Sex Education Booklet OKd Despite Uproar

School officials have approved the use in classrooms of a conservative Christian publisher’s sex education booklet that was challenged by dozens of parents as a biased and unconstitutional effort to push Christian values in public schools.

The Conejo Valley Unified School Board’s decision prompted immediate threats of a lawsuit by residents who contend that the schools’ use of the brochure, “How to Help Your Kids Say ‘No’ to Sex,” violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

“We will sue,” said Glenda Lee-Barnard, director of the local chapter of the League of Women Voters.

School board members shrugged off the threat, saying they had considered the possibility of a legal challenge during a closed session prior to a jammed, 3 1/2-hour public hearing on the pamphlet Thursday night.

Eyes welling with tears, parent Robin Cohen Westmiller said she supports the teaching of abstinence but opposes this particular pamphlet because of its Christian references.

“I am extremely upset that this school board wants to teach my Jewish kids Christian values,” Westmiller said as she left the meeting.

To placate critics who made up about half the 300 parents in attendance, the school board approved only the first 10 pages of the 19-page booklet for use by teachers, rejecting the pamphlet’s second half, which has drawn the most heated complaints.

The brochure’s last nine pages are an extensive list of other sex-education pamphlets and videos available from the publisher, Focus on the Family, including titles such as “Love, Sex and God,” which offers teen-agers “biblical guidelines for social life.”

The Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family was founded by popular psychologist and Christian radio broadcaster James C. Dobson.

Thousand Oaks teachers will still have access to the reference list because school officials won’t cut the booklets in half before distribution, Asst. Superintendent Richard Simpson said.

But, he said, the board’s decision sends teachers a clear message not to use any materials described in the second half of the booklet.

Even though the board officially rejected the reference list, attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said the pamphlet’s approval violates the constitutional separation of church and state. It also conflicts with California laws prohibiting religious teaching in public schools, ACLU counsel Carol A. Sobel said.

“It really makes no difference whether they say they’re approving it or not,” she said. “They’re distributing it.”