Here’s an example of what 32nd District delegate candidate Lynn Chapman does as policy director of the Family Leader Network. The Washington Post reports that Family Leader Network has joined PFOX and “Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum” in seeking a court order to block the Montgomery County classroom units on sexual orientation and gender identity from being taught this fall. We’ve reported extensively on this story before:
Truth wins in Maryland
Redefining “neutrality”
More identity confusion?
But what if they don’t like the facts?
Morally suspect “health education”
Reality: It’s just too controversial
Teach facts, not beliefs
Coming to Terms With Sexual Orientation
There is just no excuse for this continued harassment of educators. This curriculum has been thoroughly vetted. Parents have the choice of opting out their children from these particular units, or from the entire curriculum. The objections of these people to the content are, frankly, ridiculous.
School board members and education leaders say the lessons are age-appropriate and pedagogically sound. “The Maryland State Board of Education has already considered and rejected the opponents’ arguments as having no merit,” said schools spokesman Brian Edwards. “It appears that a small group of opponents is intent on forcing Montgomery County public schools to spend thousands more in taxpayer dollars to argue the same points all over again.”
Like the cadre of censors who want to control the student plays performed in our schools, they will never be satisfied. And, as it turns out, these censors inhabit a very small world.
Following is Lynn Chapman’s bio as it appears on the Family Policy Network website. Why is it that this position in the development of public policy is not included on Chapman’s otherwise extensive campaign website?
Lynn Chapman-Policy Director
This action provides yet more evidence that Chapman would actively seek to pass legislation that does harm to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.
If you look at the Family Leader org chart, you’ll see:
president
vice president
executive director
family leader foundation board of directors
chair
vice chair
treasurer
chairman of development
chairman of [web]launch
policy director
important people…
family leader network board of directors…
board of advisors…
One would think that the policy director would advise on policy decisions such as when to join in an educational policy law suit.
The “ex-gay” is ok argument in the motion is particularly slippery:
If this argument is upheld, then all of us ex-straights have a pretty compelling argument that heterosexuality is not innate.
This argument is also humorous:
Really? The plaintiffs only fount 2.25 hours worth of disputable content. Doesn’t that imply that the bulk of the curriculum teaches heterosexuality?
The motion is also transphobic.
Right. That’s exactly what the curriculum is for. To help Portia (that’s her name) integrate into the school as who she is. PFOX, CRC, and Lynn Chapman don’t want that. They don’t want Portia to exist because she doesn’t comport with their world view.
I’m beginning to believe that Lynn Chapman is worse than Dick Black.
What a pitiable mess of a document. Who prepared this? It’s hard to believe that this kind of verbage passes muster as a legal petition – the authors don’t even have command of the English language. “Transgender” is not a noun, first of all. “Ex-gay” and “attempting to overcome unwanted attractions” are neither sexual variations nor orientations – any more than “ex-straight” is an orientation. There are so many logical and linguistic errors, and just plain ignorance, in this piece, it’s hard to know where to begin.
Transgender people do not “change their birth sex.” Sometimes sex is incorrectly assigned at birth, and there are medical protocols for dealing with this constellation of conditions. The social world always takes a long time to catch up to medical reality, but the CRC/PFOX/FLN folks are exceptional in their willful ignorance of widely accepted medical protocols. The gratuitous, purely ideological quotes around a person’s name and gender – in what is purportedly a legal document! – really takes the cake. This alone should cause the action to be met with derisive laughter. But it gets better – they seem unfamiliar with the law itself regarding legal identity. “Gender confused” is not a medical or a legal term, but a term that is only found in anti-gay propaganda. And why do they include the mention of intersexual people 1) under the heading of sexual orientation, and 2) as a “controversial social issue”? What’s that about?
I don’t think that the Founders anticipated that someone would come along and redefine the term “religion,” either. Insisting that the development of public policy on the basis of observable phenomena in the material world constitutes a “religion” for the purpose of an Establishment Clause argument is denigrating to the very concept of faith. These folks obviously got so caught up in their rhetorical inventiveness that they didn’t realize what they were doing. Or is this all that their own religious faith means to them? That’s a disturbing thought.
As in previous pieces from the CRC, this one lies through omission in their arguments about the condom lesson. There are other portions of the curriculum currently being taught that thoroughly cover the health risk information they claim is lacking. This particular unit is narrowly concerned with proper condom use, something that people have to be taught.
All in all, I would say that this is a very weakly argued petition. It would be good to know how much of a hand Lynn Chapman had in preparing it. Thanks for sharing the link, Jonathan.
I wonder what the FLN would think about the Mormon church softening its stand on homosexuality. Also of note, “former president of CRC, Michelle Turner, is Mormon, as is their resident physician, Ruth Jacobs”.
I knew that Michelle Turner is a Mormon, because she is profiled in this WaPo article from a couple years ago. I notice a few errors in the article; the curriculum does not teach that “homosexuality is genetic,” it teaches that sexual orientation is an innate human characteristic, hardly the same thing. Also, the policy is opt-in, not opt-out. Parents have to sign a permission form if they want their children to be able to take the health curriculum. The funniest thing about Michelle Turner, though, is the exception she makes for her own cousin. Because she knows him, she can understand that he is gay, that his orientation is innate and that he didn’t “choose” it – but at the same time she believes that everyone else “chooses” to be gay. Very strange, convoluted thinking there.
This brings up the thing that nobody wanted to say about the push poll calls attacking Poisson. It’s pretty relevant, but nobody wanted to sound like they were denigrating Chapman’s religion, so it isn’t being talked about: The polling firm that made the calls, Venture Data, is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Chapman (and his wife Susie) are both graduates of Brigham Young, as are the other founders of the Community Levee Association, the most active pro-censorship group demanding an unlawful play policy. Coincidence? I doubt it. Chapman’s denial that he was behind that push poll just isn’t credible.
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