It may be the drip, drip, drip that gets your kids. A scene in a movie, a passage in a novel, a sympathetic portrayal of homosexuality in a play, a song by a well-know musician, a bullying prevention presentation at school, a visually arresting advertisement depicting homosexuality or opposite-sex impersonation positively… week after week, month after month, year after year.

Add to that the vociferous condemnation of disapproval of homosexuality or of the “trans” ideology (including opposition to co-ed private spaces) and voilà, children’s hearts and minds have been transformed—or, rather, deformed.

There are no widespread rational discussions of Leftist positions in which “progressive” arguments are presented with reasons and evidence. No dissenting arguments are explored. This, my friends, is how propaganda and demagoguery work.

And it’s everywhere, even in places you would least expect it, like Monroe Middle School in the heart of conservative Wheaton, Illinois, home of evangelical academic flagship Wheaton College.

Defacing the walls of Monroe Middle School are offensive student drawings that positively portray both homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation, some accompanied by ignorant (i.e., lacking knowledge) and troubling captions.

One drawing shows two boys hugging, cheek-to-cheek with a heart floating above their heads and a rainbow scarf encircling both their necks with the caption, “Be who you are, not who they tell you to be.”

Is that a good slogan on which schools should tacitly put their imprimatur? What does it even mean? Does it mean our identities are defined by our powerful, persistent desires? Any desires? All desires?

Who are “they” in the command to ignore “who they tell you to be”? Is there a difference between someone saying that homosexual activity is destructive to bodies and souls and telling someone who to be? Don’t teachers and administrators teach children every day in myriad ways who to be—and who not to be? Isn’t part of the job of teachers to teach children right from wrong? Isn’t that what character development necessarily entails?

Certainly, Christians believe that identity cannot be centered around the affirmation of sinful impulses of which homosexual impulses and the desire to be the opposite sex are but two.

Another drawing depicts a boy in girl’s clothing and a girl in boy’s clothing holding hands with the caption, “LOVE IS LOVE.”

Is that true? Is there just one universal, undifferentiated human experience called love? Are all loving relationships the same? If so, then logically, sex must be a morally justifiable part of all loving relationships. Man-woman, man-man, woman-woman, man-man-woman, woman-woman-man, adult-teen, adult-child, teen-child, father-daughter, mother-son, brother-brother, coach-team member, professor-student, etc.

Now don’t go all judgmental on me. And do not tell anyone in any of these kinds of relationships “who to be.” Remember, LOVE IS LOVE.

Here are some other questions someone should ask the powers-that-be at Monroe Middle School:

• Were these drawings part of a teacher’s assignment? If so, who was the teacher?

• If not, how did they come to be, and who gave permission for them to be on the walls?

• Were parents of all students notified ahead of time that there were going to be pro-homosexual and pro-“trans” drawings on the walls?

• How long have the drawings been up, and how long will they remain up?

• Are all forms of love identical?

• What other materials that depict homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation positively are the 11-14-year-old Monroe Middle School students being exposed to?

• Does Monroe Middle School allow any students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms?

• Would the administration permit students to hang drawings of, for example, young women who experience “sex-change regret” and feel sorrow over their sterility; irreversible voice changes; and scarred, breast-less chests?

Often sexual anarchists drip, drip, drip their propaganda and demagoguery into the minds and hearts of children, but lately, grown arrogant and brazen from feasting on their victories, they flood children with their noxious lies. For example, several years ago, California passed a law similar to the one wending its way through the Springfield swamp (the “Inclusive Curriculum” bill). The California law, passed in 2011 is dishonestly called the “Fair Education Act” and requires that all social studies and history classes in grades k-12 include the “role and contributions of… lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans.”

The California law also prohibits public schools from using any materials that reflect “adversely upon persons because of their… sexual orientation.” So, while being required to present resources that depict homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation positively, the law censors all resources that present dissenting views. The problem is that, unlike race, homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation are constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts that many view as immoral. Prohibiting dissenting voices transforms education into indoctrination.

In November 2017, California adopted its first set of textbooks for grades k-8 since the law took effect in 2012. Eight of the proposed textbooks were accepted, while two were rejected. Those two were rejected “because they failed to address the sexual orientations of historical figures who were LGBT, or widely speculated by historians to have been LGBT. They include poets Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, authors Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and President James Buchanan.”

As I wrote recently in regard to the “Inclusive Curriculum” bill proposed in Illinois, sexuality anarchists seek to use cultural achievements to suggest without stating that homosexuality and biological sex-rejection are good because people who affirm homosexual or “trans” identities did great things. Leftists seek to associate homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation with achievement in order to transfer the positive feelings people have about achievements to homosexuality and gender confusion.

The California law not only requires that schools include the role and contributions of homosexuals and opposite-sex impersonators but also—and unbelievably—those suspected of being homosexuals or cross-dressers.

It’s not just Wheaton parents with children in or soon-to-be in Monroe Middle School who should be outraged. All district taxpayers should be outraged. Their property tax dollars are being used to indoctrinate children with a pernicious ideology that undermines truth and human flourishing. In other words, their money is being used to harm children.

Teachers who don’t recognize truth do not deserve to be entrusted with other people’s children. Teachers who know truth but don’t battle tenaciously and courageously for it in public schools should be ashamed for abdicating their moral duty.

Finally, all Illinoisans need to contact their state lawmakers to urge them to reject SB 3249 and HB 5596, or we will end up with the same kind of law California has, only Illinois’ proposed law is worse. It will really flood the Land of Lincoln with noxious lies.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to both your state representative and state senator to ask them to reject this effort to politicize curricula in order to advance biased beliefs about sexuality to children in government schools.

More ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Monroe Middle School Principal Bryan Buck and Superintendent Jeff Schuler to express your objections to the inappropriate displays, which express arguable ideas on highly controversial topics.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Sexuality-Propaganda-from-Drip-Drip-Drip-to-Downpour.mp3

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IFI Worldview Conference May 5th

We have rescheduled our annual Worldview Conference featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet for Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture.

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

By Meghan Cox Curdon, Wall Street Journal

Raise questions about self-mutilation and incest as a young-adult theme and all hell breaks loose.

If the American Library Association were inclined to burn people in effigy, I might well have gone up in smoke these past few days. ALA members, mostly librarians and other book-industry folk, are concluding their annual conference today in New Orleans, and it’s a fair bet that some of them are still fuming about an article of mine that appeared in these pages earlier this month.

The essay, titled “Darkness Too Visible,” discussed the way in which young-adult literature invites teenagers to wallow in ugliness, barbarity, dysfunction and cruelty. By focusing on the dark currents in the genre, I was of course no more damning all young-adult literature than a person writing about reality TV is damning all television, but from the frenzied reaction you would have thought I had called for the torching of libraries.

Within hours of the essay’s appearance it became a leading topic on Twitter. Indignant defenders of young-adult literature called me “idiotic,” “narrow-minded,” “brittle,” “ignorant,” “shrewish,” “irresponsible” and “reprehensible.” Authors Judy Blume and Libba Bray suggested that I was giving succor to book-banners. Author Lauren Myracle took the charge a stage further, accusing me of “formulating an argument not just against ‘dark’ YA [young-adult] books, but against the very act of reading itself.” The ALA, in a letter to The Journal, saw “danger” in my argument, saying that it “encourages a culture of fear around YA literature.”

The odd thing is that I wasn’t tracking some rare, outlier tendency. As book reviewer Janice Haraydaobserved, commenting on my essay: “Anyone who writes about children’s books regularly knows that [Mrs. Gurdon] hasn’t made up this trend. . . . Books, like movies, keep getting more lurid.”

They do indeed. I began my piece by relating the experience of a Maryland woman who went to a bookstore looking for a novel to give her 13-year-old daughter and who left empty-handed, discouraged by the apparently unremitting darkness of books in the young-adult section. To her and many other parents, the young-adult category seems guided by a kind of grotesque fun-house sensibility, in which teenage turbulence is distorted, magnified and reflected back at young readers.

For families, the calculus is less crude than some notion of fictional inputs determining factual outputs; of monkey read, monkey do. It has more to do with a child’s happiness and tenderness of heart, with what furnishes the young mind. If there is no frigate like a book, as Emily Dickinson wrote, it’s hardly surprising that parents might prefer their teenagers to sail somewhere other than to the lands of rape, substance abuse and mutilation.

But, to some, those are desirable destinations. Many of the angriest responses to my essay came from people who believe that a major purpose of young-adult fiction is therapeutic. “YA Saves!” was the rallying hashtag of thousands of Twitter posters who chose to express their ire in 140 characters or less.

It is true that so-called problem novels may be helpful to children in anguished circumstances. The larger question is whether books about rape, incest, eating disorders and “cutting” (self-mutilation) help to normalize such behaviors for the vast majority of children who are merely living through the routine ordeals of adolescence.

There are real-world reasons for caution. For years, federal researchers could not understand why drug- and tobacco-prevention programs seemed to be associated with greater drug and tobacco use. It turned out that children, while grasping the idea that drugs were bad, also absorbed the meta-message that adults expected teens to take drugs. Well-intentioned messages, in other words, can have the unintended consequence of opening the door to expectations and behaviors that might otherwise remain closed.

If you think, as many do, that novels can’t possibly have such an effect, ask yourself: When you press a wonderful, classic children’s book into a 13-year-old’s hands, are you doing so in the belief that the book will make no difference to her outlook and imagination, that it is merely a passing entertainment? Or do you believe that, somehow, it will affect and influence her? And if that power is true for one book, why not for another?

It so happened that, as the Twitterverse was roiling over “Darkness Too Visible,” I received an advanced reader’s copy of an “edgy paranormal” teen novel coming out in August. Have a look at the excerpt on the back cover, where publishers try to hook potential buyers: “I used to squirm when I heard people talking about cutting-taking a razor to your own flesh never seemed logical to me. But in reality, it’s wonderful. You can cut into yourself all the frustrations people take out on you.” Now ask yourself: Is a book the only thing being sold here?

In the outpouring of response to my essay, I’ve been told that I fail to understand the brutal realities faced by modern teens. Adolescence, I’ve been instructed, is a prolonged period of racism, homophobia, bullying, eating disorders, abusive sexual episodes, and every other manner of unpleasantness.

Author Sherman Alexie asked, in a piece for WSJ.com titled “Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood”: “Does Mrs. Gurdon honestly believe that a sexually explicit YA novel might somehow traumatize a teen mother? Does she believe that a YA novel about murder and rape will somehow shock a teenager whose life has been damaged by murder and rape? Does she believe a dystopian novel will frighten a kid who already lives in hell?”

No, I don’t. I also don’t believe that the vast majority of American teenagers live in anything like hell. Adolescence can be a turbulent time, but it doesn’t last forever and often-leaving aside the saddest cases-it feels more dramatic at the time than it will in retrospect. It is surely worth our taking into account whether we do young people a disservice by seeming to endorse the worst that life has to offer.

Sharon Slaney, who works at a high school in Idaho, touched on this nicely in an online rebuke of her irate librarian colleagues: “You are naive if you think young people can read a dark and violent book that sits on the library shelves and not believe that that behavior must be condoned by the adults in their school life.” It is that question-the condoning of the language and content of a strong current in young-adult literature-that creates the parental dilemma at the core of my essay. It should hardly be an outrage to discuss the subject.

Mrs. Gurdon is the Journal’s children’s books reviewer.