Montgomery County Superintendent Joshua Starr called fliers sent home with students that said homosexuality is a choice that can be changed “reprehensible and deplorable.”
But he said the county’s public schools will continue to distribute them, pointing to a court decision tying the schools chief’s hands.
Students at five Montgomery County Public Schools received fliers last week from Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, or PFOX, saying “those with unwanted same-sex attractions can seek help and information on overcoming their feelings.”
A 2006 court ruling prevents the school system from choosing who can distribute information to students. Rather, nonprofit organizations are allowed to distribute fliers up to four times a year.
“We can’t really do much about it unless we wanted to cut off all flier distribution, which is an option,” Starr told Thomas S. Wootton High School students at a “Town Hall” event Tuesday. “This group has figured out how to use that law to spread what I find to be a really, really disgusting message, frankly.”
Students at Wootton, Albert Einstein, Poolesville, Damascus and Richard Montgomery high schools received the fliers last week, and several more schools will be hit with them in April, said Peter Sprigg, a member of PFOX’s board of directors.
“We know that many adolescents experience confusion about sexual identity — that’s a normal part of growing up,” Sprigg said. “Some experience same-sex attraction as something unwanted to them, and we want to ensure those kids do not have to adopt a permanent fixed identity at this point in life.”
The flier says, “Every year thousands of people with unwanted same-sex attractions make the personal decision to leave a gay identity. … According to mainstream psychological associations, there are no replicated scientific studies to support that a person can be born ‘gay.'”
Montgomery County’s sexual education classes teach that homosexuality is innate. The U.S. attorney general advised Congress last year that “a growing scientific consensus accepts that sexual orientation is a characteristic that is immutable.”
Starr told Wootton students, who brought up their concerns twice, that he “finds the actions of PFOX reprehensible and deplorable,” and is working with staff to turn the fliers into a learning experience.
“I’m quite upset by it in a lot of ways and wish there was more I could do,” he said.
In 2006, a federal appeals court told MCPS that its policy of choosing which fliers to distribute was unconstitutional, after the school system tried to block messages from Child Evangelist Fellowship of Maryland.
The three-judge panel wrote that letting MCPS pick and choose gave it “unlimited discretion.”
