The Scarborough Current should be embarrassed to have published the recent religious-right fundamentalist clap-trap written by Karen Vachon masquerading as an “editorial writer.” This is a personal attack on Dr. William Michaud, pure and simple, and is not only unjustified and irresponsible, but also lacking another key element – honesty.

Like Ms. Vachon, I attended the school board meeting last summer to discuss the sexual education curriculum at Scarborough High School. She is correct that the meeting was held before a packed house of concerned parents. What she does not portray is that by a roughly 2-to-1 margin, parents were there to express their strong support for Scarborough’s sex-ed curriculum and their concerns that a small group of fringe ‘parents’ were attempting to derail what many of us believe is a good and well-balanced program. After their campaign of lies and misinformation in the weeks leading up to the meeting (incited and spread in no small part by Ms. Vachon through her position at the Current), the abstinence-only, religious-right, Heritage of Maine “parent” group spent much of the evening looking shocked as a majority of Scarborough parents at the meeting stood up and spoke strongly in favor of the current program.

I use the term “parent” in quotation marks for the previously mentioned group, because it has come to my attention since the meeting that many of the parents in attendance who spoke out in favor of the abstinence-only, Heritage of Maine agenda do not in fact have children who attend the Scarborough school system. Rather, a number of these parents, including several of the more prominently featured speakers with the strongest opinions on this matter, were already home-schooling their children at the time of the meeting. This was not a case of “I’m going to home-school my kids if you don’t change this curriculum,” but rather was a well-planned, strategic attack by a group of people with a religious/political agenda who would like to force their views on the rest of society; in short, the “culture war,” up close and personal in Scarborough, Maine. Scarborough parents and administrators weren’t buying it, and a few days later, neither did the state of Maine Department of Education (Heritage of Maine’s abstinence-only program was determined by Maine not to meet Maine sex-ed curriculum requirements for public schools only few days after the hearing was held).

This issue has been addressed and decided at all levels by concerned parents and educators throughout Maine, and Ms. Vachon’s views are in the minority. Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, but when that opinion is expressed through revisionist history, lies, and personal attacks on Dr. Michaud, a good and decent man who has done nothing wrong, things have gone too far. Perhaps the Current could at least attempt to provide a more balanced viewpoint on this issue, and perhaps Ms. Vachon would be happier if she clicked her heels together and ended up in Kansas, where religious-based programs like abstinence-only sex education, creationism, and “intelligent design” have forced their way into the public schools. Meanwhile, I’ll take the real world here in Maine, and will continue to advocate for my children to get the best progressive, secular public education they can get in the nicest school we can afford.

Tim Kipp

Scarborough