Issues@Hand
AFA initiatives, Christian activism, news briefs
April 2003 – The West Virginia attorney general’s office promised AFA of West Virginia (AFAWV) that materials promoting homosexuality would be removed from a project affecting the public school system, after the AFA affiliate made the matter public.
The attorney general’s office introduced the venture – called the Civil Rights Team Project – into West Virginia schools two years ago as part of a hate crime prevention program. The project included materials produced by radical left-wing groups like the National Education Association (NEA), Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Safe Zone Coalition. The materials were given to students in West Virginia middle schools and high schools.
The state school board, led by board member Barbara N. Fish, suspended the Civil Rights Team Project after AFAWV informed members of the controversial materials being distributed. An NEA publication, for example, told students that it was developmentally appropriate to engage in same-sex intimate relations. Other project materials trained students to “Say the words every day – lesbian, gay, bisexual – in a positive way – stop the invisibility;” and to “Wear a LesBiGay positive button or T-shirt occasionally, e.g., ‘Straight but not narrow’ or ‘I support gay and lesbian rights’ or a pink triangle.” The project manual labeled as discriminatory and oppressive the religious belief that homosexual conduct is “sinful.”
“After sharing our position on the program’s promotion of homosexuality, the attorney general’s office has agreed to pull the project’s material,” said AFAWV Director Kevin McCoy. “We both agree the objective is to make sure all West Virginia school children feel safe from bullying, and we both agree the policies to produce safe schools are best left to the state school board and local communities.”
In a letter to McCoy, Chief Deputy Attorney General Frances Hughes said, “[A] program that has aroused so much controversy and objection is no longer useful and evidences deep divisions within the community as to what materials should be provided to children.”
McCoy said the focus for anti-bullying programs should be based on the Golden Rule of treating others as you would like to be treated. “This principle provides character development for students by teaching it is okay to disagree, and that violence or bullying is never acceptable, but homosexuality does not permeate the issue,” he said. 
