Although Montgomery County school officials have been making controversial new teachings on sexual orientation seem as if they’re optional, the reality is that all 10th-graders must take the class in question in order to graduate, officials said.

Schools chief public information officer Brian Edwards explained to The Examiner that the 18-week health course — which includes two hotly contested lessons mentioning transsexuality and bisexuality within a three-week unit on family life — is required.

Administrators have emphasized during meetings leading up to the approval of the new sex-ed curriculum that the lessons are “opt-in” — meaning parents must sign a waiver indicating it’s all right for their children to enroll.

Officials have stressed that it’s more of a permission-based process than “opt-out,” in which the student is in the class unless specifically requested not to be by a parent.

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But Edwards clarified that, more precisely — with regard to the sex-ed-included class — students can’t just pick and choose which parts of the course to study. So, essentially it’s an all-or-nothing mentality.

“If you choose to opt out of a lesson,” he said, using one of the two sexual orientation ones as examples, “you opt out of the whole course.”

And opting out of a required course, he said, means not graduating.

That notion makes the issue of the debated sex-ed curriculum important to all Montgomery County families with children in the district, curriculum opponents are saying, because they will be confronted with the teachings and expected to make a choice.

John Garza, an attorney representing Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, which sued Montgomery County Schools two years ago over sexual education teachings, said he feels that officials have not made this point clear enough and is hoping to educate parents on the reality.

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com