Gay-Straight Alliance Debate Lives On

Re “Orange Unified Trustees Deny Gay Club, 7-0” (Dec. 8):

Thank you for your fair and accurate article regarding the Dec. 7 Orange Unified school board meeting.

I attended the meeting and concluded a gay club should not exist on the campus. The students advocating the club did not appear mature enough to develop what they professed was its purpose: discussing homosexual issues to promote understanding.

Each of the four speakers arguing for the club was given complete respect by the opposition during the time they spoke.

However, all four speakers against allowing the club were hissed, ridiculed and called names by many of the students, parents and outside activists promoting the club.

It became obvious the gay activists’ idea of tolerance and respect was one-sided, and opposing opinions were not welcome. Therefore, I agree with the school board decision that subjects regarding sex education are best taught by competent teachers in a classroom situation, rather than entrusting the sensitive material to students in a club.

CAMILLE SELTZER

Orange

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Who do they think they are fooling? The Orange Unified board never had any intention of approving the application for a Gay-Straight Alliance club at El Modena High School.

They claimed they listened to all the speakers for and against, read every letter and gave each letter serious consideration. Hogwash!

They simply stalled until someone could tell them how not to allow this to happen. How they could get away with violating the law?

Well, apparently their attorneys gave them their best loophole. Call the club a curriculum-based club. Someone must have come up with that one after sitting around a conference table for hours and after so much coffee that their brain was in a fog.

PAM WOODY

Lakewood

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I am 19 and a veteran of the Orange County school system. During my senior year at Dana Hills High School I attempted to form a Gay-Straight Alliance.

I had been openly gay for three years and was familiar with all the harassment associated with being “out” and unprotected in high school.

When I approached the administration about the physical and verbal abuse I experienced daily, they responded with harassment and discrimination on a whole new level.

Institutionalized homophobia is harder to avoid and harder to deal with than any other type of harassment.

Imagine you’re a student, you’re not confused about your sexuality, and you have little to no support. Your school is the one place where you spend the majority of your time growing up, learning, interacting, thinking and feeling

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could go to [school officials] for help and they’d actually do something? Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the schools cared about the safety of their students and the right of every child to an equal education.

I watch these students from El Modena High School holding back tears in anger and frustration and pain while the Orange Unified School District school board tries to protect its image.

How can we properly educate our youth if they have to spend all their time fighting their schools for the right to feel safe and free to love who they want to love?

JARED NAYFACK

Aliso Viejo

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A knowledgeable person will never attempt to compare alcoholics and homosexuals (Letters, Dec. 12).

I am a straight alcoholic, and if I drink I create the potential to do harm to others. Should I drive, I can kill; at home I could start a fatal kitchen fire.

What two consenting adults, whether homosexual or heterosexual, do in their bedrooms does no harm to others.

CAROL A. DENNEY HOWARD

Huntington Beach

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I don’t need these kids telling me that my tax dollars need to go toward promoting this type of behavior, or even being so-called “tolerant.”

That would be tolerant of them engaging in behavior that God says is totally wrong.

RAUL HERRERA

Orange

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I think it’s a wonderful idea to teach tolerance and respect. Why would the Orange Unified school board want to spend educational dollars fighting a lawsuit instead of putting it toward children and their programs and needs?

This sounds like a very prejudicial, fearful school board that is willing to waste precious education dollars to make a point.

They have muddied the issue by calling it curriculum and saying that sex is being taught. That is so ridiculous that it is insulting.

Is this really the way the people of Orange want their schools run? Is it time for a recall for the Orange Unified School Board members?

LORENA SIKORSKI

Cypress

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Thank you for your Dec. 10 editorial concerning the request to establish a Gay-Straight Alliance club.

Your comments elucidated the obligations of school boards to be fair and even-handed. I am hoping that the school board will review its decision when they take a hard look at the facts regarding the legal aspects and the potential financial costs.

DAVID KANE

Laguna Woods