School board says, "Bring it on."
From the Washington Post:
The Montgomery County Board of Education approved new sex-education lessons yesterday for the eighth and 10th grades that teach what it means to be homosexual but say little about how people become gay, resisting pressure from a divided community to define homosexuality as nature or nurture, right or wrong.
Approved by a unanimous vote, the lessons mark the first time Montgomery schools will introduce the topics of sexual orientation and homosexuality. The materials, including a new 10th-grade condom-demonstration DVD, will be field-tested in a handful of middle and high schools in spring, barring intervention by the courts.
Some school board members said they expect a lawsuit from the same community groups that persuaded a federal judge to halt a version of the curriculum in spring 2005. U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. found that the curriculum presented one view of homosexuality, "that homosexuality is a natural and morally correct lifestyle," to the exclusion of all others.
"I believe we will be sued. That's okay. . . . Bring it on," said board member Sharon W. Cox (At Large).
Leaders of the protest groups said yesterday that they would consider their legal options and signaled that they have the same objection to the new curriculum as to the old one: They say it offers one viewpoint, favorable toward homosexuality, anal sex and premarital sex. Observers on both sides have predicted that "viewpoint neutrality," or lack thereof, would eventually form the basis of a lawsuit.
"Absolutely nothing is allowed to be said that is negative about homosexuality," said Ruth Jacobs, an infectious-disease specialist and member of Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, which, with Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, sued to block the curriculum in its first incarnation.