The ultra-conservative Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA), despite a losing record, will again present an anti-gay ballot measure to voters this November. The measure would ban public school teachers from “encouraging, promoting or sanctioning” homosexuality in their classes, with a penalty of losing state funding. The OCA’s proposed measure does not prevent teachers from condemning homosexuality, and has been criticized for the damage it could do to gay, lesbian, and bisexual students, who are already at an increased risk for suicide. Oregon’s largest GLBT rights group, Basic Rights Oregon, is planning a grassroots campaign to defeat the measure. OCA’s last attempts at passing anti-gay ballot measures, in 1992 and 1994, failed. OCA also failed in ballot-measure attempts to restrict abortion in 1978, 1986, and 1990.
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