Prop 8 Testimony Cited as “Ex-Gay” Materials Sent to High School Students

Report cards aren't the only thing they gave out at a Maryland county's high schools recently. The Washington Post reports that Montgomery County high
schools distributed fliers from Parents & Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays Seeking Tolerance for All (PFOX).

The fliers included the following message: “Every year, thousands of people with unwanted same-sex
attractions make the personal decision to leave a gay identity. . . . No
'gay gene' or gay center of the brain has been found. No medical test
exists to determine if a person is homosexual. Sexual orientation is
based on feelings and is a matter of self-affirmation and public
declaration.”

The district's own non-discrimination policy (.pdf) would seem to forbid the distribution of such materials on its high school campuses. But district officials claim their hands are tied in the Post story.
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The schools are required to distribute literature that isn't deemed hate speech from any registered nonprofit organization four times a year, the result of a 2006 lawsuit, said Dana Tofig, a spokesman for the Montgomery County Public Schools.

“These fliers are probably counter to what is available in our health curriculum, but that curriculum focuses on respect, and we respect freedom of speech,” said Patricia O'Neill, president of the Montgomery County Board of
Education.

But Steve Williams presents a compelling counter-argument on a Care2.com blog. He notes that the practice of conversion therapy for gay adolescents
and adults alike has been shown to be so psychologically scarring that
the American Psychological Association has formally discredited the practice.

Williams also mentions it was only last month at California's Prop 8 trial
that 26-year-old Ryan Kendall testified about the ex-gay therapy sessions he was forced into at the age of 13. As Courthouse News Service reports:

Kendall said he was promptly sent to a
Christian therapist for “reversal therapy.” He was 13 at the time…
Kendall said his therapist told him that the goal of their sessions was
to make him heterosexual. “I remember the therapist told me that
homosexuals were bad people and that homosexuality was not consistent
with Christian teachings,” he said.

But after attending the sessions,
Kendall said he was “still gay.” His parents then sent him to the
National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, an
organization in Encino, Calif., run by Focus on the Family.

For more than a year and a half, he
said, he talked to conversion-therapist Dr. Joseph Nicolosi. “I
remember him saying that homosexuality is incompatible with what God
wants for me,” Kendall said. “He told me that I had to fundamentally
reject what I was.”

Meanwhile, Kendall's home life changed
dramatically, particularly his relationship with his mother. “Before, I
had the kind of parents who would drive me to school and pack my
lunches,” he said. “After this, they were always yelling at me and
calling me names. It was a very emotionally abusive environment. I
remember my mother saying she hated me, that I was repulsive. She said
she wished she'd had an abortion or that I had been born with Down
syndrome,” Kendall sobbed, prompting gasps throughout the courtroom.
One woman, seated at the front of the gallery, began to weep.

Kendall said he left therapy at 16
because he realized that if he didn't stop going, he “wasn't going to
survive.” He had himself emancipated from his parents. When San
Francisco City Attorney Ron Flynn asked him if his life got better
after leaving therapy, Kendall replied, “I was incredibly suicidal and
depressed. I hated my entire life. So no, things did not get better.”

After five years of further self-destruction, Ryan was eventually able
to recover.

“To casually brush this off as a freedom of speech issue, as the
district seems to have done, misunderstands the danger that LGBT high
school students face by letting this material be disseminated without
challenge,” Williams writes.