SourceThe school-teacher type woman sits on a desk in front of a blackboard to deliver her message: “Gay marriages have everything to do with schools.
She clicks on a television screen, where viewers meet Robb and Robin Wirthlin of Lexington, Mass.
“Our son came home and told us the school taught him that boys can marry other boys. He’s in second grade,” says Robin Wirthlin, who, with her husband, unsuccessfully sued their school district after a teacher discussed gay marriage in the classroom.
The 30-second TV commercial warns that if California voters reject Proposition 8 – a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as being between a man and woman – local schools could emulate Massachusetts and teach young children about gay marriage.
Is that true? The answer, as it turns out, is a bit cloudy.
Hilary McLean, a spokeswoman for state Superintendent Jack O’Connell, said the decision to teach gay marriage lies with local communities and school boards.
“Schools are not required to talk about marriage at all,” McLean said. “It’s up to local school districts to decide.”
The state Education Code will be unaffected by passage or failure of Prop. 8.
The code only instructs schools to “teach respect for marriage and committed relationships” as part of health and sex education curriculum. The code allows districts to decide against teaching health and sex education, and allows parents to pull their children from those classes or others dealing with sensitive subject matters.
Ocean View School District trustee John Briscoe, a supporter of Prop. 8, said the Education Code and state curriculum may not change right away if Prop. 8 fails, but having gay marriage become legal would eventually prompt challenges to reflect the law of the land, limiting the decision-making power of local school boards.
“Local schools boards can approve their own curriculum, but they must meet under the umbrella of state standards,” Briscoe said. “To say that the state department of education’s hands will be free of this gay marriage issue is false.”
Santa Ana Unified trustee Rosemarie Avila, another supporter of Prop. 8, also said she would oppose policies to incorporate gay marriage into the curriculum, but the state often has more than control over curriculum like sex education than local school boards.
None of the state’s 1,000 districts have so far adopted policies to reflect January’s state Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage. Officials from other county school districts said they doubt any local agencies would voluntarily be willing to take on the issue by adopting policies that incorporate aspects of gay marriage if Prop. 8 fails.
“Proposition 8 does not deal with curriculum, so its passage or failure would not impact instruction,” said Ian Hanigan, spokesman for Irvine Unified, a district that offers comprehensive sex education instruction to adolescents. “There has never been a directive from the state that specifies marriage as applying to ‘heterosexual’ or ‘homosexual’ couples.”
In Garden Grove Unified, the concept of marriage is not taught as part of regular curriculum, so changes in the law would also not change class instruction, said Alan Trudell, the district’s spokesman.
Officials from Newport-Mesa Unified and Westminster School District also said they don’t expect the failure of Prop. 8 to change district policies, which do not require discussion of gender as it relates to marriage.
But Sonja Eddings Brown, deputy communications director for Protect Marriage Coalition, said the failure of Prop. 8 could allow for discussion of gay marriage to surface outside the sex education curriculum, and potentially in the early school grades.
“Schools begin talking to children about the characteristics of family and marriage as early as the second grade,” Brown said. “We are not challenging the rights of gays to marry, but what we are challenging is when those rights are forced into the classroom.”
Brown points to the Wirthlin lawsuit from Massachusetts, where a teacher read a fairy tale to students about how two princes kissed and could marry each other. The teacher did not notify parents prior to the reading.
In that case, a federal appeals court rejected the parents’ argument that the Lexington public school district should have given them prior notice that it was going to include books that include gay families on their student reading lists. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case earlier this month, allowing the appeals court ruling to stand.
Robb and Robin Wirthlin are traveling through California campaigning for Prop. 8.
“This is why so many parents are getting behind Prop. 8,” Brown said. “If this fails, gay activists can come in and file lawsuits to demand gay marriage be included in class discussions about family.”
Kate Kendell, executive director for the national Center for Lesbian Rights, said it’s a mistake to compare Massachusetts education policy with that of California because of the different education laws and provisions for opting out offered to parents in California.
“The claim that Prop. 8 has anything to do with schools is a lie,” Kendell said. “The way children are taught today won’t change one bit.”
The California Teachers Association, state superintendent O’Connell, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the American Civil Liberties Union, and gay and civil rights groups oppose Prop. 8, saying it is misleading to inject education into the debate over gay marriage.
“Bringing in education as part of the campaign for Prop. 8 is solely designed to scare people into supporting the elimination of rights of people to marry the person they love,” Kendell said.
On Tuesday, supporters of Prop. 8 attempted through blogs and e-mails to encourage parents to keep their kids home from school to protest a decision last week by the California Teachers Association to donate $1 million to the “No on Prop. 8” campaign. But local school districts reported no significant changes in absentee rates.
A poll released Friday by CBS news and SurveyUSA shows Prop. 8 leading with likely voters across the state, 48 percent to 45 percent.
The usual rantings of folks who don't want anyone to influence their kids but theirselves and Jesus.
