.
But ten months on, one-third of Boyd County students have failed to see the video, and that has the ACLU threatening court action.
"It sounds like the training can't possibly be done," James Esseks, litigation director for the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, tells the Louisville Courier-Journal.
District figures show 105 of 730 middle school students opted out of the training video and 145 of 971 high school students did likewise. On the day scheduled for training, 324 students didn't show up for school.
The current legal snag arises from the fact the original consent decree had no provision for parents exempting their children.
"The schools have great latitude in what they want to teach, including what's in training programs, and the training is now part of the school curriculum," Esseks says. "Parents don't get to say I don't want you to teach evolution or this, that or whatever else. If parents don't like it they can homeschool, they can go to a private school, they can go to a religious school."
"Where are the parental rights in this whole thing?" asks Rev. Tim York, president of the Boyd County Ministerial Alliance and head of Defenders Voice, a community group formed to contest the decree.
According to the group's website, Defenders Voice "incorporated due to the need for protection of both the physical and mental health of our students and citizens." Its members place blame for their current distress squarely on the ACLU:
"We have seen an onslaught of aggressive homosexual activism sweep across our country. In many cases, these activists are supported by the ACLU in their attempts. ... Defenders Voice believes that an organization like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) should not be allowed to tell parents what their children must learn."
The Alliance Defense Fund, a religious-liberties public-interest legal group, has signed on to help Defenders Voice, pledging to sue the school district unless it adopts an opt-out policy for parents this week. Alliance was formed in 1993 with the guidance of several well-known Christian conservatives, including the late Dr. Bill Bright, the late Larry Burkett, Dr. James Dobson, Dr. D. James Kennedy, and the late Marlin Maddoux.
Joe Platt, a Cincinnati attorney representing Alliance, says mandatory training on tolerance for homosexuals violates the right of conscience of parents and students who believe such behavior immoral.
But school district attorney, Winter Huff, insists to the Courier-Journal the decree does not violate parental rights: "Students certainly have the right to believe in what they want to believe, but they don't have the right to act out in inappropriate ways. The point is you don't treat people disrespectfully, you don't pick on people, you don't bully them, you don't make them afraid to come to school."
Meanwhile, only one of the seven plaintiffs in the 2003 lawsuit still remain in school. Six have graduated, and the teacher-adviser for the Gay-Straight Alliance club asked to transfer to another campus.
The ACLU's Esseks is now questioning whether the mandatory video meets the decree's required hour of anti-harassment training. Like one-third of the students in Boyd County schools, he has yet to view it.
If you'd like to sound off on this issue, please take part in the WorldNetDaily poll.
The ACLU's view of freedom of speech is to coerce the government to FORCE students to watch something they don't agree with. The ACLU's interpretation of the First Amendment has come down to banning Christianity from the schools on the one hand and compelling the joys of the gay agenda to be shoved down the throats of a captive audience on the other hand. In a perverse kind of way, it makes twisted sense. This view of freedom of expression ACLU-style says more about the degenerate state of the civil liberties organization than it does about its critics. Maybe Nat Hentoff could offer some thoughts here.
I'd be right tempted to tell them to take their film and put up there with their gerbil or hampster, or whatever...
How can students be held to a district lawsuit to see a film?
Yeah and the ACLU tells parents to go take a flying leap off a bridge. With their liberal arrogance, they assume they know what's best for the chilrun better than the folks who raise them and love them do. We hear a lot about people not being exposed to religious indoctrination but by Licorice, we'll make sure people know all about gay sex they'd rather shun. To these Libertine prigs, its all about making sure the sheeple don't ever escape their thumbs.
That's exactly what they should be doing -- with vouchers sufficient to off-set the taxes they pay to support the homosexual indoctrination centers known as public schools.
Thanks, ACLU, for driving parents closer to the correct solution.
The ACLU's view of freedom of speech is to coerce the government to FORCE students to watch something they don't agree with.
I have absolutely had it up to Green River! Every day somewhere in the country these f***s are getting away with another outrage. I can understand that maybe an underfunded school district is afraid to take them on but the Pentagon? How are they finding so easy to push institutions and branches of government around? Are there any conservative legal scholars out there who can do more than whine and bellyache in the best republican fashion? From what little I know I suspect that in the majority of such cases the district or town, or bureau in question is in fact in cahoots with the ACLU and "loses" on purpose (then pays their legal fees). But there has got to be some kind of pro-active strategy that can carry the war to them for a change. I am just so sick of the all whining and impotent teeth-gnashing I hear day-in, day-out on this subject. Can't we actually DO something?
I noticed its Kentucky. Now we know why liberals are so loathed in Flyover Country. I hope the ACLU keeps this up. They'll help the Bluegrass State turn even Redder.
Bump!
But they have to continue to pay for public schools, of course, while also paying for the alternative. Ya gotta love liberal "fairness".
Qwinn
A lot of parents will take the ACLU's advice to heart and start homeschooling their kids. Or save money to send them to private school. In a way, the ACLU's ham-handedness may be the best thing to happen in Kentucky in decades.
Oh, they have a fincanical interest as well.
New CD Marry Me Supports the ACLU’s Efforts to Win Marriage for Same-Sex Couples
http://www.aclu.org/LesbianGayRights/LesbianGayRights.cfm?ID=17009&c=23
"The ACLU’s Lesbian & Gay Rights and AIDS Projects will receive 50 percent of proceeds from the wholesale price of the Marry Me compilation"
Hardly disinterested promoters of civil liberty... If they don't push the gay agenda over the objections of the public, that's oodles of money they don't get. Common sense and fairness has been pushed aside by that oldest of motives, the need to make a profit. Why the ACLU is allowed then to retain its non-profit status is utterly beyond me.
Yeah, well I want my property tax reassessed. So the ACLU tells me to take a hike? I'll take my taxes too!
Looking at it from the other end, I see this a blessing in disguise. The ACLU is helping to hasten the end of the public school monopoly as we've known it in this country by subverting it from within. Like that's a bad thing.
Sign the petition to stop taxpayer funding of the ACLU.
http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/ACLU/
Christian Freepers:
If you don't pray to Jesus Christ about this, you better!
Atheist Freepers:
If you don't write your senators about this, you ain't gonna write them about anything.
Intolerant of intolerance?
Where do these anti-Christs get so much money that they can sue everyone?
This is yet another great reason to home school children.
This would get a resounding FU in my neck of the woods. It's time to get thee out of her folks. The public school system is a whore of the socialist left.
I can bet you bubkes that if the school district wanted to show a film about Christmas, the ACLU would sue to prevent it from seeing the light of day.
"Tolerance Training" = liberal brainwashing. I love the Orwellian spin they put on the phishing of their partisan agenda at taxpayer expense.
Isn't it time to sue the ACLU? Or bring some kind of criminal charges of terrorism against it?
They're a Liberal Mafia. I'd love to see a RICO charge filed against them.
Gays once used to argue all they wanted was to be left alone in peace. Now they have enlisted the ACLU to get social approval they will never get. See, the ACLU may change the laws, it may be able to terrorize and coerce government officials into being gay friendly but their tactics will never get a majority of Americans to view the gay lifestyle as a normal and healthy way to live a life.
Jesus said: "And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." -from THE BIBLE: Matthew 19:4-6
Tolerating a man that bleep his bleep in another man's bleep, and then prances around in lavender, is already over the line. Accepting him, and teaching my kids to embrace his sin, is not an option.
I'd like to move to Kentucky just so I could pull my kids out of these classes.
Oh to be a student today. No one would make me watch a film I did not want to watch, even if I agreed with the subject or the cause. As soon as they said I had to watch, I would say CYA.
First of all, the schools' "great latitude" is challenged all the time by the likes of the Anti-American Commie Liberal Union and their fellow travelers, and secondly, Esseks has given away the strategy of the group -- they want to make the public schools a place where parents must choose to either allow their children to be indoctrinated with their brand of moral relativism or flee to religious schools at their own expense.
When are people going to sue the ACLU for harassment?
Exactly. In this situation, its about ensuring conformity to the gay agenda. "Tolerance" here is a code word for making sure no one expresses a different view about the subject. Disagreeing that homosexuality is just as moral and natural as heterosexuality is enough to brand one as "intolerant" and guilty of committing a "hate crime." The ACLU can no more tolerate a genuinely free perspective on the subject nearest and dearest to them than the Soviets could tolerate people who disagreed communism was a beautiful thing. See, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
More like put that infernal mob of busybodies out of business for good. See my post #23 on the recommended course of action.
From taxpayers and the Lawsuits that get settled
Everyone should check this out! We must get rid of
these evil-doers.
http://www.stoptheaclu.org/
I'd rather not live in a Politically Correct America. The ACLU has become our national PC Police, watching like a hawk for the slightest sign of deviation from approved liberal orthodoxy.
They claim to have 400,000 members. In addition to those contributions, they also get money from unions, corporations and foundations. They are "non-profit," so they also get breaks from the government. Somehow, they manage to finance roughly 6,000 legal actions per year and a permanent DC lobby.
I wouldn't put the ACLU in the category of PC
To me, PC means not to offend others by choosing correct words
That is not what the ACLU is doing
What the ACLU is doing is forcing their will on the people by threats of lawsuits
IMO .. That is a civil rights violation
Well... my friend, the "correct words" are really a euphemism for the right values. The ACLU isn't so much concerned with how its said but rather with WHAT's said. Liberals claim they're worried people's feelings will be hurt if people say things they shouldn't but its never the language that at issue, its the thought that's the source of the upset. To folks who believe in PC, the right language is basically a means of straitjacketing forbidden thoughts. If you don't know how to say them, they don't get expressed. And liberals feel better knowing every one around them at least goes through the motions of agreeing with them. That's the whole point of making sure the country doesn't violate the PC canons of language... er, thought.
Just goes to show why we must get more conservative judges apointed to the courts.
The ACLU would not have so much power if not for the liberal activist judges that have been controlling the judiciary for so long.
This 'prescription' supposedly needed to assure the common good and assure the 'safety' of homosexuals is based upon the faulty studies and subsequent straw man arguments that: "numerous homosexuals are being 'abused', 'assaulted', and 'discriminated' against by fellow students...--"We Must Stop School Violence Against Homosexuals!"
-my question: Where is all this systemic and or inherent violence?
Hate crime and many other obtuse agendas are pushed this way based upon the faulty assertions made by the various groups pushing their agendas...
In my opinion, if this stuff is going to continue to be handled judicially -the best way to counter this stuff is to pull the rug out from under there sorry posteriors by proving their 'data', 'studies' and subsequent assertions flawed...
Homosexual Agenda Ping. Shaking head - ALL the children in this school district must attend pro-homo TRAINING? Training? They're actually using the word training...
RIP - I repeat, RIP your kids out of public school. The indoctrination goes on all day, every day. Read kids' textbooks. I have seen some lately. Anti-family, anti-morality crap seeps throughout all subjects. Revisionist history and leftist socialist type stuff sneaks in all over the place.
But this takes the cake. Mandatory homo-training.
Let me and ItsOurTimeNow know if anyone wants on/off this pinglist.
Good Lord!
You have to be kidding.
Here in the UK, my kids school showed a video to my daughters class (11 year olds), all about puberty and the changes they could expect,
Every parent got a letter explaining the film and was given the option for their child to be excluded from the viewing. Only a couple actually did.
But the point it, we were given the choice.
No way would this be tolerated in the UK. Parents wouldn't stand for it and the conservative press would be all over it.
Every parent in that school should keep their child off on the day that video is to be screened.
And a fighting fund should be set up to fight the ACLU in the courts.
It's a national disgrace in my opinion.
If Free Republic becomes liberal - that will be the day DU will close shop and the ACLU will start defending the few conservatives left. <sarcasm
LMAO -I like your style!
Do a FR search on "ACLU". There have been several encouraging articles about pro-active anti ACLU action lately. I'm too tired and a techno dunce anyway to check right now.
But I think there is starting to be a groundswell about this. Look into it and add to it!
If they really want tolerance - let's screen a typical porno movie in the school. It has a dose of both heterosexual and lesbian sex to leave both sides happy. Although I have a feeling that's not what the ACLU is really after.
This absolutely staggers the mind.
Hey - what are you doing up so late?
I'm just too tired to go to bed.
Regarding porn movies, they probably show them already. Or act them out in sex ed. Actually at school dances they do - there was a thread about that tonight.
I hope I live to see the day the UN is kicked out of the US and the ACLU closes up shop.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.