Another fun night at the Fairfax County Public School (FCPS) Board Thursday night, this time as the Board debated “Family Life Education” (FLE) curriculum changes. As with the May 7 School Board meeting on transgender protections, it appears that many of the same organized, right-wing, anti-LGBT folks came out to (loudly) express their point of view. See video from the meeting to the right, and let your jaw drop as you listen to some of this insanity, bigotry, ignorance, fearmongering, etc. Fortunately, as Josh Israel reports, it all turned out well in the end:
Thrilled to report that the Fairfax County School Board voted 10-2 to add age-appropriate, science-based Family Life Education curriculum changes that include the vital message that there are LGBT people in the world and that that is okay. Thanks to them, LGBT kids, questioning kids, and kids from atraditional families will be safer and our community will be stronger.
As for the video, a few highlights include strong presentations in support of Family Life Education from 43:37 to 52:07 and from 59:19 to 1:05:40); craziness starting at 52:28 (by Laura Hanford, who claims “this vote is not about bullying or hatred,” that there’s been “outright deceit” on this by the School Board, and that the curriculum presented is “so extreme on gender and sexaulity that it offended families and people of faith all over the county”); continuing at 56:00 (by Thomas Valentine, who complains about “radical policy changes,” falsely compares being transgender identity to anorexoia and that it’s a mental illness, and claims this is all about “ideologues who want to force their beliefs onto the children of the county”); predictable craziness from long-time anti-LGBT activist Steven Hunt starting at 1:05:55, from a representative from the “Traditional Values Coalition” starting at 1:09:28, and from 1:12:58 (absurdly claims that protecting LGBT students constitutes discrimination against people of faith). Then there are the bat**** crazy videos — oh my god, the videos (starting at 1:16:34). It’s hard to even know what to say about a lot of this stuff, including the 15-year-old boy reciting the Boy Scout’s oath; the guy who says “mankind cannot change sex chromosomes,” that transgender identity is a dangerous “belief,” and then goes all “violate Godwin’s Law” on us by managing to mention Sodom and Gomorrah, Nazi Germany and Martin Niemöller’s “First they came for…” quote); etc. Craaazy.
Finally there’s the debate itself, with the crowd getting more and more upset, and with the Board majority (other than the two right wingnuts on the Board) struggling to figure out some sort of way to move forward. I hear that they were in disarray leading up to the meeting, but finally came together just minutes before the meeting started. Of course, nothing the Board majority could ever do on this topic would have satisfied the anti-LGBT activists in the crowd, even though the fact is that parents can opt their children out of FLE if they feel strongly about it. So what’s the problem then? Why do these people want to tell every other parent what to do, when they already have the right to do what they want with their own kids? Hmmmm.
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