Confronting Gay-Straight Alliances in the Public Schools
by Ed Vitagliano
June 28, 2005
(AgapePress) - Concerned parents need not resign themselves to defeat when activists demand that the local public school promote acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle to students. Just follow the example of David Williams.
Williams, a mid-Oklahoma representative of the Christian Educators Association International (CEAI), decided to fight the establishment of a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) at Eisenhower High School in Lawton, Oklahoma. Last December, Williams discovered that the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network was attempting to form a GSA at his son's school. When told that the school could not legally stop the formation of a GSA, Williams decided to use whatever avenues were open to him.
After much prayer, he began publicizing the GSA via the local newspaper, local television station, and the local American Family Radio station in Lawton, KVRS Radio. Williams also summoned into the battle as many people as possible: school officials, school board members and church people.
But there was a sticking point. No matter how many people disagreed with the establishment of a GSA at Lawton, the law was on the side of homosexual students. The courts have established an "equal access" requirement, meaning that schools must allow equal access for all student groups. This requirement is why an increasing number of schools have felt pressured to allow GSAs on campus.
Williams, however, used that policy to his advantage. He argued that, if homosexual students were free to establish a club that normalizes their lifestyle, then students who believe that homosexuals can change their sexual orientation must also be allowed to start a club.
"I approached it from an equal access [perspective]," Williams said. "If they were going to promote one view of the gay agenda and not include the ex-gay agenda -- which means that people can change their perspective -- then that would be unfair."
The strategy succeeded. After the equal access push, the student government itself voted not to have a GSA. "To make a long story short, after hundreds of e-mails, phone calls, prayers, [and] actually getting some ex-gay literature through churches into the hands of students at the school ... it was voted down by the students," he said. "We have to praise the Lord for that."
Williams has since developed some materials for parents who are confronted by a similar challenge, all of which are available at the CEAI website. Included is a 10-step plan for confronting GSAs, a sample letter to the editor, a sample policy requiring equal presentation of both sides of the debate over homosexuality, and a sample resolution requiring parental permission for student participation in school clubs.
The latter strategy -- requiring parental permission before a student can join a club -- may slow the push to start GSAs at some schools. In many cases, parents don't even know their children want to join a GSA, and the extra step of parental approval may be enough, in many communities, to derail plans for a pro-homosexual group.
"My mom, she knows I'm gay," said Fiorella Soto, who founded and heads a GSA at Berkmar High School in Gwinnett County, Georgia, "but if she knew I was running this club, she would take me out."
The American Family Association Center for Law & Policy urges parents to contact them if school officials balk at allowing students to form an "ex-gay" outreach or present the other side of this issue.
Ed Vitagliano, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is news editor for AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association. This article appeared in the June 2005 issue.
