Fresno’s Armenian School Board President Needs Lessons in History and Tolerance

BY ARA KHACHTOURIAN

On Wednesday night, during a heated discussion at the Fresno Unified School District Board of Directors meeting, the board president Brooke Ashjian equated the LGBT community to Ottoman Turks who perpetrated the Armenian Genocide.

The discussion centered on the California Healthy Youth Act, a law requiring schools to teach medically accurate sex education, including lessons on birth control, abortion and LGBT relationships. Ashjian who has opposed the law and has been on a war path with the LGBT community and other city leaders who have not only criticized him but have called for his resignation chose to defend himself by equating opposition to his views with state-sponsored campaign to annihilate an entire race””the Armenian people.

In his remarks, Ashjian invokes his relatives whom he claims were subjected to the genocidal policies of the Ottoman Turks, making his statements absurd by equating a minority community to perpetrators of a crime against a minority population.

“It is sad, they like the Ottomans are trying to be the thought police,”