In the interest of fairness and balance, let’s all agree that homosexuality is bad.

At minimum, let’s agree that there are plenty of religious people who think it’s bad, and that their children have every right to make that point in public schools.

When people are this far apart, every act by one side is seen as a hostile move by the other. A "Day of Silence" to protest treatment of gays and lesbians is now followed by a "Day of Truth" to promote conservative religious views of homosexuality. A T-shirt proclaiming "Straight Pride" is worn to counter one professing "Gay Pride." These differences are deep and difficult to negotiate.

You know, I’m automatically suspicious of any article written by someone who’s authored a book called Finding Common Ground: A Guide to Religious Liberty in Public Schools, but I gave it a fair shot. Yet here, in the third paragraph, we’re already being asked to treat “Day of Silence,” which protests the treatment of the LGBT community—see: Matthew Shepard, who was robbed, beaten, tied to a fence with his own shoelaces, and left to die—with the same respect as “Day of Truth,” which serves no purpose (by the admission of its purveyor, the Alliance Defense Fund) other than to promulgate propaganda about a homosexual agenda.

Yes, those differences are deep. One is about tolerance and respect. One is about ignorance and hostility. One is about actual persecution. One is about a persecution complex.

For the process to work, school officials must be fair, honest brokers of a dialogue that involves all stakeholders. That means, first and foremost, that school leaders must refrain from choosing sides in the culture-war debate over homosexuality. If schools are going to find agreement on policies and practices that bring the community together, it won't be by taking a side and coercing others to accept it.

The only reason that someone, in this day and age, can get away with suggesting that public schools shouldn’t “choose sides” in a “culture-war debate over homosexuality” is because we have a government that flatly refuses to enact federal protections on behalf of the LGBT community. Consider how ridiculous it would sound to argue that schools shouldn’t choose sides about racism or sexism or hostility toward people with disabilities. It’s not that there aren’t white supremacists or misogynists or people who complain bitterly about disabled parking and ADA code requirements who have kids in schools that have been indoctrinated into their views, but they aren’t arguing to allow their kids to spout off racial separatist garbage, for example, because the law protects minorities, so they know they’d lose. Public schools aren’t required to remain neutral on these other issues—even though there are people who cite religion as the source for their retrograde notions. Not so very long ago, religion was invoked with regularity as a defense of racism, even among the mainstream. It wasn’t right then, and it’s not right now, irrespective of the underlying issue. The difference is that we have chosen to protect some people by law and have left others vulnerable to attack because we don’t consider them worthy of the same legal protections.

To avoid divisive fights and lawsuits, educators and parents must agree on civic ground rules to ensure fairness for all sides. After all, public schools belong to everyone. However deeply we disagree about homosexuality, the vast majority of us want schools to uphold the rights of all students in a safe learning environment.

Again, consider the absurdity if this were an argument for protecting the right of a student to argue for racial segregation. Would anyone take seriously the notion that a racist student’s right to grandstand his separatist views in a public school should be given equal consideration to a minority student’s right to attend a public school without being subjected to such harassment? My rights end where yours begin. A student has a right to express anti-gay sentiments from here to Kingdom Come, unless and until it begins to encroach upon another student’s right to be free of harassment. Within the confines of a public school, that space becomes severely limited. I can’t help but balk at the suggestion of someone who asserts an interest in seeing “schools uphold the rights of all students in a safe learning environment,” that we must necessarily (but—shrug—unavoidably) create a hostile environment for gay students in order to protect the rights of anti-gay students. It’s so easy to lay out the theory without considering the real-world effect on gay students of being subjected to didactic, anti-gay screeds from their classmates. And while it may be fun to pretend that preventing homobigot students from putting their bigotry on public display is just as psychologically damaging, I hardly think restricting the espousing of their philosophy to the other 16 hours of the day when they’re not in school will render their delicate souls irreparably shattered.

It isn't possible for us to reach ideological or religious consensus, but it is possible - and necessary - to reach civic consensus on civil dialogue.

I am, as ever, irritated by the subtle implications that this debate comes down to the morality firmly rooted in religion versus immorality rooted in religion’s void. Religion is not the singular source of morality, and so it should not be given special dispensation for its insertion into public debates, as if leaving out religion leaves out morality altogether. Civil dialogue would indeed be great, but in reality, it simply cannot include allowing students to parade around in “Day of Truth” t-shirts, handing out literature about the homosexual agenda, or giving “diversity week” speeches about how the Roman Catholic church thinks homosexuality is wrong. There’s nothing “civil” about any of those things, no matter how politely the shit is shoveled.

Perhaps what bothers me most, however, about this whole thing is the notion that has reared its ugly head in the evolution v. intelligent design fight, too—that religion has just as much place in public schools as science. Religion—and religion only—tells us that homosexuality is an immoral choice. Science tells us that homosexuality is natural and immutable. Public schools are meant to be interested in science, not religion. And as science does not accommodate this debate, neither should our public schools.