BEHAVIOR IS NOT A CIVIL RIGHT by Gary L. Morella

"
erbal engineering" is used by homosexual activists' to marginalize any who dare to disagree with homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle. All in opposition are described as hateful, insensitive, and intolerant summed up by being classified as "homophobic" in order to get public sympathy.

The homophobia charge simply rings false. The vast majority of those who oppose homosexual behavior are in no way "afraid" of homosexuals as a disagreement is not the same as fear. It diverts attention from the lack of rational answers to the arguments against one's position by focusing on the one who made the arguments, trying to claim the moral high ground.

What an irony that the self-proclaimed forces of tolerance and moderation seek to destroy anyone who contradicts their point of view! In this way, the stakes in the debate over homosexuality become clear. In public life, one point of view or the other will dominate. Social order seeks a "social good." For homosexual activists and their allies, that "good" is not tolerance but the enforced public acceptance of homosexuality as a positive lifestyle.

This school district would not be advocating obesity if overweight children were the butt of jokes or verbal harassment. They would leave it to the common sense of their teaching professionals to rectify the situation and give them their unqualified support. Similar arguments apply to alcoholism, unruly students inciting fights, etc., you correct same by not encouraging fighting. Why then are those students who are verbally harassed because of what they believe to be an innate, unchangeable orientation to homosexuality any different - such belief being very problematic given research to date? Why does this activity have to be encouraged by the state via special in-service sessions, and embracing sexual orientation as a cause for nondiscrimination? Why is something that is anathema to the belief system of a significant number of district residents being forced upon them? The School Board is needlessly polarizing this community? Is this what we're paying school taxes for?

I do not believe that reasonable people have to apologize for voicing their concern when speakers at a teachers in-service are referenced in publications entitled: Queer Youth Study Wants Participants (March 1996), "A national research project on issues faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered youths is being conducted by a psychologist at Penn State University from a lgbt-affirming perspective." (The last statement shows the bias of the study), and in something called "Men Who Have Sex With Men in the Bush."

I believe that the Administration and School Board is losing sight of the real problem that parents like me have with their recent actions to date. How can they say that this district is not "teaching" the acceptance of homosexual lifestyles as normal when they allowed the most pro-homosexual advocates in the area to speak to some of our teachers. Just what did certain members of the Board think would happen when one such individual was allowed to show a film recognized universally as homosexual agitprop (It's Elementary)?

Has anyone on the Board seen that film in its entirety? If they did, I would submit that they would be hard pressed to say that its message was nothing more than an innocuous attempt to insure that students are not the butt of mean jokes or epithets, something teaching professionals encounter and should be able to deal with regarding all types of behavior without encouraging same. It's Elementary promotes the homosexual lifestyle using young children as state props.

The state is in violation of the establishment cause of the First Amendment when it attempts to make sexual orientation a cause for nondiscrimination. I say this because a religion can be any belief system including amorality which is being forced on district residents. Behavior is NOT a civil right!

The concept of blanket nondiscrimination in reference to behavior makes no sense as our system of positive law collapses with anarchy the inevitable outcome. A civilized society, while not devaluing individual people, must "discriminate" in favor of health over disease, right over wrong, moral over immoral. Too many who have failed to discriminate have already had to face the bitter consequences of their poor choices. Will we encourage and enable the next generation to fail, or to succeed?

Historically, protected class status is determined by the courts and civil rights authorities by standards which homosexuals do not meet. The evidence for this is in their own literature where salary and empowerment data is readily available.

The way that homosexuals choose to live their lives is ultimately up to them. But when they come into the public square and suggest that the rest of America needs to redefine marriage as being between two men and two women and insist on the right in the public schools to teach children that the way they have chosen is no morally different from the way I have chosen to live with my wife, they should in a rational, reasonable world expect opposition. People like me will, in fact, oppose that agenda, and no amount of name-calling will deter us from doing that.