The U.S. Center for Disease Control is sending out an LGBTQ inclusive self-assessment guide to all schools in the country. The agency wants to find out how committed schools are to providing a safe and inclusive environment for these students. The CDC’s school health division believes that when schools provide such an environment for gay and transgender students, it will improve the health and success of all students.

What makes them think this?

Obviously, someone at the CDC put in a lot of time and effort to developing the full color 32 page guide. But how does an organization whose mission is the control and prevention of diseases find the justification to create such a document? And why do they think they are qualified to deal with this issue? Do they consider homosexuality, transgenderism, queerness a disease?

Of course not. The disease they are attacking is our culture. This takes a little explanation to understand.

For years it has been known that members of the LGBTQ community suffer from mental illnesses at higher levels than heterosexuals. In fact, anxiety, depression, alcohol and drug dependence are problems that are 2.5 times greater among homosexuals and transgenders. Prior to 1973, being a homosexual was, itself, considered a mental illness. That changed when the American Psychiatric Association decided to remove homosexuality from the DSM-II, the bible for mental illness.

At the time, most of those who voted for this change did not believe that homosexuality was normal. Instead, because homosexuality was listed as a disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, homosexuals could be denied employment. This was not right, they thought. So the condition was removed as an illness.

Removing homosexuality from the manual did not change the frequency of mental illness experienced by the LGBTQ community, however. It was higher before 1973, and it was higher after 1973, right up to 2023.

Since 1973 there has been a continuing campaign to view homosexuality as a normal variant of human sexuality. That effort started to dramatically increase after 1985, when Division 44 of the American Psychological Association was established. Division 44, also known as the Society for the Study of Lesbian and Gay Issues, is the APA’s subgroup focused on LGBTQ issues. Today, that group has 1,500 members spread across 50 states, the District of Columbia and eleven other countries. Most of the members are, themselves, LGBTQ.

From the beginning, Division 44, operating behind the scenes and largely in secret, worked to restructure the culture to be more affirming of the LGBTQ lifestyles. That started to ramp up significantly in 2004 when Judith Glassgold was president of that division. In the Fall, 2004 newsletter for the division, she published a portion of her remarks at the APA annual convention that past summer.

Glassgold endorsed what she called “Liberation Psychology.”

Liberation Psychology cannot be considered science, or even social science. It was the brainchild of Ignacio Martin-Baro, a Spanish born Jesuit priest. He also was a University of Chicago trained social psychologist who had been assigned by the Jesuits to El Salvador. In El Salvado he promoted liberation theology, which was Christian theology merged with promoting liberation of the oppressed.

Combining his radical theology with his expertise in social psychology (a discipline that views the source of many psychological problems as being directly caused by oppressive social norms) he came up with “Liberation Psychology.” Liberation Psychology combines elements of Marxism, feminism, liberation philosophy, liberation theology, critical psychology, critical theory, critical gender and critical race theories, critical pedagogy, as well as other ideological streams.

Essentially, it is more a religious cause than a scientific endeavor. It is a theory that, in practice, has no successes it can trumpet. And it is a theory that was built on a jumbled mass of speculation.

Glassgold writes: “Liberation psychology is necessary because we are oppressed . . .  Thus, understanding oppression is essential for understanding the psychological difficulties our community faces, for much of the behavior that ends up being termed ‘psychopathology’ is not simply an individual trait, but the outcome of social forces.” 

She proposed that the work of the profession is not merely to heal, but to reshape society.

For years after 1973, many psychologists and psychiatrists continued to work with homosexuals to help them conform to the social norm of heterosexuality. Some of the therapeutic efforts involved mostly talk therapy. But other approaches involved aversion therapies or other abusive types of treatments. The more abusive approaches have since been discredited for all change efforts, whether it was used to neutralize homosexual urges or to stop overeating, drug or alcohol abuse, or any other unwanted behavior.

Since 1985, Division 44 has been hard at work to discredit all efforts to convert homosexuals to heterosexuality, not only the aversion therapies. These psychologists claimed that children were born gay or born trans. For years they searched for and tried to prove there was a gay gene. But there is none. Now they insist homosexuality is inherent, a natural occurring identity on the sexual continuum.

Behind the “born that way” claim for homosexuality, there is an anti-science, blind refusal to seek understanding about how a person becomes gay. When a child says “I’m gay” or I’m lesbian” or I’m trans” we must accept it without question. It makes no difference that more than half of the LGBTQ community self-report as having been sexually abused or having experienced some other sexual trauma. Anyone who dares to explore the origins of a child’s declared homosexuality is branded a heartless homophobe. Of course, this has allowed countless predators who abused many of them to get away scot-free.

Division 44 demands that every segment of society conform to their view that LGBTQ is normal and should be affirmed by everyone. This effort started in their own professions by forcing changes in the ethical standards for psychologists, social workers and other helping professions. It has become unethical for therapists to question a person’s gender identity. Several states have incorporated these standards into law, even if the person wants help to change.

Today we all are just supposed to accept and affirm a person’s self-proclaimed gender identity. In fact, the preferred response is to celebrate the person’s gender identity.

This philosophy has been pushed into every element of our culture—media, entertainment, sports, education, government, churches, everywhere. Almost every school has a GSA (originally Gay Straight Alliance, now Gender and Sexualities Alliance) or GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network) clubs. Originally sold as an antidote to bullying, these clubs work within the schools to normalize homosexual and transgender identities. The claim was that it was only gay students who were being bullied. Which is preposterous on its face.

Now the effort is taking the next step. The activists are working to normalize the sexual activities of the homosexual community even among children. Through the GSA’s and GLSEN, the students themselves are demanding LGBTQ focused sex ed which includes instruction on how to engage in all manner of same sex sexual activities, unisex locker rooms, trans girls on girls sports teams, puberty blockers, transgender hormones and surgeries.

Through guile, manipulation, infiltration, threats, demands, cancellations, demonstrations, lies, Division 44 and its minions have bludgeoned almost the whole of society to conform to the false narrative it has created: children are born gay and we must all affirm and celebrate them. Society must conform. It is the only path to improved mental health for the LGBTQ community. Division 44 started off by focusing on adult homosexuals, but in the last 20 years, they have turned their focus toward children.

So this is the cause that the CDC now has taken up. Indoctrinate children and change the culture in a single generation. When the change has been accomplished, the increased mental illnesses experienced by the LGBTQ community will vanish. When everyone accepts varying and constantly changing sexual identities as normal, an infinite number of self-determined pronouns as the standard, the ever increasing number of gender identities, there will be no differences in the prevalence of mental illness experienced whether gay or straight. So they say.

To the CDC, as with Division 44, the culture we have forged in the United States, a culture that serves as a beacon of freedom to the world, a culture that produced the greatest generation, that created the greatest nation in the history of the world . . . that culture, that culture is the disease the CDC is out to cure.

This is happening before our eyes.

Parents with children in school today should listen to Dan Proft’s recent radio program that further illuminates the degradation of schools and the increasing violence that are making urban communities unsafe and unlivable.

Proft and his co-host Amy Jacobson began the show by reporting on the gunfire that rang out during a baseball game between St. Rita High School and Marmion Academy. At about 7:00 p.m., on April 28, twenty—three shots were fired from a McDonald’s next to St. Rita, leading the baseball players to duck or run for cover. Tragically, as Proft pointed out, such lawlessness and violence are common on the South and West sides of Chicago.

Each year that Democrats control Chicago, the city becomes more violent, more dysfunctional, and more unfit for families.

The second story was about a racist attack at Lyons Township High School by a black girl, Heavyn Washington, on a white girl, which Washington’s friend cheered on using obscene language while recording the outrageous attack.

According to West Cook News, Washington told her friends that “she attacked her classmate because ‘she was being racist.’” Where did Washington get the idea that the proper response to (alleged) racism was pummeling people in the face and head and dragging people by their hair? Maybe she watched too many BLM riots.

According to news reports, Washington was the victim of racist taunts via Snapchat in February. No worries. Just last August, District 204, which includes Lyons Township High School, hired a new and expensive Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) director “Dr.” Jennifer Rowe. In response to the Snapchat ugliness, the school held “healing circles.”

Yeah, that’s the ticket. Healing circles will make everything better #eyeroll. Sometimes I wonder if leftist high school administrators have ever met teens.

Rowe was hired last August, starting salary $155,000, to be the “director of equity and belonging.” For Rowe, a former English teacher (of course),

Equity is not something added to the plate. … It is the plate. It’s the lens through which we look at all things.

If that’s not a troubling enough claim, Rowe also made this racist and oxymoronic statement:

We always want to racialize equity work.

But do we?

A father of a Lyons Township student called in to Proft’s show to share information about the racial division in both Lyons Township high schools, suggesting that what goes on in the classrooms—particularly English classes—foments racism. I wonder how many English teachers are devotees of critical race theory.

This photo of Rowe celebrating the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s Day of Silence provides yet more evidence that she’s just another overpaid leftist activist.

Get your kids out of public schools, and look very carefully at any private religious institution you’re considering.

Read more:

“Furries” Trend is a Result of the Slippery Slope

Once upon a time, I held a naïve hope that public education could be pried loose from the grimy grip of self-righteous, presumptuous, intolerant, diversity-loathing, idea-banning, illiberal bullying leftists fluent in Newspeak. That was then. This is now.

Now I know that is not possible—at least not in time to educate properly children who are currently in school or soon-to-be in school. There are good signs that a movement is afoot to challenge the MAN—who now is a homosexual, drag queen who uses the pronouns fae, faer, faers, and faerself.

A few communities are battling to replace their partisan/activist school boards. There is growing vocal opposition to the promotion of critical race theory-derived assumptions, gender theory, and obscene material. And a few state legislatures are banning cross-dressing boys from participation in girls’ sports.

While these are significant developments, even if successful, they are but a pea shot into an ossified, systemically biased, massive infrastructure composed of leftist controlled school administrations, school boards, state boards of education, state legislatures and ancillary leftist controlled organizations like teachers’ unions; the American Library Association; the Modern Language Association; the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, the Illinois “Safe” Schools Alliance, and all the organizations that profit from selling their racist “anti-racism” and pro-homosexual, pro-“trans”-cultic snake oil to public schools—all in the purported service of “safety” and “inclusion.”

Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that in recent years, Illinois’ ideologically non-diverse General Assembly has passed several laws requiring taxpayer-funded schools to preach leftist assumptions about “gender” and sexuality starting in kindergarten and to indoctrinate faculty with those same assumptions through “professional development.”

Here are articles about three bills that passed requiring leftist indoctrination in public schools:

Leftist Public School Indoctrination Bill Moving Forward in Springfield

Another K-12 School Indoctrination Bill Coming Through the Illinois Sewage Pipeline

Leftist State Board of Ed and Lawmakers Collude to Indoctrinate Illinois Students

It’s not just Illinois, the Land of Illiberalism that’s corrupting public education. What’s taking place just over the border in Wisconsin illustrates the presumptuousness of public servants in indoctrination camps that self-identify as “schools.”

Last month, Empower Wisconsin exposed a bit of what an Eu Clair Area School District (ECASD) in Eu Claire, Wisconsin imposed on all staff and faculty during their Feb. 25, 2022 “Equity Professional Development” on “Safe Spaces.” (Is there any word more abused by leftists than “safety”?) A slide presentation included this galling statement:

Remember, parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities. That knowledge must be earned.

Who put leftists in charge of what parents are entitled to know about their own children? Who gave leftists the moral authority to conclude that parents must earn the right to know their children’s “identities”?

That claim is brazen and presumptuous. For those who have worked in public schools or studied closely what’s been taking place incrementally over the past three decades, such a claim is not, however, surprising. And it’s widely shared by leftists in schools across the country.

The Federalist reported that Superintendent Michael Johnson justified this violation of parental trust by saying he wants to create an “equitable, safe and inclusive” place “for all students.” Further, Johnson said,

Our staff often find themselves in positions of trust with our students. The staff development presentation shared extensive data and information to assist our staff members in our ongoing efforts to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all students. … The ECASD prides itself on being a school district that makes all students feel welcome and safe in our schools.

Does being in a position of trust require staff members to affirm all identities? Does it require concealment of all identities or just the ones staff members have concluded are good, healthy, and morally acceptable?

If staff members found themselves in positions of trust with students who identified as zoophiles, sibling lovers, or polyamorists, would parents have to earn the right to that information?

Are Johnson et al. concerned about cultivating the trust of parents or about making all parents feel welcome and included?

Johnson asserted that “the staff training focused on data showing students who identify as non-heterosexual have a higher incidence rate of mental health issues than heterosexual students.” Did Johnson and his buddies look at long term health risks from “transitioning”?

Did they examine material suggesting that gender dysphoria—like depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation—may be a symptom of some other underlying condition or caused by trauma?

Did Johnson and his propaganda collaborators look at the data and information regarding detransitioning?

Have Johnson and his ideological compeers researched deeply the issue of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria—a social contagion that is resulting in explosive growth in the number of adolescent girls suddenly deciding they’re boys—a heretofore nonexistent phenomenon?

Every organization leftists cite to justify their efforts to promote their views of “gender” and sexuality in schools are controlled by leftists. And every statistic and tidbit of “information” leftists cite to justify their efforts is arguable. But no debate is permitted by ideological tyrants who presume their subjective assumptions are inarguable objective facts.

I will conclude with this call from philosopher, theologian, and Princeton law professor Robert P. George a year ago–a call that’s even more urgent today:

If you have kids in public schools in New Jersey or a state that has similar laws mandating the indoctrination of children in public schools on matters of sexuality, and if you do not believe in the “Woke” ideology into which your kids are being indoctrinated, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to get your children out of those schools. The indoctrination literally begins in Kindergarten and First Grade.

The state-run schools in New Jersey and elsewhere now reflect the adoption by the State of an established religion. It is not a traditional religion, and it is not theistic, but it is a religion nonetheless–a system of ideas embodying a particular view of human nature, the human good, human dignity, and what is most important (“sacred”). The public schools are as “religious” today as they were at the beginning when they reflected the Protestant Christianity that was dominant when public education began in the U.S. in the 1830s. The difference is that Protestant Christianity has been replaced by secular progressive ideology.

If secular progressive ideology is not your family’s religion, your kids don’t belong in schools dedicated to promoting it–and to indoctrinating children in it. Your kids should be brought up in your own faith. Allowing them to be educated in a set of dogmas that are antithetical to your own beliefs simply makes no sense.

Get them out.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/If-You-Care-About-Children-and-Americas-Future-Keep-Your-Kids-Out-of-Public-Schools.mp3

For those who for years have been battling critical race theory-infused and sexually deviant material in public schools with little help from their friends, recent developments offer a smidge of hope.

I began opposing both types of resources in about 2005 when I was a member of the highly partisan English Department at District 113’s Deerfield High School on Chicago’s North Shore. At that time, my opposition and warnings fell on deaf ears—well, except for the propagandists. Theirs were hostile ears—very hostile.

Teachers in District 113 were pushing CRT-tainted content in the classroom and in what is loosely called “professional” development. Teachers who claimed to “honor all voices” and “value diversity” were pushing leftist assumptions about sexuality while censoring all dissenting voices in the classroom. They hoped that the voices of conservative parents had been effectively silenced. They were largely right. And now District 113 has wasted taxpayer money to put tampon machines in boys’ bathrooms. That’s what happens when we allow bullying and fear to paralyze us.

Racism and disordered sexuality eagerly promoted by leftist change-agents in government schools are destroying the hearts, minds, and bodies of children; the integrity and safety of families; and all institutions of public life that previously protected order and liberty.

But leftist efforts to unleash chaos by appealing to the most selfish, dark, and ignorant desires of deceitful and desperately wicked human hearts through propaganda and tyranny have awakened the consciences of Americans.

Americans now see what leftists are doing. Americans see that leftists are fostering racism to divide and conquer. Americans see the grifters scamming Americans by creating the illusion that America is awash in racial bigotry and then swooping in to sell their snake-oil to the gullible and intimidated.

Americans of color see their children being taught the lie that they are oppressed victims with no agency in their own lives. Colorless Americans see their children being taught the lie that they are racist oppressors by dint of their tint. And Americans see the fruits of this racist teaching in the riots, arson, looting, and violence that pollute our streets.

Americans see the bizarre explosion of troubled adolescent girls suddenly deciding they are boys trapped in biologically healthy girls’ bodies. Americans see public schools affirming such cultish ideas and behaviors, while concealing their complicity from parents.

Americans of all political stripes see the reprehensible destruction of girls’ sports and the sexual integration of school bathrooms and locker rooms.

Americans see curricula and library book collections permeated with obscene literature that promotes disordered sexuality.

And Americans see leftist lawmakers passing laws that require public schools to introduce and affirm leftist beliefs about homosexuality and cross-sex practices to kindergartners.

But finally with racism and unbounded sexuality unleashing chaos and suffering throughout the public square, aided and abetted by the politicized re-education long taking place in public schools, Americans are using their voices to oppose this evil.

Parents are organizing and confronting partisan and indolent school boards from California to the New York island. And when threatened by hostile, tyrannical board members and the Department of Justice with being labeled domestic terrorists, parents are doubling down rather than cowering.

As a result of the collusion between the National School Boards Association (NSBA) with the Justice Department to crack down on critics of leftist school boards, seventeen state school board chapters have withdrawn from the NSBA, taking with them $1.1 million in dues, which constitutes about 42% of the NSBA’s annual income from dues. More money will be lost as these state school boards withdraw too from participation in NSBA-sponsored events. Other local chapters are considering doing likewise. This is but a small step in loosening the grimy, grasping grip of unelected, unaccountable, faceless bureaucrats on education, which should be a local matter.

In droves, teachers are electing to leave the far-leftist, culturally regressive, morally repugnant National Education Association. World magazine reported that the NEA has lost 65,000 members since 2019. One teacher profiled by World is Tracy Hiebert, a black woman and decades-long teacher, who left the NEA because of its support for “critical race theory, LGBTQ issues, and inappropriate sex education.”

I’ve saved the best for last: Parents are pulling their kids out of school. Since the start of the pandemic, Chicago Public Schools has lost 25,000 students, and nationwide 1.5 million students have left public schools.

In a macro-burst of righteous indignation, creativity, and deep love for their children and this nation, parents are choosing alternative ways to educate their children. They are sending them to existing private schools or co-ops. They are homeschooling. And they are creating new micro-schools/co-ops that take many forms.

IFI has long argued that churches must view the children in their congregations as a mission field. Churches should make it possible for any member who wants to exit public schools to do so, either by making the necessary funds available to parents to send their children to existing Christian private schools or by creating affordable schools.

Christians can donate their skills, knowledge, time, and money for this revolutionary project. Retirees in good health with free time can contribute significantly to such a venture. Christians with financial resources can provide help in many forms from curricular material to scholarships. Christian teachers trapped in our taxpayer-funded breeding grounds of lies could provide enormous help in establishing schools that are conducive to human flourishing.

Americans of all ages, races, ethnicities, religions, and nations of origin long to live in a union that is again touched “by the better angels of our nature” rather than drowning in the basest impulses of our fallen nature.

The vast web composed of public schools and all the ancillary organizations affiliated with them, including colleges and universities that train future teachers, organizations and individuals that profit from selling their “diversity, equity, and inclusion” wares to schools, political advocacy groups (e.g., GLSEN, the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance), teachers’ unions, the American Library Association, and the Modern Language Association, are all controlled by leftists. The bias is systemic. Changes will not come in time for children in school today. But as we pull our children out, we must continue to oppose what leftists are teaching those children remaining in public schools. It is a stewardship issue. Our money is being used to indoctrinate children with lies, and these children will be our culture-makers shortly.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Smidge-of-Hope-on-the-Education-Horizon.mp3

On August 20, 2021, Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law a comprehensive sex-ed bill that sexualizes your child and strips them of their innocence beginning in kindergarten. What exactly is comprehensive sex-ed? Read about it HERE.

According to this law, all government schools that provide personal health and safety courses must align their curricula with the National Sex Education Standards, formulated by so-called “experts” who supposedly know what’s best for your child: Planned Parenthood, SIECUS, and GLSEN, among others. In other words, as these standards change, the Illinois sex ed curricula will change.

These people want your child to be introduced to masturbation, gender identity, and different types of families in kindergarten through second grade. In grades 3-5 (ages 8-10), they will learn about hormone blockers for those who identify as transgender, be able to define “sexual orientation,” “cisgender, transgender, gender nonbinary, gender expansive, and gender identity,” and have masturbation reaffirmed to them as normal.

In grades 6-8 (ages 11-13), they will be required to define “bisexual, lesbian, gay, queer, twospirit, asexual, pansexual,” “vaginal, oral, and anal sex,” know where to access “short- and long-term contraception,” and be able to list at least 4 methods of contraception available without a prescription. They will be required to describe pregnancy options including abortion. Absolutely nothing is left to the imagination as they get older.

Make no mistake, students will be encouraged to “experiment” with their sexuality and be exposed to ideas that have historically considered perverse, sinful or abominable.

The law states that materials must be “age and developmentally” and “culturally appropriate,” but those terms are not defined. Apparently that’s left to the groups who write the standards to determine what’s age-appropriate for your child, not to mention the financial profits they will amass from your child’s sexual experimentation.

Parents, if you’re unable to homeschool your child or afford private education, please consider protecting him/her from radical sex-education and other godless indoctrination. Click on the check below to access the form to opt them out of these classes.

This Opt Out Form should be printed and signed. As a parent, you are responsible for their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Not the school and not the teacher. If you do not want your child exposed to sexual deviancy, please download this form and check the appropriate box(es). Instructions are included.

Two administrators and five school board members in District 211, the largest high school district in Illinois, are being sued by Judicial Watch on behalf of a teacher who was fired for expressing criticism of the 2020 BLM/Antifa insurrections that devastated American cities. The defendants are director of human resources, James A. Britton; District 211 superintendent, Lisa A. Small; and board members, Robert J. LeFevre Jr., Anna Klimkowicz, Steven Rosenblum, Edward M. Yung, and the worst of the worst, Kim Cavill.  Two board members, Mark Cramer and Peter Dombrowski, had the good judgment to vote against the teacher’s termination. If the other five board members had exercised similar good judgment, the district would have avoided this costly but important lawsuit.

Jeanne Hedgepeth, a tenured teacher who was employed in D211 for twenty years, was fired for four posts on her private Facebook page. The lawsuit details both the posts and their context:

In late May and early June 2020, Plaintiff was vacationing in Florida after the end of the 2019-20 school year when violent street protests, rioting, looting, and shootings erupted in Chicago and many other U.S. cities in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 by Minneapolis police officers. In Chicago alone, 82 persons were shot, 19 fatally, over the May 30-31, 2020 weekend. On May 31, 2020, which the Chicago Sun Times described as the most violent day Chicago had seen in 60 years, Mayor Lori Lightfoot asked Governor J.B. Pritzker to deploy the Illinois National Guard in the city. That same day, May 31, 2020, Plaintiff posted … the comment, “I don’t want to go home tomorrow.  Now that the civil war has begun I want to move.”

An individual responded, “Follow your gut!  Move!!!!!!!!!”  Plaintiff answered, “I need a gun and training.” The individual replied, “me too!”

Another individual posted a meme that same day suggesting that the riots could be stopped with a septic tank truck and a pressure cannon.  Plaintiff reposted the meme, obviously in jest, adding, “You think this would work?”

On or about June 1, 2020, Plaintiff posted the following comment on Facebook in the course of an exchange of posts begun the previous day with a third individual:

I am about facts, truth seeking and love. I will speak on any topic I choose because I live in a free country. I find the term “white privilege” as racist as the “N” word. You have not walked in my shoes either so do not make assumptions about me and my so called privilege. You think America is racist? Then you have been hoodwinked by the white liberal establishment and race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  Travel the world and go see that every nation has racism and some more than others but few make efforts such as we do to mitigate or eliminate it. I have lived and seen.  The people I am informed by about the black experience in America are actually some of the smartest people in America. And it so happens they are black. I highly recommend studying Thomas Sowell, who is now retired and in his 80’s. A treasure.  A truth seeker. [D]oes REAL research and analysis. Candice Owens is one of the smartest and most courageous women in America and Larry Elders speaks the truth with a great sense of humor and FACTS not feelings. They are who I listen to when it comes to facts about the black experience in America. Don’t you think there is a deeper problem than racism when 50% of murders in America are committed by 13% of the population? Do you think there might be a subtle genocide of black babies when most planned parenthoods are put in poor neighborhoods and that 30% of abortions are black babies. [B]lack women only make up 7% of the U.S. population.  The greatest power you have is what you believe about yourself. [W]hat have Democrats, mainstream media and intellectuals in ivory towers been telling the black community to believe about themselves for forty years? Wake up and stop believing them, then things will change.

Does anyone believe that if tenured teachers in D211 condemned Trump-voters, conservatives, or the Jan.6 rally on their personal Facebook pages they would be fired? Does anyone believe that if left-leaning D211 teachers made critical comments about Trump-voters, Republicans, conservatives, or the Jan. 6 rally in class they would be disciplined?

Conservatives who work in public schools are well aware of the de facto double standard for “progressive” and conservative teachers regarding the expression of moral or political views. They’re well aware of the systemic, institutional bias against conservative viewpoints. They’re well aware of the open intolerance of leftist teachers and administrators who self-identify as “tolerant.” Conservatives are well aware that their moral beliefs on homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation are openly (and falsely) called hatred by “progressive” teachers who suffer no consequences.

Perhaps the most egregious aspect of this sorry event was that arrogant board member Kim Cavill, who until very recently, has expressed her political views with impunity, voted to fire Hedgepeth, accusing Hedgepeth of “lacking professionalism.” Maybe someone should ask the four remaining anti-First Amendment board members who voted to fire Hedgepeth how they view these tweets from Cavill:

April 12, 2021 retweet: 

“Nothing like a police shooting to demonstrate conservatives’ most strongly held belief: With great power comes no responsibility.” 

April 13, 2021, she tweeted this quote from an Atlantic article: 

“For the past 30 years, the GOP has pursued a consistent strategy: Find a misunderstood or marginalized group, convince voters that the members of that group pose an existential threat to society, and then ride to victory on the promise of using state power to crush them.” 

August 28, 2020 retweet:

“It sounds absurd to say it, but America is in the process of choosing whether to be a white nationalist fascist state or an inclusive democracy. That’s not hyperbole, that’s just where we are”

August 23, 2020 Retweet:

“Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body – it is heritage.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates

D211 Board of Education policy says, a “Board of Education member should honor the responsibility which membership demands by representing at all times the entire school community.” Shouldn’t Cavill resign from the board?

And how do the four anti-free speech board members view Cavill’s creepy sex podcasts for children on anal sex, porn, and her recent one on polyamory, during which Cavill fawned over all the allegedly good things polyamorous family structures confer on children? Cavill labels this a “level one” podcast, which are topics that “cover the basics,” making it “perfect”—in Cavill’s perverse and unprofessional view—”for people of any age.”

As a far leftist, Cavill has the super-power of finding racism everywhere:

It’s pretty obvious that [the fact that polyamory is seen as a white movement] is part of a larger pattern of white supremacy.

How long before Cavill starts agitating for D211 curricula to endorse polyamory?

Cavill has a history of unethical behavior, perhaps the most corrupt of which was her scheme to solicit outside money to interfere with the 2017 school board election.

Prior to being elected to the D211 board in 2019, Cavill colluded with her sister to defeat the 2017 slate of excellent candidates by bringing in outside money from wealthy homosexuals and cross-sex identifiers that was laundered through a sham PAC.

Three exceptionally well-qualified people who opposed the sexual integration of private spaces for minors were running against three people who supported such privacy-violating practices. The three well-qualified challengers were,

Jean Forrest, a Chinese-American woman with an MA in economics who works as an actuary

Katherine Jee Young David, a Korean-American woman with a BS in Business Administration from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Ralph Bonatz who has a degree in electrical engineering and is a global quality control manager for an international corporation

On March 22, 2017, just 13 days before the 2017 election, LaSaia Wade, a 29-year-old “black trans woman” (i.e., a biological man), and Daye Pope, another biological male who passes as a woman, set up a Super PAC called Trans United Fund Illinois. Pope was the organizing director for a 501(c)(3) called Trans United Fund.

Two days later, on March 24, 2017—11 days before the 2017 election—Kim Cavill and her sister Lindsay Christensen set up a Super PAC called Parents and Neighbors for Quality Education (PNQE).

Just days after the founding of Trans United Fund Illinois, donations from some surprising people came pouring in:

• Matrix Director “Lana” Wachowski, a biological man who pretends to be a woman and lives with his dominatrix wife in Chicago, donated a whopping $10,000.

• Far left former Illinois State Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago), who has an adult son who pretends to be a woman, also donated $10,000.

• Homosexual Clark Pellet, a retired attorney and development chair for the “LGBTQ” Center on Halsted who lives in Chicago, donated $5,000.

• Executive director of Gender Rights Maryland, Dana Beyer, a man who pretends to be a woman and lives in Chevy Chase, MD donated $1,000.

• Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) who lives in Brooklyn, NY donated $500.

• Homosexual Douglas Hattaway, president and CEO of a Washington D.C. strategic communications firm who lives in D.C., donated $500.

• Architect Kira Kinsman, a biological man formerly known as Kyle Kinsman who lives in Wilkes Barre, PA, donated $250.

The more than $26, 000 in donations for a school board election from donors who don’t live in District 211 then went to—you guessed it—Cavill’s Parents and Neighbors for Quality Education.

Enquiring minds may wonder why Cavill and her sister set up PNQE, since Trans United Fund Illinois was already established. Why the extra step to fund the defeat of conservatives? The answer to that question might be found in mailers and yard signs. State law requires that campaign mailers and yard signs identify the groups that pay for them. Signs must say “Approved by …”

Which sounds better—and by “better” I mean less likely to arouse suspicion: “Approved by Trans United Fund Illinois” or “Approved by Parents and Neighbors for Quality Education”?

Flush with filthy lucre, Cavill and her sister got busy smearing good people with nary a backward glance.

As reported by the “LGBTQ” newspaper Windy City Times, a local mom (Who could that have been?) reached out to Trans United Fund, “a national trans-led advocacy group,” who agreed to help them defeat the three candidates who supported single-sex locker rooms:

Trans United Fund (TUF) and a group of local parents, youth, and allies, worked together to launch the first trans-led, trans-focused independent expenditure in history. TUF assembled a powerful team of thoughtful allies to quickly build and execute a research-informed and strategic plan to help the parents and youth get their message out. TUF supported the parents’ efforts through digital, mail, phone banking and helping to train volunteers to reach their neighbors at the door.

The Windy City Times made clear this campaign was a smear campaign in which good people who believe locker rooms and restrooms should correspond to biological sex were vilified. District 211 community member Tracey Salvatore, spewing venomous lies said this about the good people who were defeated:

We are fed up with this small group of vocal, transphobic people guided by a national hate group [Alliance Defending Freedom] wreaking havoc in our community. … Our District 211 community will not tolerate adults bullying kids or intimidating us for one more day. The ADF-inspired slate of candidates ran with the agenda of inserting a hate-based, national agenda into our schools. They didn’t care that their policy changes would increase bullying and violence against kids. … So we reached out to Trans United Fund and they helped us to get our message out to our neighbors and community members. (emphasis added)

Neither Salvatore nor anyone affiliated with PNQE felt the ethical obligation to provide evidence that the three candidates feared or hated “trans”-identifying students, or that they bullied kids, or that they intimidated community members, or that ADF has a “hate-based agenda,” or that single-sex private spaces for minors increase “bullying and violence.” Why try to provide impossible-to-find evidence when hate-mongering rhetoric does the job.

Yep, with the exception of two stand-out school board members, the D211 school board is the worst in Illinois. The district deserves to lose this lawsuit.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/The-Worst-School-Board-in-Illinois-Gets-Sued.mp3

Between now and Labor Day, you can double the impact of your tax deductible donations to IFI!

A group of donors are working with us to offer a $40,000 dollar-for-dollar matching challenge
to help us raise $80,000 for “Rescuing the Children” initiative here in Illinois!

One month ago, the IFI Team set off on a five day, eight stop tour of the state of Illinois. Our mission was to reach parents, grandparents and church leaders with an urgent message.  These “Rescuing Our Children” forums featured bold presentations about the perpetual academic failures of our public schools, and worse, the intentional anti-Christian indoctrination that intensifies year after year.

One has to look no farther than the Illinois Capitol for evidence of this malfeasance. The 102^nd General Assembly finished their spring session on May 31st. State lawmakers have introduced more than 7,000 bills this year, 600 of them have or are making their way to Governor Pritzker’s desk. It grieves me to report that our state lawmakers actually approved legislation to place female hygiene products in boys bathrooms in schools state wide. Yes, you read that correctly.

They passed legislation requiring county clerks to issue new marriage certificates to reflect legal name changes for transgender and non-binary individuals.

They approved of “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards,” which will infuse the assumptions of Critical Race Theory/ identity politics/BLM into all teacher-training programs, all Professional Education Licensing (PEL), and indirectly into all public school classrooms.

So instead of focusing on academic standards, our government schools are making sure that teachers are trained in Marxist and sexual social engineering.

Let me draw your attention to this pamphlet that we’ve prepared for you. This list of the largest 40 school districts in Illinois clearly demonstrates how our government schools are failing students in English Language Arts, Math and Science while spending an enormous amount of your tax dollars per student. The proficiency rates are embarrassing. But even worse, the graduation rates in most school districts far exceed the academic performances of students.

Perhaps the most troubling bill that state lawmakers passed this year was SB 818 – “Comprehensive” sex education for K-12. The term “comprehensive” as a way to describe legislation should alarm you. It is a indication that government officials have big plans to invade a new corner of your childrens’ lives beginning in kindergarten.

This proposal requires that highly objectionable sex ed material be forced on the impressionable minds of children who attend public school, as young as 5 years-old! This new legislation would require all public schools—including charter schools—to align teaching on “personal health and safety” with the “National Sex Education Standards,” Some of the contributing organizations that helped devise these standards are really all you need to know:  Planned Parenthood, Human Rights Campaign, GLSEN, Gender Spectrum, PFLAG, LGBTQIA Resource Center, Intersex Society of North America, Race Forward, SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change, Trans Student Educational Resources, and the World Health Organization.

The intention of global elites is to create “world core” standards. Alex Newman, Executive Director of Public School Exit, points out in his 40 minute presentation that these include socialism and communism–both failed experiments in other parts of the world–as well as the ever-expanding sexual education. Having laid the groundwork in sex ed classes and drag queen story hours at libraries, now schools are attempting to hide sex change services from parents, and educational materials go so far as to teach about the pedophilia present in ancient Greece.

Furthermore, these schools are teaching Islamic and Buddhist principles, while banning prayer in schools, as part of the “global education” that schools are moving toward. Ultimately, they hope for a “world core curriculum” that will have the same standards for every child in every school in the world. This is why government schools were created and has always been the goal, Newman says, and is a sign to parents: get your children out of government schools.

Please take time to listen to Mr. Newman’s entire video presentation:

The Rev. Ceasar LeFlore followed Mr. Newman’s presentation to urge attendees to consider Christ-centered education choices.

In his presentation, Rev. LeFlore discusses the many options that parents have for educating their children if they take them out of public schools. The public schools are indoctrinating our children, he reminds us, with liberal, sexually perverted, postmodern agendas, and the time they spend there far outweighs the short time that they spend in church on Sundays. While it is important for them to know reading, writing, and arithmetic, it is far more important that they know the truths of the Kingdom of God, and this is not something that they will ever learn in public schools. With this in mind, Rev. LeFlore speaks on numerous resources for educating our children with a focus on teaching them God’s ways.

Please take time to listen to Rev. LeFlore’s entire video presentation:

Between now and Labor Day, you can double the impact of your tax deductible donation
while helping us fund this critical effort!

Please help us meet and/or surpass a rare summertime matching challenge that has been made through the generosity of faithful supporters. These donors are working with us to offer a $40,000 dollar-for-dollar matching challenge to help us raise $80,000 for “Rescuing the Children” initiative here in Illinois!

Folks, if you hope to defeat “trans” activism in your public schools, public libraries, the Springfield Swamp, and halls of Congress, you must first find those old rubbery spines that have been gathering dust in your attics. Then muster some courage to speak truth to Leftists who have been winning gold medals in epithet-hurling. Their tongues are now the strongest part of their bodies, while apparently their brains are the weakest. Try getting them to answer a few foundational questions that emerge from their incoherent, science-denying “trans”-ideology and watch them bob and weave, evasively changing subjects in between screeching “hater” at you. Just keep repeating to yourself the old adage your parents taught you: Sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will never hurt you. More on those foundational questions shortly.

Before you go on your spine search, please pay close attention to what has been happening in District 211—the largest high school district in Illinois with 12,000 students and 5 high schools—where local control has secretly been wrested from the community by a group of Leftists “colluding” secretly with “LGBTQ” activists outside the community—way outside the community—to sexually integrate student locker rooms.

Last week, I wrote about the purchase of the District 211 school board seats in 2017 by Laurence (aka “Lana”) Wachowski, “trans” director of the Matrix movies who lives in Chicago; a “trans” architect from Pennsylvania;  the lesbian head honcho of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network from New York; a state senator from Chicago; a homosexual CEO from D.C.; a “trans” activist from Maryland; a homosexual activist from Chicago; and two “trans” activists from Chicago who secretly funded the defeat of three excellent school board candidates.

Since then, it’s been revealed that Illinois’ premier “LGBTQ” activist organization, the grossly misnamed Equality Illinois, sent a representative to the District 211 School Board meeting on September 19 at which the proposal to sexually integrate all locker rooms was discussed. Equality Illinois boasted on its website about sending its “civic engagement coordinator,” Anthony Charles Galloway, who is the former Project Coordinator at Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region & Southwest Missouri.

Last Monday, Vicki Wilson, president of D211 Parents for Privacy, and Tracey Salvatore, an epithet-hurling mother of two District 211 elementary school children, were invited to appear on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight to be interviewed by Carol Marin.

Salvatore is the activist I mentioned in last week’s article who, instead of explaining exactly why private spaces should correspond to “gender identity” as opposed to biological sex, hurled epithets at parents who believe girls and boys should not be allowed to access the private spaces of opposite-sex peers.

Before I get to what Tracey Salvatore said on Chicago Tonight, it bears mentioning that for some odd reason her coach—er, I mean, escort to the Chicago Tonight studio was Ed Yohnka, communications director for the ACLU in Chicago. I wonder why Salvatore invited him?

Salvatore managed to refrain from her customary hate speech when making her points on Chicago Tonight. Perhaps her escort helped her avoid that pitfall.

In response to Carol Marin’s question about the prior policy requiring “trans”-identifying students to change behind privacy curtains (still bad policy but marginally better than unrestricted access) if using opposite-sex locker rooms, Salvatore said,

I do feel that it fell short of full inclusion, full equity, full access just by singling out transgender students as requiring them to use the privacy curtains.

Well, it rightly did prohibit “full access” because the person seeking “full access” to the girls’ locker room was a biological boy. But “transgender” students are not being “singled” out. The boy to whom Salvatore was referring singled himself out by asking for special treatment. He asked to be allowed unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room—something other boys are not allowed.

“Trans”-identifying persons, like all other humans, have a sex, which is objective, immutable, and meaningful. Schools, like every other place of public accommodation, have sex-separated spaces in which humans engage in personal bodily acts like undressing and going to the bathroom. Treating a boy as a boy is the epitome of equity. Conversely, including a biological boy in girls’ private spaces is the antithesis of fairness, impartiality, and equity. Treating a boy as if he is a girl in girls’ private spaces means treating him specially and violates the privacy rights of girls.

If girls have a right to be free of the presence of objectively male peers in their private spaces, that right is not abrogated by the feelings of some boys about their biological sex. If women have no right to be free of the presence of objectively male peers in their private spaces, then why have any sex-separate private spaces, including for staff and faculty. If biological sex has no intrinsic meaning relative to undressing and engaging in bodily functions, why have any sex-separate spaces?

Commitments to “inclusion” and “equity” do not require that persons who wish they were the sex they aren’t have access to opposite-sex private spaces. Their feelings about their maleness or femaleness do not grant them the right to dictate that private spaces no longer correspond to biological sex.

Grotesquely exploiting the words of Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren in Brown v. Board of Education, Salvatore said, “separate but equal is not equal.” Warren said this:

We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

Segregating blacks from whites in schools or other places of public accommodation was a pernicious practice based on the erroneous belief that whites and blacks are by nature different and based on white hatred of blacks. Separating boys from girls in private spaces is based on the true belief that boys and girls are sexually different and that those differences matter when undressing and engaged in personal bodily functions. The desire to be free of the presence of persons of the opposite sex when undressing has nothing to do with hatred. Salvatore’s claim is patently foolish.

Salvatore’s third claim is equally foolish:

Transgender individuals are not a threat…. Transgender people are not a safety concern to anyone, not in a locker room, not on the street, not anywhere else.

First, the primary issue is not concern about predation—though that is an issue, particularly outside of schools. But how can Salvatore know with absolute certainty that “transgender people are not a safety concern” to anyone anywhere ever? Of course, she can’t and doesn’t know any such thing. While it is unlikely that a “trans”-identifying boy will sexually assault a girl in the girls’ locker room, can prognosticator Salvatore say with absolute certainty that no such boy ever will? Can she say with absolute certainty that no such boy will look at girls who are undressing? Can she say with absolute certainty that no such boy will ever expose himself in the presence of girls?

And what about students who have been victims of sexual abuse. Estimates are that 1 in 4 girls (and 1 in 6 boys) will be sexually abused by the age of 18, which means in District 211, there are likely 1,500 girls (and 1,000 boys) who are victims of sexual abuse. In contrast, the Williams Institute estimates that .7 percent of teens identify as “trans,” which would mean that there are about 42 biological boys who identify as “trans”  in District 211. Many, perhaps most, sexually abused girls feel uncomfortable changing clothes in the presence of opposite-sex persons. They should not be compelled to leave their own locker rooms in order to feel safe.

Though the issue of protecting the feelings of children who were victims of sexual abuses is critical, it is not the primary issue either.

The primary, foundational issue is the meaning of sexual differentiation. Do our sexed bodies have meaning or not? Cultural regressives, like Salvatore and school board member/sexpert Kim Cavill, essentially say that physical embodiment as male or female has no intrinsic meaning relative to feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when engaged in personal acts like undressing and going to the bathroom, which is absurd and destructive nonsense. Three times Salvatore mentioned “respect,” and none of those times referred to the respect due to students who have a right to a locker rooms free from the presence of opposite sex peers.

Salvatore then made this baffling statement:

I think people have learned that transgender individuals are just like human beings.

Well, “transgender” individuals are not just “like” human beings. They actually are human beings, and I don’t know a single person who thinks otherwise. Recognizing “trans”-identifying persons as humans includes recognizing that they have a sex and that in private spaces their sexual identity is all that matters. Prohibiting students from using opposite-sex private facilities does not deny their existence or their humanness.

Salvatore assures the Chicago Tonight viewing audience that “the reality is that people are not getting naked in the locker room.” That may be true, but it’s hard to believe that students who are taking a swim class or are on swim teams, diving teams, or water polo teams are never naked as they change from clothes to swimsuits. That, however, is beside the point.

Unrestricted access means that if girls in girls’ locker rooms are permitted to be in their underwear or fully nude, so too is a biological boy who pretends to be a girl permitted to be in his underwear or fully nude in the girls’ locker room. And a biological boy who is permitted unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room is also permitted to be anywhere in the locker room when girls are changing into swimsuits. Whether any particular boy chooses to partially undress, fully undress, or be in the area where girls are changing into swimsuits is irrelevant. It’s the principle that matters.

Finally, here are the questions that every school board member, administrator, and supporter of the sexual integration of private spaces should be required to answer before any votes on policy proposals are taken:

• Why should locker rooms correspond to “gender identity” as opposed to biological sex?

• Who decided that in private spaces biological sex is subordinate to subjective feelings about maleness and femaleness and by what authority did they make such a radical decision?

• Do humans have an intrinsic right not to undress in the presence of persons of the opposite sex? If so, is that right abrogated by the feelings of “trans”-identifying persons or their aesthetic deception?

• If humans have no such right, then why retain any sex-segregated private spaces anywhere?

• Why is it reasonable for “trans”-identifying students to refuse to use restrooms/locker rooms with students who don’t share their “gender identity,” but it’s hateful for other students to refuse to use restrooms/locker rooms with peers who don’t share their sex?

• Why should girls in girls’ locker rooms who don’t want to undress in the presence of biological boys be forced to change behind a privacy curtain? Why can’t biological boys in the boys’ locker room who don’t want to undress in the presence of biological boys use a private changing area in the boys’ locker room or nurse’s office?

• If schools can’t discriminate based on either sex or “gender identity” in private spaces, wouldn’t prohibiting normal students (i.e., “cisgender” students) from using opposite-sex facilities constitute discrimination based on sex and/or discrimination based on “gender identity”?

• What should school restroom and locker room policy be for “gender fluid” students?

• In the “trans” community, girls who “identify” as boys are boys, so why should they be free to use girls’ private facilities? Should girls who “identify” as boys be required to use boys’ locker rooms?

• Are lesbians and homosexual men who oppose the sexual integration of private spaces—especially the private spaces of girls and women—demonizing, bullying, intimidating, hateful bigots as Salvatore characterized those who oppose the sexual integration of District 211 private spaces?

So many essential questions asked by no one even as we deny human nature and the fundamental rights of girls and boys.

Correction: This article has been corrected with regard to estimates of number of abuse victims and of teen boys who identify as “trans.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/What-Conservatives-Should-Know.mp3

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The first weekend in July, the National Education Association (NEA) held its annual Representative Assembly in Houston, an assembly consisting of “nearly 7,000 delegates.” The National Education Association is a “progressive” political activist organization that masquerades—er, I mean, identifies as an educational organization. The NEA’s Code of Ethics says, among other things, this:

The educator… recognizes the supreme importance of the pursuit of truth, devotion to excellence, and the nurture of the democratic principles. Essential to these goals is the protection of freedom to learn…. The educator therefore works to stimulate the spirit of inquiry, the acquisition of knowledge and understanding, and the thoughtful formulation of worthy goals. In fulfillment of the obligation to the student, the educator… Shall not unreasonably deny the student’s access to varying points of view.

Read these “New Business Items” just passed by the NEA, and see if you believe the NEA honors its Code of Ethics:

• “The NEA vigorously opposes all attacks on the right to choose and stands on the fundamental right to abortion under Roe v. Wade.”

• “The NEA will immediately call on the Trump administration, U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and the courts, for the immediate end to the detention and criminalization of immigrant children and their families; including an end to ICE raids.”

• “The NEA will call on the U.S. government to accept responsibility for the destabilization of Central American countries (including, but not limited to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua), and that this destabilization is a root cause of the recent increase of asylum seekers in the United States.”

• “NEA will collaborate and partner with organizations and individuals who are doing the work to push reparations for descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States.”

• “The National Education Association will organize and mobilize in support of the Equality Act to be a top legislative priority.”

• “NEA will incorporate the concept of ‘White Fragility’ into NEA trainings/staff development, literature, and other existing communications on social, gender, LGBTQIA, and racial justice.” (“White fragility” is a racist leftist term invented to mock, criticize, and silence colorless people who disagree with the assumptions of Critical Race Theory. The term embodies the false idea that disagreement with the racist views of social justice warriors is motivated by fear.)

• NEA “… will recommend specific annual numeric goals for the recruitment of, and retention of, educators of color.” (In other words, the NEA will judge educators by the color of their skin.)

• “NEA will promote the Black Lives Matter Week of Action in schools during Black History Month in 2020…. NEA will specifically call for clear efforts to demonstrate support for the four demands of the BLM Week of Action in schools” which include “Mandating that Ethnic Studies be taught in preK-12 schools.”

• The National Education Association will create space in all individuals’ name tags, badges, and IDs for the individuals’ pronouns. The individuals’ pronouns will only be left off at the individual’s request.”

• “The NEA will contact all school districts… to recommend incorporating into their science curriculum, causes, effects, and solutions to climate change and pollution.”

• “NEA will work with current partners (such as GLSEN), to expand on the number of professional development opportunities for Gender Sexuality Alliances (GSA) advisors.  This training should include, at a minimum: Starting a new GSA; How to handle possible backlash from different stakeholders.”

• “NEA will create model legislative language that state affiliates can use to lobby for a K-12 cross content curriculum that is LGBTQ+ inclusive.” (It’s bad enough that K-12 classes teach about homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation in health, sex-ed, and purported “anti-bullying” activities, but now they want indoctrination in the “LGBTQ+” ideology to permeate all content areas.)

• “[T]he National Education Association will explore the opportunity to create a Stonewall LGBTQ Scholarship for tuition assistance to an openly LGBTQ student attending graduate school who demonstrates a commitment to research and practice surrounding LGBTQ issues and awareness in our schools.  This would be a tribute to the Stonewall riots.”

• “NEA will… call on educators to refrain from discouraging… students to not speak a language other than English at school.”

• “The NEA will publicize… a 100 percent student loan forgiveness program for educators… across the country.”

One interesting membership change was passed as well. Two-thirds of the delegates “voted to amend the national teachers’ union’s constitution” to allow “non-educators” to become members, which in turn allows them to “donate to the NEA’s political action committee.” Such “public education allies” won’t “be able to vote, nominate candidates for elected office, or hold governance positions within the union.” They’ll only be able to donate money, thereby strengthening the power of “progressives” within the NEA. If by becoming members, non-educators could vote and nominate candidates, conservatives would have reason to join, because membership might enable them to weaken the power of “progressives” within the NEA. But if membership entitles non-educators only to donate money, the effect will be to strengthen the existing power structure.

The NEA is not an educational organization. It is not an organization committed to the full, free, and critical examination of diverse ideas. It’s a Leftist, political advocacy organization led by presumptuous culturally regressive dogmatists who have arrogated to themselves the right to use government schools to impose their arguable assumptions/worldview on other people’s children. The NEA and its ideological allies have transformed education into indoctrination.

The systemic anti-conservative bias deeply rooted in the sinews of government schools make them places that conservatives—especially Christians—should exit immediately if not sooner. And this will require the assistance of churches. Many families can neither homeschool nor afford existing private schools. Churches must be creative and find ways to enable their members to exit government schools. Churches should make funds available to enable members to send their children to existing private schools and/or create affordable private schools.

There are many ways the church can facilitate the training up of children in the way they should go, including tapping one of our greatest resources: retirees who, mature in their faith and equipped with a lifetime of diverse experiences and acquired knowledge, can and should help in this crucial endeavor. Retirees who are in good health should actively pursue ways to help in this effort. I will close with this legendary admonition from theologian and retired pastor, John Piper:

I tell you what a tragedy is. I’ll read to you from Reader’s Digest what a tragedy is. “Bob and Penny . . . took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their thirty foot trawler, playing softball and collecting shells.”

That’s a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. And I get forty minutes to plead with you: don’t buy it. With all my heart I plead with you: don’t buy that dream. The American Dream: a nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement, collecting shells as the last chapter before you stand before the Creator of the universe to give an account of what you did: “Here it is Lord — my shell collection! And I’ve got a nice swing, and look at my boat!”

Don’t waste your life; don’t waste it.

Let’s all start working for children in earnest, with courage, and with a willingness to suffer for Christ and his Kingdom.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/New-Recording-3.mp3

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An arm of, arguably, the most tyrannical, divisive, hateful, and destructive political movement in the country will once again urge children and teens to disrupt government schools for an entire day on Friday April 12, 2019. And for the 23^rd year in row, spineless Christians will take it on the chin. They tolerate the intolerable—not for principled reasons—but out of cowardice.

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) sponsors and promotes the political protest called Day of Silence whose goal is to exploit taxpayer-funded middle and high schools for the purpose of transforming the moral, political, and ontological views of other people’s children. GLSEN even provides a guide for “educators” that teaches teachers how to promote Leftist views of homosexuality and the “trans” phenomenon on Day of Silence.

GLSEN urges students to refuse to speak for the entire day—including during instructional time—in the service of normalizing disordered feelings and sexual acts that God abhors. And Christians shamefully say and do nothing.

Day of Silence uses government schools to propagate arguable assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexual acts and relationships and of biological-sex impersonation. And Christians rationalize their capitulation as fostering unity and demonstrating “niceness.”

Why are “LGBTQ” activists more impassioned, tenacious, and persevering in promoting wickedness than Christ-followers are in opposing it? Do Christians not remember that we are to deny ourselves and take up our crosses daily, to hate evil and love good, to expose the unfruitful works of darkness, and to count it all joy when we encounter trials because of our identity in Christ?

Have Christians forgotten these words of Jesus: “It is inevitable that stumbling blocks will come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be thrown into the sea than to cause one of these little ones to stumble”?

As children and teens are inculcated with a body-, mind-, and heart-destroying ideology, one must wonder if Christians love—or even like—their neighbors.

There is something Christian parents can do. They can contact their children’s middle and high school administrators to ask if students and/or teachers will be permitted to refuse to speak on Day of Silence. If the answer is “yes,” keep your children home. Stop acquiescing to every moral offense the sexually deviant among us do in the service of their ideology.

Schools have a legal and pedagogical right to prohibit students from refusing to speak during class time. Schools may prohibit any actions they deem disruptive, and surely refusing to speak during instructional time is disruptive.

Imagine if another group of students refused to speak for an entire day to draw attention to the plight of women in Muslim countries, or the plight of Christians in China, or to object to American military intervention around the world, or to oppose socialized medicine, or endorse the Green New Deal. Such hijacking of government schools is disruptive and inappropriate. Students can engage in political action on their own time and their own dime—not in public schools supported by the hard-earned money of diverse peoples, many of whom object to the assumptions of the “LGBTQ” ideology.

A month ago, a Fresno, California high school spokesperson prohibited students from wearing MAGA hats, implying that the hats would be “distracting.” Translated: She feared intolerant leftist high school students would respond obnoxiously to the presence of peers wearing MAGA hats.

It’s well-known that conservative kids are far less likely to respond obnoxiously to “progressive” paraphernalia or political action than Leftist kids would to conservative paraphernalia or political action. Therefore, only conservative paraphernalia and political action are deemed distractions and banned. Leftist brats, bullies, and boors win again.

If the Leftists who control government schools really cared about creating a learning environment free of political distractions and disruptions, they would establish policies that prohibit all clothing with political messages and all controversial political action. But they don’t.

I learned from my experience working at Deerfield High School on Chicago’s North Shore that the claims of Leftist teachers about their commitments to tolerance, inclusivity, and diversity are lies. They don’t value true tolerance, inclusivity, or diversity. They don’t seek to make schools “safe” places for all students. They don’t care if Orthodox Jews, Muslims, or theologically orthodox Christians feel excluded, uncomfortable, and “unsafe.”

The central pedagogical goals of Leftist “teachers”—better known as agents of change—are ideological not pedagogical. And they’re shameless in their hyp0crisy.

Conservative Parents: If your middle or high school allows students to refuse to Speak on Day of Silence, please keep your children home.

Click here for more information.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/mp3-What-the-World-Needs-Now-is-Some-Conservative-Civil-Disobedience_01.mp3

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Arguably, the most tyrannical, divisive, hateful, destructive political movement in the country will once again urge children and teens to disrupt government schools for an entire day on Friday April 12, 2019. And for the 23^rd year in row, spineless Christians will take it on the chin. They tolerate the intolerable—not for principled reasons—but out of cowardice.

read more here

The recently released policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in support of chemical and surgical interventions for children and teens who experience gender dysphoria, or who falsely believe they are the sex they are not, or who wish they were the sex they are not is being trumpeted far and wide by “progressives” and “progressive” organizations. That document, dripping with leftist, politically-constructed language, is titled, “Ensuring Comprehensive Care and Support for Transgender and Gender-Diverse [TGD] Children and Adolescents.”

First some facts:

1.) The policy was created by only 28 medical doctors, 2 psychologists, 1 nurse practitioner, 1 social worker, and 1 person with a PhD in behavioral sciences. At least 4 of those involved in creating the policy are not members of the AAP.

2.) In addition to the 33 people listed as writers, contributors, or liasons at the conclusion of the policy, only about another dozen members of a board would have voted on it.

3.) The policy was not presented to all 67,000 members of the AAP for a vote, nor are minority reports solicited. In fact, most of the 67,000 AAP members would not have seen the policy before it was released to the public.

So, all we know is that fewer than 60 members of the 67,000-member AAP created and voted for the new policy affirming the chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation of minors. One would think the mainstream press would include this salient information when reporting on the destructive and politicized policy.

You can read the AAP recommendations here, but a plain-speaking summary should suffice. According to the AAP,

• The medical and mental health communities should embrace and affirm the anti-science “trans” ideology by chemically sterilizing and surgically mutilating minors.

• All health records should identify only the subjective, internal feelings of minors about being “male, female, somewhere in between, a combination of both, or neither” and should conceal the biological sex of minors who seek to pass as the opposite sex.

• Insurance plans should cover all Mengelian science experiments performed on minors in their futile quest to become the sex they are not and never can be.

• Pediatricians should actively promote the “trans” dogma in public schools, community organizations, and the law.

• Federal government research should “prioritize research that is dedicated to improving the quality of evidence-based care for youth who identify as TGD.”

Note what the AAP doesn’t recommend.

• It doesn’t recommend that medical and mental health communities should provide comprehensive, biological-sex-affirming health care in a safe, clinical space.

• It doesn’t urge medical and health care professionals to ascertain when a patient’s feelings first emerged or to determine the presence of comorbidities (i.e., other conditions present simultaneously).

• It doesn’t call for research into 1. the safety of lifelong cross-sex hormone-doping, 2. the effect of social “transitioning,” and chemical and surgical interventions on desistance/persistence rates, 3. the rate of detransitioning/sex-change regret, 4. the phenomenon called “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” or 5. all the possible causes for the “high rates of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, and suicide” among adolescents who self-identify as “gender diverse,” which could include abuse, molestation, social ostracism, bullying, and family breakdown.

Do the 33 AAP members know with absolute certainty that in every case of feelings of incongruence between a child’s objective, immutable biological sex and his internal feelings about his sex, the error rests with his sex and not his internal feelings?

Maybe the 33 AAP members could explain why adolescents who experience incongruence between their anatomical wholeness and their internal sense of themselves as amputees (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder) should not be permitted surgical intervention to achieve a sense of congruence. Why is it justifiable to amputate the healthy breasts or testicles of those who identify as “gender diverse” or “trans” but not justifiable to amputate a leg below the knee in order to alleviate the feelings of incongruence that those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder experience? Why shouldn’t we allow “amputee wannabes” to socially transition at school even without surgery by being permitted use of wheel chairs and handicapped parking, and allowed more time for passing periods? Why shouldn’t school forms be required by law to falsely identify bodily whole students as having orthopedic impairments?

The 33 AAP members cite the non-medical, highly political Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) whose sole reason for existence is to exploit government schools in its quest to normalize homosexuality and the “trans” ideology. GLSEN’s non-medical, non-objective claim cited by the AAP is that schools that prohibit co-ed restrooms are guilty of having “antibullying policies” that don’t provide “specific protections for gender expression.” Never mind that sex-segregated restrooms provide specific protections based on biological sex. That doesn’t matter to either GLSEN activists or the 55 people who devised and voted for this boneheaded AAP policy.

While wandering through the thicket of citations carefully selected by the 33 AAP members, I made an interesting discovery. The AAP policy statement cited an article titled “Gender Variance and Dysphoria in Children and Adolescents,” which in turn cited an AAP document titled, “Childhood Gender Nonconformity: A Risk Indicator for Childhood Abuse and Posttraumatic Stress in Youth,” which examines the prevalence of abuse among “gender nonconforming” children. That AAP article states this:

Our study cannot determine the causal relationship between abuse and gender nonconformity; in other words, the extent to which nonconformity is a risk factor for abuse versus an indicator of abuse. (emphasis added)

The 33 members of the AAP’s pro-sterilization/pro-mutilation contingent likely don’t want the public to learn that it’s possible that childhood abuse may cause gender nonconformity, just like “trans” activists don’t want the public to learn that the well-known phenomenon of “social contagion” may lead to adolescent self-identification as “trans.”

One of the contributors to the AAP pro-sterilization/pro-mutilation policy is Dr. Robert Garofalo. He is the openly homosexual, HIV-positive doctor who is the Division Head of Adolescent Medicine at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. In a May 2015 Chicago Magazine profile of him titled “The Change Agent,” Garofalo admits that he “has had patients as young as 15 undergo top surgery.” That was then… this is now, and now double-mastectomies are ravaging the healthy bodies of girls as young as 13.

Another contributor to the new AAP policy and chief architect of the first policy is Dr. Ellen Perrin. A Tufts University profile of Perrin reports that for her, “pediatrics is more than just medicine; it’s a vehicle for social change.” A 2006 Boston Globe profile of Perrin says, “Politics, specifically politics with a progressive tincture, is in Dr. Ellen Perrin’s blood.” Further Perrin, who was “chair of Pro Family Pediatricians—a group of pediatricians opposed to the Federal Marriage Amendment,” shared that “[a]dvocacy is one of the things I do.”

Fortunately for children, there’s another medical organization that has sprung up precisely because of the radical positions taken by the AAP: the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds). You may have heard of ACPeds because the very name sends shivers of revulsion (or is it fear) up the spines of “progressives” everywhere. Why? As I asked a year ago, is it because ACPeds is composed of charlatans and snake oil salespersons who received their medical degrees from Rufus T. Firefly’s University of Freedonia?

Nope.

ACPeds is ridiculed because it holds different positions on the treatment of gender-dysphoric minors. Leftists are reluctant to discredit ACPeds based solely on disagreement about treatment protocols because that argument becomes circular: “You can’t trust ACPeds because it doesn’t support ‘gender affirmative’ protocols, and we all know ‘gender affirmative’ protocols are right.”

So, how do liberals attempt to discredit ACPeds which was founded just sixteen years ago? They do so by citing the fact that the number of members is lower than the number of AAP members—which was founded 87 years ago. That’s still a fallacious argument (i.e., appeal to popularity), but it works as a soundbite and it works for the  ignorant among us of which there are many.

Dr. Joseph Zanga, ACPEDS member who serves “as Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Medical College of Georgia,” Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics at Mercer University School of Medicine, and is a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, further clarified the policy-making process that liberals would likely prefer concealed:

• Policy Statements are produced by 10-12-member Committees or Councils, or Section or more commonly by Section Executive Committees.

• The 10 members of the AAP Board of Directors are elected by the AAP members of their district (elections never garner votes from even 40% of members) and the Executive Committee consisting of the president, president-elect, immediate past-president (elected by the AAP members nationally with equally small numbers voting), and the paid executive director (hired by the Board)

• Statements are sent to the board for review and vote. Often there is discussion at a board meeting. Rarely is there outside opinion sought, and there is never a minority report.

• AAP members often don’t even see the report until after it appears in the media. They have no direct input.

Meanwhile the AAP continues to provide reasons for pediatricians to join ACPEDS. In September 2016, the AAP discredited itself as an impartial, unbiased medical organization when it announced that henceforth it would be partnering with the nation’s largest pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” activist organization, the radical Human Rights Campaign (HRC). I wonder how many of the 67,000 AAP members voted to partner with the HRC.

Here are some HRC recommendations  from its guide for schools:

• “While this guide focuses primarily on transgender youth who are transitioning from male to female or female to male, it is important to note that a growing number of gender-expansive youth are identifying themselves outside the gender binary, and many use gender-neutral pronouns. While it may be more difficult to adapt to gender-neutral pronouns, it is still important to do so in support of the student.”

• “Another crucial element in supporting a transitioning student is giving them access to sex-separated facilities, activities or programs based on the student’s gender identity [including] [r]estrooms, locker rooms, health and physical education classes, competitive athletics, overnight field trips, [and] homecoming court and prom.”

• “Any student who feels uncomfortable sharing facilities with a transgender student should be allowed to use another more private facility like the bathroom in the nurse’s office, but a transgender student should never be forced to use alternative facilities to make other students comfortable.”

Leftists assume that hard science provides all the answers to our ethical questions, and, therefore, we need only defer to our objective scientific organizations to point the way to sexual Shangri-La. But science does not provide answers to moral questions, and our scientific organizations are not objective. When in ten or twenty years the medical community and public at large are faced with the enormity of the harm done to children and teens by the “trans” ideology, I hope feckless doctors, school administrators, teachers, and “progressive” pundits are still around to answer for the damage they facilitated.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/New-Recording-4.mp3

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One of the accusations that is most offensive to gays and lesbians is that they are child predators who want to seduce our children sexually. I stand with them in finding this accusation to be highly offensive.

To be clear, I have documented elsewhere that the arguments put forth by advocates of pederasty parallel key arguments used by gay activists. And some studies indicate that there is a higher percentage of homosexual pederasty than heterosexual pederasty.

Nonetheless, the vast majority of gays and lesbians are not pederasts. And so, to accuse them of infiltrating our schools in order to prey sexually on our children is both ugly and false. (See, here, however, for potential problems with school-based Gay Straight Alliances.)

The LGBT’s Ideological Goals for Our Children

But what is 100 percent truthful is that while the vast majority of LGBT activists presumably do not have sexual goals for our children, they most certainly have ideological goals. Without a doubt, they want to influence the way our children think.

They want our kids to view same-sex attraction as no better or worse than opposite-sex attraction. (Perhaps some want kids to view same-sex attraction as superior!)

They want children to embrace the possibility of gender fluidity.

They want them to consider whether they might be transgender themselves.

All of this is easily documented, and at this point in history, cannot be reasonably denied. The ideological seduction of our little ones is at hand today. And it has been at hand for some years now.

The Lunchbox

Well over a decade ago I purchased the GLSEN Lunchbox (second edition), containing helps for gay-friendly educators to be used in grades K-12.

The goals, of course, were to teach “tolerance” and to reduce “anti-LGBT harassment” in our schools. But the method was to normalize, if not celebrate, virtually every LGBT talking point.

The Lunchbox included activity cards, some of which listed famous people from history, all of whom were allegedly gay. Other activity cards offered definitions of terms like genderqueer (and remember, the target audience for some of these activities was elementary school children.)

Then there was the exercise called “Getting in Touch with Your Inner Trannie” (as in transgender identity). And I remind you: This goes back over a decade.

When I testified before a local school board, holding up the Lunchbox and its full-length training manual, one of the board members said out loud, “That material is not in that box.” (I guess for some people, it’s better to deny the truth rather than face it.)

What has happened in the years since?

What Has Happened

Here’s the tiniest sampling, not even touching on the many LGBT-themed curricula in our schools.

• A July 25 headline on LifeSiteNews announced: “American Library Association endorses ‘drag queen storytime’ for libraries across U.S.” (chew on that one for a while; need I say anything more?)

• There is now an endless stream of gay-themed books for little children, including titles like Monsters and Robots, which features “poly amorous parents and a bisexual character who is prominent in the story.” This is part of the LGBTQ Picture Books series. (For a sampling of LGBT children’s books through 2011, see here.)

• The same can be said for trans-themed books, such as Who Are You?: The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity. The blurb states, “This brightly illustrated children’s book provides a straightforward introduction to gender for anyone aged 5+… An interactive three-layered wheel included in the book is a simple, yet powerful, tool to clearly demonstrate the difference between our body, how we express ourselves through our clothes and hobbies, and our gender identity. Ideal for use in the classroom or at home, a short page-by-page guide for adults at the back of the book further explains the key concepts and identifies useful discussion points. This is a one-of-a-kind resource for understanding and celebrating the gender diversity that surrounds us.”

• As of 2016, “A new study by trend forecasting agency J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group found that only 48 percent of 13-20-year-olds identify as “exclusively heterosexual,” compared to 65 percent of millennials aged 21 to 34.” The indoctrination is working!

• LGBT activists have decided not to cloak or hide their agenda in the least. In the words of S. Bear Bergman on the Huffington Post, “I Have Come to Indoctrinate Your Children Into My LGBTQ Agenda (And I’m Not a Bit Sorry).” (This was originally published on March 7, 2015.)

Bergman explains, “All that time I said I wasn’t indoctrinating anyone with my beliefs about gay and lesbian and bi and trans and queer people? That was a lie. All 25 years of my career as an LGBTQ activist, since the very first time as a 16-year-old I went and stood shaking and breathless in front of eleven people to talk about My Story, I have been on a consistent campaign of trying to change people’s minds about us.”

Ideological Indoctrination

Again, Bergman is not talking about sexual recruitment. Absolutely, categorically not. But he is talking about changing people’s minds, beginning with children: “I want them to know that we’re absolutely as worthwhile and worthy of love and respect as anyone, and that if you’re kind to us and behave yourself well there’s a better than even chance you can get an invitation to brunch.”

And what if that means children coming into conflict with their parents or their religion? Bergman doesn’t flinch: “I want kids to know this even if their parents’ or community’s interpretation of their religious tenets is that we’re awful. I would be happy — delighted, overjoyed I tell you — to cause those children to disagree with their families on the subject of LGBTQ people.”

I stand with Bergman in calling for the gracious treatment of all human beings. And I personally counsel parents to encourage their children to befriend other kids who are marginalized. In this effort, we agree.

But with everything within me, I will resist the LGBT indoctrination of our children. I urge you to stand together with me. Better still, I urge you to stand together with your kids.

This article was originally published at The Stream.com

For decades homosexual and “trans” activists have used schools to indoctrinate children with the disordered and destructive “LGBTQ” ideology. Thirteen years ago, the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education published an article titled “Trans-Friendly Preschool” by now-ordained Rev. Laurel A. Dykstra, a “bisexual Christian activist” who has twins via a sperm donor. I wrote about her article for IFI in 2008—a decade ago. Here are some of Dykstra’s ideas for training up children in the way they should go:

• She said that the “gender binary system…. is harmful to everyone.”

• She moralized that “It is not enough for classrooms, teachers, and schools to be ‘open’ or ‘non-judgmental’; they need to be actively trans-positive.”

• Dykstra recommended that when talking to preschoolers, teachers should say things like “‘Well, most men have penises, but some don’t,’” and “‘Some girls grow up to be men.’”

• She urged teachers to “Encourage kids to question their assumptions. ‘How do you know that that person is a woman? Could a man wear a dress?’”

• She instructed teachers to “Call children by the name and the pronouns they choose.”

• She recommended accessorizing classrooms with a “Tranny Teddy. Have a non-gendered toy/doll/puppet…. Do not use pronouns and give this creature a variety of gendered clothing, such as a skirt and tie. If asked, say ‘Oh, Binker isn’t a boy or a girl.’”

• She suggested having a “Butch/Femme Day. Why not teach kids language like butch/femme, as an alternative to boy/girl or male/female? You could have dress-up days to play deliberately with gender, like ‘Fabulous and Fearless Day’ or ‘Capable and Campy.’”

• She encouraged teachers to “Invite a drag performer or transsexual person who would be willing to share their story and a photo album.”

• When reading picture books to preschoolers, Dykstra recommended “switching pronouns, avoiding them altogether, or using alternative pronouns.”

• Dykstra rationalized using deceit in the face of parental opposition: “For ‘stealth practitioners’ (i.e., teachers in a transphobic setting), these classroom suggestions can be implemented without fanfare to create a more just and welcoming classroom.”

Remember, these recommendations were made 13 years ago, and we now have drag queen story hours for toddlers in public libraries. This is what happens when we ignore warnings and succumb to peer pressure and cowardice.

The efforts of sanctimonious and arrogant “LGBTQ” activists to “queer” schools are not limited to preschools. Illinois lawmakers captivated by bad ideas in general and in thrall to the “LGBTQ” ideology are pushing a bill that would require teachers to discuss the disordered homosexual and biological-sex-rejecting predilections of anyone who has contributed something noteworthy to culture. This is a tricksy way of transferring the good feelings children and teens have about achievements to homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation—which is the ultimate goal of LGBTQ activists. Only California has a similar law.

Someone should ask lawmakers why this bill is limited to the “roles and contributions” of homosexuals and opposite-sex impersonators. Why doesn’t it mandate discussions of the roles and contributions of polyamorists or the “trans-abled”? “Trans-abled” persons identify as disabled persons and wish to bring their bodies into alignment with their subjective, internal, “felt” sense of being disabled. They often want a limb amputated. What about “Minor-Attracted” persons, those who experience “Genetic Sexual Attraction,” and those who experience all manner of paraphilias, like sadomasochists, fetishists, infantilists, and voyeurs. If homosexuals and opposite-sex impersonators are entitled to see people who share their experiences represented in curricula, shouldn’t children and teens who experience other powerful, persistent, unchosen feelings see people who share their experiences  represented positively in curricula?

Oh, but that’s not all. Schools also allow activities—including protests—created and promoted by outside “LGBTQ” activist organizations to disrupt instructional time. The queen of all classroom-invading protests, the Day of Silence, takes place this Friday, April 27 in thousands of high schools and middle schools across the country.

The Day of Silence is a protest organized and promoted by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, which urges students to refuse to speak all day on Friday—including during class—in support of all things homosexual and “trans.”

In response to this usurpation of public schools for a partisan political protest, a national coalition of almost 50 pro-family activists and organizations, including the Activist Mommy, American Family Association, Capitol Resource Institute, Minnesota’s Child Protection League, Coalition of African-American Pastors, Dr. Michael Brown’s Coalition of Conscience, Concerned Women for America, Illinois Family Institute, Liberty Counsel, MassResistance, and Mission America are urging parents to keep their children home. The Day of Silence Walkout (which is not technically a Walkout) has been taking place for over a decade.

There are three major reasons to keep your children home on the Day of Silence:

1.)  To remove your children from exposure to yet more corrupt ideas and coercive social pressure.

2.)  To communicate to administrators, faculty, and school board members that if they allow instructional time to be disrupted—and yes, refusal to speak disrupts instructional time—your children will not be present.

3.)  To prevent political protests from metastasizing in government schools.

Efforts like the Day of Silence are not solely or centrally about ending bullying. These efforts are intended to eradicate moral distinctions between right and wrong sexual behavior and to mainstream homosexuality and the “trans” ideology. One can oppose both bullying and the Day of Silence.

Efforts like the Day of Silence, the school sexuality-indoctrination bill, and Dykstra’s recommendations for “transing” preschools are about using public monies and captive audiences of children to transform their moral and political views. That is not the role of government employees. The presupposition on which all of these efforts are based is that homosexual activity and opposite-sex impersonation are moral, which is an arguable belief—not an objective fact.

To find out more about the Day of Silence Walkout and see a complete list of coalition partners, go to the Day of Silence Walkout website.

I will conclude with what I wrote in 2008:

No civil society, let alone those who claim to be followers of Christ, would countenance such evil being perpetrated on our most innocent. The ideas articulated by Dykstra [and GLSEN and the school sexuality-indoctrination bill] constitute not education but unconscionable educational malpractice.

Virtually every cultural institution—from our churches to our courts to our legislatures to our news media to our entertainment industry to our government schools—has been commandeered by homosexuals and those who support their destructive cultural agenda. Those who hold traditional Judeo-Christian values must boldly and tenaciously oppose through word and deed efforts to normalize homosexuality and the “trans” ideology, including in government schools that our taxes subsidize.

If ever there was a time for weeping, it is now. If ever there was a time for righteous indignation, it is now. If ever there was a time for uncompromising courage, it is now.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Queering-Schools-Just-Say-No.mp3

Worldview Conference May 5th

Worldview has never been so important than it is today!  The contemporary culture is shaping the next generation’s understanding of faith far more than their faith is shaping their understanding of culture. The annual IFI Worldview Conference is a phenomenal opportunity to reverse that trend. This year we are featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet on 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.”

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

Schools just endured a disruptive, Leftist anti-gun protest, and soon they will have to endure the disruptive, Leftist Day of Silence.

For those who don’t know, the Day of Silence is a purportedly “student-led” political effort sponsored and organized by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to exploit government schools and captive audiences for the purpose of advancing the “LGBT” sexuality ideology. Instead of walking out of classes like students did last week, GLSEN urges students in middle and high schools to refuse to speak all day—including during class. It’s important to note that the ACLU has said students have no legal right to refuse to speak if asked to by teachers.

This year, GLSEN’s Day of Silence takes place in thousands of schools on Friday April 27, 2018.

For over ten years, a coalition of pro-family activists and organizations from all across the country (see list below) have urged parents to contact their children’s principals and teachers to ask if they will be permitting students to refuse to speak during class on the Day of Silence. If administrators and/or teachers are evasive or say that students may refuse to speak during instructional time, we urge parents to keep their children home. This counter-effort is called the Day of Silence Walkout (DOS Walkout). It’s not technically a walkout. Rather, parents should just keep their kids home.

The DOS Walkout is the only organized effort to oppose the hijacking of public education by “LGBT” activists.

In many school districts, student absences cost districts money. Since most administrators are not persuaded by reasonable requests to keep Leftist political action from disrupting instructional time, perhaps they can be persuaded by loss of funds. Until schools stop allowing “LGBT” activism in the classroom, parents should remove their children from exposure to it.

“LGBT” activism permeates government schools in numerous ways throughout the school year. Here are just some of the ways in which public elementary, middle, and high schools promote Leftists views on the controversial topics of homosexuality and gender confusion, and which make the DOS Walkout necessary:

• Many schools allow gender-confused students to share restrooms and locker rooms with students of the opposite sex, including even elementary schools.

• Many schools allow gender-confused students to participate on opposite-sex athletic teams.

• Teachers are being forced by the government to lie by being compelled to refer to gender-confused students by pronouns that designate the opposite sex.

• Girl students are running for prom king and boy students for prom queens.

• School staff are identifying as the sex they are not.

• California schools are legally required to teach positively about homosexuality and gender confusion in all social studies classes in grades k-12, and all resources that espouse dissenting views are censored.

• Schools normalize homosexuality and gender confusion in bullying prevention curricula; sex ed; social studies, English, and theater classes; and in grade school presentations about “family diversity.”

• Elementary schools make picture books that depict homosexuality and gender confusion positively available to children in their libraries.

• Schools host dances for homosexual students.

• Schools promote the normalization of homosexuality and gender confusion through Spirit Day, Ally Week, National Coming Out Day, “LGBT” History Month, and the queen of all homosexuality-affirming days: the “Day of Silence.”

Just recently, activists in Delaware proposed a school code amendment that, if passed, will permit students at any age to “self-identify” their “race or gender identity” at school without parental knowledge or permission. And just recently, activists in Illinois proposed a school amendment that would require every class from k-12 to include the “roles and contributions” of homosexuals and opposite-sex impersonators as well as the roles and contributions of “LGBT” activists.

Of one thing you can be certain: “LGBT” activists are relentless.

Every year a new crop of students enters middle and high schools whose parents naively believe that public schools value diversity, honor all voices, foster critical thinking, and are committed to creating a “safe” place for all views to be expressed. Those parents and many others whose children are returning students often have no idea the extent of the “LGBT” propaganda that pervades our schools or the degree to which schools censor dissenting views.

And many of those parents have never heard of the “Day of Silence.”

The Day of Silence Walkout offers an easy way for parents to tell school administrators and teachers that they oppose the promotion of non-factual Leftist beliefs about disordered sexuality.

There’s a role too for conservative teachers in this mess. They could be allies of conservative students by prohibiting student silence in class and by refusing to create assignments that accommodate silence. In other words, they should conduct class as if it’s just an ordinary school day.

What too few realize is that many students and teachers detest the Day of Silence. There are teachers—including even liberal teachers—who just want to teach their subject matter. They’re not invested in transforming the moral and political views of other people’s children.

And there are students who dread the controversy. About them, I recently wrote this:

[M]any students do not like divisive political events or discussions on hot button topics at school. Many teens are struggling with all sorts of issues. Their families are experiencing financial struggles, health issues, deaths, divorces, and dysfunction. They have interpersonal issues with peers. They struggle with grades and worry about what comes after high school. They’re exhausted from athletics, academics, part-time jobs, and sleep deprivation. Some struggle with eating disorders, substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and other psychological disorders…. [M]any of these kids do not want to confront controversial issues… at school.

These often emotionally vulnerable kids have peers—some acquaintances, some friends—who hold very different views on controversial issues, and for the sake of friendship and comity, these kids seek to avoid discussions and other kinds of events that bring to the fore issues that may affect their relationships. For these kids, political events like…. Day of Silence only make school more stressful.

What do adults do when forced into contexts (e.g., work or social gatherings) with people who hold very different political views? They stay away from the most contentious issues. And what do we do with teens who are struggling through adolescence—a period of developmental turmoil? We force them to be confronted with these very issues in places from which they cannot escape.

If your children are in public school, please consider keeping them home on the Day of Silence. For more information, please visit the Day of Silence Walk Out website.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Another-Disruptive-Political-Stunt-Coming-to-Schools-in-April-Day-of-Silence.mp3

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!