San Francisco
considers terminating Junior ROTC in high schools

A bill before the San Francisco board of education would terminate the Junior ROTC program in the city's high schools because it discriminates against gay students. The measure was introduced Tuesday by the board's only openly gay member, who says the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy conflicts with school-district policy upholding equal rights for gays, the Associated Press reports. "If the military said, 'You can't be openly Jewish, or you can't be openly Catholic,' I don't think we would have stood for it," board member Mark Sanchez told the AP. His bill calls "don't ask, don't tell" a "state-sanctioned act of homophobia. The bill proposes developing an alternative to JROTC that maintains the program's physical fitness aims but jettisons the ties to the military and its discrimination against gays. Some 1,625 San Francisco public school students currently participate in JROTC, according to the AP. If the bill passes upon a final vote next month, it may be the first action of its kind. A military spokesperson told the AP that no other school district has banned JROTC to date. (The Advocate)