by Robert Knight

   The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing school districts in Kentucky and California in an attempt to force them to conduct mandatory homosexual appreciation sessions for students and staff.

   In Kentucky, the ACLU went back to federal court on July 6, claiming that Boyd County High School has not lived up to a 2004 settlement that forced the school to conduct mandatory “anti-harassment training” focusing on “sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination.”

   After the settlement, which also established a “gay-straight alliance” club, parents pulled many of the students out of school on days when training sessions were scheduled. The students were given unexcused absences and not required to make up the sessions. The ACLU noted that about half of middle school and high school students attended the mandatory sessions and that an hour-long video dealt with bullying issues in general instead of focusing on “sexual orientation and gender identity.”

   Before the settlement, school officials who had opposed the “gay” club and the new policy said they would teach students mutual respect without focusing on homosexual issues.

   “The ACLU continues to use a law license to bully school districts and harass parents in order to brainwash their kids about the ‘normalcy’ of homosexuality,” said Jan LaRue, Concerned Women for America’s chief counsel. “Having them dictate the content of anti-bullying training makes as much sense as having Bill Clinton teach abstinence classes.”

   In February, the Alliance Defense Fund sued the Boyd County Board of Education over the settlement, contending that it amounted to a First Amendment violation of the rights of students whose faiths tell them that homosexuality is wrong.

   Parents, led by the Rev. Tim York, pastor of Heritage Temple Free Will Baptist Church, called the training “a form of recruitment” for homosexuality, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. “They (the ACLU) want to control the district,” York told the newspaper. “They don't believe in parental rights.”

   In south Los Angeles, the ACLU of Southern California, along with the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), reached a settlement requiring mandatory attitudinal training at Washington Preparatory High School.

   “The training is a model for the state,” said Christine Sun, staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, in a press release.

   The sessions, according to the NCLR release, include: “mandatory day-long faculty training on diversity, discrimination and harassment, focused primarily on issues pertaining to actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity.”

   Some teachers, in discussions with students, reportedly called homosexuals “sinners,” “wrong,” “unholy,” “not supposed to live like this,” and “faggot,” according to the ACLU. The training will be conducted by the Anti-Defamation League, which produces materials that castigate Christians and others as bigots for not accepting homosexuality.