Board’s Vote an Act of Discrimination

* Imagine a place where it is acceptable to prevent knowledgeable, qualified individuals from imparting knowledge and information because they are different from the ruling body.

You just have to look at life in Ventura today. Because what I have just described actually happened in the boardroom of the Ventura Unified School District on June 25.

Board of Education members John Walker and Velma Lomax made absolutely no mistake about what they were intending to do. In fact, they both said very clearly they were voting to remove AIDS Care from a list of approved speakers in the Ventura Unified School District’s family life curriculum not because they disagreed with the agency’s HIV/AIDS education message but because they didn’t want that message delivered by gay people. Board President Jim Wells, by voting with the other two, silently assented to this discrimination. And most tellingly, Walker, Lomax and Wells condemned everyone associated with AIDS Care by association because the staff and volunteers of the agency include some gay people.

For those who were in attendance at that meeting, it was quickly made clear that the issue wasn’t one of HIV/AIDS education, it was one of discriminating against a very specific group of individuals.

What’s next? Will everyone who walks through the portals of the Ventura Unified School District be grilled on their sexual orientation? Will gay and lesbian parents be barred from working with their children’s schools as volunteers or members of committees? Will the voter-denounced teacher witch hunts of the ‘70s’ John Briggs’ Proposition 6 become a reality here in Ventura?

And then what? Will the fact that an individual is black or Latino or Jewish or Catholic become a reason to deny their skills, abilities and expertise because, after all, some students may not identify with one of “those people”?

Publicly sanctioned bigotry and hatred are alive and well right here and right now. June 25 will forever be a dark page in the history of the Ventura Unified School District. We can only hope that saner heads will prevail in the future and that newly elected board members will be able to put the lid back on the Pandora’s box of ugly discrimination that current board members Walker, Wells and Lomax have removed.

MICHAEL R. TAPIA

Ventura