OC HIGH / Student News and Views : Separate Ideas, Equal Access? : Moral Outrage Fuels Anti-Gay School Protest

Editor’s note: When the Fountain Valley High School Student Alliance, a gay support group, began meeting as a student organization in October, it triggered a public furor and demands that the group be banned from meeting at the school.

At the center of the controversy is an equal access policy, which makes it illegal to ban one group from meeting on campus during non-instructional time if another has been allowed to do so.

Student opposition to the alliance is being led by the Future Good Boys of America, which has been given the same status as the alliance under the equal access policy.

The Huntington Beach Unified School District is scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to continue the equal access policy. If eliminated, no student groups would be allowed to meet on campus for non-school related reasons.

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Homosexuality is a behavior that should not be condoned by our schools. Fountain Valley High School is one of the newest recipients of a support group that encourages the homosexual lifestyle. We must now ask, what are the true intentions of this support group? If this is just a support group, then why are they giving out phone numbers of militant gay organizations, such as ACT-UP, without parental knowledge or consent?

It is a preposterous concept that a school is condoning a chosen lifestyle that is extremely dangerous. Based on a study of obituaries in 17 homosexual publications by the Family Research Institute Inc., of Washington, D.C., the median age of death for a homosexual is the early 40s.

According to information gathered by the Oregon Citizens Alliance, a group opposed to minority status based on homosexuality, male homosexuals experience a higher rate of disease than the general population. It reports that homosexual males are 14 times more apt to experience syphilis, at a three times greater risk for genital warts, eight times more vulnerable to hepatitis and at a 5,000 times greater risk of contracting AIDS.

The Orange County Coroner’s office reported that in 1992 more than twice as many people died from AIDS than from gunshots.

Of the 3,030 adult cases of AIDS reported in Orange County since 1986, 2,422 of those cases were from male homosexual or bisexual contact, according to the Orange County Health Department.

Joseph Nicolosi, an Encino psychotherapist and author who believes psychotherapy can redirect sexual orientation, writes that “research constantly reveals great promiscuity and a strong emphasis on sexuality in gay relationships.”

In California sodomy and oral copulation are still illegal for minors to engage in. There is a tendency for homosexual couples to engage in sodomy. Would our schools allow support groups that advocate other illegal practices, such as a drug abuse, underage drinking, graffiti, rape or child molestation? For one confused student to seek counsel from another confused student who is struggling with the same problem makes as much sense as an alcoholic asking a bartender why he shouldn’t drink.

Our schools should not be permitted to advocate any type of lifestyle that does not teach students to practice abstinence, because there is absolutely no risk involved in that lifestyle. We should give parents back their right to teach their children about sex. A public institution such as a high school is not the place for such social engineering.

It is a transgression against the moral principles of our country to tell the children of our high schools, who are at an impressionable age, that homosexuality is a healthy alternative lifestyle.