You are wrong, sir!

[samsamka]

I am back in the habit of arguing with stupid people on the internet! If I ever was out of it.

This time it is an argument on change.org over, of all things, Maryland's Montgomery County Public Schools.

If you've ever had anything to do with Maryland or the DC area, you know that Montgomery County is ridiculously liberal. It is also one of the best educated and and wealthiest counties in the country, with towns like Bethesda, Rockville, Potomac, and Silver Spring. Its public school system is extremely good and also well-funded. I attended MCPS schools until sixth grade, and a lot of my friends went all the way through. It was a far cry from the Bible Belt.

Apparently, MCPS has a flyer program that allows community members to distribute flyers to school students twice times a year. Because the school system is a state actor and because it's opened up the flyer program as a "public forum," the school can't exclude any particular viewpoint from distributing flyers except in when it would cause serious disruption, such as overt hate speech. So when an "ex-gay" organization, PFOX, submitted a flyer that just said "don't be mean to ex-gays, instead you should respect their personal decisions, and by the way we're an organization that supports people with unwanted homosexual feelings," the school said "okay, sure, whatever, put it in the box." And the flyers went out to the student body.

Of course, the queer community is completely outraged. I would be too, if this were actually the school system passing out the flyers. Instead, though, the school system is just also allowing people to flyer-spam the students. Their viewpoint-neutral outlook enables PFLAG and other queer organizations to also send out flyers to kids (on the link, scroll down to David Fishback's first comment).

Most of the Change.org commenters seem to be under the impression that the school can keep the flyer program but require that flyers be "fact-checked," which would enable the school to ban PFOX's flyer because "ex-gay" programs don't work (interestingly, though, the flyer itself never actually asserts that ex-gay programs are effective, just that some people choose to enter into them, which is probably true. It also stops short of actually saying it's wrong to be gay, just that some gay people don't want to be, which is also true). But the lawsuit that decided that MCPS had opened a "public forum" in the first place involved a Christian evangelical organization sending out information about their religious-based club, and held that schools couldn't exclude that organization. If you could require that all the viewpoints in flyers be scientifically validated, I'm pretty sure you could exclude organizations whose primary beliefs are that evolution is a lie and God impregnated a virgin who gave birth to a human form of God who then died and rose from the dead. But the commenters JUST DON'T GET that the Constitution has a different idea than they do of when governments can engage in viewpoint discrimination.

In any case, the upshot is that tons of people are signing a petition yelling at MCPS for allowing something that they didn't really have much of a choice but to allow, unless they wanted to abolish the flyer program entirely. And I appear to be the only queer person in the world who thinks that the harm in preventing PFLAG from sending out flyers to schoolkids outweighs the harm of allowing PFOX to send them out. Because apparently when confronted with both sides, and in the context of one of the most gay-friendly public school environments in the entire country, kids STILL can't be trusted to figure out which position is the correct one. They also appear to think that the flyers are dangerous because parents could read and believe them, but from what I can tell the flyers were handed out at school and kids had no obligation to take them home.

I sort of want to start a counter-petition encouraging MCPS to keep the flyer program open.

Oh, and the worst part? Even Feminist Law Professors is getting this all wrong. "Do you think that the school system would distribute a flier with its report cards from a nonprofit that said that we could achieve world peace if only everyone embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior? That certainly isn’t a slur or a threat either, but, like the flier from the ex-gay group, it would contribute to an atmosphere of intolerance–in this case, of religious minorities." UM, YES ACTUALLY. THAT WAS THE POINT OF THE ORIGINAL LAWSUIT AGAINST MCPS. YOU ARE A LAW PROFESSOR. RESEARCH YOUR GODDAMN LAW. And also, why does Feminist Law Professors not allow comments? I will have to make do with trackback.

ETA: In case anyone was skeptical of my claim that the schools, and the students, were fully aware of the problems with PFOX, here's an interesting open letter from PFOX to MCPS from back in 2007, complaining that teachers were encouraging kids to throw the flyers in the trash. PFOX threatened litigation over it. So: a) the fact that PFOX is sending out flyers to kids is not news, and b) no reasonable kid could think the flyers were endorsed by the school. I note that even though PFOX can threaten to sue when teachers tell kids to throw out the flyers, they certainly can't prevent the kids themselves from throwing them out, which, undoubtedly, most of them do.

Comments

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I hate to say it, but I'm leaning towards the side of abolishing the flyer program. I think you're underestimating just how hard evangelical Christians try to manipulate teenagers into adopting their beliefs, and how persuasive they can be. It's not something I would want my future kids exposed to in a flyer program even if they were being exposed to positive things as well. Evangelism can be extremely emotionally manipulative.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

Nothing's stopping PFOX from passing out flyers outside the schools, in person, which is even worse. The flyer itself, if you read it, is not all that terrible. I don't think exposure to a single flyer is going to scar that many kids for life, and I would hate for PFLAG and other organizations to be banned from putting materials in the schools.

[flamingjune07.livejournal.com]

I don't really get the point of a "flyer program" in the first place? It seems like it would just invite stuff exactly like this to happen, and I'm not quite convinced that "stuff like this" is all that productive.

That said, if you're going to have a "flyer program" in this way, then yes, anyone should be allowed to participate, barring hate speech or incitement to violence or whatever. And then, when people distribute controversial flyers (which they will), you should be prepared for there to be backlash, and also perhaps encourage students to have lively debate amongst themselves about the issue. Anyway, my point is that I'm with you in principle, but I'm also totally unsurprised that people are reacting the way that they are, and I think probably the high school administrators ought to be totally unsurprised and hopefully unfazed as well, unless they're totally new to both the job and how public opinion works in general...

[sammka.livejournal.com]

It's a way to enable community announcements and information distribution. If your school allowed any sort of nonprofit orgs--including ones that provide resources to kids, like PFLAG, SMYAL, PP, etc.---to leave pamphlets to be left inside the school building, that's the same type of program. A lot of this information is really good stuff to have available to students, since they inform kids about resources and community events they might not otherwise know about. The effect is pretty similar to bulletin boards, mailboxes, or flyer-covered tables at colleges.

I don't see how allowing flyers inside the school should be seen as asking for nationwide controversy, especially when, as a school system, you've gone through more than one court battle to keep out "controversial" flyers.

[flamingjune07.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure my own (large, public) high school didn't allow any outside organizations to distribute anything on school grounds at all; I forget what the actual rules were, but that seems like a big no-no. I was one of the people trying to get a Day of Silence thing organized among the students, and even doing that was like pulling teeth, for weeks. If my own school had been open to just anyone distributing anything, you can be absolutely sure that the people with the most money and time and rabid enthusiasm to devote to it would have been right-wingers of various stripes, although the school district itself was fairly Republican (of the educated, moneyed kind for the most part). And then a loud minority of the students (including myself) would have raised hell about whatever e.g. anti-abortion flyers we were getting, and then we would've ended up on all the local "annoying pundit says some shit" shows, and so on (note: this actually happened with the Day of Silence stuff). I mean, we were all pretty outraged because that was Our Job in order to defend and promote our position, but even then I wasn't all that surprised (just disappointed) that people freaked out.

Anyway, I guess what I don't get is something like -- are the students not allowed to form clubs about whatever they want? (We were, and did -- we even had an anarchist after-school club going for a while). Do students not have access to the internet? I'm just not sure what the flyering thing is supposed to do, over and above what should already be available to them -- or what could be available in a somewhat more innocuous context if they did just have a couple of designated flyer boards or whatever they way colleges do?

[sammka.livejournal.com]

Students may not have internet at home, and while they can form clubs, there's something really important about having info available to kids who don't want to join the club quite yet. Plus, my impression is that most of the flyers are just interesting community announcements.

They prevent conservative organizations from completely taking over by limiting each organization to sending flyers once per marking period. They have to be 501(c)(3)s. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of progressive 501(c)(3)s who want to send out flyers to students and who balance out the right-wingers, and besides, the student body is already quite liberal by a vast majority. And there are designated tables/racks/whatever for displaying materials year-round. This doesn't seem that different from what my local public library has.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

I also wouldn't be particularly irritated over the backlash, if it a) were actually based on what actually happened, rather than the assumption that it's the school choosing to distribute the flyers; b) acknowledged that the only way to get rid of the flyers is to shut down the whole program, since "fact checking" is not an option; and c) had some basic consideration for the possibility that the students themselves may be best served by having access to good and bad information. What bothers me the most is that these people would rather just rant about how they hated PFOX than actually think about what, given the character of this particular school system and the constraints of the law, best served these students.

It pisses me off extra when law bloggers don't actually look into the law behind what they're covering.

[flamingjune07.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree that the backlash is pretty stupid. I mean, the concept of "fact checking" promotional flyers in the first place seems kind of weird, unless you just mean it in the way that commercials aren't allowed to claim that, like, their magical elixir will help you lose weight AND turn into a unicorn at will, or something.

The only good thing about this whole business, I think, is that maybe the students now get to have heated discussion amongst themselves about this stuff, and being provoked to research stuff and figure out where you stand and argue for it and so on is a pretty great way for students to learn things, critical thinking skills, how to best express themselves, etc.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

I think they had that opportunity for heated discussion already, though, since from all indications the PFOX flyers were controversial already when they started getting handed out, sometime before 2007.

[flamingjune07.livejournal.com]

Ohhhhhh. Nevermind then, this whole thing is just dumb all around, and the kids are almost certainly "over" it by now. Why is there so much fuss now if the flyers in question have been around for ~3 years?

[sammka.livejournal.com]

Some parents of Winston Churchill kids apparently just figured out about it and went to the news. As of around 2007, the principal of Churchill was in the habit of telling kids to throw PFOX flyers in the trash, which gives you a sense of how liberal Churchill is. PFOX threatened to sue over that, and I'm guessing the principal stopped, but even her stopping must have been over a year ago.

[wrane.livejournal.com]

it always feels so surreal to read about people/places you know in a news context - or maybe that's all the post-surgery narcotics i am on... ::lying down again::

[tiurin.livejournal.com]

Oh, Sam.

[researcher.livejournal.com]

1) On the legalities, I totally agree with you (and even if I didn't, I know this is by far more your area of expertise than mine.)

2) On whether to have the program...eh? I've never heard of a school doing anything remotely like this. I can see potential for horrible, horrible abuse, but that may come from living in KY.

3) As for arguing with people on the internet...I now have a blog. It's what I do. And it sometimes makes me feel stupid and dirty. But, someone has to fight the good fight, right? (Or else we are just wasting our time, but it makes us feel better about ourselves.)

Won't someone please think of the teachers?!

[matthewljacobs.livejournal.com]

TI'm a teacher at a MCPS high school. (Bethesda-Chevy Chase HS)

There's an overlooked aspect in your post and in the comments so far. The flyers were placed in teachers' mail boxes, and the teachers were instructed to hand them out.

I know my students. They (for the most part) trust me. I have a good relationship with my students.

I could not look them in the eye and hand this flyer to them. It could not come from me. I threw my stack of flyers in the trash.

If someone else wants to hand out these anti-gay (ok, "arguably" anti-gay) flyers, I support their right to do so. The cure for bad speech is not restrictions on free speech, but rather more speech. Marketplace of ideas and all that.

I'm in the process of teaching these students how to choose between competing claims - evidence and logic and the scientific method and all that. That's sort of the point of high school. I should, logically, be in favor of handing out the flyers. I just object that they can use ME as their agent.

In the system we have, it has to come from the hand of the trusted, familiar teacher. It should come from the random, untrusted hand of the random pamphleteer.

Also, B-CC High School had a school-sponsored counter-protest against the Westboro Baptist Crazies when they came to protest the "acceptance of gays" at our school earlier this school year. The principal made pro-gay-rights announcements, and said she was proud of our two GLBT-rights focused afterschool clubs. We're pretty staunchly tolerant of all lifestyles, and even so I didn't want to give these flyers to the students.

Re: Won't someone please think of the teachers?!

[sammka.livejournal.com]

It looks, after reading other stuff about Churchill and the policy itself, that different schools have different methods. Churchill appeared to have handed them out in a bundle of other flyers, along with kids' report cards. Somehow even though a teacher may have been handing them out, this seems more anonymous.

Re: Won't someone please think of the teachers?!

[matthewljacobs.livejournal.com]

True, each school probably has a slightly different way of passing these out.

We don't have any central place for students to come pick up pamphlets at B-CC. There's college-related stuff in the guidance office, health related stuff in the nurse's office, sports schedules in the athletic office, etc.

Bundling them into a larger spam package would help make it more anonymous, but I don't want the students to see me as the distributer of spam. Besides, I don't recall any other non-school sponsored flyers we've distributed this year to bundle with. I don't think many groups exploit this flyer policy.

I hand out very few things over the course of the year, and I try to get my students to understand that whatever I hand them is important and they should read it.

Re: Won't someone please think of the teachers?!

[sammka.livejournal.com]

Eh, there's no need to tell them that this is important and they should read it... why not just tell them "this is stuff that gets handed out through the flyer program, it's something that allows pretty much any nonprofit to send stuff out to students, you are free to read it or throw it out as you like"? I think high school students should understand that sometimes teachers have to do stupid things as dictated by the administration, and this does not reflect on the teacher.

One commenter from PFLAG said that they use the flyer policy too. I wonder if this is only in some schools? If nobody else really uses the flyer policy then I'd be much happier just stopping it.

[mumbly-joe.livejournal.com]

I am inclined to agree with you on the legalities, but my initial reaction was over the backlash per se, or even over the PFOX flier's content. Instead, it was a great deal more along the lines of "This seems abusable- is there a way to use this to troll people? How difficult is it to start a non-profit?".


I wonder if that says something significant about the sort of person I am.