School grilled kids on parents’ views of ‘gays’
A legal team already challenging a Lafayette, California, high school over its use of Planned Parenthood personnel – including a self-described “pleasure activist” and another who led demonstrations at a “sex toy porn shop” – to teach public school sex-education classes now is accusing school officials of allowing a “Queer Straight Alliance” to bully students.
The Pacific Justice Institute dispatched a letter to officials at Acalanes High School in Lafayette asking for documents that would show what happened.
Pacific Justice said “students were singled out and ostracized for their beliefs.”
Students reported that, on Jan. 29, members of the school’s Queer Straight Alliance (QSA) took over all freshmen English classes to grill students about their beliefs and their parents’ beliefs on LGBT issues
Pacific Justice said the QSA had students step forward to demonstrate whether they believed that being gay was a choice and whether their parents would be accepting if they “came out as gay.”
Students who did not step forward were ridiculed and humiliated, Pacific Justice said.
“The QSA also gave students a handout of LGBT terminology such as ‘pan-sexual,’ ‘demi-sexual,’ ‘gray gender,’ and about a dozen other terms. The QSA also had students line up to demonstrate where they fell on the ‘gender spectrum.’”
But in a letter to Matthew Juhl-Darlington, a lawyer for the school, the PJI pointed out the federal Pupil Rights Amendment “provides that schools must acquire written parental consent before a minor student is required to participate in surveys, analysis, or evaluations regarding … sex behavior or attitudes.”
PJI noted California’s education code also states: “No test, questionnaire, survey, or examination containing any questions about the pupil’s personal beliefs or practices in sex, family life, morality, and religion, or any questions about the pupil’s parents’ or guardians’ beliefs and practices in sex, family life, morality, and religion, shall be administered to any pupil … unless the parent or guardian of the pupil is notified in writing that this test, questionnaire, survey, or examination is to be administered and the parent or guardian of the pupil gives written permission.”
The school district declined to respond to a WND request for comment, and PJI told WND it couldn’t add to its letter.
In a statement, PJI said the organization “believes the school exercise violated federal and state laws requiring parental notice and permission before students are questioned about personal or family beliefs on sexuality or morality.”
And “the school’s actions violated the students’ constitutional privacy rights.”
It demands that the school stop the student interrogations and suspend the QSA, and it seeks all public records associated with the events.
“Singling out students for ridicule based on their moral or political beliefs is a Marxist tactic that should have no place in the United States of America,” said Brad Dacus, the president of PJI. “We’re not going to put up with this intimidation and interrogation of students, and it’s also time for other community members to join PJI and the parents we represent in speaking out against the outrages happening in their school district.”
Continued the letter to the school: “It should be self-evident that, as a fundamental privacy right, students cannot be ‘outed’ during class time by being made to declare their beliefs and feelings about sensitive sexual matters, any more than a student could be required to announce their sexual orientation. While the school environment should be free from harassment, viewpoint discrimination and peer pressure, AHS is in fact creating such.”
PJI attorney Matthew McReynolds, who wrote the letter, said Acalanes High School and the district “have defied common sense, ignored the law and broken parents’ trust.”
“These administrators are acting like schoolyard bullies. If they think intimidation is going to work on us or these parents, they are greatly mistaken,” he said.
WND had reported last month on the previous controversy.
The fracas developed when it was reported that 13- and 14-year-old students at Acalanes High were given a Planned Parenthood class in which “The Genderbread Person” was used to explain they could choose what sex they wanted to be.
A few of the lessons included students being taught that their gender was not necessarily fixed, a checklist was introduced to show students how to prepare for sex and they were taught to obtain “clear consent” by asking questions such as, “Is it OK if I take off my pants?”
PJI said parents learned “that one of the sex-ed instructors at Acalanes High School, when she is not working for Planned Parenthood, leads ‘pleasure workshops’ demonstrating the use of sex toys for a sex toy porn shop in Berkeley called Good Vibrations.”
“It is not yet clear what this instructor may have told students about the store’s offerings,” Pacific Justice reported.
And another “sex-ed instructor” has been identified as the Planned Parenthood education manager in the region, who “calls herself a ‘pleasure activist,’” the organization said.
“She commented enthusiastically on attending the CatalystCon pornography conference for her continuing education along with other Planned Parenthood representatives, just prior to teaching at AHS this past fall. This event attracts leading members of the porn industry and focuses on topics like using explicit instructional media for sex ed, the history of sex toys and how to effectively share your sex life on the stage and on the page,” Pacific Justice said.
http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/school-accused-of-bullying-students-with-queer-grilling/