Standing up to one-way diversity: Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, used its annual "Diversity Week" to promote the homosexual agenda. But resistance resulted in the event's cancellation.
Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has an enrollment of about 2,700 students. For more than a decade prior to 2003, it held annual "Diversity Week" confabs that included general assembly programs, "open mike" sessions during lunch hours, multi-cultural music and food activities, and panel discussions on the topics of race, religion and sexual orientation.Diversity Week 2002 was held March 18-22, and, as usual, the Pioneer High Student Council had responsibility for organizing the week's activities, pending approval by the council's faculty adviser. For the 2002 conclave, however, the council broke with tradition by inviting other student groups to assist in arranging the race, religion and sexual orientation panels.
The only response to the council's solicitation came from the school's pro-homosexual Gay/Straight Alliance (GSA), which asked if it could run the sexual-orientation panel. Sunnie Korzdorfer, the Student Council faculty adviser, agreed to the request and turned the entire sponsorship and administration of the panel over to the GSA and its faculty co-sponsors.
In earlier years, the Diversity Week panelists were students, but the GSA decided to modify both the composition and format of its discussion group. Rather than "sexual orientation," the topic was changed to "Religion and Homosexuality"; and instead of student panelists, six pro-homosexual, adult religious leaders were asked to comprise the panel. Parker Pennington IV, one of two GSA faculty advisers, later admitted that the panel members (two Episcopalian ministers, a Presbyterian minister, a Presbyterian deacon, a rabbi, and a pastor from the United Church of Christ) were chosen "because the institutions they represent were welcoming and affirming" with regard to homosexuality. Some even wore their clerical garb during the panel session.
Opposing Viewpoint
Elizabeth ("Betsy") Hansen was a senior at Pioneer High at the time. She graduated in June 2002 and currently attends the University of Florida. A devout Roman Catholic who believes that homosexuality is a sin, she was also a member of the student organization Pioneers for Christ (PFC).
Betsy had earlier expressed interest in participating on the sexual-orientation panel to espouse her traditional biblical position on homosexuality. When she learned that the GSA had been allowed to co-opt the event, and that only adult religious leaders would serve as panelists, she asked faculty adviser Korzdorfer if she could invite an adult clergyman of either her (or PFC's) choosing to participate. Since the GSA did not want a viewpoint other than its own represented, a controversy ensued. But after the Ann Arbor Public Schools equity officer (a licensed attorney) opined that Betsy should have a voice on the panel, Korzdorfer, with school Principal Henry Caudle's blessing, canceled the panel.
GSA's faculty advisers promptly protested the cancellation. Though Korzdorfer did not reverse her decision at the time, she asserted in an e-mall response: "I am treading on shallow ground here, as I do not want to be sued. However, I support and believe in your vision of the religion discussion. Let me know how I can more fully show my support."
During a March 15, 2002 meeting attended by school officials and the faculty advisers for both GSA and PFC, it was decided to again reverse course and allow the Religion and Homosexuality panel to proceed as originally planned, with neither Betsy nor anyone else representing her religious position permitted to speak. Just one school day before Diversity Week began, Pioneers for Christ was invited to arrange its own separate panel discussion; PFC faculty advisers Bill Johnson and James Brink, recognizing they would have insufficient time to properly organize an event on such short notice, understandably rejected the offer.
So the Homosexuality and Religion discussion went forward without so much as a single panelist to challenge claims that scriptural references to homosexuality had been misunderstood or mistranslated by others to mean that homosexuality was immoral or sinful, or incompatible with Christianity.
In a related development, on March 13, 2002 Korzdorfer had offered Betsy an opportunity to deliver a two-minute speech during the Diversity Week general assembly. She would, however, be required to submit the text to Korzdorfer in advance for review.
Betsy accepted the offer. After Korzdorfer reviewed the draft of her remarks on the topic, "What Diversity Means to Me," she passed it along to Class Principal Lara Erickson, who in turn gave it to Principal Caudle. Both Erickson and Caudle objected to this portion of Miss Hansen's address because it targeted homosexuals:
One thing I don't like about Diversity Week is the way that racial diversity, religious diversity, and sexual diversity are lumped together and compared as if they are the same things. Race is not strictly an idea. It is something you are born with; something that doesn't change throughout your life, unless you're Michael Jackson, but that's a special case. It involves no choice or action. On the other hand, your religion is your choice. Sexuality implies an action, and there are people who have been straight, then gay, then straight again. I completely and whole-heartedly support racial diversity, but I can't accept religious and sexual ideas or actions that are wrong.
Korzdorfer called Betsy at home the day before Diversity Week began and asked that she make sundry changes in the speech. Though she did not wish to do so, the teen complied, believing that she had no choice. Korzdorfer also reviewed two other speeches, but those speeches were not forwarded to Erickson or Caudle, and no modifications were required.
Court Case
In July 2002, in the wake of this politically correct censorship and religious bias, the Thomas More Law Center filed suit in U.S. District Court on behalf of Betsy, her mother, and the father of another Pioneer High School student. Named as defendants were Ann Arbor Public Schools, Pioneer High School and the pertinent school personnel. The suit alleged, among other things, that Betsy's constitutionally protected rights of free exercise of religion and equal protection of the law had been violated. The case was assigned to District Court Judge Gerald E. Rosen of the Southern Division of Michigan's Eastern District.
In a 67-page decision handed down December 5, 2003, Judge Rosen asserted:
This case presents the ironic, and unfortunate, paradox of a public high school celebrating "diversity" by refusing to permit the presentation to students of an "unwelcomed" viewpoint on the topic of homosexuality and religion, while actively promoting the competing view. This practice of "one-way diversity," unsettling in itself, was rendered still more troubling--both constitutionally and ethically--by the fact that the approved viewpoint was, in one manifestation, presented to students as religious doctrine by six clerics (some in full garb) quoting from religious scripture. In its other manifestation, it resulted in the censorship by school administrators of a student's speech about "what diversity means to me," removing that portion of the speech in which the student described the unapproved viewpoint.
Analyzing the case on the basis of earlier federal court (including Supreme Court) precedents, Judge Rosen concluded that the "Defendants' level of involvement in this case in selecting the clergy for the panel, vetting the religious beliefs of the chosen clergy, recruiting the clergy, and providing school facilities and a captive audience of students for the clergy, and censoring and editing Betsy Hansen's speech based on its religious viewpoint, constitutes the kind of 'excessive entanglement with religion' found by the Supreme Court to be constitutionally impermissible."
Judge Rosen also held that the defendants had "discriminated against Betsy Hansen on the basis of both message and religion, denying her the right to deliver her message while at the same time affording the GSA the right to deliver its own religious message," and that "Such discrimination is violative of the [Fourteenth Amendment's] Equal Protection Clause."
In a December 5 news release, Thomas More Law Center president and chief counsel Richard Thompson lauded the "judicial courage" Judge Rosen displayed by "refusing to bend to the winds of political correctness." His decision, Thompson asserted, is "a tremendous victory for the First Amendment rights of Christian students and a tremendous defeat for those who consider public schools as their private platform to advance the homosexual agenda."
In the wake of the 2002 brouhaha, Pioneer High opted to forego Diversity Week altogether last year. And that, of course, was the best possible outcome, since the whole point of Diversity Week was to propagandize students on behalf of government-approved "victim" groups.
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| Title Annotation: | Culture War |
|---|---|
| Author: | Lee, Robert W. |
| Publication: | The New American |
| Date: | Jan 26, 2004 |
| Words: | 1391 |
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