Gay-friendly curriculum in schools under attack

The San Francisco Unified School District has led the nation in promoting a gay-friendly curriculum in its schools, making gay history and Gay Pride month an integral part of life at institutions such as Mission High School, profiled in this article by the New York Times. Elementary schools routinely include words such as "gay" and "heterosexual" in children's vocabulary lists as early as kindergarten. Overall, educators', parents', and students' minds seem to be opening, and revolutionary companies such as Groundspark enjoy burgeoning sales, producing media and art that support homosexual relationships, which are then circulated through schools.

Recently, however, groups of parents have revolted against the administration at several Bay Area schools, claiming that gay-friendly content is being forced on their children, wrongly without their consent. At a recent board meeting, one parent complained that her nine-year-old daughter's crossword puzzle had the word "lesbian" as one of its answers. Some parents rely on the support of Pastor P. Daniels Jefferson, who leads a popular Christian evangelical group, the Vallejo Faith Organization. Jefferson believes that God's word should trump any novelties in the school curriculum and that this pro-tolerance campaign will remain a brief phase in the education debate. Sadly, recent reports on the increase in school bullying in the U.S. make a terrible parallel with the attack on gay rights advocacy in schools. San Francisco Unified School District has yet to defend its claim of being more progressive than its counterparts in the Bay Area - let's see how the district weathers this storm...