Sex education, yes, ignorance, no

Montgomery County’s curriculum encourages abstinence, but also helps students navigate the real world of teenage life. This is the approach that the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other leading professional associations recommend.

The county board resisted pressure from groups representing a small minority of our residents that oppose the new curriculum, which consists of two 45-minute lessons. A whopping 91 percent of parents gave their children written permission to participate in field tests of the curriculum held this year at six secondary schools. Only 40 parents showed up at the six schools combined for meetings on the new lessons.

The county developed its lesson plans after consultation with health professionals and a Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) that included representatives of groups whose lawsuit in 2005 prompted revisions of a curriculum proposed at that time.

This year’s product is a cautious, tightly scripted lesson plan that tilts to the clinical, not the salacious. It defines terms like ‘‘homosexual” and ‘‘transgender” and promotes tolerance, empathy and respect for all students. It discourages stereotyping and harassment, but does not advocate a particular lifestyle. Students can get edgier, more provocative stuff every night on primetime television.

Although the board accepted most of CAC’s recommendations, it did not, for example, include proposed language saying that ‘‘Homosexuals can live happy, successful lives; they ‘can be successful parents.’” And teachers are authorized to say that ‘‘the American Psychiatric Association does not include homosexuality in its listing of psychiatric or mental disorders,” only in response to student questions.

Don’t be surprised that supposedly liberal Montgomery County is a hotbed of controversy. Our community includes diverse political views and for 35 years has weathered efforts to challenge sex education. In 1972, a conservative group sued the county to end its sex education program. Ten years later, a conservative majority on the school board ended contraceptive education for eighth graders. The voters promptly threw them out of office and the new board restored the program.

This time, outside groups with little or no base in Montgomery County have taken a lead opposition role. The Virginia-based Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX), an offshoot of James Dobsons’ fervently anti-gay Family Research Council, rallied protestors. A Florida-based Christian right group, the Liberty Counsel, represented plaintiffs’ in their 2005 lawsuit.

PFOX exemplifies the right’s Bush era strategy of putting old prejudices in the new package of ‘‘compassionate conservativism.” The group claims to seek ‘‘tolerance and understanding” for children regardless of their sexual orientation.

But here’s what PFOX said in a June 8 flier urging parents to protest the new lesson plan: ‘‘The risk of suicide decreases by 20 percent for each year a young person delays homosexual or bisexual self-labeling.” The lesson risks ‘‘Contracting and Spreading Sexually Transmitted Diseases by equating homosexuality with heterosexuality.” It ‘‘sows Gender Confusion” and ‘‘implies that schools should create new unisex bathrooms for cross-dressing students.” PFOX conveniently prepared signs for protestors reading, ‘‘No Unisex Bathrooms.” If such fear-mongering is tolerance and understanding, then Joe McCarthy should be outfitted for sainthood.

PFOX disseminates the work of a complementary group, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), which follows another right wing strategy by putting the veneer of science on homophobia. Contrary to an overwhelming scientific consensus, NARTH claims that homosexuality is a sexual disease, curable through ‘‘reparation therapy.”

There is not a single controlled scientific study with random sampling that shows that such therapy works. To the contrary, the American Psychiatric Association warns, ‘‘The potential risks of ‘reparative therapy’ are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient.”

Supporters of NARTH and PFOX may be sincere in their beliefs. Yet as Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘‘Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance.”

Allan J. Lichtman is a professor of history at American University and national political analyst for CNN Headline News. He can be reached at lichtman@american.edu.