Pro-Homosexual Clubs Make In-Roads into Kentucky Schools
by Jim Brown
July 27, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Yet another public high school has been pressured into allowing the establishment of a homosexual activist group on campus -- this time in the Bible Belt state of Kentucky.
The site-based council of parents and school officials at Boone County High School, Florence, unanimously approved the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club at a meeting last week. The move comes after the Kentucky Equality Association threatened to sue the school for violating the Equal Access Law and discriminating against homosexual students.
Martin Cothran, a senior policy analyst for the Family Foundation of Kentucky, says public schools are no longer "community" schools but "government" schools.
"That's largely the problem here ... a lot of these schools are no longer really answerable to the people who are going to them," Cothran said. "They're answerable to the regulations that come down from centralized government so that they can't reflect the values of the families of the children who are going there."
The Equal Access Act, he laments, has become a double-edged sword.
"The Equal Access law was originally designed to provide fuller access to religious groups and Bible study groups in public schools," Cothran said. "And unfortunately the intent has sort of been turned against the language of the bill. And so now we have a lot of gay rights groups asking for that same privilege, and according to the letter of that law, that's a difficult thing for a school to argue against."
Two years ago, a federal judge ruled the Boyd County School District had to allow the formation of a GSA club and implement pro-homosexual sensitizing training for students. Just earlier this month, another federal judge in Georgia ordered a high school to permit a GSA to meet on campus.
According to the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, the first Gay-Straight Alliance was started in 1988. GLSEN claims to have more than 3,000 GSA groups registered.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
