April 18, 2011

The apparent maneuvering of gay activists has led to a Maryland public school district entertaining statements on homosexuality, one of which attacked “the right of individuals with unwanted same-sex attractions to seek therapy to overcome those attractions.” PFOX heard about the statements and has responded by presenting the school board “with peer-reviewed academic research confirming that some people have changed from homosexual to heterosexual.” The full text of PFOX’s news release follows:

Montgomery County, Maryland School Board Urged to Reject Hateful Statements about Former Homosexuals

Ex-Gays attacked while gays cited as “successful parents”

April 18, 2011/Rockville, MD-Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) today called upon the Montgomery County (Maryland) Board of Education to reject a renewed proposal to attack ex-gays in the sex education curriculum for Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS).

On April 13, MCPS’ Citizens Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development (Committee) voted to recommend to the Board of Education (School Board) that it include five statements about homosexuality in school lessons. One statement attacks the right of individuals with unwanted same-sex attractions to seek therapy to overcome those attractions, while the other statements praise homosexuals as “successful parents” with children who “do just as well as those raised by heterosexuals,” and tell students that “homosexuals can live happy, successful lives.”

Contact the Montgomery County Board of Education at boe@mcpsmd.org and please ask them to start teaching tolerance for former homosexuals and reject the statements recommended by the Committee.

The initiative for the statements appears to come from David Fishback, the Advocacy Chair of Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), which actively supports hate against the ex-gay community. Fishback is the discredited chairman of an earlier Committee which had drafted controversial lessons on homosexuality and condom use that the School Board threw out after a federal court ruling in a lawsuit brought by PFOX. The School Board’s attorneys at that time had reviewed and rejected the statements. Fishback’s illegal curriculum cost Montgomery County taxpayers over $36,000 in legal fees. Fishback has a long history of ex-gay bashing – See http://pfox.org/PFOX_answers_PFLAG.html & http://www.mcpscurriculum.com/pdf/April_18fishback.pdf

The statements were drawn from a letter addressed to the Board of Education from five Maryland pediatricians, including Drs. Rachel Y. Moon, Jennifer A. Tender, Eric Levey, Maura Rossman, and Lara Akinbami. The pediatricians state their letter was motivated in part by the distribution of PFOX flyers to students as part of the schools’ backpack flyer program, which allows any non-profit organization to send information home with students.

Peter Sprigg, a PFOX Board member who has represented PFOX on the Committee since 2005, responded with peer-reviewed academic research confirming that some people have changed from homosexual to heterosexual, including a well-known study by Dr. Robert Spitzer, a pro-gay psychiatrist who was instrumental in removing homosexuality from the official list of mental disorders in 1973. Yet the Committee refused to retract the statement attacking the right of individuals with unwanted same-sex attractions to seek therapy, although it eliminated the implication that people can never change their sexual orientation.

Said Sprigg:

“PFOX will continue to defend the rights and dignity of ex-gays and oppose efforts to mislead students into the false belief that sexual orientation is fixed and immutable. It is disgraceful for pediatricians to make bigoted statements against the ex-gay community. If Montgomery County Public Schools seek to protect the rights and interests of sexual minorities, those protections should be extended to ex-gays as well. This attack proves that ex-gays must be included in the schools’ tolerance curriculum and we urge the Board of Education to do so immediately.”