Board Ignores Parents and Their Concerns Over Campus GSA Clubs
by Jim Brown
March 16, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A Virginia school board has thumbed its nose at parents in Richmond who are pushing for a ban on "Gay Straight Alliances" and other student clubs that promote teen sexual activity.
Parents and citizens collected more than 700 petitions of registered voters in Chesterfield County, asking that GSAs and other sex-based clubs be banned from public schools. Fifteen opponents of the clubs addressed the board on Tuesday night (March 14), including an attorney from Florida-based Liberty Counsel, who affirmed the board's authority to prohibit sex-based clubs based on the federal Equal Access Act.
However, the board voted 5-0 to approve a new policy that falls short of banning homosexual student clubs. Kevin Hoeft with the group Concerned Citizens of Chesterfield County calls the outcome "devastating."
"There are mechanisms in that policy to prohibit any clubs that have sexually explicit speech or that violate the board's policies or Virginia law,," Hoeft notes, "but we are really doubtful as to whether the school board and the superintendent's office [are] going to remove these sex-based clubs from our schools."
Last year a homoerotic author was scheduled to speak to a local high school's Gay Straight Alliance, but after parents noted his books contained sexually explicit content, the event was cancelled.
The spokesman for the citizens group says the board is naïve to think the GSA clubs are not about risky sexual behavior. "If they do have an awareness of the potential danger, they are not taking the appropriate action to protect our students by getting rid of these clubs," he says.
Hoeft says he will be monitoring how the school board responds when local Gay Straight Alliances take part in the National Day of Silence, an event designed to increase the acceptance of homosexual sex among young people.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
