Mandatory Pro-homosexual Diversity Training
ADF Sues Kentucky Schools Over Mandatory Pro-homosexual Diversity Training
Jim Brown
February 18, 2005
(AgapePress) – Parents in a Kentucky school district have filed a lawsuit challenging a mandatory one-hour training video for school children that promotes homosexuality as a safe and healthy lifestyle and homosexual orientation as a fixed and unchangeable trait.
Over the course of a two-year dispute, the American Civil Liberties Union pressured Boyd County school officials into a settlement that requires all middle and high school students in the district to undergo pro-homosexual “diversity training.” Several families that do not want their children subjected to the mandatory training have sued the Boyd County Board of Education.
The plaintiffs’ attorney, senior legal counsel Kevin Theriot of the Alliance Defense Fund, says the school district will not allow parents to opt their children out of the training without a penalty. He contends that the Boyd County school officials have trampled the parents’ rights to direct the education of their children.
However, that is only one of the reasons why Theriot feels the schools are on the wrong side of the law. “The second thing,” he notes, “is that the school’s policies actually prohibit students from even expressing their view that homosexuality is wrong. And, of course, that has serious implications for the free speech rights of the students.”
According to the ADF complaint, students are required to undergo the diversity training without expressing any disagreement. As the plaintiff’s lawyer points out, the mandatory diversity training hardly teaches diversity when it “puts a gag on students who disagree with homosexual behavior while it actively attempts to change their moral beliefs.”
According to Theriot, the mandatory training obviously crosses a constitutional line by denying the students the right to express their personal beliefs. However, he suspects the schools may not have crossed that line willingly, so much as it may have been pushed across it.
“This is one of those situations where I think the school board was pressured into doing something that they knew wasn’t the right thing to do, but they didn’t feel like they had any option for one reason or another,” ADF’s senior counsel says. “The problem is, a settlement agreement can’t violate the constitutional rights of a third party, like parents and students, and that’s exactly what happened in this case.”
Theriot feels the Boyd County Board of Education is misguided, and he says the schools’ “diversity training” program is phony because it offers zero tolerance for biblical opposition to homosexuality. And whatever the provisions of the settlement with the ACLU were, they cannot stand if they are not consistent with the United States Constitution.
ADF filed its lawsuit against the school district February 15. The Boyd County Board of Education has 20 days to file a response to the complaint.