USA Today

Editorial/Opinion

Posted 3/19/2006 7:49 PM

A moral battleground, a civil discourse

By Charles C. Haynes

Tragically, public schools have become front lines in the culture war over homosexuality — and the biggest losers are the kids caught in the crossfire of incendiary rhetoric and bitter lawsuits.

In school districts across the nation, escalating conflicts involving sexual orientation in the curriculum, student clubs, speech codes and other areas of school life are undermining the educational mission of our schools. Media stories in the past two months alone have spotlighted bitter fights over these issues in Utah, Pennsylvania, Kansas, California, Idaho and Florida. Any notion of the public interest is often lost in the clash of world views across seemingly unbridgeable distances.

When people are this far apart, every act by one side is seen as a hostile move by the other. A "Day of Silence" to protest treatment of gays and lesbians is now followed by a "Day of Truth" to promote conservative religious views of homosexuality. A T-shirt proclaiming "Straight Pride" is worn to counter one professing "Gay Pride." These differences are deep and difficult to negotiate.

Can we do better? If we care about education — and the future of the nation — we must. That's why the First Amendment Center asked Wayne Jacobsen of BridgeBuilders, an organization that helps communities find common ground on religious issues, to help me create a road map for winning the peace in the fight over sexual orientation in schools. The drafting committee also included representatives from the Christian Educators Association International and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, two groups with widely divergent views on homosexuality, but with a shared commitment to civil discourse.

It took eight months to hammer out a statement of principles we could all support. But finally, on March 9, we released "Public Schools and Sexual Orientation: A First Amendment framework for finding common ground." Two major educational organizations, the American Association of School Administrators and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, have endorsed the document. The guide does not prescribe a particular outcome, but rather proposes a process for reaching an agreement that all sides can support. All of the sponsoring groups have agreed to disseminate the guidelines widely and encourage schools to address these issues proactively.

Fairness is a two-way street

For the process to work, school officials must be fair, honest brokers of a dialogue that involves all stakeholders. That means, first and foremost, that school leaders must refrain from choosing sides in the culture-war debate over homosexuality. If schools are going to find agreement on policies and practices that bring the community together, it won't be by taking a side and coercing others to accept it.