‘Well Maybe You Just Swayed the Kid to Go That Way’
A California school board president is under fire in his conservative county after making inaccurate comments about sex education, making offensive comments about LGBT people, refusing to apologize, and claiming his religious and free speech rights are being challenged. He is adamantly refusing to resign.
In a five hour school board meeting Wednesday that was open to the public, Fresno Unified School Board President Brooke Ashjian listened to concerned parents speak in support and opposition of him and his remarks.
It was Ashjian’s comments earlier this month to a local newspaper that created anger, pain, and upset throughout the school district. Included among his remarks were his belief that telling children being gay is OK can make them gay.
Ashjian had told The Fresno Bee his “biggest fear in teaching” sex education is “you have kids who are extremely moldable at this stage, and if you start telling them that LGBT is OK and that it’s a way of life, well maybe you just swayed the kid to go that way.”
That is of course false.
“It’s so important for parents to teach these Judeo-Christian philosophies,†he added, as if being LGBT is immoral. The Fresno Bee identified Ashjian as Mormon.
Wednesday night’s meeting became very emotional, with one person saying it made them sick to their stomach.
“Ashjian spurned demands for his resignation from people in the audience at an overflow board meeting Wednesday night, and equated LGBT activists, who have opposed him, with Ottoman Turks,” The Fresno Bee reports. “In a two-page letter that Ashjian read into the record, he said LGBT leaders were attacking his faith and trying to silence him and force him from his school board, tactics he said were akin to what the Ottoman Turks did to Armenians leading up to the 1915 genocide.”Â
A Trump supporter, Ashjian concluded his remarks by saying open debate is what “makes America Great.”
KSEE anchor Megan Rupe posted the text of his remarks to Twitter:
“These individuals who are personally attacking me and my religious foundation while demanding my resignation, I ask why?” Ashjian said in his statement, which he read aloud (video below). “Is it simply because I exercised my Constitutional rights of freedom of speech while I was doing my duty or isn’t something more nefarious, like simply desiring to muzzle anyone who dares not fall in line with the narrative of the day.”
“It is sad, they like the Ottomans are trying to be the thought police,” Ashjian said of LGBT activists. “They are trying to make people of faith second class citizens, as they seek to silence our voices in the public square. Just like what my grandparents and millions of other grandparents had to endure at the hands of the Ottomans before escaping to America.”
“I will NOT resign my position and I will not be silenced by bullies who want to control the public narrative by mischaracterizing the intent and meaning of my statements. My comments were not intended to offend anyone, but to simply express a concern. If we as board members cannot openly and honestly express concerns without being marginalized and labeled, then why do we even have a board?”
It’s important to note that no where in his remarks did Ashjian mention anything about the LGBTQ students he is supposed to be serving. He did not mention what effect his remarks might have on young LGBTQ children or teens, or what lessons might be taught by this very public display of animus against them.
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