Instead, Obama wants to provide government daycare for all preschoolers who live in households where the income is below approximately $47,100. He doesn’t call it daycare or baby-sitting (which is a more accurate term); he calls it early childhood education.

Early childhood education means programs for kids from birth to age three (a massively expanded Early Head Start, home visits by nurses, parental education, and health services), more of the existing Head Start (mostly for three-year-olds), more “high-quality pre-school” for four-year-olds available to every child in America, and full-day kindergarten for all.

Obama went to College Heights Early Childhood Learning Center near Atlanta to formally unveil his extravagant program. He said, “Let’s do what works and make sure none of our children start the race of life already behind.”

The daycare advocates like to cite as models for success the so-called Perry Preschool Project and the Abecedarian Project. Those two projects took place a half-century ago, using highly trained teachers under optimum conditions; one project studied only 58 3- and 4-year-old children, and the other only 57.

The proclaimed purpose of Pre-K Ed is to close the gap between kids from high-income and low-income households. The defect in Obama’s announcement is that there is no evidence that Pre-K schooling can or will accomplish that – it’s not a program “that works.”

The federal program called Head Start was created in 1965 as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. It has been running nearly 50 years, now costing $23,000 per student, and incurring a total expense of $150 billion, but it still does not provide promised benefits.

Obama likes to say he is guided by “the science,” and he claims that “study after study” shows every dollar of Pre-K “investment” (that’s the liberals’ synonym for taxes) saves seven dollars later on. Obama’s falsehood is easily refuted.

In fact, all studies show that Head Start and all the early interventions do not achieve what they promised, and any benefits “fade out” by the third grade. His own Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did an important Head Start Impact Study tracking the progress of 3- and 4-year-olds from entering Head Start through kindergarten and first grade, and then a follow-up study on the students’ performance through the end of the third grade.

The conclusion was that Head Start had little to no effect on cognitive, social-emotional or health outcomes of participating children. The HHS report was released on the Friday before Christmas, hoping to avoid press coverage and to minimize public attention.

The principal goals of the billions of federal tax dollars poured into public schools during the George W. Bush Administration were to raise U.S. scores on international tests and to close the gap between high-income and low-income students. All that spending was a failure on both counts.

Head Start was based on the assumption that government schools can compensate children for the disadvantage of being poor. It’s time to face up to the fact that children are poor mainly because they don’t have a father provider-protector, and the problem we should address is the decline in marriage.

Obama’s Pre-K proposals are just a reprise of the perennial feminist demand for government-paid daycare. The feminists believe it’s part of the war on women by the patriarchy for society to expect mothers to care for their children, and they should be relieved of this burden by the taxpayers.

Can you believe? The feminists are still whining about President Richard Nixon’s 1971 veto of the Brademas-Mondale Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would have made daycare (now called Pre-K) a new middle class entitlement. A feminist article in the Feb. 14, 2013 New York Times claimed that Obama’s Pre-K proposal is a resurrection of Walter Mondale’s bill that was defeated under a tsunami of public opposition.

The feminists are thrilled that Obama has picked up where Mondale left off 42 years ago. Remember Mondale? He was defeated by Ronald Reagan back in 1984.

The real difference between high-achieving and low-achieving children is whether or not they live in a traditional family. There is no substitute for the enormous advantage to children of growing up in a home with their own mother and father.

A better formula for helping kids to achieve in school would be to stop giving financial handouts that operate as incentives to women to have babies without marriage.

Parents, grandparents, and concerned taxpayers take notice! As your children start off a new school year, take time to get to know what’s going on in your local public schools.

Your local public schools are supposed to be places where young minds are taught the basics-reading, writing, and arithmetic — and how to think critically.

But, increasingly, they are becoming institutions where liberal and even radical social agendas are implemented, designed to undermine the truths we teach our children at home and church.

Today, more than ever, parents must take to heart their God-given responsibility to guide their child’s education and moral training.

Activist administrators, faculty, and school board members work tenaciously to implement radical social views through curricula, policy, and the professional development opportunities they provide to staff and faculty, all at taxpayer expense. They work to undermine our deeply held beliefs using our hard-earned money.

Organizations such as the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) constantly pressure school administrators and teachers to use the classroom to indoctrinate students into accepting homosexual behavior as just another healthy and moral option, demonizing traditional beliefs in the process.

Innocuous sounding acronyms like “Club SODA (Sexual Orientation Diversity Awareness), Unitown, and SAGA (Straight and Gay Alliance) mask the subversive goals of gay and straight alliances (GSAs).

GLSEN also pressures schools to observe various “days of action,” such as “No Name Calling Week,” the “Day of Silence,” and the “Transgender Day of Remembrance.” These political events are used to get the attention of all students and implicitly convey the message that participating schools support homosexual behavior.

Public school students everywhere are being bombarded with immoral messages. These messages promote homosexuality, promiscuity, profanity, abortion, and euthanasia and run counter to the religious beliefs and moral values of many families.

Even more troubling, through both our legislatures and our courts, public schools have been granted authority to disregard parental beliefs and values.

Just as societal values have been transformed by relentless exposure to left-leaning media messages and homosexual activism, so too are our children’s beliefs being transformed by the biased curricula and pervasive censorship of conservative ideas they encounter in school.

If you care about your children, your grandchildren, or your neighbor’s children, we strongly encourage you to take time to study the following information provided by IFI. We hope it will be helpful as you prepare your children for a new school year.

Click the links to access the PDF documents:

• Back to School: Parental Check List
• Reject Teachers Who Exploit Position
  
• Challenging Objectionable Texts

Not only did Illinois pass a terrible “anti-bullying” law two years ago, but now lesbian activist and appointed State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) has proposed an amendment that has the potential to make school “bullying” policies even more intrusive. Here are some of the problems with HB 5290:

1. This amendment would mandate that the State Board of Education establish “restorative measures” for schools to use to combat bullying. Restorative measures that include potentially intrusive and emotionally manipulative activities involving what’s called “social and emotional learning” and “peer juries, circles, and mediation.”
   
   Illinois was the first state to mandate that “Social and Emotional Learning” (SEL) standards be incorporated into curricula. Psychologist Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book Emotional Intelligence was influential in propelling the desire of liberal educators to expand their areas of influence to children’s emotions, values, and beliefs through what has come to be called SEL standards. It is through SEL standards that a host of troubling ideas about homosexuality and gender dysphoria/Gender Identity Disorder are working their way into curricula.
   
   One of the foremost organizations dedicated to promoting SEL is the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) which is located in Chicago.  One of CASEL’s co-founders is Daniel Goleman, and CASEL cites the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) as one of its resources.
   
   CASEL boasts that one of “SEL outcomes related to success in school and life” is “improved ethical attitudes and values.” What are the ethical attitudes and values that public schools will be promoting, and is it really the role of public schools to teach ethics, particularly on topics on which there is no cultural consensus?
   
   The current president of CASEL, Dr. Robert Weissberg, is a member of the DuPage County Anti-Bullying Task Force that created the 2011 “Best Practices in Bullying Prevention and Intervention,” which makes clear the connections between bullying prevention, “social and emotional learning” and the promulgation of liberal beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality.
   
   This document states that “’When schools are able to scaffold bullying prevention onto a larger more comprehensive framework for prevention and positive youth development, they strengthen their prevention efforts while also addressing some of the underlying contributing social, emotional, and environmental factors that can lead to bullying. A social and emotional learning (SEL) framework can serve just this purpose.’” Liberals believe that conservative moral and theological beliefs constitute the central underlying contributing factor in the bullying of students who identify as homosexual, and, therefore, a central plank of their efforts is to eradicate those beliefs.
   
   Further, this document emphasizes the importance in bullying education to work “together with parents, families and community to understand… sexual orientation.” There can be no doubt that the “understanding” of “sexual orientation” that is being promoted is “progressive” in nature.
   
   Tufts University lecturer Deborah Donahue-Keegan, who teaches “Education for Peace and Justice,” states that “High school teachers, particularly those who teach history and/or social studies, subjects where issues of civic concern are central, have an increasingly complex ‘explicit pedagogical responsibility for promoting their students’ social, moral and emotional growth.’” Integral to the social and emotional learning movement is the effort to influence moral beliefs.
   
   Combating bullying is a critical goal of public schools, but in many public schools, the issue of bullying is dominated by discussions of homosexuality and gender dysphoria (or what liberals call “gender identity”). Current efforts to prevent bullying focus on trying to influence student beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality and behaviors related to gender confusion. These efforts to influence student beliefs or feelings about homosexuality or gender confusion are dangerous and inappropriate means to curb bullying.
   
   
2. This law would mandate that “restorative measures” be implemented before suspension or expulsion, which means that students may be compelled to be exposed to ideological and/or emotional manipulation. The goal of keeping students in school is a good goal, but the means for achieving this goal should not include requiring students to participate in activities involving peer juries, peer circles, or peer mediation that carry serious emotional risks.
   
   Furthermore, the language of this amendment should be changed to state that “Restorative measures may not include any instruction, resources, or activities that implicitly or explicitly contradict or undermine any student’s or parents’ beliefs (including religious, moral, political, and philosophical beliefs) or that might be construed as criticisms or indictments of any student’s or parents’ beliefs”.
   
   
3. This law adds yet more categories of conditions for which students may not be bullied. Since it is impermissible to bully any student for any reason, enumerated categories are unnecessary.
   
   Retaining and expanding enumerated categories opens the door to other special interest groups demanding the inclusion of yet more categories in this ever-expanding enumerated list. In addition, it will increase resentment among those groups who are bullied for reasons not enumerated.
   
   In addition, since “sexual orientation,” and “gender identity” (conditions enumerated in existing law) are conditions constituted by behaviors that many consider immoral, their inclusion raises the possibility that those who affirm other conditions constituted by volitional acts that many consider immoral (e.g., polyamory) will demand inclusion of their conditions.
   
   All categories should be eliminated.
   
   
4. This law requires that the “State Board of Education recommend that schools create professional development [i.e., the training of staff and faculty] and youth programming for bullying prevention that are consistent with State Board of Education recommendations.” In other words, the State Board of Education will tell districts what kinds of ideas they should teach to staff and faculty. Does this mean that the State Board of Education will mandate what every school district will have to teach staff and faculty? Will youth programming be required?
   
   
5. This amendment changes the original law from requiring schools to “create and maintain” bullying policy to requiring schools to “create and administer,” which seems to mean that schools must not merely have the policy but must also actively promote it, presumably through the “professional development and youth programming” mentioned above.
   
   
6. This amendment would mandate that even “allegations of incidences of bullyingbe collected, maintained, and submitted to the State Board of Education, which shall keep a record of each incident.” There isn’t enough specificity in the bill’s language to know what information would be included in such a permanent record, which makes this dangerous. If allegations of bullying are not proved, no permanent records should include identifying information about alleged perpetrators.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your representative and urge him/her to oppose HB 5290.

Illinois State Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago), the original sponsor of the comprehensive sex ed bill (HB 3027) that passed the Illinois State Senate on May 25, 2011 and may be called for a vote soon in the Illinois House, posted on her website that she proposed this bill in order to reduce the number of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and unintended pregnancies. Ironically, even though her bill requires that sex ed information be research-based, neither she nor State Representative Camille Lilly (D-Chicago), the Illinois House sponsor of the bill, nor any other co-sponsor has provided any research-based proof that comprehensive sex ed curricula is consistently more effective at reducing STDs and unintended pregnancies than abstinence-centered curricula.

This ideologically driven — rather than research-driven — effort is reminiscent of the specious arguments used by voracious comprehensive sex ed proponents to eliminate all federal funding for abstinence education:

[A]bstinence foes launched yet another attack, attributing the rise in teen pregnancy and birth rates, after more than a decade of dramatic decline, to federally-funded abstinence programs.  However, a funding analysis by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that, in the fiscal year 2008, for every dollar the department spent on abstinence education, it spent $4 on comprehensive sex education and family planning services targeting teens.  In FY2008, the department spent $176.5 million on abstinence education. By contrast, pregnancy and STD prevention programs and family planning services for teens received $609.3 million.

Sadly, despite the social science evidence, the Obama administration and Congress have eliminated all federal spending on abstinence education and, instead, have created additional funding for comprehensive sex education.  (Source:  Heritage Foundation)

According to the Chicagoist, 60 percent of Illinois schools already teach contraception. If most Illinois schools already teach about contraception and if our liberal lawmakers believe that current sex ed curricula are failing, what sense does it make to compel all Illinois communities to use the type of curricula that are failing?

Currently, IL schools are free to use comprehensive sex ed if they choose. Why should those districts that choose abstinence curricula lose their freedom to choose, particularly when no lawmaker has provided definitive research proving that comprehensive sex ed is more effective at reducing STDs and unintended pregnancies?

And let’s not overlook the homosexuality-affirming elements of typical “comprehensive” sex ed curricula that homosexual activists and their legislative allies hope Illinoisans won’t notice before the law is passed. For evidence, just review the SIECUS “Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education” or ask Senator Steans why the original bill included the requirement that “all course material and instruction shall be free from bias in accordance with the Illinois Human Rights Act.” The Illinois Human Rights Act defines sexual orientation as “actual or perceived heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, or gender-related identity, whether or not traditionally associated with the person’s designated sex at birth.” If this bill were solely about reducing the numbers of STDs and unintended pregnancies, why would it have included this requirement, which is completely irrelevant to the problems of STDs and unintended pregnancies?

Most mainstream media sources and comprehensive sex ed websites report that abstinence programs are failures because they’re no more effective than comprehensive sex ed programs. These comprehensive sex ed promoters evidently don’t notice that such a claim indicts comprehensive sex ed programs. If it’s true that abstinence programs have largely the same results as comprehensive sex ed programs and lawmakers view abstinence programs as failures, then comprehensive sex ed programs should be viewed as failures too.

But, the claim is not true. Between 1992-2010, there have been multiple studies that demonstrate that authentic abstinence curricula are not only effective but often more effective than comprehensive sex education.* If lawmakers have not read the research regarding the effectiveness of abstinence-centered programs and if they cannot produce research proving that comprehensive sex ed programs are consistently more effective than abstinence programs at reducing STDs, unintended pregnancies, sexual activity rates, and age of sexual initiation and more effective at increasing condom use and knowledge of STDs, they should not pass this law. Perhaps if the bill’s sponsors had thoroughly studied the research on this controversial topic, they never would have proposed the bill in the first place.

*Information on abstinence education research can be found either HERE or HERE or HERE.

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Money. It makes the world go round, or so I’ve heard. But when it comes to choice in education, money is usually what brings meaningful change to a screeching halt. As new development s emerge in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal, perhaps it’s time to take a closer look at how the school system is using its funds and to learn a lesson that applies to every school system across Georgia regarding education spending.

People often agree that parents should be allowed to choose the educational setting that is best for their child. Yet suggest that the money the state is spending on that child should be free to follow him to the educational setting selected by his parents-and the hesitation sets in.

The most cited reason against a “money follows the child” model of education is entirely monetary: “It will take money from cash-strapped public schools.”

The simple fact is that educational choice programs actually provide schools with larger per-pupil funding. Public schools receive local, state, and federal dollars, and with a “money follows the child” model, only the state dollars follow the child. The public school retains the local dollars, resulting in larger per-pupil funding.

Supporters of educational choice have always maintained that it is not about money, or systems, or adults. It’s about kids having access to the best education possible-by whatever delivery mechanism best suits their individual needs.

Some Georgia students are already attending the school of their choice through one of Georgia’s successful “money follows the child” opportunities. The state portion of education spending follows a child choosing a public charter school, or even a private school under the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Program.

But given recent headlines, maybe we should talk about money for a minute.

Former Atlanta Public School Superintendent, Beverly Hall, recently made headlines after 11 Alive News reported that she cost the school system over $127,000 in legal fees in just three months. And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the school system could be forced to pay back nearly $1 million in federal money earned with falsified test scores.

And that’s not the worst of it.

The AJC reports that the 126 teachers on administrative leave cost Atlanta Public Schools $1 million per month while they are being investigated for cheating on the state’s standardized tests.

Some say that giving parents and students more choices in education is too expensive, yet we sure spend an awful lot on the adults who quite literally cheated our students out of a quality education.

Leaving Ms. Hall’s legal expenditures and possible returned funds aside, the $1 million monthly price tag used for teachers accused of cheating could buy Atlanta:

· An additional 2,611 students each month attending a state-chartered public school at the average amount expended by the state per student, or

· An additional 1,595 Georgia Special Needs Scholarships each month at the average scholarship amount.

Experience shows that these types of school choice opportunities are life changing for kids.

Remember, we’re only talking about what we could do with the dollars currently being wasted in one month following a cheating scandal perpetrated by a school system. And it’s one of the school systems from which school choice supporters are incorrectly chastised about taking “much-needed funds.”

Imagine the hope we could offer tens of thousands of families across the state of Georgia if we just let the money follow the child.

Since we say that education is all about the kids, maybe it’s time we actually put our money where our mouth is and fund students, not systems.

Jamie Lord is the Government Relations Director for the Georgia Family Council.

I’m beginning to wonder if there are any public school administrators who understand the concept of hubris. LifeSite News reported that Hartford Public High School in Hartford, Connecticut is embroiled in a controversy following the administration’s decision to allow the homosexuality-affirming play Zanna, Don’t! to be performed. The play is set in a high school in the inverted (or perverted) world of Heartsville where homosexuals are the socially dominant group and heterosexuals are closeted social pariahs. One of the central characters is Zanna, a Puck-like “fairy,” who uses his magic to match-make. The play includes girls intramural mechanical bull-riding, lesbian infidelity, and a musical within the musical in which the ban on heterosexuals serving in the military is challenged. Apparently, this puerile inversion passes as a clever conceit in our contemporary literary scene.

Hartford Public High School is divided into multiple “academies,” two of which attended the first performance. When two teenage male characters kiss, a group of high school students attending the play audibly expressed their disgust and walked out of the performance. Subsequently the play, which was scheduled to be performed two more times for other groups of students, became a source of community and national outrage.

A local Connecticut news report stated that the principal of one of the school’s academies “noted the importance of accepting homosexual intimacy as society accepts heterosexual intimacy.” What right has a government employee acting in his official capacity as a school official to decide or state that students should accept the unproven, non-factual belief that homosexual intimacy is equivalent to heterosexual intimacy?

Well, at least he’s honest — not even a pretense of neutrality on the topic of homosexuality. School administrators who were committed to neutrality on the contentious moral issue of homosexuality would never even implicitly suggest that schools have the right or obligation to promulgate the subjective moral assumption that homosexual “intimacy” is ontologically or morally analogous to heterosexuality. Their specious comparison of homosexuality to heterosexuality exposes the absurdity in such comparison in that no one could ever rationally argue that heterosexual acts or relationships are inherently morally flawed. Clearly, the Hartford HS administration has come to the moral conclusion that homosexual acts are good and right, and are determined to inculcate other people’s children with their moral conclusions.

Nursing Academy principal, David Chambers, explained that “It’s a balancing act of individual values and the expectations of the school.” It’s curious that the “individual values” of parents and students who believe volitional homosexual acts are immoral rarely coincide with the “expectations” of schools.

It’s curious that diverse views on this controversial topic are rarely explored in academia, which so self-righteously espouses “diversity” and “tolerance.” It’s curious that students in public high schools rarely if ever read the work of scholars who oppose adoption by homosexuals, or who oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage, or who challenge the soundness of the comparison of race to homosexuality. It’s curious that the prevailing liberal views held by hubristic academicians and their student proselytes are so rarely challenged.

According to CitizenLink, Chambers “said he considered sending an opt-out letter home with students, but decided not to because in the health care field, they’ll be exposed to all kinds of people.” The problem is not that the school is exposing students to different “kinds of people,” but rather that the school is exposing them to a particular moral view –only one moral view — of homosexual relationships. The problem is not that different “kinds of people” are present; the problem is with which kinds of actions and ideas are presented and how these actions and ideas are portrayed.

The phrase “kinds of people” is deceitful rhetoric employed to conceal the espousal of particular ideas. It’s easier to make a specious civil rights argument if you attempt to base it on a purported heritable identity or ontological foundation rather than a subjective feeling/volitional behavior foundation. Principal Chambers, however, unwittingly opens a Pandora’s Box of problems once he implicitly argues that subjective feelings and volitional acts constitute a “kind of person.”

Here are some questions for Chambers et al at Hartford HS:

• Should high school students who may pursue healthcare careers be exposed to affirming depictions of every kind of behavior they may encounter in the future?
• Should students be exposed to positive portrayals of pedophilia — or “minor-attracted persons” as they prefer to be called — since surely healthcare workers will be exposed to them in their healthcare professions.
• What about positive portrayals of consensual adult incest, paraphilias, and drug addiction?
• To be intellectual consistent, should school administrators seek to have students accept polyamorous intimacy in the same way that they accept intimacy between two people?
• Since health care workers often encounter theologically orthodox Christians, Orthodox Jews, and Muslims, should students be exposed to positive portrayals of them, including their views of volitional homosexual relationships and acts?

Homosexual “kinds of people” are actually heterosexual people who experience disordered attraction to their same sex and often act out those disordered attractions sexually. Every human is objectively heterosexual in that their bodies are designed for heterosexual activity; they procreate heterosexually; and only heterosexual activity is moral sexual activity.

Minor-attracted “kinds of people” are people who experience a disordered attraction to children and sometimes act out those disordered attractions sexually. Aggressive “kinds of people” are people who experience aggressive impulses and sometimes act out those impulses. Apotemnophiliac “kinds of people” are people who experience the disordered desire to be amputees (i.e., they wish to align their bodies with their self-conception) and sometimes act out those impulses by amputating healthy limbs. Perhaps Chamber wants to positively portray all of these “kinds of people,” their desires, and their actions.

I suspect he would not want to positively portray such “kinds of people,” or more accurately, he would not want to expose students to positive portrayals of such desires, actions, and/or relationships. And why not? If he were honest, he would likely say that these desires, actions, and/or relationships are unhealthy and immoral, which is precisely the salient point. Many people believe that homosexual acts and relationships are unhealthy and immoral. In order for school administrators to allow a controversial play that positively portrays homosexual acts and relationships, they had to have concluded that such acts and relationships are moral.

Government employees like Chambers are using public funds in public schools to promote their particular moral conclusions. They did not choose this play for aesthetic reasons, or to foster critical thinking, or to explore diverse viewpoints. They chose this play for ideological reasons. School administrators allowed this play to be performed in the hope that it would result in students adopting liberal moral and political views, which is decidedly not the right of government employees.

Too many “educators” have become self-righteous about their own moral and political views and puffed up with pride in their perception of their role in the lives of other people’s children. They arrogate to themselves the right to preach their moral and political views to children on the public dime; to censor absolutely all resources that challenge their views; and to conceal both their proselytizing and their censorship.

One final point needs to be made in light of the students’ expressions of disgust at a homosexual kiss: People are entirely justified in feeling disgust at images of homosexual intimacy, including kissing. Government-paid “educators” have no business communicating that such feelings are inappropriate or morally wrong. The belief that homosexual acts are analogous to heterosexual acts is not a fact. Rather, it is a disputable assumption that no public school teacher has the right to promote in his capacity as a government employee. And if homosexual acts are, in reality, perverse, revulsion is as legitimate an emotional response to them as it is to polygamous intimacy or pornography.

It is entirely appropriate for children, teens, and adults to feel disgust at images of two teenage boys kissing. What the Hartford HS administration and homosexual activists seek to do is use publicly funded schools to eradicate the moral disapproval of students and the feelings that accompany moral disapproval. Whereas, loud disruptive expressions of disgust in the middle of a play are not civil expressions of moral opposition, walking out of play in which profoundly immoral behavior is being depicted positively is entirely appropriate.

Choosing to invite students to positive depictions of morally corrupt sexual behavior is the greatest offense of all in this regrettable incident.

Our Illinois state lawmakers will be returning to Springfield next week (October 25th-27th) and in early November (8th-10th) for the annual Fall Veto Session.

One of the bills that we are working against is HB 3027 — a bill being promoted by the ACLU of Illinois. This unnecessary and ill-conceived proposal mandates that every public school which teaches sex education in grades 6-12 must teach “comprehensive” sex education.

Contraception-centered sex-education curricula encourage children and youth into early sexual experimentation. They mislead youth by teaching them that condoms will provide sufficient protection from the physical, emotional and social consequences of early sexual activity.

Abstinence-emphasis curricula already address condom use for protection against sexually transmitted infections, and research suggests such curricula are more effective in educating students on STDs than are comprehensive sex ed curricula.

In addition, typical comprehensive sex ed curricula include homosexuality-affirming ideas, usually without information on the serious health risks of homosexual practices.

This bill has already passed the Illinois Senate and we must stop it in the Illinois House.

Background
This “comprehensive” sex education bill will affect secondary AND elementary schools by mandating “comprehensive” sex education in grades 6 – 12. “Comprehensive” sex education refers to sex-education curricula that emphasize and encourage contraception use, rather than abstinence. In reality, we are talking about teaching children to use a condom.

HB 3027 is completely unnecessary and an intrusion into local control. Public schools in Illinois already have the ability to teach “comprehensive” sex education if they wish. Local public school administrators do not need a mandate from Springfield telling them they must teach comprehensive sex education when the preponderance of evidence suggests that authentic abstinence education is successful.

IFI’s Laurie Higgins identifies a number of significant problems with the bill:

• HB 3027 requires that “course material and instruction shall place substantial emphasis on both abstinence… and contraception…” First, “substantial emphasis” is vague, ambiguous language open to interpretation, Second, typical “comprehensive sex ed” curricula give short shrift to abstinence teaching both in terms of amount of material and tone. Typical sex ed subordinates abstinence to contraception.
• Three different sections of HB 3027 require that sex education “material and instruction shall be developmentally and age appropriate, medically accurate, and complete.” (SIECUS, the nation’s “experts” on sex-education, believes this information is age-appropriate for your child.) The word “complete” is ambiguous and potentially opens the door to the inclusion of deeply problematic material. For those districts that want to teach about methods of contraception, the term “complete” is unnecessary in that elsewhere in the amendment is wording that requires contraception to be taught.
• HB 3027 defines important terms, but “abstinence” is not defined. What will students be taught to abstain from? Will they be taught to abstain from just vaginal intercourse — or will they be taught to abstain from all erotic interactions. Does abstinence education include abstaining from oral sex, mutual masturbation, anal sex, bestiality, and paraphilias?

Contraception-centered sex-education curricula encourage children and youth into early sexual experimentation. They mislead youth and create a false hope that condoms will provide sufficient protection from the physical, emotional and social consequences of early sexual activity. Authentic abstinence education programs provide youth with life and character skills, not condom skills. Sexual activity among youth is far too costly for adolescents, families, society and taxpayers.

Passing HB 3027 would mandate the teaching of curricula that most parents and taxpayers would find objectionable.

The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand an Illinois law requiring the observance of a moment of silence in Illinois public schools. The High Court declined to hear an appeal of a federal appeals court decision that upheld the law. Last year the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The Illinois statute is titled the Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act, but is known as the “Moment of Silence” law. It requires that each school day begin with a brief time for “silent prayer or silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day.” The law stated that the time set aside “shall not be conducted as a religious exercise.”

The Seventh Circuit had ruled that the law did not amount to an endorsement of religion. Judge Daniel Manion, writing for the court, stated that the law did not advance nor inhibit any particular religion. Manion said there must be a legitimate secular reason for the law, and that the observance of silence satisfied a secular purpose.

The Illinois Family Institute, the Alliance Defense Fund and allied attorneys filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in October of 2009, in hopes that the court would uphold the “Moment of Silence.” IFI believes that this case is significant because while the law does not establish or endorse a particular religion, it does recognize students’ First Amendment rights to exercise — or not exercise — their religious liberties. Simply offering students a moment of silence for prayer or reflection each school day in appreciation of that sacred right should not create a constitutional crisis.

IFI’s Laurie Higgins agrees, “The Illinois’ law is important because it makes clear to students that prayer is permissible, an idea that many students may not realize because of the pervasive cultural hostility to religion and the poor understanding that many Americans have about church-state relations. Many students may mistakenly believe that voluntary silent prayer is prohibited by law. Illinois’ law communicates that the state neither prescribes nor proscribes the content of private thoughts.”

The original lawsuit challenging the “Moment of Silence” law had been filed in 2007 by the Illinois ACLU against Buffalo Grove High School in suburban Chicago on behalf of Rob Sherman, a well known atheist activist and his high school daughter. Sherman was represented in his appeal to the Supreme Court by Michael Newdow, another atheist activist who has litigated numerous cases seeking to squelch religious expression in public settings.

The ACLU had argued that the law did have a “predominantly religious purpose,” and that it had the effect of “coercing children to pray in our public schools.” Sherman contended that the Illinois Legislature was “sabotaging public education” by imposing the “moment of silence” requirement.

Matthew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, believes the federal courts have made the right call. “A moment of silence does not endorse a religion contrary to the First Amendment. A moment of silence is just that — a moment for a person to pray or meditate or do nothing. They are not forcing anyone to pray or not to pray. It’s an accommodation of people who may choose to use this time for prayer.”

The subject of a “Moment of Silence” has a long history in Illinois. The Legislature first passed a law permitting the observance of a moment of silence in 1969. That law was amended in 2007 to make the “moment of silence” mandatory. Governor Rod Blagojevich vetoed it, but the Legislature overrode his veto.

The Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Illinois law to stand is significant because it stands in contrast to a prior U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1985 known as Wallace v. Jaffree. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Alabama law establishing a moment of silence in that state’s schools. The High Court decided that Alabama legislators did not have a secular purpose for their law, having declared that their objective was to return prayer to the public schools.

Judge Manion drew that distinction between the Alabama and Illinois statutes, saying that Illinois had “offered” a secular purpose for their law, namely, “establishing a period of silence…to calm the students and prepare them for a day of learning.” Illinois joins Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia in requiring a dedicated “moment of silence” at the beginning of the school day.

A freshman boy in Ft. Worth, Texas, Dakota Ary, was recently given an in-school suspension and two days out-of-school suspension because he told a classmate that because he’s a Christian, he believes homosexuality is wrong.

The German teacher in whose class this took place accused Dakota of “possible bullying” and wrote that the student’s comments should not be expressed in public school, even though the class discussion was on religion in Germany and another student had asked a question about homosexuality. How can the expression of a moral position about behavior, even a negative moral position, constitute bullying or even “possible bullying”?

Last week this same teacher put up a poster that depicted two men kissing, telling students that they should accept homosexuality. Put another way, this teacher has told orthodox Christian students that their moral positions on homosexuality are wrong. In doing so, has this teacher engaged in “possible bullying”?

According to student complaints, this teacher frequently discusses homosexuality. Apparently to this presumptuous teacher only conservative comments should be banned, and only liberal views are protected by the First Amendment.

Liberty Counsel, who is representing Dakota, has been successful in persuading the school to rescind the two-day suspension, and they’re working to ensure his formal record is clear.

But Christians should not be expecting organizations like Liberty Counsel, Alliance Defense Fund, and the Thomas More Society to do all the heavy cultural lifting. We need to actively and courageously work to restore sound pedagogy in the public schools that our taxes help subsidize. There are several things that parents and all other taxpayers can do:

1. Push for school policy that prohibits presumptuous educators like the German teacher in Texas from expressing their personal moral or political views through their comments, their curricula, or visual symbols in the classroom.

2. Push for a law (or at minimum a school policy) like the one that’s being promoted in Massachusetts (Click Here), which requires all schools that “present, implement or maintain a program that involves human sexual education, human sexuality issues or alternative sexual behavior ” to “adopt and implement a written policy ensuring parental/guardian notification of such school programs and a description of their content …. All such school programs shall be offered only in clearly identified non-mandatory elective courses or activities in which parents or guardians may choose to enroll their children through written notification to the school, in a manner reasonably similar to other elective courses or activities offered by the school district.”

The term “alternative sexual behavior” means “homosexuality, bisexuality, lesbianism, transsexuality , transgenderism , cross-dressing, pansexuality , promiscuity, sodomy, pederasty, prostitution, oral sex, anal sex, masturbation, polygamy, polyandry, sex re-assignment treatments, “bondage and discipline”, sado -masochism, bestiality, and similar behaviors. It also includes issues and relationships deriving from those behaviors, including but not limited to ‘sexual orientation,’ and alternative family, parenting, and marriage constructs.

This law (or a similar school policy) would prevent students from being exposed to any resource or activity that mentions any of these sexuality issues unless their parents are notified and give explicit permission for their child to enroll in the class or be present during the activity.

3. In addition, this law states that “No public school teacher or administrator shall be required to participate in any such school programs that violate his religious beliefs.”

4. Push for school policy that ensures intellectual diversity or parity. Taxpayers should ask school boards to create policy that requires teachers to spend equal time on and present equivalent resources from all perspectives on controversial issues. So, for example if a teacher assigns The Laramie Project or an article from a magazine that affirms “transgenderism,” he should be required to assign essays, commentaries, or journal articles written by conservative scholars on the issue of homosexuality.

I recently wrote about the persecution that Christian author and apologist, Frank Turek, has experienced because of his beliefs about homosexuality. Please watch the entirety of this short video in which he identifies the group that bears significant blame for the loss of our religious liberty: Christians.

By Alicia Constant — World Magazine

More Indiana parents are choosing to send their children to private and parochial schools in the state, which has enacted the nation’s largest school voucher program.

More than 3,200 students received vouchers to attend private schools this year-with nearly 70 percent of them attending Catholic schools.

Catholic schools are in the minority among Indiana private schools but received a majority of vouchers because many are venerable and already have state accreditation. They also have more space: One Catholic school in South Bend had seen enrollment dwindle from 702 students in 1953 to 135 last year. This year, due to the voucher program, enrollment has jumped to 212 students.

Most voucher systems enacted elsewhere in the United States are limited to poor students, those in failing schools, or those with special needs. But in Indiana, any student whose family has a household income less than $60,000 is eligible.

Because of the popularity of the program, public school officials have been contacting parents of voucher students, begging them to keep their children in the public schools. And these administrators have strong incentive. For example, if families in South Bend who signed up for vouchers don’t return, administrators there estimate they will have $1.3 million less to spend.

“They’re making the argument that the money belongs to the system and not to the parents,” said Robert Enlow of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.

The vouchers in Indiana are government-issued certificates that allow parents to pay private school tuition with tax money they would have normally paid to public schools.

Nate Schnellenberger, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, complained that “public money is going to be taken from public schools, and they’re going to end up in private, mostly religious schools.”

The teachers’ union, which is suing, claims the voucher program is in violation of “the separation of church and state” since only six of 240 participating private schools in the state are secular.

But Enlow called the lawsuit a “misdirection,” adding that parents are simply choosing available schools: “We’re giving aid to students, not aid to religion.”

The ACLU finds itself in the midst of another controversial legal battle, this time in Missouri where they are suing a school district to allow K-12 students to access GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) websites. The ACLU’s Eastern Missouri chapter wrote to the school district in May telling it to stop using the sexuality blocker on its filtering software. But doing so would likely put the school in violation of the federal Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires public schools and libraries to protect children from harmful web content as a condition of receiving federal funding. The heros at the Alliance Defense Fund are taking up the school district’s case.

What’s disturbing about the ACLU’s demand is that it goes beyond the usual lines about tolerance and nondiscrimination to demand that the district stop filtering sexually graphic content. What about GLBT websites do kids need to be seeing if their content won’t pass a sexuality filter? The school’s policy is not discriminatory; children should be protected from all illegal pornography — especially when it is distributed on taxpayer funded computers — regardless of its sexual orientation. The federal government recognized this with CIPA.

The reason school’s Internet filters block GLBT websites isn’t because of the so-called “identity” of the people who run them, but that the sites contain inappropriate and sexually graphic material.

Decades ago, summer was the time that necessitated increased parental vigilance. School was the safe place. But the times they have a’changed. Self-righteous “agents of change” stand ready at the schoolhouse door to mold other people’s children into ideological replicas of themselves. So now the school year has become the time that necessitates increased parental vigilance.

One organization that warrants particular attention is “Teaching Tolerance,” which is laughingly called an “educational project,” but is, in reality, the pernicious propaganda project of the leftwing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This is the organization that has listed the Illinois Family Institute, Family Research Council, and the American Family Association as “hate groups.”

The propagandists — I mean educators — at Teaching Tolerance are taking full advantage of the propensity of parents to remain blissfully unaware of what their children are being taught. These “tolerance teachers” count on parents remaining ignorant of their goal to undermine conservative moral and political beliefs.

Here is the newest resource spawned by the manipulators of children at the SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance of which parents should be aware:

Planning to Change the World: A Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers 2011-2012

This handbook for teachers begins with a quote from the Brazilian Marxist, Paulo Freire, who is the guru for “social justice teachers” and wrote their bible, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

The introduction makes clear that liberation from oppression supersedes sound, apolitical education:

Planning to Change the World is a plan book for teachers who believe their students can create meaningful social change. It is the product of a collaboration between two education networks — the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) and the Education for Liberation Network — and is published in partnership with Rethinking Schools. The information and ideas featured on its pages come from teachers, college students and activists who, like you, struggle daily to put their values into practice. As educators, our vision of teaching for liberation often gets buried under the everyday realities of teaching. Bombarded with paperwork, tests, curriculum mandates, we feel frustrated, overwhelmed, alone.

…Planning to Change the World is packed with important social justice birthdays and historical events, words of wisdom from visionary leaders, lesson plans, resources, social justice education happenings and more. [Emphases added]

The planning book includes quotes from radical historical revisionist Howard Zinn, homosexual activist Staceyann Chinn, and controversial labor leader Cesar Chavez. It also includes dozens of resources for teachers, most of which are extreme leftwing resources, including resources that promote far leftist assumptions about homosexuality, economics, religion, and American “imperialism.”

Here are some of the historical events honored just in November by the SPLC’s “educators” from Teaching Tolerance:

• Transgender Day of Remembrance
• The 50th anniversary of the first openly gay person to run for public office
• Eid al-Adha: an Islamic holiday
• Muharram, the first day of the Islamic calendar
• The 170th anniversary of the Creole revolt
• First day of Native American Heritage Month
• 80th anniversary of the beginning of the removal of the Choctaw Indians from their lands
• Thanksgiving: Teaching Tolerance recommends that teachers use resources from the anti-American organization, Oyate, about which I have previously written.

Teaching Tolerance also recommends an activity they created called Thanksgiving Mourning:

[S]tudents will review two written works by Native American authors. The first — a speech written by Wamsutta James in 1970 — gave birth to the National Day of Mourning, which is observed on Thanksgiving by some indigenous people. To them, Thanksgiving is ‘a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the relentless assault on their culture.’ The Day of Mourning, on the other hand, is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest of the racism and oppression that Native Americans continue to experience.”

I wonder if Teaching Tolerance would revise their list of important “social justice” historical events to include mention of Joseph Scheidler, father of the pro-life movement. He is the indefatigable pursuer of social justice for the most vulnerable in America: babies in utero, whose developmental immaturity or imperfections put them at risk of legalized extermination.

As I’ve written before, “teaching for social justice” is, in a nutshell:

repackaged socialism with its focus on economic redistribution. Social justice theory emphasizes redistribution of wealth and values uniformity of economic and social position over liberty. Social justice advocates seek to use the force of government to establish economic uniformity.

Its other dominant features pertain to race, gender, class, and sexual orientation/ identity/ expression. Social justice theory as I’m describing it encourages people to view the world through the divisive lens of identity politics that demarcates groups according to which group constitutes the “oppressors” and which the “oppressed.” Those who are identified as the “oppressors” need not have committed any acts of actual persecution or oppression, nor feel any sense of superiority toward or dislike of the supposed “oppressed” class. The problem with social justice theory is that it promotes the idea that “institutional racism,” as opposed to actual acts of mistreatment of individuals by other individuals is the cause of differing lots in life.

Social justice theorists cultivate the racist, sexist, heterophobic stereotype that whites, males, and heterosexuals are oppressors. This is an offensive, prejudiced stereotype that robs minorities of a sense of agency in and responsibility for their own lives, telling them that their lots in life cannot improve through their own efforts but only through an appropriate degree of self-flagellation on the parts of the purported oppressors. It cultivates a sense of perpetual victimization and powerlessness on the parts of minorities and an irrational and illegitimate sense of guilt on the parts of whites, or men, or heterosexuals.

Finally, social justice theory is distinctly anti-American and hyper-focuses on America’s mistakes and failings. Social justice theory diminishes or ignores the remarkable success America has achieved in integrating virtually every ethnic and racial group in the world, and in enabling people to improve their lots in life through economic opportunity and American principles of liberty and equality.

To learn more about the ethically and intellectually bankrupt Southern Poverty Law Center’s deeply troubling ideology, goals, and tactics, click HERE (this is a very recent and important article from an immigration reform organization on the SPLC’s “phony claims”), and HERE.

When you’re done, email your children’s teachers, some of whom likely subscribe to Teaching Tolerance’s free online newsletter for educators, asking whether they will be using any resources or activities from Teaching Tolerance. Then make it clear that should they decide to use any resources created by, or recommended by Teaching Tolerance, you want to be notified so you can opt your child out.

There’s troubling news coming out of Florida that provides evidence that the cultural movement to normalize homosexuality poses a serious threat to First Amendment speech and religious rights.

Mount Dora High School social studies teacher and winner of the 2010 “Teacher of the Year” award, Jerry Buell, wrote this on his private Facebook page during non-work time:

I’m watching the news, eating dinner, when the story about New York okaying same sex unions came on and I almost threw up.

If they want to call it a union, go ahead. But don’t insult a man and woman’s marriage by throwing it in the same cesspool as same-sex whatever! God will not be mocked. When did this sin become acceptable???

The administrative response to this veteran teacher’s condemnation of government-endorsement of abominable (God’s word, not Buell’s) relationships is to suspend him from the classroom and begin an investigation.

Society has become so desensitized to the offense of cesspoolish acts that calling them cesspoolish constitutes an offense. Our cultural moral compass has become so broken that citizens do not recognize that homosexual acts are, indeed, cesspoolish. In a very literal sense, the primary sexual act engaged in by homosexual men is cesspoolish in that a cesspool is a waste receptacle, but the term “cesspool” also refers to corrupt, depraved acts. Although Buell’s word choice was indelicate and politically incorrect, it strikes me as accurate. (For recent CDC information on HIV infections among Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM), click HERE, and for shigellosis information click HERE.)

Christians have become deluded into believing that saying that homosexual acts are cesspoolish is an unchristian act, and they have been bullied into self-censorship by exactly the kind of repercussions Buell is experiencing.

Americans, including leaders in government, education, and even the church, increasingly accept the dangerous notion that the First Amendment should be subordinate to the “feelings” of homosexuals. What next? Will speech rights and religious liberty be subordinated to the feelings of “minority-attracted” persons (aka pedophiles) and polyamorists? How long will it be before yet another group committed to normalizing their particular sinful proclivity starts talking about how marginalized, stigmatized, and “unsafe” they “feel”?

Some questions for Mount Dora High School administrators:

• If teachers are not permitted to express their moral and political beliefs during their free time on their private Facebook pages, should they be permitted to express their beliefs on blogs?
• Should they be permitted to express them in letters to their local press?
• Should they be permitted to express them in conversations in public restaurants where they may be overheard by others?
• Should they be able to express them in radio or print interviews?
• Was it the word “cesspool” that generated the investigation and suspension of Buell, or was it his disapproval of the legalization of same-sex “marriage” and homosexuality?
• If it was the word choice that got the administrators’ panties in a bundle, will these language-dictators provide a list of acceptable denunciatory words? Remember, it’s our educators who are promoters of diversity and the free exchange of ideas and defenders of even obscene language when it’s found in the books they teach our children.
• If it were not merely the word “cesspool” but rather any expression of disapproval of homosexuality, is it just homosexuality that teachers may not condemn in their free time or are there other topics of which they may only safely express approval? If so, what are those topics and who decides?
• The First Amendment was intended to protect the expression of even unpopular ideas. How does Big Brother — I mean the Mount Dora High School administration — reconcile its draconian response to Buell with the First Amendment?

The Mount Dora administration might defend their actions by citing the need to keep students “safe.” What school administrations rarely do, however, is define “safety.” The entire homosexuality-affirming juggernaut depends on the tricksy manipulation of rhetoric. “Safety,” which formerly meant the absence of physical threat, has now come to mean the absence of emotional or intellectual discomfort. Of course, liberal activists in public schools won’t admit this (and conservative teachers are too fearful to expose it).

Intellectual and ethical consistency — never the forte of liberals — is not found in public schools even on the topic of “safety.” Liberal activists have no problem making conservative students feel uncomfortable (i.e., “unsafe”) if it’s in the service of eradicating conservative moral beliefs. In so doing, increasing numbers of homosexual students and their “allies” (another rhetorical buzz saw in the homosexuality-normalizing tool box) are becoming presumptuous ideological dictators. They treat all encounters with dissenting moral propositions with high dudgeon and an expectation of administrative censorship.

The exaltation of subjective feelings through the self-actualization and self-esteem movements and the demonization of shame have collided with the tyrannical homosexual “rights” revolution, resulting in the cultural collapse that’s happening right in front of our eyes. (And what do conservatives do? Cover their eyes, plug their ears, and shut their mouths.)

My advice: exercise your right to express unpopular ideas while you can.

Post script:

1. A fellow conservative with whom I discussed this article prior to posting expressed concern over any mention of sexual acts, arguing that we should not “dwell” on them.

I completely agree: dwelling on sexual acts is neither necessary nor constructive. I wish we had a society that valued modesty and privacy, but we don’t and the other side is making public statements about sexual acts and promoting images and ideas about sexual acts that are shaping the beliefs of Americans.

The current cultural problem is not that conservatives dwell on sexual acts, but that we ignore them. In my approximately 800-words above, I have about 80 words that address sexual acts. That hardly constitutes “dwelling.”

We are derelict in this cultural battle if we cede through silence the battle about the true nature of homosexuality, including the sexual acts in which homosexuals commonly engage. Our silence — which the other side covets — leaves homosexuals free to create and promulgate an unchallenged message. Even our high school comprehensive sex ed classes, purportedly concerned with adolescent health, rarely provide to students information on the astonishing array and rate of sexually transmitted infections associated with what the CDC calls Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM).

2. Over the weekend, I was sent a Christian Post article in which Neuqua Valley High School math teacher, Hemant Mehta, weighed in on the suspension of Jerry Buell. IFI readers may remember Mehta, or as he refers to himself and his blog, the “friendly atheist,” about whom I’ve written several times.

Initially, Mehta, who, according to the Christian Post views Mr. Buell as a “bigot,” wanted to “join in the backlash,” but some soul-searching restored Mehta’s reverence for the First Amendment. In his statement, Mehta implied that a situation involving IFI’s response to his blog was analogous to the Buell situation.

Several clarifications are in order. As I wrote in 2009, I did, indeed, contact Mehta’s administration and school board regarding something he had written on his blog, but I did not contact them because of his moral views or in order to have him suspended. In fact, I specifically said, “Of course, teachers have a First Amendment right to blog or speak publicly about anything they want.”

I contacted his administration and school board because Mehta had suggested on his public and widely read blog that it would be a good thing if homosexuals came and kissed in front of my home. His entire blog is an expression of his controversial social, political, moral, and philosophical beliefs, and I had never previously contacted his administration or school board. His suggestion, however, that homosexuals come to my home — whether delivered in jest or not — constituted an irresponsible, unprofessional comment that may have violated school policy regarding employee-community relations.

In subsequent articles, I urged parents to think about whether a teacher who publicly uses obscene language and vigorously promotes polyamory and atheism is a good role model for their children. The First Amendment prohibits the government from abrogating the right of citizens to express even unpopular ideas. It does not prohibit parents from making choices about the people with whom their children spend 180 hours a week.

To read more about Hemant Mehta’s blog, click HERE, HERE, and HERE.

One final note: I have met Hemant and find him a very nice person. Many people believe that condemnation of actions or passionate intellectual disputes indicate dislike or hatred of our worthy opponents. That’s nonsense or worse.

It’s not only possible but commonplace to like, value, enjoy the company of, and even love those whose beliefs and behavioral choices we find foolish and destructive.

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Part I of this two-part article about Illinois’ new “enumerated” school anti-bullying law and its attendant Task Force exposed the bias and lack of diversity of the Task Force as well as the troubling recommendations made by it.

106-page Task Force recommendations refer to” broader cultural systemic issues of power, privilege and oppression,” “homophobia,” and “underlying power imbalances.” For the uninitiated, this language may sound benign or even positive, but those familiar with the jargon of the “teaching for social justice” movement will recognize the troubling ideas concealed beneath the deceitfully reassuring rhetoric.

The goals of the Task Force are consistent with the mission of the organization that created the law: the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance (ISSA). ISSA is a homosexual activist organization that was originally an affiliate of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). ISSA’s anti-bullying law was created specifically to add the terms “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” and “gender expression” to existing law, which in turn would provide liberal assumptions about homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder an even greater foothold in Illinois schools.

The Task Force recommends “all schools in Illinois immediately embark on a journey of complete school transformation,” which means all public and private schools in Illinois. Current law applies only to public schools and non-sectarian, that is, non-religious private schools, but the Task Force calls for an amendment to the existing law so that it would apply to religious private schools as well.

The Task Force recommendations include indoctrination plans for students, teachers, administrators, all school employees (e.g., maintenance workers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers), and future teachers enrolled in college and university teacher-preparation programs.

The Task Force asserts that “complete school transformation cannot be accomplished without adequate commitment, time, and resources,” stating that “nothing less than the complete overhaul of the education system in Illinois” will suffice, and that “the state of Illinois fully fund pilot projects to collect and evaluate data on the efficacy of the proposed school transformation model.”

Their recommendations include this troubling suggestion: “Many changes will need to be made to state laws, ISBE regulations and school policies.”

Many community members feel helpless to stop the usurpation of public education by liberal ideologues hell-bent on using taxpayer resources to advance their moral and political beliefs, but there are things taxpayers can and should do:

1. Email your local school administrators and request the following information:

a. Ask for detailed information about any “bullying prevention” activities that are planned for students.

b. Ask for detailed information about any “bullying-prevention” training (i.e., professional development) that is planned for administrators, teachers, and staff.

c. Ask if any of the “bullying-prevention” activities that are planned for any of these groups specifically mention “sexual orientation,” “gender-identity” (i.e., Gender Identity Disorder), or “gender-expression” (i.e., cross-dressing).

d. Request copies of any resources that will be used in “bullying-prevention” training for students, teachers, administrators, and staff.

2. If your administration is uncooperative, file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to access the information. FOIA requests are easy to file and cost-free for the first fifty pages of documents. Every Illinois school district has a FOIA officer who by law must be identified on the district’s website. Your district’s FOIA officer can provide instructions on how to file a FOIA. Click here and go to page 56 for a sample FOIA request. Taxpayers should be making use of FOIA requests. They provide invaluable (and often surprising) information about what takes place behind the scenes in schools.

3. Finally, tell your children’s teachers that under no circumstance is your child to be exposed to any resources or activities that mention “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” or “gender expression.” Tell them that you will provide “bullying-prevention” instruction at home. And ask them to notify you prior to any activities or presentations that address “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” or “gender expression,” so that you can opt your child out.

IFI is urging our readers to research how your school districts are implementing the Illinois Prevent School Violence Act (PSVA). Please do this if you’re a taxpayer. You don’t have to have students enrolled in school. All taxpayers are subsidizing what takes place in our public schools; and today’s students are tomorrow’s culture-makers. We all have a stake in public education.

We cannot afford to sit around fretting and whining about the corruption of public education by liberal ideologues who have transformed education into indoctrination. Please email your schools, and if anything troubling turns up, send the information and documentation to IFI. We would love to share with IFI readers what’s taking place in particular school districts around the state.

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Illinois parents may soon begin to taste the diseased fruit of the Illinois “enumerated” anti-bullying act that Governor Quinn signed into law a year ago on the Sunday morning of the Chicago “gay pride” parade at a ceremony at Nettelhorst School, Chicago’s first public elementary school to march in the debauchery-affirmation parade, which is located in the city’s premier homosexual neighborhood “Boystown.” (And there are still gullible people who buy the deceit that this law is centrally about bullying.)

The term “enumerated” is an obfuscatory euphemism that means the law specifically includes homosexuality, Gender Identity Disorder, and cross-dressing. Of course our lawmakers wouldn’t dare use those terms out of fear that Illinoisans would see the pernicious truth lurking behind the civil rights argot. No, our lawmakers use the equally obfuscatory euphemisms of “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” and “gender expression.”

This law required our State Superintendent of Education, Christopher Koch, to appoint a Task Force to make recommendations about the implementation of the anti-bullying law. Here are just a few of the “unbiased” Task Force members:

Christopher Koch: Illinois State Superintendent of Education, who according to the Chicago Tribune, lives with his “partner.” Other public sources (here and here) reveal that partner to be Kyle A. Lentz.

In 2009, Koch was honored by the homosexual activist organization, Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, as “advocate of the year.”

Rocco Claps: openly homosexual Director of the Department of Human Rights (Read more HERE).

Shannon Sullivan: openly homosexual Director of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, who seeks to exploit all public schools — including elementary schools — to normalize her own sexual proclivities.

Jennifer Nielsen: Associate Director of the Anti-Defamation League (pictured here in the homosexual newspaper Windy City Times, promoting the pro-homosexual film It’s STILL Elementary. Trailers of this film can be viewed HERE).

Lonnie Nasatir: Regional Director of the Greater Chicago/Upper Midwest area with pro-homosexual Anti-Defamation League. Nasatir had this to say about the civil union law: “In our eyes this is an issue of pure and simple fairness and equality; we knew representative [Greg] Harris would need a lot of help and we thought it would be a great opportunity to inform the community about what the bill means and other issues about the LGBT community to be informed and educated citizens.”

And this: “Today we celebrate the hard work of advocates and legislators, and specifically Representative Greg Harris, who worked tirelessly on this bill for several years to ensure all citizens are afforded the rights and privileges of married couples…. This is a proud day for the state of Illinois as we have recognized a fundamental inequality and taken steps to remedy it.”

Dr. Stacey Horn: assistant professor in the College of Education, University of IL at Chicago (former academic home of Bill Ayers). In an article co-authored by Horn she writes, “A final LGBTQ school safety strategy involves…integrating LGBTQ topics into the school curricula.”

According to the UIC website, Horn is “interested in factors (e.g., age, religion, school context, intergroup context) related to sexual prejudice among adolescents and adults….In her teaching, she….also examines how to use our knowledge about adolescent development in creating educational and social context that support and promote positive developmental outcomes for all youth, and specifically for youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.”

Click here, here, and here for more on Horn.

Dorothy Espelage: Professor of Educational Psychology, College of Education, University of IL at Urbana-Champaign. HERE are some words of wisdom from Espelage: “Kids are bombarded by homophobic messages….The kids’ attitudes in this state are homophobic in nature. They marginalize boys who don’t act like boys and girls who don’t act like girls….This is very controversial….It’s tied to religion, it’s tied to values, and we’re a very sexually repressed nation as it is, anyway.”

Ann Rangos: self-identified lesbian high school student who is described by David Fischer of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance as “an incredible activist.”

Sukari Stone: self-identified lesbian high school student who writes the following on her blog:

I’m extremely passionate about human rights. More specifically gay rights. I work with an orginization that helps make schools safer and more welcoming to LGBTQA students. Equal rights are very important to me. Probably one of the most important things in my life at the moment (and hopefully for awhile). I have serious pride in who I am and honestly don’t care whether others accept me or not. And because of my ridiculous pride I’ll let you in on a little secret of mine…I’m a rainbow kid. Get it? I like girls. Cool right? (Source)

I was thinking gay thoughts as usual)….I promise to try to cut down on the ridiculous about of gay things in my posts. I really can’t help it. Most people have 2 parts of their brain, a logical side and an artistic side. I actually have 3 parts; an artistic side, a logical side and a gay side. (Source)

After reading [“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards], I honestly laughed. Seriously, this guy needs to be put away. I could just imagine a red-faced fat man screaming this sermon at the top of his lungs. “What’s his deal?” I asked myself.

What surprised me even more was the fact that people were so quick to believe this idiot. If they even read the Bible they’d know that the God portrayed in it was a good one. A loving caring and accepting one.

Personally, I am not religious. I don’t believe in God but I have read the Bible and studied religion a little bit. It’s just not my cup of tea. I could rant on and on about religion in general but I don’t want to ridiculously offend someone (for once in my life).

I think that Johnathan Edwards was trying to get his listeners to live a life of fear of paranoia. After all, if I believed that God was holding me by a string over a flaming pit I’d be pretty damn scared too. He’s using fear to force people to live their lives perfectly and not to make any mistakes. The God portrayed in the Bible was a forgiving guy so I’m not exactly sure what edition Edwards was reading. Maybe he knew that this wasn’t happening. That God was a hateful being that wanted to kill everyone. It could’ve been a pretty smart way to brainwash people into believing what you had to say.

Basically, Johnathan Edwards was either a ridiculously smart manipulator or a guy that was coming down from a serious acid trip while delivering his sermon. (Source)

Here are some of the recommendations made by the Koch-appointed Task Force (comments and questions in brackets are mine; all emphases are mine):

• education stakeholders in Illinois [should] commit to engaging in overall school transformation….To accomplish transformation, schools must:
• Recognize the impacts of systemic cultural issues such as racism, sexism, classism, adultism, disability discrimination andhomophobia that contribute to negative and hostile environments for youth and adults
• Provide effective youth programming with:
• Strong ties to theoretical constructs related to bullying…and behavioral change [Will any of the “theoretical constructs” used in “youth programming” dissent from liberal dogma regarding homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder?]
• An evaluation component [Will students be evaluated? If so, on what will they be evaluated? Will they be evaluated on the degree to which they have embraced the moral assumptions of liberal demagogues?]
• Methods and strategies for adapting programs to unique school contexts (e.g., race, age, gender) and ecological domains (e.g., peer relationships, family relationships)
• Provide professional development to all school personnel (including not only administrators and teachers, but bus drivers, maintenance workers, security, cafeteria workers, etc.) on issues of:
• School-wide expectations, as well as reporting and monitoring requirements when expectations are not met
• Impacts of systemic cultural issues such as racism, sexism, classism, adultism, ableism and homophobia that contribute to bullying and school violence, as well as hostile environments for youth and adults that inhibit learning and development
• In order to support schools in the school transformation process, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and other governmental agencies, where possible, should:
• Support amendment of the PSVA (the Illinois “enumerated” anti-bullying law) and implementing regulations to…cover all public and non-public schools, require more detail in mandated anti-bullying policies, and more effectively support school transformation efforts
• Develop two to four common indicators (e.g., incidence rates, discipline referrals related to bullying, overall school climate) that address bullying and school violence and require all schools and districts to report annually
• Establish an administrators’ academy to teach all school administrators ways to establish and maintain a positive school climate
• Make available quality technical assistance and professional development to schools engaged in the school transformation process
• Ensure all pre-professional education for school personnel prepare them to engage in and lead school transformation processes [“Pre-professional education” refers to students preparing to become teachers. In other words, the task force is recommending that all future teachers be indoctrinated with their subversive ideas about homosexuality.]
• Fully fund pilot projects to collect and evaluate data on the efficacy of the proposed school transformation model to comprehensively prevent and address bullying and school violence

Some random thoughts about this legislative debacle:

— It’s odd or ironic or hypocritical that an educational group that purports to embrace diversity and tolerance would apparently make no effort to create a diverse task force. It’s clear that the task force excluded anyone who opposes bullying but believes that affirming volitional homosexual acts harms children.

— It’s also odd that despite the fact that lesbians constitute less than 2% of the population, they comprise 100 percent of the student representation on the task force.

— According to research, the kids who are most frequently bullied are obese kids, and not one was included on the task force. In addition, I’ve never heard a single expert advocate the celebration and affirmation of obesity as a means to eradicate the bullying of obese students.

— I am loathe to refer, even indirectly, to particular students, but our state’s educational leaders have foolishly decided to make students public figures by including them on the task force. This reminds me of the equally foolish practice in District 113 of including students on committees that interview teacher candidates. Teacher candidates should be insulted by such a practice. However did we arrive at a cultural place where immature students who lack both knowledge and wisdom and who hold disordered moral beliefs serve on committees that make critical educational decisions for Illinois students? Clearly, Koch’s allegiance to homosexual kids is greater than his allegiance to conservative adults, sound pedagogy, or philosophical diversity. Perhaps he fears being accused of “adultism” if he doesn’t include students and “homophobia” if he doesn’t include homosexual students on the task force.

—Many conservatives fearfully, ignorantly, and, in some cases, self-righteously proclaim–at least publicly–that the homosexuality of educators and lawmakers doesn’t matter to them. Well, it better matter to them because when an educator or lawmaker affirms and embraces a homosexual identity, they are announcing precisely what they hold to be true about the nature and morality of volitional homosexual acts. And these non-factual assumptions about homosexuality will shape their decisions on a whole host of issues including laws, school policies, curricula, their own classroom comments, and professional development opportunities provided to school employees at public expense.

—How much will these complete “transformations” of all schools cost individual districts and the state?

It should be obvious that this anti-bullying law, like virtually all contemporary anti-bullying laws, policies, and activities, is centrally concerned with exploiting legitimate anti-bullying sentiment and public education to transform the moral beliefs of Illinois students. Part II of this article on Illinois’ “enumerated” anti-bullying law will focus on what community members can do in the hope of mitigating the law’s moral and pedagogical damage.

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