The Washington Blade reports today that an outfit called the Thomas More Law Center has replaced the much stronger and better-known Liberty Counsel in pursuing a battle against sex education in Montgomery County, Maryland, public schools.

Thomas More is assisting the national ex-gay advocacy group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and the local group Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum in a lawsuit to prevent suburban Washington, D.C., schools from teaching age-appropriate information and tolerance regarding sexuality — homosexuality in particular.

Thomas More’s online About Us statement positions the organization as a “sword and shield” of religious conservatives in a war against the advocacy of civil liberties. Among its advisory board members are Alan Keyes and other activists who advocate the governmental imposition, across the United States, of their own interpretation of Biblical law.

According to Wikipedia, the Center claims to be handling more than 120 legal matters in at least 27 states, and has a team of about 300 pro bono attorneys. The Center was co-founded in 1999 by Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, a conservative Roman Catholic, and Richard Thompson, who helped prosecute Dr. Jack Kevorkian for his role in assisted suicides. The Center has focused on advancing court cases on behalf of anti-abortion, anti-gay, and Creationist political activists.

Jim Kennedy, a member of a local coalition of parents and teachers called Teach The Facts that favors the sex-education curriculum, points out to the Blade that the More Center’s press release contains misinformation about the content of the Montgomery County sex-ed curriculum.

In a press release, the Law Center said the lessons wrongly teach that homosexuality is “innate,” anal sex is “just another sexual option” and students who hold “traditional religious or moral beliefs about homosexuality” are labeled homophobic.

Kennedy said the lessons do not label as homophobic those who object to homosexuality and note only that condoms should be used for protection during anal sex.

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