Let's suppose, for a moment, that conservative critics are correct: Gay educators want to "promote homosexuality" in American schools.

So what?

That's the real question raised by the recent attacks on Kevin Jennings, the assistant deputy secretary of education who heads the federal Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools.

Fifty-three House Republicans signed a letter last month calling on President Obama to fire Jennings, who founded the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network in 1990. According to its critics, the network advocates the "gay agenda" - that is, it tries to make more people gay.

Of course, GLSEN and Jennings scoff at the charge. They say their goal isn't to promote homosexuality, which they deem a contradiction in terms: You're either gay or you're not, in their view, and no school program is going to change that. Rather, they're simply trying to create school environments in which gay kids feel safe from insults, harassment, and violence.

But that response gives too much away to the other side. By denying the charge that they're promoting homosexuality, gay activists implicitly endorse the idea that it would be wrong if they were promoting it.

Jennings acknowledged the contradiction in an interview in 1997, when he recalled the testimony of GLSEN officials before Congress.

"We were busy putting out press releases and saying, 'We're not promoting homosexuality,' " Jennings said. But one day, he hoped, "most straight people, when they would hear that someone was promoting homosexuality, would say, 'Yeah, who cares?' because they wouldn't necessarily equate homosexuality with something bad that you would not want to promote."

Clearly, we're not there yet. Consider the major complaint against Jennings, as detailed in the House Republicans' letter: Back in 1988, when Jennings was teaching in Massachusetts, a 15-year-old student told him that he had had sex with an older man. Instead of reporting this episode to authorities as a case of sexual abuse of a minor, the charge goes, Jennings simply asked the boy if he had used a condom.

To quell the growing GOP firestorm, Jennings released a short statement confirming the episode and apologizing for it. "I should have asked for more information and consulted legal or medical authorities," he wrote.

Again, though, this response concedes too much to Jennings' critics. Never mind that the boy he counseled now says he was 16 at the time, not 15, and therefore past the age of legal consent. If the student who confided in Jennings had been a 15-year-old girl who had told him she had had sex with an older man, would the GOP be denouncing Jennings for his failure to report the incident as child abuse? Would we be debating the episode at all?

It seems unlikely. The real question isn't whether Jennings and other educators want to promote homosexuality in schools or anywhere else. It's about being gay, period, and whether there's anything wrong with it.

And on that question, Americans remain deeply divided. Correctly or not, millions of Americans believe that we can - and should - promote heterosexuality in our society. That's the premise of the "ex-gay" movement, which tries to bring homosexuals back into the straight fold.

So I have a proposition, for both sides: Let's have a full and free airing of the question in America's high schools. Bring in speakers from GLSEN and other gay-rights organizations, and pit them against representatives from the Family Research Council and other conservative groups. And may the best man or woman win.

Maybe some formerly straight kids really will become gay, or maybe some gays will go straight. Who knows? I don't really care, one way or another.

Do you?

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory" (Yale University Press). He can be contacted at jlzimm@aol.com.