Some PTAs protest gay group's ad

Some members of Utah PTAs are objecting to a scholarship program advertisement in the national parent-teacher group's magazine that was placed by Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbian and Gays.

Leaders of the Bountiful High School PTA have threatened to withdraw from the national PTA, and the president of the state PTA encouraged people to write the national office to complain.

"If you sit back and don't say anything — if you don't have a voice — it will just keep going," said Carmen Snow, state PTA president.

The work of the national PTA is about children, said Anna Weselak, national PTA president. Accepting the ad does not reflect a point of view or an endorsement, she said.

"I know there are PTAs who may not agree with everything we do as a national organization, but it's a very big country and there's a lot of issues we need to deal with," Weselak said.

In a letter to the national organization, the Bountiful High PTA wrote that allowing the ad to appear in a publication supported by local dues assumes Bountiful PTA's "support of 'gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning high school students and their supporters."'

"I don't want anything I say to come across as condemning people, individuals," said Rose Marie Murray, Bountiful PTA president. "But we do not support or encourage the promotion, the advertising, the encouraging of alternative lifestyles."

In explaining how homosexuality does not match the purposes of PTA, the letter said:

"Alternative lifestyles cannot foster intelligent cooperation of any sort between any groups interested in the education of children and youth because they are not scientifically sound. ... Adults who care about the future of children and youth wisely guide and direct them, acting as voices of morality, decency and standards to counteract the popular but immoral trends of society. In Bountiful, Utah, we value, stand up for and celebrate the innateness of biological gender and the decency and tradition of heterosexual relationships."

The founder of Bountiful High's first gay-straight student alliance called the letter hateful.

"I know that Bountiful is a very LDS city and the parents think that since it's a very LDS city the whole school is safe — they think everybody follows Christlike values," said Brendon Olsen, 19, who is now in college. "In real life you actually do have to worry about your sexual preference, sexual identity, gender identity, your race," suggesting those people struggle in the high school.

Earlier this year, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. signed a law requiring parental permission for students to join school clubs along with lengthy regulations that are intended to allow school districts to ban gay-straight alliances.