But what if they don’t like the facts?

This “action alert” landed in my inbox a few days ago, from the reliably apoplectic Donald Wildmon. “Homosexuals,” it seems, are causing Montgomery County Public School students to be taught (of all the nerve) a health curriculum that is in agreement with medical science.

I encourage everyone to take a look at the curriculum. It’s really very good, with a lot of content about how gender stereotypes harm girls and boys, often leading to poor decision-making and unwanted sexual activity. That kind of thoughtful analysis of why abstinence is the best choice and what the obstacles are is exactly the antidote that’s needed for the demeaning trash that’s been imposed on some Loudoun students recently. You can view the entire curriculum here, compliments of Teach the Facts:

8th grade
10th grade

A lot of it seems to be way over poor Don’s head, as this comment attests: “The lessons teach that ‘gender identity’ is simply what a person feels inside rather than one’s anatomy.” Well, yes. That’s because that is the definition of gender identity. If it were not, by definition, distinct from anatomy, what would it be?

I think I like this little non sequiter the best:

Teachers must say that “sexual orientation is innate” without acknowledging that the scientific community has not found a “gay gene.”

Here’s a quiz: In how many ways can a human attribute be produced or mediated by biological processes – in other words, be “intrinsic” – that have nothing directly to do with a “gene”?

Is this obsession with genetics to the exclusion of all other biological factors indicative of the quality of science education in general, or are these folks just fixated on the idea of a “gay gene” because “they can’t find a gay gene” makes a nice, dumbed-down soundbite, and they think that most people won’t notice? Are they unfamiliar with the complex process of pre-natal sexual differentiation, or does the “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” thing do it for them? Don’t they find it embarrassing to present themselves as such simplistic rubes? Do they even realize that this is what they are doing? Inquiring minds want to know.

Coming up: The other faction in the universe of anti-gay “science,” the one that thinks it can play God.