Hate filled ANTI crowd shows up in Bay Area attacks anti bullying

We are not the only place in the state with hate filled ANTI folks. Seems like the Bay Area has the same folks there. Read more below.


http://www.sacbee.com/education/story/2212093.html

Anti-bullying effort in Alameda under fire
By Jeff Mitchell
Special to The Bee
Published: Sunday, Sep. 27, 2009

A small East Bay school district's effort to protect children of nontraditional families from being bullied has sparked a lawsuit from an out-of-town Christian legal group and a campaign to recall three school board members.

On one side are parents who believe the Alameda Unified School District board's decision to authorize a lesson in the so-called Caring Schools Community Curriculum violates their rights to teach their children about sexuality issues on their own terms and will indoctrinate their children into what they call the homosexual lifestyle.

On the other are parents who believe the curriculum's Lesson 9 is vital for preventing children with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered parents from being bullied or harassed while attending school in the 10,000-student district.

The board's decision in May followed several standing-room-only hearings and touched off an effort to recall trustees Tracy Jensen, Ron Mooney and Nielsen Tam, who voted for the lesson. Trustees Trish Spencer and Mike McMahon opposed it.

"Basically, these board members decided that they didn't want to do what the people of Alameda who elected them wanted to be done, and that was to strike down Lesson 9," Alameda parent Adam Wooten, one of the 10 city residents to sign the original recall notice, told a local online news site shortly after the effort was announced. "If they don't want to do what we elected them to do, then why should they remain in office?"

District administrators have said the board's decision stemmed from concern that teachers of kindergarten through fifth grade had no lesson plan ready if they encountered LGBT-oriented intimidation.

Alameda educators have also said repeatedly that because the lesson is not about sex or sexuality, state law prevents them from granting parents the right to remove their children from school whenever the lesson is being taught.

The opt-out issue is what prompted the Sacramento-based Pacific Justice Institute*, a nonprofit conservative Christian law firm, to file a lawsuit over the lesson. Because of that suit, district Superintendent Kirstin Vital said late last week she could not comment on the controversy.

But the institute's chief counsel, Kevin Snider, argues that because the district is broaching the issue of helping kids from LGBT and nontraditional families who face campus bullying, the lesson is a de facto endorsement of that lifestyle. Snider says that, just like any sex education class in California, parents should be able to opt out or remove their child from attending that class if it runs counter to their religious or moral beliefs.

Moreover, Snider said, a state Public Records Act request filed by the group shows that most bullying on Alameda school campuses involves racial tensions and opposite-sex sexual harassment, not sexual orientation.

"Parents do not support LGBT indoctrination that fails to address the main causes of bullying and harassment in the district and intentionally omits children belonging to the other five protected classes," Snider said in a statement. He was referring to the protected classes of race and ethnicity, gender, disability, nationality and religion.

"It is their right to remove their children from this highly controversial program, and we intend to vigorously defend that right," Snider's statement added.

Proponents circulating the recall petition are part of a larger local parent group called SERVE, or Seeking Equity and Respect for all Viewpoints in Education. They have until December to collect some 8,600 signatures of local voters to qualify the recall for the ballot, officials said.

SERVE representatives did not return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment for this report.

Jensen, one of the targets of the recall, has subsequently appeared on the Fox News Channel to speak on the controversy. She says she has no misgivings about her vote supporting the lesson, adding that while no student with an LGBT background has yet to formally complain of being bullied, research indicates it's just a matter of time.

The curriculum was created to assist teachers in reacting to incidents of bullying of all students from all classes, protected or not, she said.

"People at SERVE and PJI are intentionally 'sexualizing' this issue," Jensen said. "To do that is intellectually dishonest, and they know it.

"This isn't about sex or trying to indoctrinate anyone into doing anything. It's about the district giving its teachers a tool to deal with a difficult and very real problem."
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*I am quite sure that this was the group that our three Vista Unified ANTI school board majority from 1992-1994 used to defend their elimination of FACT based sex education and to replace it with a racist, fact challenged, curriculum called Sex Respect. Read more about Pacific Justice Institutes current anti gay, anti union activities here:

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/groups/pacific-justice-institute

Here is the Pacific Justice Institute website URL:

http://www.pacificjustice.org/