Subject: Schools Hearings' Final Day Dominated by Extremism
From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 10:36:19 -0500

_________________________________________________________________

NEWS from the
Human Rights Campaign

1101 14th Street NW
Washington, DC 20005
email:  [email-masked]
WWW:    http://www.hrcusa.org
_________________________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, December 7, 1995

           SCHOOLS HEARINGS' FINAL DAY DOMINATED BY EXTREMISM 

Washington -- A House panel yesterday concluded its two-day hearings on
"Parents, Schools,
and Values" with a parade of witnesses attacking local school efforts to
protect young people
from AIDS, hate violence, and suicide.   The taxpayer-funded forum before the
Oversight and
Investigations Subcommittee of the House Economic and Educational
Opportunities
Committee was originally sought by anti-gay lobbyist Lou Sheldon of the
Traditional Values
Coalition to fulfill a campaign promise by House Speaker Newt Gingrich
(R-Ga.).  Though
public awareness of Sheldon's role in orchestrating the hearing prompted
congressional
staffers to  distance the proceedings from the man who requested them, a
string of witnesses
used the forum to level attacks against AIDS- and violence-prevention efforts
in schools.

"While they certainly might have been worse had there not been a public
outcry, these
hearings nonetheless provided a taxpayer-funded platform for religious
political extremists
seeking to impose their divisive agenda on everyone," said Human Rights
Campaign Political
Director Daniel Zingale.  "The outrageous attacks on local community efforts
to protect young
people from AIDS, hate violence, suicide, and discrimination not only ran
roughshod over the
facts, but trampled on the very values the hearings purported to be about,"
added Zingale.

The first day of hearings featured testimony by former Secretary of Education
William
Bennett and award-winning teacher Patricia Ann Baltz, who spoke of the need
for values
education in schools.  Zingale characterized their remarks as benign, but
noted that they
"served as a smoke screen to obscure the fact that the second day of
testimony would be
much more divisive."

Lou Sheldon set the tone for the second day of hearings with his own press
conference in a
House office building yesterday morning, at which he accused the United
States government
of being "the nation's largest pimp."  Referring to the national response to
AIDS, Sheldon
charged that "The federal government is running a network of whorehouses." 

Then came the second day's official proceedings.  Claire Connelly, who heads
the Gay and
Lesbian Resources Center of Ventura County, Calif., and has long sparked
controversy for her
free-wheeling attacks on AIDS education, submitted some of the more bizarre
and baseless
testimony.  Among a host of other accusations, Connelly asserted that she
returned a small
federal AIDS grant to her organization because it would have turned her group
into a
"whorehouse."  Connelly was unanimously ousted from her local AIDS funding
consortium in
1994.

"Everything in her background indicates she is a disgruntled, discredited,
and defunded former
AIDS service provider who seems to be on some sort of personal vendetta,"
remarked Human
Rights Campaign Communications Director David M. Smith upon hearing
Connelly's
testimony, adding that "Everything she said was outlandish and baseless."

Other witnesses attacking sex education included Sandi Martinez of Concerned
Women for
America; Nancy Maclone, a parent who organized a failed referendum to halt a
condom
availability policy in Falmouth, Mass.; Warren Grantham, who lost his bid for
a St. Paul,
Minn. school board seat after opposing school efforts to end harassment of
gay and lesbian
students; and George Dent, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University
who spoke
about parents rights.

The hearing was not entirely without fair-minded witnesses.  Mary Griffith
told the
heart-wrenching story of her son Bobby's suicide; Anne Simon, a high school
teacher from
Sudbury, Mass., spoke of the discrimination and harassment she has witnessed
against lesbian
and gay students; and Alan Storm, Ph.D., director of student services for the
Sunnyside
Unified School District in Tucson, Ariz. testified about parents' support for
sex education and
discussed how communities can appropriately work together to protect the
health and safety
of young people.

Over the course of this year, during which the hearings were repeatedly
discussed, scheduled,
and postponed, the Human Rights Campaign exposed Sheldon's involvement and
mobilized its
members to speak out against the forum's extremist slant.  HRC also worked
with its coalition
partners to provide the public and Congress with information on the local
programs under
attack and background on the witnesses.

The Human Rights Campaign, the largest national lesbian and gay political
organization, with
members throughout the country, effectively lobbies Congress, provides
campaign support,
and educates the public to ensure that lesbian and gay Americans can be open,
honest, and
safe at home, at work, and in the community.

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