As if South Carolina ranking #1 in text messaging while driving, we’re also getting national attention because a high school principal has decided to resign after being asked to allow the formation of a club he says goes against his “professional beliefs and religious convictions.”

The club in question is a Gay/Straight Alliance. His resignation will take effect in June of 2009, at the end of the 2008-2009 school year. I can’t help but wonder, if he’s so offended, why he didn’t set his date of separation to be June of this year.

The organization that creates such clubs nationwide describes its vision of the future as “a world in which every child learns to accept and respect all people, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.”

Doesn’t sound so terrible, does it?

The principal in question says his school focuses on abstinence-based curriculum, and feels that a Gay/Straight Alliance would imply “that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes.”

¿Que?

First, let me get the abstinence issue out of the way. Abstinence-based curriculum stresses the importance of waiting for sex until after marriage. It’s what most Christian organizations like to push for in our schools, because it allows parents to sit back and feel that kids are getting the “right” message. But as everyone who has ever been a teenager knows, being told that you should wait for something almost certainly guarantees that you don’t want to wait for it. Add to that the typical peer pressure students face, and a curriculum that urges abstinence with less-than-realistic instruction on protection for those students who choose not to wait, and you have a scenario that is basically facilitating the real possibility of unwanted pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases. It doesn’t take a college degree to see that.

The opposite of abstinence-based sex ed is comprehensive sex ed:

“There is good evidence, from studies of programs implemented in the US, UK and other European countries and countries in Africa and Asia, that comprehensive sex education can reduce behaviors that put young people at risk of HIV, STIs and unintended pregnancy. Studies have repeatedly shown too that this kind of sex education does not lead to the earlier onset of sexual activity among young people and, in some cases, will even lead to it happening later.”

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to the rest of the quote:

“…that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes.”

I can guarantee that every student in this principal’s school will choose to engage in sexual activity with the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes at some point…whether there is a Gay/Straight Alliance or not. The only exceptions will be those who decide to be celibate for life, or those who prefer relations with something other than humans, and I’d as soon think no more of that. If he could just figure out what needs to get said to make the members engage in sexual activity one day with members of the opposite sex only, his little “problem” would be solved, wouldn’t it?

If the formation of a Gay/Straight Alliance is enough to make people want to have sex, shouldn’t even abstinence-based sex education be banned as well? After all, if just the mere mention of the topic — which is apparently this principal’s concern — is enough to send students over the edge, isn’t sex education itself also a danger? Even if students are pressured not to have it until later, they’re still telling them something about having it, and that must be asking for trouble!

Maybe sex education in his school should be replaced by good old Home Ec. Baking chocolate chip cookies and sewing on buttons probably wouldn’t get anyone all that hot and bothered. (Unless they got too close to the hot oven.)

The executive director for Faith in America, a group that fights religious bigotry against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Americans, issued a statement that read in part:

“We truly believe it is unfortunate that this principal cannot see the immense harm that is caused when a social climate of rejection, condemnation and violence is justified with misguided religious belief. To make such a choice over simply allowing gay youth a forum to meet and talk, alludes to the apparent deep-seated prejudice that must exist in the religious mindset of this person.

“It is unfortunately very similar to the time in our history when segregation in schools was once allowed to flourish because of the deep-seated prejudice that existed in our institutions and the religious mindset of many people during that period.”

Or, to put it another way, discrimination is discrimination, no matter what makes the targets of it different from the “rest.”

The article from Columbia television station WIS-TV also quotes the parent of a student at the school:

“We are not putting them like, ‘ugh. You know you’re lepers.’ But we have to stand for what our foundation of our nation was about.”

Huh?

I might have to go dig up my history book, because I don’t recall reading that our country was founded to discriminate against gay high school students. I do, however, happen to vaguely remember something about the desire for religious freedom being a motive.

Religion does play a big role in this. There are plenty of Christians who refuse to call homosexuality anything other than an abomination. Many of them latch on to issues like this so that they can deflect their own sins that they don’t like to talk about. It’s human nature, after all. Rather than take the blame for something you’re doing that’s wrong, it’s so much easier to point a finger at someone else you feel is worse.

They also are convinced that homosexuality — and heterosexuality for that matter — should be the classifications of one’s sexual preference, not sexual orientation. As if anyone really wakes up one day and chooses which he’ll be.

Think about this for a second.

How old were you when you decided to which gender you were attracted? How many long days and nights did you labor over the decision? How long was your list of pros and cons for each gender?

Surely, if it was solely a function of choice, you must have spent a long, long time carefully considering which “team” you’d be “playing” for.

I can’t help but wonder why these religious zealots who are so against a club designed to open dialog wouldn’t welcome it. They should want straight students talking with gay students. They should want gay students — or in their minds, students who are choosing to be gay — to be exposed to straight students, those who are doing the “right” thing, so that they may see how happy and perfect the straight students’ lives are, and be positively influenced to rethink their “choice.”

That is to say, they should want those “good, sinless” straight students to rub off on those gay students. (No pun intended.)

Dialog, they should believe, could make all the difference in turning these gay students’ lives in the “proper” direction, right?

If they’re so convinced that it works for abstinence, then what’s the hang-up about homosexuality? They should be eager to quash two “problems” at once.

That is, if they’re giving it any real thought at all.