Montgomery County Superintendent Joshua Starr called fliers sent home with students last week that said being gay is a choice are “reprehensible and deplorable.”
But Starr told Wootton High School students on Tuesday that the fliers will keep coming, as he was legally bound to allow Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays to distribute fliers to students.
“We can’t really do much about it unless we wanted to cut off all flier distribution, which is an option,” Starr said at a Student Town Hall. “This group has figured out how to use that law to spread what I find to be a really, really disgusting message, frankly.”
Sent home with students at several high schools last week, including Albert Einstein in Kensington, the PFOX fliers say, “No ‘gay gene’ or gay center of the brain has been found.”
A “growing scientific consensus” says that sexual orientation is innate and immutable, the U.S. Attorney General has advised Congress.
But Montgomery County Public Schools must allow nonprofit organizations to distribute their messages four times a year.
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.”
The Washington Post reported in February 2010 that PFOX sent home fliers that said “every year thousands of people with unwanted same-sex attractions make the personal decision to leave a gay identity” alongside report cards at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac.
Regina Griggs, director of PFOX, said that “no one’s telling anybody that they have to support our position.”
Moving forward, Starr said he is discussing with his staff how to turn the fliers into a learning experience for students.
“How do we help kids to discern between legitimate information and illegitimate information, how do we explain what it means to live in a free society, with First Amendment rights, is there a way to educate people about what this means in a larger context,” Starr said.
