They didn't even wait one month.

Not three weeks after citizens went to the polls to vote for George W. Bush-as much to protest downwardly spiraling moral values as over concerns about terrorism-the Montgomery County, Maryland, school board in my own neck-of-the-woods launched its homosexual-friendly curriculum for middle-schoolers. Turns out, according to several reports, including Washington Times reporter Christina Bellantoni's (see: "'Gay-straight' clubs in schools anger foes," Nov. 11, 2004), that a whole new wave of gay-lesbian clubs (read: glorified same-sex dating services) have been petitioning their "educational" institutions for inclusion in school-sanctioned activities, mostly at the behest of the Big Three activist organizations-the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), the Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Then, as if that weren't enough to make parents gag, the Pentagon decided it would no longer support Boy Scout troops on military bases.

Are these acts of desperation, coming so close to the election and the brouhaha over moral values in voters' choices of candidates? Or are such actions merely in-your-face, "take that!" temper tantrums calculated to tweak the noses of so-called "reactionary" and "dogmatic" moral-values folks?

If the intent is to deliberately offend, or more to the point, to have the "last word," as it were, the effort is succeeding. But maybe not in the way the sex educators, homosexual advocates, abortion-rights feminists and their various comrades among the counterculture-left expected.

Over the weekend, I was a presenter at a three-day conference sponsored by the Alliance for the Separation of School and State ("SepCon")-not to be confused with the Separation of Church and State. What fascinated me most was that folks I never would have imagined being there were in attendance. What's more, they were agreeing with the message, not bashing it!

Two weeks ago I wrote in my column that what may have triggered the moral-values backlash in the 2004 election was the Superbowl halftime fiasco starring Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, among other crotch-grabbing "entertainers." Specifically, I stated: "�it finally dawned on parents � that no matter how hard they try, no matter how much 'quality time' they spend with their children, no matter how 'involved' they are with their schools and communities, their kids still are steeped in filth, until and unless parents themselves decide to put a stop to it." I noted that Baby Boomers who may once have dabbled in Woodstock now don't like what they're seeing. I went on to describe a smorgasbord of "family life" and "health" curricula their youngsters are getting, ranging from blatantly homosexual texts like "Heather Has Two Mommies" and "It's Okay to be Gay"; to how-to-copulate manuals (complete with cartoon characters in coital positions and having erections); to a sex ed board game played with "sperm cards."

Now along comes Montgomery County, Maryland, which includes my home town of Kensington (made a national laughingstock last year for trying to ban Santa Claus), has approved a sex-education video for middle-schoolers that presents homosexual couples as actual families. For tenth-graders, a girl demonstrates fitting a condom onto a cucumber. According to a series of articles beginning November 11 by Washington Times reporter Jon Ward chronicling this outrage ("Sex-ed critics intend to fight,"), the curriculum reinforces the notion that sexual experimentation with members of the same sex is normal, that homosexuality is never a choice, and that same-sex "marriage" is legitimate.

At first, critics were dismissed as presenting a mere "minority report" (i.e., "minority opinion"), but in the ensuing days, meetings were held that allowed parents and citizens vent their fury. Of course, none of that will amount to anything in the end; school districts today do as they please. The final vote on whether to implement the program will come next summer (probably while most people are on vacation).

As usual, school officials and the purveyors of Montgomery County's sex ed program glossed over any actual description of the curriculum to parents, presenting only vague niceties. And although the school district says parents must provide written permission for their child to actually participate in the weeklong sex-education program, and that abstinence-only classes as well as an independent study options are offered as alternatives, lurid details concerning the "preferred" program (passed by a 6-0 margin in the school board) will be all over the school like a Viagra commercial. Parents who are opposed to this sort of thing won't stand a chance.

Meanwhile, across the state line, in Alexandria, Virginia, children debate the efficacy of fruit-flavored condoms. Teenagers are to understand that fellatio is not really sex (i.e., President Bill Clinton said so!). Even Texas Senator Ron Paul's language prohibiting federal funding for universal mental health screening (the New Freedom Initiative on Mental Health) was shut out in the Senate, thereby assuring that future generations of schoolchildren can be "evaluated" when they fail to buy into such politically incorrect notions-and maybe find themselves referred to mental health "counselors" to boot.

What parents are discovering, according to those I spoke with at the SepCon conference, is that there is no longer an "up-side" to placing their children in the public schools. Parents used to rationalize that they could provide their children a higher quality of life by working; that their job would supply youngsters with supplemental experiences and activities to augment their educations. But in the last couple of years, mothers and fathers have been disabused of that notion. Their children are, instead, coming home traumatized, lagging even further behind other countries in basic knowledge, and are caught between increasingly conflicting and incompatible authority figures.

Add to that the imposition of blatantly dishonest intellectual offerings, such as fringe "science" on global warming and evolution, sexology masquerading as "health" curriculum, and "history/civics" courses that have morphed into a advertisement for global citizenship, while omitting critical constitutional ideals like national sovereignty, self-determination, and the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. Moreover, parents are spending a whole lot of time trying to undo the damage inflicted by government "educational" institutions.

At least three parents at the SepCon conference expressed the view that the public school "needs to implode." I predicted the public school's eventual collapse years ago, even before the Columbine shootings, but parents themselves now seem to be recognizing that schools are interested only in the lowest common denominator, rhetoric at the federal, state and local levels notwithstanding. So, they figure now they might as well leave government schools to the irresponsible and negligent and see what happens.

Schools have children some six hours per day for 13 years, and they lobby continually to extend that time frame. Serious parents are doing the math, and they realize that it is no wonder their youngsters have nothing in common with them by the end of middle school. They know that parental "involvement" is desirable only so long as they are serving the cookies and the punch and acting as cheerleaders for whatever school activists want to dish out. But the minute a dissenter has a concern, or questions any aspect of the school experience, be it a curriculum, a questionnaire, or an activity, that person gets the cold shoulder.

Take Terri Leo, member of the Texas State Board of Education, one of the few school boards nationwide to adopt at least an optional abstinence-only "health" program for its schools. She dared to flout those pushing instead for comprehensive sex education by calling attention to a little-known fact in a November 14 op-ed piece for the Boston Globe: that there exist many sexually transmitted diseases (STDs like HPV, chlamydia, syphilis, herpes, chancroid) for which condoms offer little or no protection. She stated that "a whole generation � has received comprehensive sex education, yet STDs have continued to increase. According to a study done by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 43% of teenagers say they got pregnant while using birth control. Pregnancy can occur only during a few days of the month, but an STD can be contracted 365 days of the year. Comprehensive sex education curriculum hardly if ever mentions the fact that the healthiest choice for teens is to practice abstinence until marriage."

Even so, middle school "health" texts in Texas (specifically: Holt, Rinehart and Winston's text and a high school book published by Glencoe/McGraw-Hill) allegedly contain pictures of homosexual couples, select the term "partners" over "husband and wife," and never mention marital commitment. A 2003 Texas law supposedly prohibits the state from recognizing same-sex marriages or civil unions, as Terri Leo pointed out, but the counterculture apparently is free to overlook legislation it doesn't wish to honor. Texas Education Agency lawyer David Anderson warned the Texas board against forcing publishers to make changes as long as texts "cover the curriculum." Textbooks accepted by Texas tend to be adopted in other states.

The bottom line is that any individual who objects to anything is not considered "mainstream," even when they are on some kind of elite panel: a so-called Citizens' Advisory Committee, official task force, or even a state Education Board. This trend can even be seen in churches, such as the Episcopal Church, which affirmed last year openly homosexual bishop, Gene Robinson. Such boards and focus groups are all time-wasters that provide the illusion of parental, congregational or citizen input when, in fact, there is none. Any actual legal battle by individuals will be long and drawn out, so that in the case of schools, one's offspring will have graduated by the time the problem is resolved, even if a challenge proves successful.

"Every time the question of same-sex marriage is put before the public, the public emphatically says no," stated Boston Globe reporter and columnist Jeff Jacoby on November 7. He gave statistics from diverse states dating back to 2002 that substantiate his claim.

Mr. Jacoby's analysis underscores the point that no matter how hard parents try, and no matter how much time they invest in the decision-making process, they will not succeed if they are not on the side of the counterculture left.

The Montgomery County School Board, like most districts, contains only candidates backed by such institutions as Planned Parenthood, the Sex Education and Information Council of the U.S. (SEICUS), and the teachers unions, each of which has as its mission, among other things, to indoctrinate children into a life of promiscuity. Every other issue, from religious expression to sexual expression will necessarily be passed through a cultural Marxist/counterculture filter. And in the spirit of totalitarian societies, which are loathe to allow anybody to exit, parents will find out about unacceptable aspects of curriculum at the last minute, before they can yank their kids out and get them into a private school that doesn't cater to prurient tastes and counterculture chic. Thus the accelerating homeschool movement.

The counterculture forces are well-funded. They are superbly organized, complete with public relations experts and legal staff. They have non-profit and for-profit arms, and are connected to other tax-free, as well as governmental, organizations that use loopholes to lobby and proliferate their views.

These forces are also unabashedly brazen. For example, Toledo Blade (Ohio) staff writer Clyde Hughes reported that Jerry Steven Gonzales, 46, a South Toledo man who police say is HIV-positive, has been a volunteer for the Planned Parenthood of Northwest Ohio's HIV outreach center since 1997, talking to people at gay bars about the dangers of having unprotected sex. Surprise of surprises: He has been charged with unlawful sexual conduct with a minor after police found some 50 videotapes of him allegedly having sex with boys.

No doubt, this made him a good candidate for the outreach job in the eyes of Planned Parenthood. Mr. Gonzales pleaded guilty to a similar, misdemeanor charge in Michigan in 1989. The logic, of course, is no different from the one that insists homosexual troupe leaders are suitable candidates to lead the Boy Scouts-a child-sex-abuse setup waiting to happen, if there ever was one.

For years, traditionalist parents and educators thought that all they had to do was present logical, well-thought-out arguments, cite experts to back up their contentions, and provide reams of documentation. They thought that by soliciting free and open discussion, "a place at the table" would be assured. What was assured was their exclusion.

Like President George W. Bush, they made a show of reaching out to the other side, prayed for their enemies, and reasoned that all people needed was to understand each other.

But as President Bush is just now discovering, our counterculture adversaries understand us just fine. What we're getting is the rhetorical finger.

And parents, like the ones at the SepCon conference, are comparing notes.