from Political News

Professor FitzGibbon told members of the committee that the immediate impact of the Court's Goodridge v. Department of Public Health decision was to chill freedom of speech and academic freedom on high school campuses throughout the state.

Fitzgibbon noted that shortly after the decision was handed down, Thomas W. Payzant, Superintendent of the Boston Public Schools, sent out a memorandum to school officials urging them to report any person in the district who criticizes or creates bias against others over their sexual orientation.

Payzant's memo said, in part: "Administrators, teachers, parents and students are reminded that no action or speech will be tolerated that results in harassment, discrimination, bias or intimidation toward any member of our community for any reason, including his/her sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation."

In addition, according to FitzGibbon, Payzant's memo turns teachers and students into whistleblowers against any person on campus who says negative things about same-sex attractions or creates any sort of bias against a person because his sexual orientation.

Professor FitzGibbon also points out that the promotion of homosexuality on campuses also results in explicit sexual teachings to children. He quotes a National Public Radio with a lesbian school teacher in Massachusetts who admits that she's using the legalization of gay marriage to teach her children about the use of sex toys by lesbians.

He notes that the Lexington Superintendent of Schools has notified parents that the school has no obligation to notify them if the school is teaching anything about homosexual conduct.

FitzGibbon concludes his testimony by expressing support for passage of a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union of one man and one woman. He observes:

When a state gets off the same page as the rest of the country as regards fundamental marital and sexual morality and comes to indoctrinate children in ways that are anathema elsewhere; when a state begins to exclude or even prohibit the presentation of opinions which are not only acceptable but common and commonsensical in the minds of the rest of the country; and when a state goes even further along the road and develops a morality and jurisprudence of marital relationships which is unstable and divergent from tradition, it is appropriate to bring the matter forward for national discussion and common resolution.