The strategy worked. Overruling the courts and lawmakers, voters defeated gay marriage ballot measures in California last year and in Maine this week after conservatives convinced residents that same-sex unions would become common classroom fodder without any say from parents.

The punch-to-the gut claim has emerged as the latest tool in the ever-evolving playbook of same-sex marriage opponents, and the Achilles’ heel of the gay-marriage movement. Voters seem to be swayed by the notion that gay marriage will be a corrupting force among children, even though critics blasted the message as a blatantly misleading case of fear-mongering.

“It was very effective. It’s drawing on the fears of the unknown,” said Sandy Maisel, director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at Maine’s Colby College. “There’s no evidence that it’s going to happen, but there’s very clear evidence that it’s an effective campaign tactic.”

Gay marriage opponents discovered the effectiveness of the schools message in last year’s successful effort to pass Proposition 8 to outlaw gay marriage in California.

After signing up to lead the campaign, political consultants Frank Schubert and Jeff Flint knew they had a problem: Polls were showing that residents tended to not have much of a problem with gay relationships.

With the help of focus groups, surveys and ammunition unwittingly supplied by their opponents, Schubert and Flint soon found a new way to frame the issue, by focusing on education.

It was a departure from past elections when the issue was defined in simpler terms – that marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. The various strategies have helped conservatives win 31 consecutive ballot initiatives on gay marriage.

“We bet the campaign on consequences, especially on education,” Schubert recalled in March when he and Flint were named the “public affairs team of the year” by the American Association of Political Consultants for their work in California. “Education from the beginning, while it was one of three consequences, it was the one that was the most emotionally charged and the most powerful.”

In California and Maine, gay marriage supporters countered the claims with spots featuring prominent elected officials – California’s chief of public instruction, Maine’s attorney general – who insisted that same-sex marriage had nothing to do with schools.

They also angrily denounced as deceptive the visuals the Sacramento team employed, including a Massachusetts couple who lost a lawsuit seeking parental consent before same-sex families are discussed in elementary classrooms.

But the response did not defuse the hot-button issue, advocates on both sides of the issue observe, in part because they failed to address what many parents knew to be true: Many public schools already have lessons that include references to gay families in the younger grades and confronting anti-gay discrimination for older students. Although the topics usually are broached in the context of appreciating diversity and tolerance, for some parents any discussion of gay people is too close to talking about gay sex.

“The trend that we are seeing is homosexuality is being promoted more and more in schools, and the increase in this is creating a hostile environment for kids with Christian or socially conservative viewpoints,” said Candi Cushman, education analyst for the Christian group Focus on the Family.

Cathy Renna, a public relations consultant in Washington who is married to a woman and has a 4-year-old daughter, said that equating references to gay parents with sex is “like saying that introducing someone’s mother and father to a class means you are talking about heterosexual sex.” But Renna agrees that same-sex marriage supporters need a different comeback to the kids-and-schools argument.

“This idea that gay people are coming to eat your children is a long-standing tactic of the right wing,” she said. “The response to those ads that not only has more truth, but more integrity, is that we live in a diverse world and our kids know that and it’s irresponsible for us not to talk about the world we live in in age-appropriate ways. Dismissing them as lies actually does a disservice not only to the people in our community, but to the public that knows better.”

In California, some gay rights groups want to try to repeal Proposition 8 at the ballot box next year. There has been talk about including language in the new measure that would state that nothing in it is meant to mandate the teaching of same-sex marriage in schools. Some gay rights advocates fear, though, that the wording could be used to undermine the way gay subjects are treated in schools now, said Chaz Lowe, founder of Yes! on Equality.

Melissa Murray, an assistant professor at the UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law who researched the messages used in the Proposition 8 campaign, said gay marriage advocates underestimated how deeply Schubert and Flint’s carefully crafted schools message resonated with the public.

One reason it resonated so deeply is it changed the debate from one of equal rights to the equally cherished notion of individual rights, something gay activists should keep in mind as the marriage moves to other states, Murray said.

“Parents are always thinking about how do I keep unwanted influences out of my children’s lives, and it’s a lot harder to do that as a parent if that influence is the state,” Murray said. “That’s the fear they are tapping into. … and they are just going to keep repackaging it, because it works.”

We are not trying to “recruit” your children, if by that you mean “turn them gay.” As gay people, we understand enough about how sexual orientation works to know that you can’t turn people gay—or straight, for that matter—by some act of will.

Rather, we’re trying to do just what those scary “protect marriage” ads say we’re trying to do. We’re trying to teach them about same-sex marriage. In school.

There—I said it. The secret’s out. The gay agenda has been leaked. Call the Maine Yes-on-1 campaign and tell them there’s new material for Frank Schubert and company to quote out of context.

Meanwhile, let’s talk about that campaign—specifically, the ads warning that if Maine keeps marriage for gays and lesbians, Maine schoolchildren will be taught about homosexual marriage.

Put this way, the claim is extremely misleading. Maine (unlike California, which micromanages everything) does not dictate teaching about marriage. Maine curriculum is controlled locally, and individual schools can teach about same-sex marriage (or not) whether or not Maine has marriage equality.

To put the point another way: just because something’s legal, that doesn’t mean it must be taught in Maine schools (or vice-versa).

But whatever happens with Maine’s Question 1, I want Maine schools to teach about gays getting married. Other states’ schools, too.

Part of my reason for wanting this has nothing whatsoever to do with my support for marriage equality. I also want schools to teach about genocide, and I’m pretty staunchly anti-genocide. Schools are supposed to inform students about what’s happening in the world. For better or worse, same-sex marriage is happening in the world. Even if it is taken away in Maine, it will keep happening elsewhere. Indeed, even if it were somehow eliminated everywhere, it would remain part of our history. Students need to know this.

Of course, when we teach about genocide, we make it clear that genocide is a Very Bad Thing. By contrast, responsible teaching about same-sex marriage would have to acknowledge that it is a controversial thing, with sane and decent people on different sides of the issue.

And that is doubtless one reason why you, dear parent, fear teaching about same-sex marriage in schools. You’d rather that your children not know that there are some sane and decent people who deny that same-sex marriage is a Very Bad Thing. Indeed, that there some who think it is a Perfectly Fine Thing. You want to shelter them from such diversity. I don’t.

I want them to know that there are people with different views on marriage, and that gay people are getting legally married in parts of the United States and elsewhere. I want them to know it because any informed citizen ought to know it. But I also want them to know it because some of them might themselves be gay.

That’s right: there’s a small but statistically significant chance that your child might be gay. Ignoring the issue won’t make it go away. And isolating him from the fact of other gay people won’t make it go away, either. It will just make him…well, isolated.

Now, your child might not be gay, and if that’s so, learning about gay marriage isn’t going to make him gay. Sexual orientation doesn’t work that way. (If it did, I’d be straight.) If your child is straight, he will remain straight, regardless of what happens in Maine, California, Massachusetts and elsewhere.

But let’s suppose he’s gay. If so, and if I’m right that he can’t willfully change that fact, then his best chance for a happy, fulfilling life is probably in a relationship with someone of the same sex. (I say “probably” because some people—a very rare subset—are happier single; let’s assume he’s not one of those.) Realistically, his choice is not between a gay relationship and a straight relationship; it’s between a gay relationship and none at all.

Now I don’t expect you simply to take my word for any of this. You want your child to be happy, and you can’t imagine his happiness as a gay person. Maybe you’re deeply convinced that he’d be better off alone than with someone of the same sex.

I don’t doubt that you sincerely believe this. But I sincerely believe that you are wrong—badly wrong, wrong in a way that does needless harm to your gay child.

I want your child to know that his love is a good thing. I want him to know that he deserves a chance at romantic bliss. I want him to know that, regardless of sexual orientation, he can seek someone to have and to hold, for better or for worse, until death do they part.

I want him at least to have that option.

And that, to be very frank, is the bigger part of my reason for wanting schools to teach about gay marriage. I want all kids, including gay kids, to have a fair shot at happiness.

That’s my homosexual agenda in a nutshell.

******

John Corvino, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. His column “The Gay Moralist” appears Fridays on 365gay.com.

Check school websites for rooms and times.

(Portland, Maine) Citing child welfare and their commitment to support what is best for children, physicians from the Maine Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) today announced their support for the NO on 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign.

“Children who are raised by legally married parents benefit from the legal status granted to their parents. What is good for parents and families is good for children,” said Dr. Jonathan Fanburg, president of the Maine Chapter of the AAP. “The Maine Chapter of AAP is opposed to the referendum vote that challenges the marriage equality law.”

The Maine Chapter’s statement reads, in part:

“As physicians who care for children and their families, we are committed to supporting what is best for children. And there is no question that when their parents can marry, children are more protected legally and socially.”

“Marriage equality is the right thing for Maine’s children, and will strengthen and protect families who have lacked legal recognition for too long,” said Augusta pediatrician Dan Summers. “As pediatricians, we see how supportive parents — whether gay or straight — positively impact the development of children. That is why we oppose the referendum that would rescind the law that allows same sex couples to marry.”

A national report commissioned by the national AAP concludes that the legal status that marriage achieves “promotes healthy families by conferring a powerful set of rights, benefits, and protections that cannot be obtained by other means.”

With the law awaiting President Tabare Vazquez’s signature, gay rights groups have been celebrating the prospect that Uruguay could become the first country in Latin America to give gay and lesbian couples the opportunity to adopt.

But nowhere in the law does it specifically say that homosexual couples have a right to adopt. And in some places, it suggests otherwise — for example by specifying how the child should take a mother and father’s surnames.

Lawyers, judges and even the law’s own authors now have doubts about how the law will be applied.

Under Vazquez, Uruguay already legalized gay civil unions and ended a ban on homosexuals in the military, despite strong disapproval from the Roman Catholic Church.

The church also campaigned against the adoptions law, which shifts much of the decision-making to the national Institute of Children and Adolescents, and away from a system in which individual lawyers, notaries and religious groups had a central role.

The new law would drop a requirement that children can only be adopted by legally married couples or single parents.

Deputy Margarita Percovich, who wrote the law, acknowledged that it doesn’t directly mention same-sex adoptions, but said it would enable them because gays and lesbians already can legally form civil unions, and “the law enables couples in civil unions to adopt children without impediment.”

But Attorney Juan A. Ramirez, an expert in civil rights law, told the leading newspaper El Pais that judges still won’t be able to approve same-sex adoptions, because this intent isn’t explicitly described in the law.

“Any objective interpretation of the law would conclude that either they forgot to mention that gay couples can adopt, or they didn’t want to mention it. They didn’t want to take the bull by the horns and resolve it clearly — they left it undefined,” he said.

Family judge Estrella Perez said the judges association now plans to meet “to see how to resolve these doubts.”

“We all have them.”

And a lawyer for the institute, Edgard Marzarini, told reporters that he doesn’t know how to resolve a same-sex adoption given the law’s requirement that a child take a mother and father’s surnames: “These are the holes that later give us problems.”

The divorced dad spent thousands of dollars fighting an unusual ban imposed by a county judge in 2007 that kept the three minors from having any contact with his gay friends or partners.

He felt unfairly scrutinized every moment he spent with the kids, though he never was looking to make a statement. He just wanted to spend a day with his kids and his partner, Jose Sanchez – together.

This Father’s Day, he finally did.

“It’s a fairy tale ending,” he told The Associated Press after the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the ban.

The ban stemmed from the bitter divorce between Mongerson and his ex-wife, Sandy, who were married for almost 20 years and had four children. Mongerson said the marriage ended when his wife discovered he was gay in November 2005, but he would not elaborate.

The dispute played out the next few years in court, as Sandy’s attorney claimed he had several affairs with other men and subjected the kids to an array of “wholly inappropriate conduct” during a trip to Arkansas.

The arguments helped sway Fayette County Superior Court Judge Christopher Edwards to award Sandy Kay Ehlers Mongerson custody of the children. The judge also issued a blanket order banning Eric Mongerson from “exposing the children to his homosexual partners and friends.” A fourth child is an adult over 18 and had no restrictions on contact with Mongerson or his gay friends.

Edwards said in his ruling that the decision was meant to reflect “the trauma inflicted upon the children” during the Arkansas trip.

Mongerson, though, said it only made him feel like he was being targeted for coming out of the closet. For almost two years, Mongerson said he feared losing more time with his kids and walked on egg shells during their weekly four-hour visits.

He didn’t hide the fact he was gay from the kids, but they couldn’t be around his partner, Sanchez. He was afraid to invite straight friends who might be accused of being gay. And he wouldn’t dare bring his children to his place in downtown Atlanta, even though his wife once brought a boyfriend to his daughter’s concert.

“I was always afraid of the ‘What if?’” Mongerson said. “I felt isolated, alone. She could go get friends, have them watch the kids, but I could never because I was gay.”

Sanchez, fearful of somehow violating the order, would run through all sorts of scenarios.

“What if you and I are on a plane, and your kids happen to be on the plane?” he would ask incredulously. “Do I jump out?”

Mongerson, a restaurant manager who routinely works 13-hour shifts into the night, said he scrounged together more than $10,000 to challenge the judge’s decree, partly by wracking up debt on his credit cards.

In court arguments in January, attorneys Hannibal Heredia and Kimberli Reagin contended the judge had no evidence that exposing the children to Mongerson’s gay friends would damage them.

Last Monday, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously agreed. Justice Robert Benham wrote in the scathing 10-page ruling that the trial court abused its discretion without evidence of harm to the children. He concluded it “flies in the face of our public policy that encourages divorced parents to participate in the raising of their children.”

The decision was quickly applauded by gay rights advocates who say the judge’s order was rooted in decades-old misconceptions about gays and lesbians. Jeff Graham of Georgia Equality called the top court’s decision a dose of “common sense and fair mindedness.”

Sandy Mongerson’s attorney, Lance McMillian, said the mother does not plan to appeal.

“My client is interested in putting it behind her,” he said. “Other than that, we don’t have anything to say about it.”

As news of the court’s ruling filtered down to Mongerson on Monday morning, he picked up the phone and called his partner. It didn’t take long to work out their schedule for Father’s Day, when they’d finally go out for that ice cream.

“I cry at commercials – he cries before commercials come on,” Sanchez said. “He’s very emotional. He said, ‘Happy Father’s Day. You get to meet my children.’”

Florida law allows gays to serve as foster parents but not adopt. The law is considered the most repressive of its kind in the country.  But a Miami judge ruled in November that there is “no rational basis” for prohibiting gays from adopting children. 

The Florida Department of Children & Families and the state attorney general’s office , backed by Gov. Charlie Crist (R), appealed the gay-friendly ruling to the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami. 

In January, the Florida Bar’s Board of Governors voted to allow its Family Law Section to file “a friend of the court” brief in support of the gay-friendly lower court ruling. But a conservative group of attorneys challenged the right of the board to intervene in the case. The lawyers are represented by Liberty Counsel, which regularly fights LGBT issues across the country.

The Bar Association, on the other hand, argues that the board should be allowed to present its arguments, saying that the board is a voluntary section of the Bar and does not necessarily represent the full membership of the Association.

The  issue of whether the ban on gay adoptions is constitutional will likely ultimately end up before the Supreme Court as well.

Until then, the lower court ruling permitting gay adoption will apply only to the case that was before it at the time, which  involved Martin Gill of Miami who sought to adopt two young brothers he had cared for as foster children since 2004. 

The boys had been placed with Gill temporarily after he was approached for help by a state child abuse investigator. When the three became attached, so Gill sought to adopt the boys.

In November, Gill and lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union in October asked Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman to overturn the ban on gay adoption and award him permanent custody.

An attorney appointed by Lederman to represent the children said in a report to the court that the children refer to Gill and his partner as “dad” and that Gill should be granted the adoption.

The Florida Department of Children & Families and the state attorney general’s office argued the ban should be maintained. The position had the support of Gov. Charlie Crist (R) who said he has no plans to have the law repealed.

The Florida legislature adopted the law banning gay adoption during Anita Bryant’s infamous anti-gay crusade in 1977. The bill’s sponsor in the state Senate told a local newspaper at the time that the law was intended to send this message to lesbians and gay men: “[We] are really tired of you. We wish you’d go back in the closet.”

In 2004, a federal appeals court upheld Florida’s ban on gay adoption. In a written ruling, the court rejected a challenge by four gay men to the law.

“We exercise great caution when asked to take sides in an ongoing public policy debate, such as the current one over the compatibility of homosexual conduct with the duties of adoptive parenthood,” wrote Judge Stanley Birch.

“The state of Florida has made the determination that it is not in the best interests of its displaced children to be adopted by individuals who ‘engage in current, voluntary homosexual activity’ and we have found nothing in the Constitution that forbids this policy judgment.”

The following year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal. Attempts to repeal the law have failed several times in the Florida legislature.

The lawsuit was brought by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union.

It asserts that Kentucky Baptist Homes has no right to accept public funding while imposing religious dogma on the children in its programs, and that the Homes’ religion-based anti-gay employment policy violates civil rights laws.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Alicia Pedreira, a former employee at the Louisville home who worked with troubled young people. Despite her excellent performance reviews, Pedreira was terminated in 1998 after officials at the facility learned she is a lesbian.

A federal district court dismissed the case last year, ruling that the plaintiffs do not have legal standing to bring it.

Americans United and the ACLU Tuesday asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate the case.

The lawsuit also asks the appeals court to strike down public funding for Kentucky Baptist Homes.

In the appellate brief filed with the 6th Circuit, Americans United and the ACLU note numerous examples of the religious nature of the childcare agency. Its president has touted the Homes’ success in converting children, and the agency calls itself “Christ centered.”

The document also cites a report by the Children’s Review Program, a private contractor hired by Kentucky officials to monitor programs for children. The report noted numerous instances where young people complained about being forced to attend Baptist services or said they were not permitted to attend services of other faiths.

The federal court action comes at a time when government support for “faith-based” social services remains a deeply controversial national issue. Former President George W. Bush supported government funding of religion and religiously based job discrimination through his faith-based initiative. President Barack Obama has drawn criticism for continuing the Bush plan.

“This is a vitally important lawsuit for all Americans,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “It will determine whether taxpayers can be forced to subsidize religious indoctrination and religious discrimination. The civil rights and civil liberties of every American are very much at stake.”

Ken Choe, a senior staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Project, said, “This case illustrates the all-too-real dangers of the government funding religious organizations without adequate safeguards. Alicia Pedreira was fired because she didn’t conform to the religious beliefs of her government-funded employer.”

There is no indication when the court will issue a ruling.

The measure states that anyone “cohabitating with a sexual partner outside of marriage” cannot be considered as a foster or adoptive parent.

Although the bill affects all unmarried couples living together, it is seen as specifically targeting same-sex couples.

Opponents of the measure accuse Republican Senate leaders of dirty tricks over the way the committee vote was taken.

The Justice Committee meeting was announced just as the Senate was being adjourned for the day. The bill passed 9-0 with no discussion.

Opponents said Friday that no notice was given that the committee was about to hold a vote on the bill. It passed unanimously.

“It was legislation by ambush,” said Sen. Kathy Stein (D) an opponent of the bill told the Louisville Courier-Journal. “I am disgusted.”

Last week, close to 200 people demonstrated against the measure at the Capitol, calling the legislation “a hate bill.”

The LGBT civil rights group The Fairness Campaign organized the rally.

“I find it very interesting that this was a secret meeting that very few people knew about,” Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign told the Courier-Journal. “This seems purposeful to exclude any real debate or discussion.”

Sen. Robert Stivers (R), a key supporter of the bill, denied there had been an underhanded move to hold the vote but admitted he did not know if notices of the committee meeting had been distributed.

The bill is modeled after similar ban that was approved by voters in Arkansas last November.

Rita Goodman and her then-partner Siobhan LaPiana planned to have a family.  LaPiana gave birth to two children, now aged 11 and 8.

Both women equally parented the boys, who love and rely on both of them as their mothers ,according to court documents filed by Lambda Legal which represents Goodman.

Before the birth of the first child, Goodman and LaPiana drafted and signed a parenting agreement detailing their intent to share all responsibilities of parenthood.

After the couple ended their 10-relationship, LaPiana began restricting Goodman’s time with the boys. 

In February 2007, Goodman filed a lawsuit, and in August 2008, the trial court ordered visitation for Goodman.

 LaPiana appealed, arguing among other things that Ohio’s antigay constitutional amendment prevents courts from entering orders permitting former lesbian partners to share custody, and that the court’s order unconstitutionally infringed on her right to autonomy as a parent.

“The Ohio Supreme Court already has said that Ohio’s antigay constitutional amendment does not prevent a same-sex couple from sharing custody of the children they are rearing together,” said Lambda Attorney Camilla Taylor in a statement.

” We shouldn’t have to address this hurtful and discriminatory argument any longer. The trial court below in this case did the right thing by focusing on the needs of the children, and awarding shared custody to these women based on more than a century of Ohio case law allowing such orders.”

Goodman said that the issue is about the well-being of the children.

“This has always been about my sons and making sure they can rely on both of their parents. I made a promise to take care of them always — and I’m just trying to make good on that promise,” said Goodman.

Last December in a similar case argued by Lambda, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a similar effort by a woman in a custody dispute with her former partner to use Ohio’s antigay constitutional amendment to sever the parental relationship between her child and her former partner.