Perhaps you missed the story about a Naperville, Illinois elementary school where third-grade teacher, Nicholas Cosme, a 25-year-old man who “paints his nails like a woman does—and is teaching eight-year-old boys” in his class at Elmwood Elementary School to do likewise. According to the DuPage Policy Journal, he has asked his students for their pronouns, “suggesting the boys … might ask him to refer to them as ‘she.’” To top off his lesson, he read to his young students the picture book My Shadow is Pink, in which “a young boy who likes to wear dresses inspires his father to also wear a dress.”

No ideological grooming going on here. Move along.

In response to a parent complaint, the school issued a statement to the DuPage Policy Journal defending Cosme’s actions because they “align to Naperville 203’s efforts to cultivate a culture of inclusion that values the dignity and uniqueness of each individual.”

So, in the service of “inclusion” will Elmwood Elementary School introduce young children to polyamory? Zoophilia? Genetic Sexual Attraction? Kink? If not, why not?

What about parents who believe cross-dressing undermines the dignity of boys and men? How does Elmwood Elementary include representations of those people?

Perhaps you missed the story from Paterson Elementary School in Fleming Island, Florida, where last January, parents Wendell and Maria Perez were called from their 12-year-old daughter’s school following her second suicide attempt in two days. The parents were told that she attempted to hang herself in a school bathroom over her “gender identity crisis,” and that they weren’t notified earlier because of their Catholic faith, which the school rightly surmised would have led them not to affirm her gender confusion. The parents also learned that school counselor Destiney Washington had been secretly meeting with their daughter for months and facilitating her social transition at school.

Subsequently, the Perez’s found proper counseling for their daughter. Her sexual confusion resolved, she accepts her sex, and she no longer experiences suicidal ideation. The parents are now suing the district.

Florida father Wendell Perez tells the state surgeon general that Clay County District Schools secretly "transitioned" his 12-year-old daughter without his knowledge and "affirmed" a male name and pronouns, which contributed to her attempted suicide in a school bathroom. pic.twitter.com/VY8Le9KqCi

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) August 23, 2022

Perhaps you also missed the news story from Richard J Kinsella Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut about 77-year-old school nurse Kathleen Cataford who was suspended for a personal Facebook post that Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez described in a letter to the entire school community as “inappropriate,” “harmful,” “hateful,” and “inconsistent with what we stand for.” Here’s the allegedly hateful post:

Buyer beware. Investigate the school system curriculum … CT is a very socially liberal, gender confused state … As a public school nurse, I have an 11 yo female student on puberty blockers and a dozen students identifying as non-binary, all but two keeping this a secret from their parents with the help of teachers, SSW [social service worker] and administration.

Teachers and SSW are spending 37.5 hours a week influencing your children, not necessarily teaching [your] children what YOU think is being taught. Children are introduced to this confusion in kindergarten by the school SW [social worker] who ‘teaches’ social and emotional regulation and school expectations.

Science tells us that a child’s brain continues development into the early 20’s, hence laws prohibiting alcohol, tobacco, vaping and cannibis. But it’s ok to inject hormones into confused prepubescent children and perform genital mutilating surgery on adolescents! How incongruent is that thinking!

Which part of this is inappropriate? Is it inappropriate to expose publicly that teachers, social service workers, and administrators are conspiring to keep secrets from parents?

Which part is harmful? Is it harmful to warn parents that teachers are doing far more than teach the subject for which they were hired to teach? Is it harmful to point out the inconsistency in allowing prepubescent children and teens to make irreversible, life-altering decisions before the decision-making parts of their brains are fully developed?

Which part is hateful? Is calling the mutilation of children’s genitalia “genital mutilating surgery” hateful or true? If Torres-Rodriguez would spend some time reading the tragic accounts of detransitioners, she might find such a description true and accurate. If she has a tidbit of courage—which seems unlikely—she might even change her de facto policy of supporting social, chemical, and, presumably, surgical efforts to conceal children’s sex.

I will grant Torres-Rodriguez one point: the ideas expressed by Kathleen Cataford are very likely inconsistent with what district leaders stand for. They stand for deceit, hubris, and ignorance.

Let’s try two brief thought experiments:

1.) Let’s imagine that one day a Jewish girl from an Orthodox family decides to identify as Muslim. She changes her name to Aayat, which means “verses in the Quran.” At school, she tells her counselor and teachers that she wants to be referred to by this name because it reflects her authentic identity. She also requests a place to pray Dhuhr at its specified time near noon and a place to change into her hijab where there will be no biological boys. Finally, she tells her counselor that her parents would strongly disapprove of her trans-religious identity. In other words, her parents are not “safe.” Therefore, she wants the school to keep her trans-religious identity secret from her parents.

2.) A high school girl from a strict Muslim home converts to America’s civil religion: atheism. A long-time fan of actress Ellen/Elliot Page, she changes her name to Elliot. She changes from her hijab at school into typical American clothes, including shorts, short skirts, and figure-hugging tank tops. She changes into gym clothes in the presence of boys who pretend to be girls and use the girls’ locker room—a practice to which Muslim parents would strenuously object. She shares restrooms with those same boys. She requests that all staff (and peers) refer to her as “Elliot” and conceal their duplicity from her parents who would be shocked and angry with their daughter’s choices.

Some questions:

Would schools honor the requests of these girls?

Would parents object to schools accommodating such requests?

Since some schools today provide “transition closets” outfitted with gender-specific clothing for “trans”-identifying students to change into while at school, would schools provide “transition closets” for trans-religionists, replete with attire to match their new religious identities while concealing them from their parents?

There was once a time in American public schools when teachers served in loco parentis—in place of the parents. That is, schools assumed some parental “rights, responsibilities, and liabilities” during the time minor children attended school. Those rights and responsibilities were assumed to be delegated by parents to schoolteachers and administrators to ensure “student safety and supervision” while at school.

The doctrine of in loco parentis has morphed as teachers have expanded the areas of children’s lives over which they assume dominion, as teachers have grown in social and political power, and as they have redefined “safety” in accordance with their dogmatic sex/gender ideology.

Now teachers believe they have a right to “educate” the “whole child” which means teachers believe that the minds, hearts, bodies, and wills of other people’s children belong to them—the social constructionist “educators.” These presumptuous dogmatists believe they have dominion over what material may, should, and must be presented to children, including material that espouses—not objective facts—but arguable assumptions.

Jeff Berger-White, an English teacher at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Illinois, who fifteen years ago was teaching the obscene play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes until the community found out and whose wife, Juliet Berger-White, is an activist for “trans”-cultism, offers a glimpse into the hubris of teachers today.

In addition to teaching an obscene pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” play, Berger-White once claimed in the local press that it is the job of English teachers to challenge the emotions and morals of students, a claim that likely would surprise many parents.

More recently, in a Character Strong podcast about testing metrics, Berger-White made some revelatory claims:

I think school boards, I think administrators want something easy and quantifiable. They want to be able to say to their constituents, “Look, their reading scores have gone up. Look, the math scores have gone up.” But, um, what about our humanity? What about teaching empathy? What about teaching in this moment … the anti-racism movements across the country. …? I think all those things are essential and vital.

Were English, math, science, social studies, world languages, and P.E. teachers hired to teach empathy and “anti-racism”? Is that what parents expect them to teach? Is empathy—that is, identifying with someone and feeling what he feels—always good? Should teachers be teaching other people’s children to put themselves in the minds and hearts of people who experience disordered desires?

It is unclear what Berger-White means by “humanity,” but for many, affirming false, destructive ideas, as Berger-White does, erodes rather than cultivates our humanity.

Perhaps Berger-White should limit the scope of his endeavors to teaching students to communicate civilly and leave their emotional and moral development to their parents and those who share their parents’ beliefs and values.

And that would include parental views on what Berger-White and other leftists refer to as “anti-racism.” Parents might like to know if Berger-White is referring to the arguable critical race theory-derived ideas that racists like Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Kimberle Crenshaw, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Glenn Singleton profit so handsomely from promoting? If so, many taxpayers would heartily disagree that public school teachers should be teaching “anti-racism.”

While many parents value expertise, knowledge, and wisdom in their children’s teachers, Berger-White values “authenticity”—whatever that is:

I think we as educators need to be authentic. We all have a kind of classroom persona, but the closer our personas can come to our authentic selves, the better. And if we can find opportunities to share what moves us, what delights us, what saddens us, all the better. Because we model that, our young people see the adults in front of them every day. … When students trust us to be good … shepherds … they’re more likely to buy in.

All that palaver sounds admirable, but here’s the rub. What moves, delights, and saddens Berger-White may be things that do not move, delight, and sadden many parents. And those parents likely don’t want Berger-White socially constructing his preferences in their children.  C.S. Lewis argues that children must be trained to love that which is worthy of love and hate that which is contemptible. I suspect that C.S. Lewis and Jeff Berger-White might be moved, delighted, and saddened by very different phenomena.

Further, many parents do not view as “good shepherds” adults who share obscene material with minors on the public dime, who teach minors to “empathize” with those who embrace homosexual and “trans” identities, and who teach Kendi’s racist ideas.

Dogmatists like those found in Hartford, Fleming Island, Naperville, and Deerfield schools base much of their social constructionist activities on appeals to “safety” as redefined by them. They believe that “safety” is shaped by their arguable sexual ideology. A person or idea is “safe” if and only if it aligns with the unproven assumptions of leftist sex/gender ideology.

If an idea is deemed unsafe according to the nebulous criteria schools use and never share, then propagandists feel justified in banning it from the classroom, the library, and locker room usage policy. If a person is deemed unsafe, leftist activists who identify as teachers feel self-righteously justified in either firing them, muzzling them, marginalizing them, or, in the case of parents, deceiving them.

Parents, get your kids out of public schools, pronto. And churches, help make that possible.

The contexts and materials “progressives” use to warp the hearts and minds of children on sexuality are far too numerous to list. The pro-homo/pro-sex-impersonation propaganda campaigns in government schools, publicly funded libraries, and children’s programming are both bold and ubiquitous. The sexually disordered among us no longer feel the need to hide their intentions to lure children into their deceptive world. Today they can get jobs in elementary schools, public library children’s departments, and the colorful cartoon universes that thrive on Amazon, Netflix, Disney, and Cartoon Network from which they light up the viral world and darken children’s worlds.

By now virtually everyone has heard about the recent viral sensation, an episode of the cartoon show Muppet Babies in which the children’s classic Cinderella is retold as a “trans”-cultist fantasy for preschoolers. Baby Gonzo is depicted as a cross-dresser wannabe who longs to go the ball dressed as a princess. After a heartstrings-pulling scene in which a pitiable baby Gonzo sadly shares that he won’t wear the princess gown of his dreams because he doesn’t want to “upset anyone,” his “fairy ratfather” grants his wish to attend the ball in a princess gown. At the ball where he identifies as his drag persona Gonzorella, Gonzo is unrecognizable to his friends. After the ball when his friends discover he was Gonzorella and ask why he didn’t tell them, he says—pitiably again—that he didn’t want to upset them. Duly chastised, baby Piggy, apologizes and repents of her prior belief that princess gowns are for girls.

Ignorant wokesters with metaphysical delusions and bent sexual drives have tossed away those unnecessary trench coats of invisibility. They know that preschool is the ideal age to manipulate the emotions of children on complex issues—the nature and implications of which preschoolers can’t possibly understand—and wokesters know they can do their manipulating openly.

Tragically, Muppet Babies was not the first or only animator’s foray into children’s propaganda. Another such effort is Steven’s Universe on the Cartoon Network created by the well-known non-binary, bisexual Rebecca Sugar. The Peabody award-winning series works tenaciously to blur the distinctions between male and female and to normalize homosexuality.

NPR reported that “Rebecca Sugar is one of the many animators who’ve been pushing—successfully—for more overt queer representation in cartoons.”

The increase in the amount of “queer” representation is staggering:

A new database from Insider confirms more than 250 LGBTQ+ characters in children’s cartoons dating back to 1983. And if you look at the data from 2010 through 2020—especially in the latter five years—the representation of overtly queer characters skyrockets. …

They say what makes shows during this decade so special is that it’s not just a handful of tokenized, possibly gay characters living in a straight world. The baseline narratives of these shows have LGBTQ lives at the center of them.

Abbey White, reporter for the Inside database, waxes enthusiastic about “queer” propaganda for children:

“I think about Danger & Eggs, I think about She-Ra, Steven Universe [and] just how overtly queer these cartoons are. … That’s really exciting to see people queering their entire narratives in ways that I think reach not just children but a broader audience.”

Sexually perverse, age-inappropriate content on Disney and Netflix makes a huge cultural splash, while even more subversive content hides in plain sight in libraries creates barely a ripple.

Libraries in public elementary, middle, and high schools are brimming with books that affirm leftist views of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation, including some that would have been deemed obscene and pornographic before those terms were rendered obsolete by moral anarchists. An Internet search for Young Adult (YA) “LGBT” fiction—which is intended for children ages 12-18—yields countless lists of recommended books.

One influential proponent of YA “LGBT” fiction is 48-year-old homosexual author of several YA novels that affirm homosexuality, David Levithan, who serves as the senior editor of Scholastic, the well-known children’s book publisher.

A 2015 article about Levithan, who claims he’s been “out” since nursery school and has a homosexual uncle, confirms the role of YA fiction in transforming culture:

The rising popularity of YA novels has also increased their power as educational tools.

Ironically, in this article, Levithan writes this about librarians and teachers:

You’re not a librarian to keep books out of the hands of children. … [T]here are clearly many [teachers] who bring their own bias to work when they are not supposed to.

Is Levithan asserting that there are no “progressive” teachers who bring their bias against theologically orthodox Christian views to work? Is he claiming that librarians would happily include books about teens who resist their homoerotic feelings or about adults who have chosen to leave homosexual lives—assuming any such books could get through the bigoted, intolerant censors in publishing companies and book review organizations?

While “progressives” argue that all identities should be represented in library collections, they really mean all identities they deem morally justifiable. Stories about teens or adults who subordinate erotic predilections to religious convictions in publicly funded libraries? No way. Stories about homoeroticism, cross-sex impersonation, kink, and polyamory? Absolutely.

CAUTION: Pornographic cartoons of two women from Kobabe’s memoir.

Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer: A Memoir, which is carried in high school libraries, tells her peculiar tale of her journey to her “identity” as a genderqueer, asexual woman with a lesbian aunt and a sister who dates a woman who pretends to be a man.

The far-left American Library Association awarded Kobabe an Alex Award for her “graphic” memoir. Her memoir is graphic in both senses of the word. It’s a sexually explicit, 240-page comic book. Kobabe, who uses the “Spivak” pronouns ey/eir/em, also teaches art workshops to middle school children, mostly, she says, “AFAB” girls, which means “assigned female at birth.” Kobabe evidently doesn’t know that children aren’t assigned either a sex or “gender identity” at birth. That’s not a thing obstetricians do. Obstetricians identify the objective sex of babies at birth, a characteristic that never changes.

Judging from the flood of propaganda polluting culture, it appears oppressive “progressives” take far more seriously Aristotle’s oft-quoted statement, “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man” than do conservatives.  And this flood of propaganda aimed like Cupid’s arrow at the hearts of children—and, therefore, the heart of civilization—will not soon be stemmed.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Warping-Childrens-Hearts-and-Minds.mp3

With the kids home for Thanksgiving we were watching a movie and during one of the commercial breaks, a cosmetic company promoted its products with a slick, high-gloss advertisement. Inserted with the burst of dramatic head shots showing beautiful young women wearing lipstick, rouge and eyeliner was a quick shot of a man doing the same.

Because it passed so quickly, it took a second to register and I asked, “Was that a guy?” My daughter responded with, “Yeah. I don’t know why you have to make such a big deal about it.”

That moment was instructive for a couple of reasons. First, when I asked my daughter if she was okay with a man wearing make-up, she said that that’s just the way the world is, and wonders why I’m surprised.

She has a point. We’ve been force-fed the LGBTQ+ agenda for years, and it’s seeped into every conceivable corner of life. The rapid collapse of historical sexual norms since Obergefell has felt like a dam giving way under the weight of the floodwaters behind it, unleashing a swollen cascade that submerges everything in its path.

Transsexuals now grace the covers of lifestyle magazines that cater to women. They displace women and girls in competitive sports. Drag queens read to children at libraries across the country. Starting in kindergarten, the next generations of children are being taught that what was once considered perverted and shameful is to be affirmed and celebrated.

Businesses adopt policies and practices that provide benefits to same-sex couples. They aspire to achieve a “100” rating from the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, billed as “the national benchmarking tool on corporate policies and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer employees.”

Why should I be surprised that this is the world we live in now?

But I am surprised and that leads me to the second reason it was an instructive moment. The fact that my daughter didn’t react with aversion tells me that men wearing make-up has become normalized at a much faster rate than I expected.

Do we really need to be reminded that biological males cannot be female? Men in make-up are play-acting—they’re pretending to be women (and mostly ugly women, at that).

No matter how much lipstick, rouge, or eyeliner they wear; no matter how much they mutilate their bodies or how much estrogen they consume; no matter how much they sashay, flounce or pose in satin dresses—they remain biologically male.

It’s the science, stupid. Transsexuals either know they’re lying about their biology, in which case they need to be called out for the frauds they are; or they don’t know they’re lying about their biology, in which case they have a serious mental condition and need to be institutionalized. But in either case, why should the larger society accommodate them, much less on their terms?

I won’t. I won’t, first and foremost, because it denies God’s created order. He “created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen. 1:27) I realize that most, perhaps even all, transsexuals don’t believe that. But I do and so does God and I won’t compromise my convictions.

I also won’t do it because it is irrational and I won’t betray logic or common sense to accommodate their absurdities. It makes me an accessory to their delusions and makes them codependents in a dysfunctional relationship. I’m not playing that game.

And I won’t do it because I was born at the end of the baby boom after World War II. I am part of a passing generation that held to traditional cultural norms, rational beliefs and American patriotism. It may be that my generation is one of the last to escape the full indoctrination of the decades-long “march through the institutions” of Western—specifically, American—civilization developed by Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci more than 80 years ago. I won’t be party to the overthrow of that civilization.

Unfortunately the church has not escaped the boots of cultural Marxism marching through its sanctuaries, either. As Jude told his original readers, “certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.” (verse 4)

Instead of holding firm to scriptural teaching, some church leaders have sought to accommodate the alphabet mob in the cause of “winning the lost.” Just love everyone always, they say. They’ve lost their nerve to stand against the popular demands of the world and have compromised their faith. In their compassion they have forgotten that even Jesus declared that he did not come to bring peace on earth, but division. (Luke 12:51)

The church needs to regain its courage, stand for righteousness, and let God sort out the winners and losers. Parents need to take charge of their children and pull them out of public schools. Business owners need to take hits to their bottom line. Employees need to risk getting fired for refusing to toe the line on the Human Rights Campaign’s index.

When a man shows up in a cosmetics commercial peddling the latest beauty products, I express surprise, yes, but also revulsion and dismay over what our society has become. It’s getting late and we are likely past the point of no return. But we don’t need to succumb without resistance to the end.

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For years conservatives have asserted that homosexuals are pursuing children, and for years homo-activists have mocked that claim. Due to either their profound ignorance or their commitment to deception as a tactic for advancing their pernicious goal of normalizing homoeroticism, homo-activists misrepresented what conservatives were claiming.

Homo-activists falsely claimed that conservatives were worried that they would try to “turn children gay,” when, in reality, most conservatives were claiming that homo-activists were feverishly working through every cultural institution to eradicate conservative views on the nature and morality of homosexuality. In other words, homo-activists were pursuing the hearts and minds of other people’s children.

The same goes for “trans”-activists who, like homo-activists and their ideological allies, are hell-bent on using public schools to pursue the hearts and minds of other people’s children.

These activists teach other people’s children that homoeroticism and biological-sex rejection (i.e., “transgenderism”) are phenomena to be celebrated.

They teach them that there is no difference between a marriage between a man and a woman and an anti-marriage between two people of the same-sex.

They teach them that expressing the belief that homoerotic activity or cross-dressing and bodily mutilation are wrong is equivalent to bullying and the cause of teen suicide.

They teach them that men can be mommies, and women daddies.

They teach them that to be loving, compassionate, and inclusive, they must lie by calling gender-pretending peers by opposite-sex pronouns, and they must be willing to relinquish their privacy.

They expose them to plays, novels, and essays with obscene language that depict deviant sexuality positively.

They teach them that every person who believes homoeroticism and co-ed locker rooms are wrong is hateful—which includes many children’s parents.

Christian parents charged by God to train up their children in the way they should go have no biblical warrant for placing their children all day, all year in schools that refuse to recognize the immutability and profound meaning of sexual differentiation, particularly as it relates to modesty and privacy.

No Christian should teach in an institution that requires them to facilitate the body- and soul-destroying fiction that humans can be born in the “wrong” body.

No Christian teacher should refer to boys and girls by opposite-sex pronouns. If they do, they teach all students that the “trans” ideology is benign at best, if not good. They teach all children that it is justifiable to participate in the grievous fiction that subjective feelings about one’s sex have greater value and import than does one’s objective, immutable sex.

Hawaii just issued guidelines that direct schools on how “trans”-identifying students should be accommodated. The guidelines include the false claim that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibit “discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression.” They do not. They prohibit discrimination based on sex and sex did not then, nor does it now include “gender identity” or “gender expression.”

Here are some of the other guidelines:

1.) Schools should accept a student’s “gender identity” based on nothing more than his or her claim. No medical or mental health diagnosis or treatment is necessary.

2.) For students who will be pretending to be the opposite sex at school, there should be a meeting with school officials. Parents need not be included or notified about the meeting or the student’s opposite-sex impersonation. This directive applies to elementary, middle, and high schools.

3.) “Trans”-identifying students should be allowed access to opposite-sex restrooms, locker rooms, and hotel rooms on overnight school-sponsored trips.

4.) Schools should not require “trans”-identifying students to use single-occupancy restrooms or locker rooms.

5.) Schools may not share the true sex of “trans”-identifying students with students of the opposite sex whose privacy they are invading. Nor may schools share this information with the parents of students whose privacy is being invaded. So, a girl who pretends to be a boy should be able to use the boys’ restrooms—where boys use urinals—and no parents may be notified.

6.) Schools should make special accommodations for normal students who don’t want to share restrooms and locker rooms with peers of the opposite sex. In other words, normal girls will be forced out of girls’ restrooms and locker rooms so that boys with a mental disorder may use them.

7.) “Trans”-identifying students should be allowed to play on opposite-sex athletic teams.

8.) Students should be permitted to cross-dress at school.

9.) School staff and faculty should use the “preferred” pronouns of “trans”-identifying and “gender nonconforming” students.

Minnesota has just issued similar guidelines but include this startling statement regarding restrooms, locker rooms, and hotel accommodations for overnight trips:

Privacy objections raised by a [normal] student in interacting with a transgender or gender nonconforming student may be addressed by segregating the student raising the objection provided that the action of the school officials does not result in stigmatizing the transgender and gender nonconforming student. [emphasis added]

So, what exactly will happen if “trans”-identifying students feel “stigmatized” when normal students of the opposite sex don’t want to share restrooms or locker rooms with them? Will normal students be forced to share private facilities with persons of the opposite sex?

The purportedly Catholic governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) just signed a bill into law requiring schools to allow co-ed restrooms and locker rooms, and requiring teachers to refer to “trans”-identifying students by opposite-sex pronouns. The government is requiring teachers to speak falsehoods to and in the presence of children. Will theologically orthodox Christians comply? Will they bear false witness by pretending that boys are girls or vice versa? Will they render unto Caesar that which is not Caesar’s?

These things are happening in public schools all around Illinois, and where they aren’t yet, they will be soon.

Unfortunately for the countless children and teens who attend public schools, the 2017/2018 school year is just around the corner, and like dirty old men in trench coats lying in wait to expose children to sordid things, so too await public school administrators and teachers to do likewise. Unlike perverts who lurk in darkness, however, these government employees have no shame. They do their dirty work of exposing children to wickedness openly and call it “love.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie HERE.

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Correction: Macy’s has stated that it was the victim of a “prank” that involved a flyer falsely advertising an event involving Santa in “kinky boots” to be held at the State Street store in Chicago. IFI regrets including a discussion (since removed) of that flyer in this article about the troubling Kinky Boots performance in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

Like many Americans, you probably spent Thanksgiving Day at home with your family engaged in any number of family traditions, including watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.  So, did you enjoy the drag queens in “kinky boots” during the parade? For those who didn’t see the parade, take a few moments to watch this video clip of this controversial parade performance.

Macy’s invited the cast of the musical Kinky Boots to be part of their parade this year, apparently thinking the world needs to see kinky drag queens dancing in their boots in order to fully grasp what equality, tolerance, and Thanksgiving are all about.

The show centers around a drag queen who helps turn a shoe factory around with, you guessed it, kinky boots. In case you’re unfamiliar with this award-winning musical, you can click here to learn more. 

The musical has limited family appeal as most parents don’t want to take their children to see drag queens, so it was both curious and controversial when Macy’s invited the cast to take part in the Thanksgiving Day parade. Surely Macy’s management knew there would be many young children watching live and from home. Did Macy’s management care that exposure to drag queens would compel parents to talk to their children about a topic that many consider age-inappropriate? It’s one thing to put gender confusion on display for adults who at least have enough experience to understand what they’re seeing. It’s another thing to expose children to this confusion,  many of whom will have questions about why men are dressed as women.Is there no musical that Macy’s could find to illuminate the message of and spirit of Thanksgiving other than one that celebrates a behavior that God condemns (ie., cross-dressing)?

As with sympathetic portrayals of homosexuality, this effort is not about promoting tolerance of people. It’s about exploiting the concept of tolerance in order to expose children to the perverse sexual activities of adults in an effort to normalize such perversion.

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade also serves to inaugurate the Christmas season with an appearance by Santa Claus. Macy’s is willing to profit from the day set aside to celebrate the birth of Christ, while blaspheming God and insulting the beliefs of those whose hard-earned money they want. The hard-earned money of Christians is being used by Macy’s to normalize gender confusion and cross-dressing and to insult our God — who will not be mocked.

This is bad business and bad policy on the part of Macy’s. They are pushing mature adult conversations about psychological and moral issues on families at a time when families want to focus on celebrating Thanksgiving and the advent of the Christmas season.

Take ACTION:  Please click HERE to send an email or a fax to Macy’s President and CEO Terry J. Lundgren.  Let him know what you think of their decision to include a Kinky Boots performance in the Thanksgiving Day parade, then shop elsewhere.  You can also call their customer relations number at (513) 570-7000. 

It’s always offensive to push corrosive social and sexual agendas on children, but doing so during celebrations of religious holidays may be most offensive time of all.

Additional Contact Information:

Terry J. Lundgren, President 
Macy’s 
7 West Seventh Street
Cincinnati, OH  45202 
Phone: 513-579-7000
or: 513-579-7764
Fax: 513-579-7555

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You know how conservatives are always warning against non-discrimination laws that include sexual orientation and gender identity language? We try to communicate that not only are such laws unnecessary, but also pose a threat to other freedoms. For example, they will prevent a Christian school from requiring its teachers adhere to a statement of faith. Such laws also lack common sense and will lead to abuse by disturbed individuals that pose both privacy and safety concerns for people.

Adding sexual orientation or gender identity to non-discrimination laws eventually leads to allowing transgender and cross-dressing persons into bathrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities for the gender they are biologically the opposite of. So, in the end, cross-dressing men get to go into women’s locker rooms, and transgender females are allowed into men’s bathrooms.

Our opponents try to laugh it off, as if that sort of thing has never happened and will never happen. Enter Rodney Kenneth Peterson. A recent article explains that Mr. Peterson decided to get“dressed up in women’s clothes — and a brunette wig — and unsuccessfully attempted to sneak into student-only areas of a women’s residence hall on the campus of Loma Linda University in Southern California…Eventually, dormitory staff members noticed a cross-dressing, middle-aged man in their midst and confronted him.”

It has been determined that Mr. Peterson sought to take pictures with his cell phone of the females in the residence hall and that he has tried this stunt in other places. Evidently Mr. Peterson hasn’t been listening to the politicians that assure us these things never happen as a result of adding sexual orientation and gender identity to non-discrimination laws.

Another ill-effect of this language being added is the story of Don Ennis. Don is a middle-aged ABC News editor that believes he is a woman trapped in a man’s body. So he decided to become transgender, leave his wife, and change his name to Dawn. Don, err…um…Dawn of course used the women’s restroom and other facilities since “she” was obviously identifying now as a woman. The problem is that Dawn decided she was really a he and changed his name back to Don and apologized to friends after realizing that he is “not transgender after all.”

The problem in each case is that laws are being passed to accommodate a minority group that is very confused. If a person can wake up one day and conclude that he is a she or that she is really a he trapped in a woman’ body, the opposite can be just as true. Just as Don came to the conclusion that he was “not transgender after all” so can others now saying they are trapped in the wrong body.

Just as Mr. Peterson decided to cross-dress in order to fulfill his perverted fantasy, so others can abuse non-discrimination laws with sexual orientation and gender identity language to similarly take advantage of unsuspecting girls and women.

Add to this the very dangerous trend of adults encouraging gender confusion in children. Rather than recognize the natural curiosity of children which can lead to a temporary period of gender experimentation, parents are quick to conclude their sons are girls and their girls are boys. From there, with the encouragement of their parents, these children become locked into a pattern of behavior that at one time was classified as a mental disorder, but is now seen as “normal.”

So what happened to Don Ennis? He says he was diagnosed as transgender and began living accordingly. Now he says he is absolutely certain he was misdiagnosed and is “totally, completely, unabashedly male.” Was Mr. Ennis confused about being confused? Was he trying to take advantage of a politically correct corporate world in order to fulfill a perverted fantasy?

The danger with non-discrimination laws that include sexual orientation and gender identity is that they elevate one class of people based on variant characteristics over the rest of the population with non-variant characteristics. No African American has ever suddenly realized he was “a white guy.” Outside of surgical procedures even biology is non-variant. Homosexuality, transgenderism, and other sexuality based characteristics seem to be unstable.

Do we really want our daughters to become accustomed to grown men seeing them in the bathroom or the locker room? Where does that kind of “normal” lead? I submit that it leads to a society where our daughters become so accustomed to grown men seeing them in various states of dress and undress that they think nothing of sending pictures of themselves in their underwear, or even nude, to the boys in their school. Pornography becomes a routine part of life. Engaging in sexual activity with numerous partners of various sexual orientations at a young age becomes the standard.  

Is that really the society we want to leave for our daughters and grand-daughters?

Anyone who’s concerned about the increasing involvement of deviant sexuality activists in our public schools should pay close attention to recent events in Aurora, Illinois—events that may unfold further. Those who believe the issue is over do not understand the obsessive fervor with which these activists pursue their dystopian vision, including corrupting the hearts and minds of our children. 

To review, an administrator (Christine Aird) in East Aurora School District 131 worked behind the scenes last summer with an activist from the “LGBT”-affirming organization, ironically named the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, to come up with an unnecessary school policy that would have permitted gender-confused students to use the restrooms and locker rooms of opposite sex students. This administrator then misled the school board into thinking that such policy was required by state law. Public opposition to the policy resulted in the school board rescinding the policy four days later. 

Subsequently, the board formed an unelected, ad hoc committee to revisit policy for gender-confused students. On this committee sat two homosexual activists from outside Aurora, an activist from the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance who does not live in Aurora, and two cross-dressing men who do not live in Aurora. 

Well over 100 Aurora community members, most of whom were Hispanic, showed up at ad hoc committee and school board meetings to express their strong opposition to any policy that would allow students to use restrooms and locker rooms of opposite sex students. They also expressed opposition to non-community members serving on any committee that was creating policy for the district. As a result primarily of community involvement, the school board disbanded the ad hoc committee after just two meetings. 

In reporting on this story, Nathan Smith, public policy associate for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) managed to accomplish what I thought was impossible: diminish my view of GLSEN. His GLSEN blog post about this entire debacle was dishonest in two significant ways. 

First and most important, Smith attributed the decision of the East Aurora High School Board of Education to dissolve the ad hoc committee solely to the Illinois Family Institute. Although IFI appreciates Smith’s assessment of our influence, his assertion is untrue, likely deliberately deceitful, and unfair to the scores of Aurora citizens who were most responsible for the decision of their school board to dissolve the ad hoc committee. 

His assertion that IFI was responsible reflects either journalistic incompetence or deliberate dishonesty or both. The article I wrote in which I urged Illinoisans, particularly Aurora community members, to contact the board of education was published before the ad hoc committee had even formed. 

It was the Aurora community members who showed up at the second meeting of the ad hoc committee and a subsequent school board meeting who were responsible for the school board’s decision to dissolve the committee, and yet Smith never said a word about their attendance at these meetings and their vocal opposition to the controversial policy.  It’s mind-boggling that anyone reporting on this event would fail to mention that over 100 community members attended the meeting and opposed both the policy and the composition of the ad hoc committee.

It’s obvious why Smith would omit these inconvenient truths from his blog post. It serves GLSEN’s strategic purposes to conceal community opposition to the perverse goals of deviant sexuality advocates—goals that GLSEN relentlessly promotes. It also serves GLSEN not only to distract the public’s attention from the effectiveness of community involvement but to drum up hatred against IFI. Although, I understand Smith’s strategic reasons for his startling omissions, I would hope that a commitment to truth and accuracy would supersede GLSEN’s strategic interests. 

Second, Smith erroneously claims that the East Aurora School Board disbanded “efforts to protect” gender-confused students. What the school board did was disband the committee on which multiple activists who were not Aurora community members were serving and which the community opposed. Smith assumes that the only way to protect students who suffer from gender confusion is to maintain a committee composed of unelected, non-community members; to accept his ontological and moral presuppositions about gender confusion; and to enact policy with which he agrees. In a diverse world, however, there are multiple, competing visions of how best to respond to and protect those who experience gender confusion. 

One final point, unlike the “progressive” activists who actually served on the ad hoc committee while not living in Aurora, I only wrote about the story, as did homosexual and gender-confused activists all over the country. No IFI employee even attended a meeting of the school board or ad hoc committee.

While media pundits and liberal activists feign “concern” about the prominence of “social issues” in the GOP primary race for president, liberal activists tirelessly work to advance their social agenda. Whether it is the mandate from Washington D.C. that requires all healthcare insurance plans to provide free contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization services or the introduction of a “same-sex marriage” bill in Springfield merely nine months after “civil unions” became legal in Illinois, the Left aggressively promotes its social agenda, often with the approval of the mainstream media.

Lesbian activist and recently appointed — not elected — StateRepresentative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) is fast becoming Illinois’ champion of all things liberal. Leftwing zealot Cassidy is co-sponsor of the following bills: “same-sex marriage” (HB 5170), universal health care (HB 311), “medical” marijuana (HB 30), “comprehensive” sex education (HB 3027), a two percent sales-tax increase on firearms ammunition (HB 5167), a resolution to support the Occupy protesters (HR 610), and chief sponsor of another onerous “bullying” bill (HB 5290), which I will address in a future IFI E-Alert.

But it is Rep. Cassidy’s sponsorship of a legislative proposal that would add Gender Identity Disorder (euphemistically referred to as “gender identity”) to the existing “hate crime” law in Illinois (HB 4725) that is the subject of this article.

Enumerated “hate crime” laws are intellectually and ethically flawed and dangerous. This proposed amendment would only make a bad law worse.

It is important to remember that opposition to hate crime laws does not constitute endorsement of criminal acts committed against anyone. One can oppose both criminal acts of all kinds and the pernicious purported solution of hate crime laws, which pose a serious threat to liberty.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact your state representative to ask him/her to oppose HB 4725 and the addition of Gender Identity Disorder to existing hate crime law. You can also call the Springfield switchboard at (217) 782-2000 and speak to your local representative’s administrative aide about your concerns with this proposal.

It is interesting to note that this bill was originally heard in the Judiciary II committee last Friday, but failed by a vote of 2 yea, 2 nay and 3 present.  Yesterday, however, two of the lawmakers who voted “present” [Reps. Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago) and Esther Golar (D-Chicago)] were substituted by Rep. Toni Berrios (D-Chicago) and the chief sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Cassidy. Obviously, Rep. Cassidy, who was appointed to the General Assembly last summer, has enough clout with Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) for this kind of maneuvering. This exposes Madigan’s eagerness to cater to the aggressive efforts of homosexual activists to promote their “social issues” in the General Assembly.

Problems with hate crimes laws in general:

• American jurisprudence traditionally and rightly takes into account the mens rea, or state of mind, of perpetrators of crimes. In the prosecution and sentencing of crimes, we take into account whether the perpetrator was negligent, reckless, knowing, or purposeful. These categories reveal that our system takes into account the perpetrator’s mental state or the degree of intentionality with regard to his or her actions.
  
  In contrast, hate crime laws are concerned not with the perpetrator’s mental state with regard to his or her actions, but with the beliefs, feelings, or values that impel a particular criminal act. Hate crime laws depend on an evaluation of what the perpetrator believed to be true of the victim, and whether he or she acted because of that belief. This constitutes the most troublingly intrusive form of Big Brother thought control.
  
  There is no ethical justification for meting out more severe punishments for identical actions based on the beliefs, feelings, or values of the perpetrator. The beliefs, feelings, and values of citizens — even beliefs, feelings, and values that society or some segment of society views as erroneous — should be off-limits to the law.
  
  The enhancement of punishments based on the beliefs, feelings, or values of perpetrators opens the door to unconscionable government intrusion into the minds and hearts of citizens. Such intrusion into and evaluation of the beliefs, feelings, and values of citizens is inappropriate in regard to any conditions, including conditions that have no moral implications, but it’s even more problematic when it pertains to volitional behavioral conditions of which questions of morality are central (e.g., homosexuality, cross-dressing).

• The purpose behind enhanced punishments for particular beliefs, feelings, or values is to eradicate those beliefs, feelings, or values, which is decidedly not the role of government or the law.

• Equality before the law is a principle upon which this country is founded. That principle is undermined by establishing particular groups as more worthy of protection than others. Our legal system is based on punishing behavior, not selecting out particular victims for special treatment. Preferential treatment for one group, particularly a group that is constituted my subjective desires and volition, establishes a troubling precedent.

• Preferential treatment for one group will exacerbate rather than reduce inter-group tensions and hostilities.

• Establishing particular groups as deserving of special protections, preferential treatment before the law or establishing other groups as deserving of harsher punishments for committing the same criminal act because of their beliefs, feelings, or values creates a social and political climate that will affect the administration of justice.Imagine a scenario in which the victim of a mugging is a cross-dresser and the perpetrator is known to hate cross-dressers, but the perpetrator had not committed the crime because of his hatred for cross-dressing. Rather, he had committed it because the cross-dresser was alone and appeared to be wealthy. Could the perpetrator be treated fairly before the law? Should his feelings about cross-dressers be the concern of the government? Would the kind of politically charged legal context we are creating with laws that evaluate feelings ever concede that such feelings did not play a role in the commission of the crime? What crimes are prosecuted, and what sentences are levied become political acts.One writer explains this:

Prosecution is selective. This means that the district attorney or prosecutor decides which cases to pursue and which to dismiss. They also decide which charges to file. In most cases this is mainly about expediency, but there is always an element of politics involved. When it comes to hate crimes, the political element grows immensely in a potential prosecution. This is because the hate crime casts an offense against an individual or small group of individuals as an offense against an entire demographic subset.

Problems with the inclusion of the term “gender identity”:

• The term “gender identity” is a biased, non-neutral, political term that was created to disassociate certain behaviors (e.g., cross-dressing) from the psychological disorder that impels them. The neutral terms are “gender dysphoria” and Gender Identity Disorder. We object to the inclusion of “gender identity” because embedded in it are a number of non-factual assumptions about the nature of gender dysphoria and the morality of particular behaviors associated with gender dysphoria and Gender Identity Disorder.

• This term “gender identity” was invented as a rhetorical tool to legitimate or normalize behaviors that citizens have every right to view as disordered and immoral.

• The term “gender identity” was invented as a rhetorical tool to stigmatize those who view gender aberrant behaviors as disordered and immoral.

• Making possible enhanced punishments for crimes committed against those who experience gender confusion raises the question of whether those who experience other disorders/conditions that have volitional behavioral implications will demand inclusion of their conditions in enumerated hate crimes laws.

• Using laws to make social, moral, and political statements about moral beliefs that one group doesn’t like is unethical and dangerous.

Conclusion:

We are becoming a society increasingly removed from fundamental American principles of justice. The law is being used to treat people differently depending on their group membership and to invade the thoughts minds and feelings of people, all in the service of transforming the social, moral, and political beliefs of Americans.

Bullying in schools is a serious problem that must be addressed. In a misguided, poorly reasoned attempt to address it, Illinois legislators recently passed the disastrous “School Anti-Bullying Act” (SB 3266).

The problem of bullying did not necessitate any new state laws in that virtually every school in the state has more than adequate anti-bullying policy. The problem is not with a lack of policy, and the solution is certainly not this new, poorly constructed law.

For those who naively believe that “anti-bullying” policies, programs, and legislation are centrally about ending bullying, please note where and when Governor Pat Quinn signed into law the Illinois “School Anti-Bullying Act.” The symbolism of the time and place of the signing ceremony points to the real purpose of the legislation, which is to exploit legitimate anti-bullying sentiment and Illinois public schools to undermine traditional beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder. If this legislation were not a Trojan Horse for getting homosexuality-affirming resources into public schools and were truly about addressing all forms of bullying, why would Quinn sign it into law on the Sunday morning of the Chicago “gay pride” parade, and why hold the ceremony at Nettelhorst Elementary School — the Chicago elementary school that has marched in the “gay pride” parade for two years — which happens to be located in the homosexual neighborhood called Boystown?

SB 3266 was initiated by the homosexual advocacy group Illinois Safe Schools Alliance (ISSA), which grew out of the unholy alliance of the Chicago chapter of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and the Coalition for Education on Sexual Orientation. According to the homosexual newspaper the Edge, “ISSA and its allies and predecessors worked more than a decade to get the legislation passed.” ISSA Executive Director Shannon Sullivan praised the passage of this legislation. You may recognize this name: Shannon Sullivan is the lesbian who has been working to introduce resources that affirm homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder to elementary school children in Oak Park.

Below are some excerpts from the actual text with the most problematic language emphasized:

Bullying on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, physical or mental disability, military status, sexual orientation, gender-related identity or expression….

“Bullying” means any severe or pervasive physical or verbal act or conduct, including communications made in writing or electronically, directed toward a student or students that has or can be reasonably predicted to have the effect of one or more of the following:

…

causing a substantially detrimental effect on the student’s or students’ physical or mental health….

substantially interfering with the student’s or students’ academic performance; or substantially interfering with the student’s or students’ ability to participate in or benefit from the services, activities, or privileges provided by a school….

Bullying, as defined in this subsection (b), may take various forms, including without limitation one or more of the following: harassment, threats, intimidation, stalking, physical violence, sexual harassment, sexual violence, theft, public humiliation, destruction of property, or retaliation for asserting or alleging an act of bullying. This list is meant to be illustrative and non-exhaustive….

Each school district and non-public, non-sectarian elementary or secondary school shall create and maintain a policy on bullying, which policy must be filed with the State Board of Education.

This legislation is disastrous for two reasons.

First, it is disastrous because it is an “enumerated” law which means it includes the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender-related identity or expression” (i.e., “transgenderism,” “transsexuality,” and cross-dressing) in the list of conditions for which students cannot be bullied. Why, in a non-exhaustive list that omits other conditions for which students are bullied, would these two be specifically named? Do our legislators and the crafters of this legislation actually expect the public to believe that there are more students bullied for their same-sex attraction or cross-dressing than for being shy, socially awkward, impulsive, overweight, studious, or athletically challenged? And why not use the proper term for “gender-related identity or expression” which is Gender Identity Disorder (GID)?

The answer is that the motives behind both the inclusion of these particular terms as well as the refusal to use the correct term, GID, are wholly political. Those who proposed and promoted this legislation are seeking to end bullying based on “real or perceived” homosexuality or GID by transforming the moral and political views of students. This new law with its inclusion of the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender-related identity and expression” will be used to introduce resources that implicitly and explicitly affirm homosexuality and GID in even elementary schools and will be used to simultaneously censor resources that espouse traditional views.

Second, it is disastrous because of its ambiguity. For example, the bill identifies bullying as “any severe verbal conduct that can be reasonably predicted to cause a substantially detrimental effect on a student’s mental health.”

• How is the vague phrase “substantially detrimental effect” defined? If a teacher brought in two scholars to debate same-sex adoption and one of the conservative scholar’s arguments was that homosexual acts are inherently morally flawed, could a homosexual student claim that he experienced a substantially detrimental effect on his mental health? Or what if a classmate made such a point in a classroom discussion?
• Do athletic codes that prohibit genetic males from joining the girls’ swim team “substantially interfere” with the ability of a boy who has GID to “participate in the activities provided by the school”?
• What if a teacher in order to have students study both sides of the public debate on same-sex marriage assigned reading from conservative scholars or columnists that asserted that same-sex marriage should not be legalized because homosexual practice is not moral? Could a homosexual student claim that he was publicly humiliated?
• Does this new legislation render illegal a high school dress code that prohibits boys from wearing lipstick and dresses to school?
• If a school counselor were to provide a student or his parents with information about GID counseling, could that be considered gender identity discrimination or bullying if the student claimed the provision of such information humiliated him or had a detrimental effect on his health?
• If a school prohibited a boy with GID from using the girls’ bathrooms, could the school be found liable for violating this law?
• Does this require all public and private non-religious schools to create policy on bullying that specifically mentions “sexual orientation” and “gender-related identity and expression”?

Since the list of bases on which bullying is prohibited is deliberately “non-exhaustive,” what is the justification for the exclusion of other conditions for which students may be bullied? The current legislation gives examples from three broad categories of conditions but offers no reasons for the inclusion of some conditions and the exclusion of others:

1. Disorders (e.g., GID): Why does the bill include only one disorder (i.e., GID) while excluding other disorders, like Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hyper-Active Disorder (ADHD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), anorexia, bulimia, and Aspberger’s Syndrome, all of which can lead to behaviors for which kids are bullied? And why does the bill not use the correct designation, Gender Identity Disorder, rather than the politically biased terms “gender-related identity and expression”? It seems likely that there are more students in public schools who are ridiculed for behaviors related to ADD, ADHD, or Aspberger’s Syndrome than there are students who are ridiculed for behaviors related to GID.

The inclusion of only this one psychological disorder and the failure to use the correct designation reflect the acceptance of particular assumptions regarding the nature and morality of cross-dressing that are controversial and unproven. The use of the politically biased phrase, “gender-related identity and expression” exposes the political nature of this bill and the influence of the “transgender”-affirming Illinois Safe Schools Alliance in the creation of this legislation.

2. Conditions centrally defined by impulses and volitional behavior that carry moral implications (e.g., “sexual orientation” and Gender Identity Disorder): Why does the bill exclude other behaviors that many consider immoral and for which kids may be bullied, like “sexting,” aggression, stealing, plagiarizing, drug use, and promiscuity? For example, students who use drugs are called “druggies” and “stoners,” and girls who are promiscuous are called “sluts” and “hos.” Obviously, schools no more need policy that specifically mentions homosexuality to protect homosexual students than they need policy that mentions promiscuity in order to protect promiscuous students.

The reason that no other conditions that are centrally defined by desire and volitional acts that many deem immoral are included is that the crafters of this legislation seek to use law to promote the unproven belief that homosexuality and GID are analogous to race. By including these conditions in a list of morally neutral conditions, they seek to reinforce implicitly their false assumption that homosexuality and GID are morally neutral. Indeed, the use of the political term “sexual orientation,” which embodies the ideas of biological determinism, immutability, and moral neutrality, rather than “homosexuality” further exposes the political nature of this legislation. When crafting their own policy, schools should replace “sexual orientation” with the less political term “homosexuality.” (Further, when replacing the term “sexual orientation,” there is no reason to add the term “bisexuality,” because no one is bullied for the heterosexual part of bisexuality.)

3. Conditions that carry no moral implications (e.g., race, sex, and disability): the crafters of this bill excluded other morally neutral conditions for which far more students are bullied, like obesity, nearsightedness, farsightedness, acne, speech impediments, shyness, social awkwardness, or lack of athletic ability. These omissions further reveal the political nature of this legislation.

Focus on the Family’s anti-bullying project, True Tolerance, warns against the inclusion of specific categories:

Listing certain categories creates a system ripe for reverse discrimination, sending the message that certain characteristics are more worthy of protection than others. Instead of bringing more peace and unity, this can politicize the school environment and introduce divisiveness among different groups of students and parents.

A more general, and therefore more inclusive, description would be far superior. It’s too bad Illinois legislators didn’t consider the apolitical, concise, and inclusive anti-bullying policy created by the Alliance Defense Fund.

The new Illinois law requires the creation of a fifteen-member Task Force whose responsibility it will be to make recommendations “for preventing and addressing bullying in schools in this State.” The Task Force is required by this bill to include a high school or college student who has been bullied. This student should be someone who has been bullied for characteristics such as race or disability that have no behavioral manifestations about which there is moral controversy.

The Task Force must also include representatives from organizations that address bullying. To avoid yet even more policy blunders, these representatives should be from organizations that are not centrally concerned with the partisan socio-political goal of normalizing homosexuality. To avoid the appearance of being a tool for the homosexual movement, the Task Force should exclude representatives from GLSEN and the Safe Schools Alliance or balance them with representatives from conservative organizations like IFI.

So far only twelve states, including, unfortunately, Illinois, have anti-bullying legislation that specifically mentions “sexual orientation” and “gender identity/expression.” The inclusion of these terms in anti-bullying policies and legislation allows homosexualists to use them as cultural battering rams to destroy First Amendment speech and religious protections. The central purpose of the inclusion of these terms in legislation and policy is not to protect homosexuals and “transgenders” but to censor the expression of traditional moral beliefs and ultimately eradicate them.