In a Pennsylvania school district, after roughly 2,800 students were forced to watch LGBT videos during LGBT “Unity Week” in April, parents and conservative activists asked the district to provide links to the videos so they could see what their children had watched.
The answer they got: no.
As The Christian Post noted of Principal Kate Kieres of Emmaus High School, where the videos were shown, “Despite parents’ requests to see the videos, Kieres stated that the school board solicitor has advised that ‘these videos cannot be sent to you, because they are part of a student project.’”
In June, parents of students and the president of the state’s chapter of the American Family Association objected at a school board meeting. The religious freedom law firm Liberty Counsel sent a letter on June 22 to the superintendent of the East Penn School District asking for the links to the four videos the students saw at Emmaus High School. As The Christian Post noted, “The videos were part of activities organized for ‘Unity Week’ and the nationwide ‘Day of Silence’ sponsored by the national LGBT lobbying group GLSEN. The four videos that were shown to students were sponsored by the school’s Gay Straight Alliance club.”
In the June 22 letter, attorney Richard Mast threatened a lawsuit under the state’s “Right to Know” law if the school didn’t cough up the links to the videos and all emails sent to the principal or the school’s GSA adviser revolving around the issue.
Mast wrote, “It does not pass the straight face test for the District to claim it need not provide parents with the actual video links, although the District required more than 2,800 students to view these videos, with no prior notice to their parents, and no opportunity to opt-out. This is a gross violation of parental rights. The links to the videos are public records, notwithstanding claimed ‘selection’ of the videos by the ostensibly ‘student-led’ Gay-Straight Alliance (‘GSA’) as part of an alleged ‘student project.’ It would be convenient indeed if school districts could bypass all public records laws and parental notice and consent requirements for objectionable content, by finding a willing ‘student group’ to ‘select’ the material for them.”