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BORN THAT WAY?
IS SEXUAL ORIENTATION INNATE?
The Board of Education voted to insert a statement in the 8th grade curriculum that
“Sexual orientation is innate and a complex part of one’s personality."
To ensure that the students know what “innate” means, they will also be given the Webster’s dictionary definition of innate:
“determined by factors present in an individual from birth.”
However, the 8th grade curriculum also contains the following change statement:
“What causes sexual orientation? Almost certainly there is no single reason why some people are homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual.
According to the American Psychological Association, sexual orientation results from an interaction of cognitive, environmental, and biological factors.”
The statement that sexual orientation is “innate” and “inborn”, and the statement that sexual orientation results from a combination of various factors, contradict each other. Teaching conflicting statements in the 8th grade curriculum is unreasonable on its face, regardless of the subject matter, and contrary to sound educational policy.1
Indeed, the curriculum fails to cite any source verifying the veracity of its ‘innate’ statements both in 8th and 10th grade curriculum.2 According to the American Psychiatric Association, “there are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality.”
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Science does not support a genetic or DNA test to determine if a person is homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual; there is no gay gene. |
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The latest identical twin study found 80% of twins were not both gay: Identical twins have the same genetic make-up. |
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Sexual orientation is a matter of self-affirmation and public declaration. |
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Approximately 97% of population is heterosexual: heterosexuality is the norm. |
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Former homosexuals – the entire community of “ex-gays” – are living proof that homosexuals can change. |
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Science has performed many studies proving that homosexual to heterosexual sex change is possible. |
Yet the Board of Education instructs students that homosexual orientation is innate and inborn, while refusing to include reference to the ex-gay (former homosexuals) community despite factual evidence of their existence and repeated appearances before the school board by ex-gays and former transgenders.
The Board of Education teaches students that it is normal to change your birth sex (transgender), but that it is not normal to change your unwanted same-sex attractions (former homosexual) because sexual orientation is innate from birth. If it is possible for a man to consider himself to be a woman (transgender), why isn’t it possible to believe that a man no longer considers himself to be a homosexual? This is common sense thinking which does not require any scientific studies.
“Why does it matter whether we teach our children that gays are just “born that way?” For every year a child puts off labeling their sexual orientation as bi-sexual or homosexual, the risk of suicide decreases 20%. Maryland state law (COMAR) and county policy dictates that school curriculum must be factually correct. The innate statement is in violation of Maryland state law.
In the 8th grade exercises, the children fill in the definitions of gender identity, sexual identity, sexual orientation, heterosexual, bi-sexual, homosexual. It is quite natural to expect that they might question their own orientation during this exercise when being presented with a variety of sexual orientations as normal or equivalent to heterosexuality.
1Adding “innate” to the 8th Grade curriculum violates MCPS procedure policy for review. The “innate” statement was added by MCPS staff as an addition to the proposed 8th grade curriculum on the day the Board of Education voted on the curriculum. Thus, the statement was adopted by the Board without any review from the curriculum advisory committee or citizens, in violation of the Board’s established procedures for evaluating and selecting instructional materials, district policy, and state law.
2New MCPS Curriculum Grade 8, lesson 1&2, page 2-Vocabulary word: Innate- “determined by factors present in an individual from birth”; Page 3, “Statement to be read to children: ‘Sexual orientation is innate and a complex part of one’s personality.’” New MCPS Curriculum Grade 10, lesson 1, page 7: “Sexual orientation and gender identity are deeply personal, innate and complex parts of one’s personality that define how people see themselves as individuals and in romantic relationships.” [10th grade statement was written by a non-medical gay activist]
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