Kentucky parents are not tolerating "tolerance training".

Voting with your feet is a powerful way of making a statement. And the statement parents in the Ashland-Boyd County school district of Kentucky are making is that they don't want their children exposed to pro-homosexual "tolerance training."

More than 12 percent of the school district's students opted out of a training video that was supposed to be shown in 2004 to the entire school population as part of the school district's settlement of a 2003 lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In that lawsuit, the school was forced to allow the Gay-Straight Alliance group to meet on campus. In addition, the Consent Decree and Order signed by the Boyd County Board of Education, the Superintendent of Schools, and the ACLU called for "Mandatory Staff Training" and "Mandatory Student Training" that was to "focus on issues pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, harassment and discrimination."

The ACLU claims that parents have no right to prevent their children from seeing a video about sexual orientation and gender identity tolerance training. But parents disagree. Not only did a significant portion of the students opt out of the video, but more than 300 students failed to come to school the day the video was to be shown.

Parents in Boyd County have banded together in an organization called Defenders Voice, which is supported by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a religious liberties public-interest legal group. "The ACLU should not be allowed to tell parents what their children must learn," states Rev. Tim York, head of Defenders Voice. ADF attorney Joe Platt concurs, stating that mandatory training on "tolerance" for homosexuals violates the right of conscience of parents and students who believe such behavior is immoral.