The College Fix

The Department of Education is spending nearly $2 million to study the ’empowerment’ of LGBT teens.

A professor at Boston College will study ways to promote the “empowerment” of LGBT teens with nearly $2 million from the Department of Education.

Psychology Professor Paul Poteat and the other researchers “will develop, refine, and conduct an initial pilot study of an intervention program for LGBTQ+ students,” according to the Institute of Education Sciences grant.

The initiative used is called the “Empowerment Program for Individual and Collective Health,” according to the Education Department grant. The researchers will work with Gender-Sexuality Alliance clubs over the next three years.

Boston College is a Jesuit Catholic university. The Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts are a serious sin. The Catholic Church also teaches marriage is between one man and one woman.

The participating GSAs will meet and organize activities to “guide students to reflect on and build self-awareness around their identities” and “facilitate action to raise LGBTQ+ awareness and affirmation within the school or community,” according to the grant.

Poteat told The College Fix via email that he does not see conflict between his work and the Catholic Church’s teachings.

“I do not identify as Catholic,” Poteat said via email.

“[H]owever I do believe that this work and its aims align closely with the Catholic Jesuit principles that are best highlighted in the mission statement of our School of Education and Human Development at Boston College,” he said.

These principles, as quoted by Poteat, are “to enhance the human condition, expand the human imagination, and make the world more just.”

“Many LGBTQ+ students contend with unsafe learning environments in school,” Poteat told The Fix. “Those who experience marginalization report greater school avoidance, poorer report card grades, and lower intentions to complete high school.”

“LGBTQ+ youth need tailored interventions to address their specific needs, build upon their strengths, and promote positive social-emotional and academic outcomes,” he said.

This sort of project has been the primary focus of Poteat’s past work. His research in “school-based experiences of sexual and gender minority youth” and LGBT clubs is highlighted in his biography.

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C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, had a different view on the project.

Doyle said the project’s goals were based on false assumptions about the struggles that LGBT students are said to be facing. He called it “appalling,” but “unsurprising” Boston College would be involved with this project.

“This so-called ‘Empowerment Program,’” Doyle told The Fix in an email, “is founded on the fraudulent premise that same-sex attracted students need special interventions because they face alleged ‘unsafe learning environments.’”

“The evidence cited to support this specious assertion are claims that homosexual students have higher drop-out rates, more incidents of truancy, and poorer overall academic performance than other students,” Doyle said.

He said that “sexual disorders afflicting these students” could be the reason, but LGBT proponents “always” blame the problems on “external and adverse socio-cultural conditions.”

Doyle said that “unsafe environments” means “any institutional reluctance to uncritically and unhesitatingly affirm” the sexual choices of LGBT students.

LGBT “advocates,” Doyle said, want to “capture the American educational system” and “make it an organ of LGBTQ ideology and propaganda.”

“[Boston College] forfeited what little remained of its Catholic identity many years ago,” Doyle said.  “What would be surprising, and unusual, and historic, would be a story about a BC faculty member who supported Catholic teaching.”

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