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.

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In just six weeks, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) will again attempt to ram their sexuality ideology down the throats and into the hearts and minds of other people’s children via the hijacking of government schools for the political protest called the Day of Silence.

On Friday, April 21, 2017 at thousands of middle and high schools around the country, GLSEN will ask students to refuse to speak all day in support of the promotion of Leftist assumptions about homosexuality and gender dysphoria.

GLSEN laughably calls this a “student-led” event while providing 15 resources that direct students into pro-homosexual school activism.

And those resources don’t include the for-profit merchandise GLSEN sells to adorn students on the Day of Silence, Ally Week, and other days. This merchandise includes t-shirts, pins, temporary tattoos, keychains, wristbands, lanyards, socks, sweatshirts, hoodies, and a $500 denim trucker jacket made by “Levi Brand.”

Although technically it is students—often students who belong to the “gay” clubs in schools—who sponsor the Day of Silence, all their activities are directed by the biased, Leftist organization GLSEN. Here are some of GLSEN’s “Jump-Start” documents to help students start “gay” clubs (also known as Gay and Straight Alliances) in their schools:

• “Building and Activating your [Gay Straight Alliance] or Student Club”
• “Strategies for Training Teachers”
• “Understanding Direct Action Organizing”
• “Power, Privilege and Oppression”
• “Your Student Club Trans-Inclusive”

In addition, GLSEN incentivizes participation in the Day of Silence by offering free materials to all participants and extra “free swag” to the “first 3,000 registrants.”

In addition to the Day of Silence, there are numerous trends in public elementary, middle, and high schools regarding the controversial topics of homosexuality and gender dysphoria that make a vigorous public response necessary:

• Increasing numbers of schools are allowing gender-dysphoric students to share restrooms and locker rooms with students of the opposite sex, including even elementary schools, and often with no parental notification.

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

• Girls students are being permitted to run for prom king, and boy students are being permitted to be prom queens.

• Elementary schools are marching in “gay” pride parades.

• California schools are legally required to teach positively about homosexuality and gender dysphoria in all social studies classes in grades 6-12, and all resources that espouse dissenting views are by law censored.

• Schools—including elementary schools—promote Leftist views of homosexuality and gender dysphoria in sex ed curricula, in presentations about “family diversity,” in bullying prevention programs, and via “social and emotional” learning standards.

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

• Schools host dances for homosexual students.

• School theater departments mount productions of The Laramie Project; Zanna, Don’t!; and Rent. And English teachers teach Angels in America, The Laramie Project, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

• Film teachers show Brokeback Mountain.

• 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.

What can parents and teachers do?

While “progressives” in and outside of schools are using countless resources and activities to promote the normalization of homosexuality and gender dysphoria, there is only one organized annual event that allows conservatives to express their opposition to the hijacking of government schools for the pernicious purposes of homosexual activism: the Day of Silence Walkout, which offers several ways the Day of Silence can be opposed:   

1.)  The Day of Silence Walkout is sponsored by a coalition of pro-family organizations that is again urging parents to keep their children home on the Day of Silence if their school administrations permit students and/or teachers to refuse to speak during class time on the Day of Silence. The Day of Silence Walkout Coalition does not object to student silence during passing periods or free periods, but neither teachers nor students should be permitted to refuse to speak during instructional time.

2.)  Parents should insist that their school administrations notify all parents that the Day of Silence political action is taking place on April 21 and insist that their administrations inform all parents about what students will be permitted to do or be prohibited from doing on the Day of Silence.

3.)  Conservative teachers should plan activities that require student participation. The ACLU—which supports the Day of Silence—has issued this statement: “[Students] do NOT have a right to remain silent during class time if a teacher asks you to speak.”

For years, teachers have been either modifying their lesson plans to accommodate student silence, creating lesson plans to reinforce the ideology of GLSEN’s Day of Silence, or participating in the Day of Silence themselves. It’s time for conservative teachers to do something constructive and courageous in the service of removing political hijinks from instructional time.

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 have no idea the extent of the pro-homosexuality propaganda that pervades their schools. And many have never heard of the Day of Silence.

The Day of Silence Walkout alerts parents to the exploitation of their public schools in the service of transforming the moral and political beliefs of their children.

The Day of Silence is not centrally a day committed to the eradication of bullying—a goal all decent people support. Rather, the Day of Silence organizers, promoters, and participants seek to exploit legitimate anti-bullying sentiment to normalize homosexuality and the “trans” cult. Despite what GLSEN says, it is possible to oppose bullying and oppose GLSEN’s Day of Silence.

The Day of Silence Walkout offers an easy, safe way for parents to express to school administrations, school boards, and their children’s teachers that they oppose the promotion of non-factual Leftist beliefs about disordered sexuality in taxpayer-funded public schools.

Student absences cost many schools money, and often that matters much more to school administrations and school boards than the beliefs and feelings of parents.

For more information on the Day of Silence Walkout and a list of the coalition partners, please visit the Day of Silence Walkout website.

Read more recent articles from Laurie:

Former “Transgenders” Talk About De-“Transitioning”

Beauty and the Beast: A “Gay” Tale for the Kiddies

New Trier High School Needs Accounting, Diversity, and Logic Lessons

The Radical “Trans”-Formation of America

IFI Forums: Climate Change & the Christian

Join us during the last week of April as we have Dr. Calvin Beisner, the founder & national spokesman for The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation discuss the Christian responsibility to the environment as we learn how to discern truth and myth in the climate change controversy.

April 25th in Rockford
April 26th in Arlington Heights
April 27th in Orland Park
April 28th in Peoria

Click HERE to learn more!

The Day of Silence, which is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), fast approaches. This year it will take place in most public schools on Friday, April 17.

On this day, thousands of public high schools and increasing numbers of middle schools will allow students to remain silent throughout an entire day-even during instructional time-to promote GLSEN’s socio-political goals.

Parents must actively oppose this hijacking of the classroom for political purposes. Please join the national effort to restore to public education a proper understanding of the role of government-subsidized schools.

You can help de-politicize the learning environment by calling your child out of school if your child’s school allows students to remain silent during instructional time on the Day of Silence.

If students will be permitted to remain silent, parents can express their opposition most effectively by calling their children out of school on the Day of Silence and sending letters of explanation to their administrators, their children’s teachers, and all school board members. One reason this is effective is that most school districts lose money for each student absence.

School administrators err when they allow the classroom to be disrupted and politicized by granting students permission to remain silent throughout an entire day.

Visit www.doswalkout.net for complete information on opposing the Day of Silence.

TAKE ACTION

1. Call your local schools and ask whether they permit students or teachers to remain silent in the classroom on “Day of Silence.” IMPORTANT: Do not ask any administrator, school board member, or teacher if the school sponsors, endorses, or supports DOS. Schools do not technically sponsor the Day of Silence. Technically, it is students, often students in the gay-straight alliance, who sponsor it. Many administrators will tell you that they do not sponsor the DOS when, in fact, they do permit students and sometimes even teachers to remain silent during instructional time. Also ask administrators whether they permit teachers to create lesson plans to accommodate student silence.

2. Find out what date the event is planned for your school. (The national date in 2015 is Friday, April 17, but some schools observe DOS on a different date).

3. Inform the school of your intention to keep your children home on that date and explain why.

This alert was originally posted at the American Family Association website.

In a recent article about the upcoming political protest in public schools sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), I referred to the “sickening sweetness” of increasing numbers of Christians. By that expression, I am not suggesting that Christians are sickening, as in disgusting. Nor am I referring to civility, kindness, compassion, or genuine love—which is inseparable from mercy, grace, truth, holiness, and justice.

Rather, “sickening sweetness” refers to the superficial “niceness” that so often passes for love within the body of Christ. It’s the equivalent of sugary candy that tastes oh-so-yummy, but provides no nourishment, nothing that can restore health to dying people. It sickens, rather than strengthens. Its sweetness attracts and deceives, making consumers feel good for a moment but contributing only to decay and death. It’s a cheap, easy counterfeit of biblical love, which Christians exploit to conceal the truth that they are avoiding the costly way of Christ. It ignores eternity while paving the way to eternal destruction.

When I refer to the sickening sweetness of Christians, I’m describing those Christians who misuse—make that torture—Scripture to argue that Christian bakers should make wedding cakes for homosexual anti-weddings.

I’m referring to Christians who misuse Scripture to defend keeping kids in school on the Day of Silence even as administrators and faculty use their schools to promote homosexuality as equivalent to heterosexuality and good.

I’m referring to Christians—including public school teachers and church leaders—who say nothing as five-year-olds are exposed to positive images of and assumptions about homosexuality and gender confusion in our taxpayer-funded schools.

I’m referring to Christians—including teachers and church leaders—who said nothing when the sacrilegious and egregiously obscene homosexuality-affirming play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes was taught at Deerfield and Highland Park High Schools or when the deceitful Laramie Project is taught virtually everywhere.

I’m referring to Christians—including teachers and church leaders—who said nothing when The Perks of Being a Wallflower was included by public school teachers on a middle school recommended book list in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

I’m referring to Christians—including teachers and church leaders—who say nothing when schools decide that restrooms no longer correspond to objective biological sex but rather to the disordered desires of confused children.

The exegetical positions that theological contortionists twist themselves into in their effort to avoid acting in accordance with Scripture on matters related to serving or attending same-sex anti-weddings are evident when Christians say, “But Jesus spent time with sinners, including even prostitutes and tax collectors.” Christians who say this conveniently omit inconvenient parts of these biblical accounts. Jesus didn’t merely hang out, eat,  and chew the fat with sinners. He spent time with them, defining what constitutes sin, and calling them to repent of their sins and follow him.

And Jesus did not spend his time with sinners facilitating, participating in, or celebrating their sin. Jesus would not help a prostitute solicit johns or celebrate her career path. Jesus would not help tax collectors cheat their neighbors or celebrate their ill-gotten gains. Jesus did not sit passively by smiling benignly in the presence of men and women who were lost in spiritual darkness and at risk of spending eternity separated from God.

Some who claim to be Christians say that God does not hate, ignoring that God does, indeed, hate. He hates sin and so too should followers of Christ, even as we love those in need of the redemption we have found through God’s grace.

Purveyors of sickening sweetness claim that Christ came to bring peace, ignoring that he also came not to bring peace but a sword that will divide even families.

The peace Jesus brings is a peace constituted by reconciliation with a holy God. This peace does not include, nor will permit affirmation and celebration of acts that God abhors.

Since the fall of man, there has been enmity between God and Satan. Jesus came to bring peace by destroying the enemy—not by affirming and celebrating the sinful activity in which Satan tempts humans to engage.

Some Christians offer the unbiblical argument that Christians should never be angry, whereas God commands us to be angry, but sin not. The salient questions are what constitutes a sinful expression of anger, and what constitutes a sinful absence of anger about that which we should feel and express anger.

In a novel but futile attempt to ennoble cowardice, Andrew Walker writing on First Things advocates fiscal fungibility. He penned an open letter from a fictitious Christian baker to his customers acknowledging that he would be caving in to Leftist tyranny and bake cakes for homoerotic anti-weddings, but that he would donate his 30 pieces of silver to organizations that are willing to suffer for Christ.

Walker argues unpersuasively that “If Caesar insists that bakers must be made to bake cakes or else close up shop, we’re going to see to it that Caesar’s edicts get undermined by channeling resources designed to fight Caesar.”

I think Jesus said something slightly different: “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22: 21). Our gifts, time, and labor are God’s.

In a blog post Jessica Kantrowitz argues that  Jesus’ command to his followers that “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles” constitutes a mandate to provide goods and services for same-sex faux-marriages.

It’s important to note that Kantrowitz admits to believing that “gay marriage” is not immoral,” so we know that even as she cites Scripture as the authority for baking cakes for same-sex faux-marriages, she rejects biblical authority on both marriage and homoeroticism.

Kantrowitz ignores critical differences between being commanded to carry a soldier’s pack and being asked to bake an anti-wedding cake. In the first instance, a Christian is being forced to do something, whereas in the contemporary case, a baker is being asked. Second, there is nothing inherently immoral about carrying a pack for someone—not even for a Roman soldier—whereas volitionally making a cake to adorn a homosexual anti-wedding is, indeed, immoral.

The only way that creating a product to enhance an anti-wedding can be construed as morally neutral would be to argue that an anti-wedding is ontologically identical to a true wedding. But at some level even Leftists must recognize that as false. Would Kantrowitz make this argument in regard to a commitment ceremony between a 40-year-old and a 14-year-old? Would she make the same argument in regard to a commitment ceremony between two brothers? If plural unions are legalized—as they will be in the not too distant future—would she argue that Christian bakers have a biblical mandate to create goods and provide services for a polygamous or polyamorous wedding?

Would she make this argument in regard to a commitment ceremony between a person and an animal? This is not to suggest that a homosexual anti-wedding is identical to a zoophile’s anti-wedding. It’s to suggest that Kantrowitz likely holds a prior and unspoken assumption about same-sex faux weddings. In addition to believing that they are inherently moral, which she has already admitted believing, she likely believes same-sex anti-weddings are, in reality, weddings.

What if the government commanded Christian restaurant-owners to refuse to serve blacks? Would Kantrowitz cite Matthew 5:41 as proof that Christians have a biblical obligation to comply? Is Matthew 5:41 an absolute command for Christians always to do the bidding of non-Christians, including when force is not involved and the act requested violates Scripture? Was Jesus’ command intended to compel Christians to carry a pack that they knew would serve a profound evil and even to do more in the service of the evil? Would Kantrowitz argue that as a Christian she has a biblically mandated duty to engage in an activity that she believes is profoundly immoral and which she believes God detests (e.g., refusing to serve blacks in her restaurant or providing goods for a “wedding” between a human and an animal).

And then there are those other pesky biblical passages that point uncomfortably to God’s countercultural mandate:

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. (Eph. 5:11)

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1: 2-4)

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. (Mark 8:34-35)

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name. (1 Pet. 4: 12-16)

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. (John 15: 18-21)

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. (Matt: 10: 34) 

 [A]nd anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Matt. 10: 38)

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matt. 5: 10, 11)

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. (2 Cor. 4: 1-2)

How many rationalizations will Christians, in their fear and desperation, attempt in order to avoid doing what they must know is expected from those who claim to love Jesus? God is calling his people in America to deny themselves, to take up their crosses and follow him, and to rejoice when people falsely say all kinds of evil against us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this in The Cost of Discipleship:

The messengers of Jesus will be hated to the end of time. They will be blamed for all the division which rend cities and homes. Jesus and his disciples will be condemned on all sides for undermining family life, and for leading the nation astray; they will be called crazy fanatics and disturbers of the peace. The disciples will be sorely tempted to desert their Lord. But the end is also near, and they must hold on and persevere until it comes. Only he will be blessed who remains loyal to Jesus and his word until the end.

And let’s not forget that our children are watching us. Perhaps we can set an example of courageous, faithful self-sacrifice for them, and perhaps we can gain a moment more of freedom for them and their children.

IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

CLICK HERE for Details

If you have school age children, contact your administration as soon as possible to ask this specific question: Will you be permitting students to refuse to speak in class on the Day of Silence? If the administration either answers “Yes” or dodges the question, please call your child or children out of school on the Day of Silence. Every absence costs districts money, and money talks.

Also, if your school will be permitting students to refuse to speak in class, politely insist that an email be sent to every family informing them of the following: 1. The Day of Silence will be taking place in classes on April 17, 2. Students will be permitted to refuse to speak during instructional time, 3.  The Day of Silence is organized and promoted by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

Parents have a right to know.

The Day of Silence is the queen of all the numerous homosexuality-affirming activities that take place in public schools. It started in one university and then like a cancer metastasized to thousands of high schools, and then into middle schools. Before long it will take place in elementary schools. Leftists know that it’s easier to indoctrinate 16-year-olds than 36-year-olds and easier still to indoctrinate 6-year-olds.

GLSEN promotes the Day of Silence as an “anti-bullying” effort. If it were solely about eradicating bullying, everyone—liberals and conservatives alike—would support it. But it’s not.

The Day of Silence exploits government schools, captive audiences, and anti-bullying sentiment to advance the Left’s social, moral, and political beliefs and goals. GLSEN seeks to advance the belief that all public expressions of moral disapproval of homosexual activity are bullying.

GLSEN urges students to refuse to speak all day, including during academic classes, which is disruptive to instructional time. Administrators permit students to refuse to speak in class, and teachers feel compelled to create lesson plans to accommodate student-refusal to speak. Teachers feel that if they don’t accommodate student-refusal to speak, they will be seen as supporting the bullying of self-identified homosexual students.

The little unspoken secret is that many teachers on both sides of the political aisle hate the Day of Silence because of the distraction and disruption it creates. Unfortunately, they’re afraid to say that to their administrations because GLSEN and its ideological acolytes proclaim that opposition to the Day of Silence necessarily means endorsement of bullying. The truth is one can both oppose bullying and oppose the Day of Silence.

The homosexuality-affirming legal organizations Lambda Legal and the ACLU have both stated that students have no legal right to refuse to speak in class, so school administrations have every right to require students to participate verbally in class. And teachers have every right to require students to answer questions, give oral presentations or speeches, or participate in debates or discussions.

A coalition of pro-family organizations is once again urging parents to keep their children home from school on the Day of Silence if their school administrations will be allowing students to politicize instructional time by refusing to speak. This is the only organized national effort to oppose any pro-homosexual activity or event in public schools.

Each year through the Day of Silence Walkout, parents of freshmen learn about the Day of Silence. And remarkably, there are parents of sophomores, juniors, and seniors who learn for the first time that the Day of Silence takes place in their children’s schools. This lack of awareness happens because school administrations do not notify parents about the Day of Silence.

The absence of conservative influence within the culture on issues related to homosexuality is to some extent the fault of conservatives. Ignorance, fear, and an astounding lack of perseverance on the parts of conservatives have turned our cultural institutions—including public education—into the playground of “progressives.” Our passivity has enabled homosexual activists and their ideological allies to become social, political, and pedagogical bullies. Evidence of that is everywhere, including in schools on the GLSEN’s annual April school event, the Day of Silence.

We must demonstrate the boldness and perseverance of the Left if we hope to stop the relentless appropriation of public education for the promotion of homosexuality.

Matt Barber, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, BarbWire

Dr. Michael Brown, Director, Coalition of Conscience

Brian Camenker, President, MassResistance

Linda Harvey, Founder and President, Mission America

Laurie Higgins, Cultural Analyst, Illinois Family Institute

Peter LaBarbera, President, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality

Diane Gramley, President, American Family Association of Pennsylvania

Matt Staver, President, Liberty Counsel

Debra Smith, Founder, Informing Christians

Tom Rasmussen, Executive Director, Montana Family Foundation

Pastor Scott Lively, President, Abiding Truth Ministries

Penny Nance, President, CWA

Debbie Leininger, State Director, CWA of Illinois

Beverly Uhlmer Roberts, State Director, CWA of Texas South

Linda Wall, VA Mass Resistance

Nolan Clayton, Faith and Freedom Family Ministries

Pastor Christopher Clegg, Operation Save America

**Caution: Not For Younger Readers**
Includes Some Graphic Content and Links

Parents of 5th grade students at Andrew Jackson Language Academy, a West Side Chicago Public School (CPS) magnet school,  were stunned and repelled by the binder of sex ed material that they were shown recently during an after-school presentation about the upcoming sex ed class.

The binder included the following PowerPoint slides:

1. A picture of Homer Simpson with the words, “Lube, Lube, Lube. Use more lubrication, increase pleasure…”
2. A slide which appears to come from the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, a homosexual activist organization(slide#5): “Once you pop, you won’t have to stop! FCs [female condoms] don’t require an erect penis, so your partner doesn’t have to pull out right after ejaculation. Feel the heat! FCs adjust to body temperature, so both you and your partner can feel the heat. Oh! Oh! The two rings of the FC double the pleasure for you and your partner.”
3. A slide that reads “Female condoms are for everybody: men, women, transgender folk, gay straight, any position, any time.”
4. And a slide that says “Where YOU can get female condoms…,” with a list of places where 11-year-olds could presumably access female condoms.

A mother interviewed by a local news station was clearly irritated with material pertaining to anal intercourse, saying that it is not “appropriate” for the school to tell her 5^th grade daughter that “it’s okay to have safe anal sex.”

CPS parents shouldn’t expect sex ed to improve for 6^th graders. Here are two videos that the CPS “Sexual Health Education Grade 6” curriculum recommended,  the first one of which was produced by Planned Parenthood (The CPS “Sexual Health Education for Grade 6” website was available Monday morning and early afternoon but was taken down by late afternoon Monday, November 17, 2014. Click here for a cached version):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdSq2HB7jqU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjmoQlAQP4Y

The narrator in the Planned Parenthood video says to students who use condoms, “Congratulations! You just prevented a pregnancy, a sexually transmitted infection, or both.” This is a false statement that will create in adolescents a false sense of security. A properly used condom will reduce the risk of conception and reduce the risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted infection, but condoms do not prevent either.

The CPS “Sexual Health Education Grade 6” curriculum also includes this activity for 11-12 year-olds in co-ed classes:

Activity #1 – Contraceptive Relay

Break students into small groups. Provide each group with “Steps to Using a Male Condom” activity sheet and “Steps to Using a Female Condom” activity sheet (cut and shuffled). Student teams should work together to assemble “Steps to Using a Male Condom”. Once they have achieved the correct order they will move on to “Steps to Using a Female Condom.”

The first team to assemble both activity sheets correctly receives bragging rights.

Sex education classes should not be co-ed. Among the myriad, diverse, expanding, and protean objectives and “values” to which public school administrators and teachers claim they are committed, you will never see modesty. With a culture as coarse and immodest as ours, schools should stand as a bulwark against immodesty and vulgarity. Our literature, our sex ed curricula, our classes, and our government employees (i.e., teachers) should do nothing to undermine whatever vestige of modesty our children and teens are able to retain as they move through our crass culture which tells them there are no aspects of human life that are private and that objective, immutable biological sex (i.e.,  maleness and femaleness) is meaningless.

CPS spokesman Bill McCaffrey stated that “The objectionable material presented at Andrew Jackson Language Academy this week is not and never was part of the student sexual education curriculum. It was mistakenly downloaded and included in the parent presentation, and we agree with parents it is not appropriate for elementary school students.”

But the CPS also said that only teachers were supposed to see the material. If teachers were supposed to see the material, then the material was not “mistakenly downloaded.” The material was deliberately downloaded. The mistake that CPS employees made was to show the deliberately downloaded material to parents.

If parents of CPS students think that all CPS teachers share Mr. McCaffrey’s publicly stated view that this material is objectionable, M.I.T. economist Jonathan Gruber has some healthcare to sell you. Many teachers, rather, share the sexuality ethos of Planned Parenthood and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. It’s not moral indignation that rattled the CPS cage. It was that parents had their consciousness and dander raised by some inadvertent truth-telling from CPS teachers. Parents accidentally found out, and they responded with unselfconscious and justifiable outrage. That’s what led to the CPS apology (and website-scrubbing).

In order to conceal the identity or identities of those government employees who were responsible for downloading the  controversial material, McCaffrey conveniently used the passive voice saying,  the “objectionable material….was mistakenly downloaded.” Parents and other taxpayers are entitled to know specifically who downloaded these materials. And who told the person printing and assembling the binders what to print and include in the binders?

Taxpayers in every community are entitled to know specifically which teachers and administrators are choosing controversial, age-inappropriate supplemental and curricular resources. And the press should be naming names. These government employees should be required to defend publicly the choices they make for other people’s children with other people’s money rather than being shielded by PR spin masters.

It gives me no pleasure to say to CPS parents that we tried to warn them in this article.

Taxpayers in every community should take this CPS imbroglio as a warning because the Common Core of sex ed is coming. An unholy alliance of feckless organizations committed to the boundary-free,  morality-free early sexualization of children has created the National Sexuality Education Standards  intended to promote their dogmatic ideology through the nationalization of  sex ed.

Please consider supporting the work of Illinois Family Institute.

Written by Linda Harvey

Q. Why should parents be concerned about the so-called Day of Silence?

A. This event was started first by college students, then picked up as a national activist effort by an adult homosexual advocacy group, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). The goal is to promote homosexuality to all students in a given school, under the aegis of fighting discrimination. It has grown enormously, unfortunately, as the support for the ‘gay’ agenda has been embraced by schools and impressionable students nationwide.

The Day of Silence postures every person who identifies as a homosexual or cross-dresser as a victim of ongoing, unrelenting harassment and discrimination (being ‘silenced’). While some incidents like this do occur, this event is an overwhelming exaggeration in an effort to manipulate our kids’ natural sympathies. The result ironically is that youth develop favorable views about a controversial, high risk behavior.

Q. How widespread is the observance of the ‘Day of Silence’ now?

A. Unfortunately, thousands of schools are now involved. Some schools are passive in their participation, and simply allow a few students (usually members of a homosexual school club) to hang signs around their necks and remain silent all day. Other schools are at the other end of the spectrum, with many students, teachers and faculty remaining silent, and with the school allowing several days of outside speakers, school assemblies, announcements, even school TV shows.

Q. Isn’t the Day of Silence just a way for students to learn compassion and tolerance?

A. In reality, the Day of Silence is a one-sided campaign to manipulate acceptance of homosexuality by every student. Nationwide, parents are fed up with the political hijacking of their kids’ classrooms. What makes it even more problematic is that the results of ‘tolerating’ this lifestyle without objection can be tragic for many young people. The risks of homosexual behavior are well-understood by public health officials, but are being ignored by some politically correct school administrations.

Q. What can parents do?

A. Parents can send letters and make phone calls to schools, expressing their grave concerns about events like the Day of Silence. They can choose to remove their sons and daughters on the day the school is observing the DOS, usually in late April.

This article was first published at the MissionAmerica.com website.

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) seeks again to exploit captive audiences and disrupt instructional time in public schools for the purposes of transforming the moral and political views of other people’s children through the Day of Silence (DOS). Parents, however, do not have to sit by and passively accept this political action in the class. On the DOS, they can keep their children home.

GLSEN promotes the DOS as a bullying-prevention program. If that were its true goal, IFI and every one of the organizations who are urging parents to keep their children home would support the DOS.

Unfortunately, the ultimate goal of GLSEN and those who promote the DOS is to eradicate conservative moral beliefs. And they are using public schools to achieve that end, thus transforming education into indoctrination.  

Every year middle and high schools see a new crop of students whose parents naively believe that public schools value diversity, honor all voices, foster critical thinking, and remain neutral on controversial social issues. Many parents have no idea the extent to which pro-homosexuality propaganda pervades our schools. And many have never heard of the Day of Silence.

Here are just some of the ways public elementary, middle, and high schools are treating the controversial topics of homosexuality and gender confusion:

• Increasing numbers of schools are allowing gender-confused students to share restrooms with students of the opposite sex, including even elementary schools.
• Teachers—who are, of course, government employees—are being forced by the government to lie by being compelled to refer to gender-confused students by pronouns that designate the opposite sex.
• Girls are being permitted to run for prom king, and boys are being permitted run for prom queen.
• Elementary schools are marching in “gay” pride parades.
• California schools are legally required to teach positively about homosexuality and gender confusion in all social studies classes in grades 6-12, and all resources that espouse dissenting views are by law prohibited.
• Schools—including elementary schools—promote Leftist views of homosexuality and gender confusion in sex ed curricula and in presentations about “family diversity.”    
• Elementary schools make picture books that depict homosexuality positively available to children in their libraries.
• Schools host dances for homosexual students.
• Teachers actively promote the legal recognition of same-sex pseudo-marriages.
• School theater departments mount productions of The Laramie Project, Zanna, Don’t!, and Rent, and English teachers teach Angels in America, The Laramie Project, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
• Film teachers show Brokeback Mountain.
• Schools promote the normalization of homosexuality and gender confusion through Spirit Day, Ally Week, National Coming Out Day, “LGBT” History Month, “LGBT” Pride Month, and the queen of all homosexuality-affirming days: the Day of Silence.

And what do conservatives do in response? Virtually nothing. There is, however, something easy they can do. If their children’s schools permit students to refuse to speak on the DOS, they can keep their children home.  

Keeping their children home on the Day of Silence is an easy, safe way for parents to express to school administrations, faculty, and school boards that they—parents—oppose the promotion of non-factual Leftist beliefs about disordered sexuality in their schools to their children.

Every student absence costs schools money, and that matters much more to school administrators and school boards than the beliefs and feelings of conservative parents.

Parents: Contact the principals of your children’s middle and high schools and ask this specific question: “Do you permit students to refuse to speak during class on the Day of Silence?” If your principal says students will be permitted to refuse to speak in class, keep your child/children home. You might also inform your principal that teachers have a legal right to require students to speak in class and that students have no legal right to refuse to speak if called on to answer a question, give a speech, or participate in a debate, group project, or other activity.

We recommend sending an email to your administrators, your child’s teachers, and school board members explaining why you’re keeping your child home. A sample downloadable letter is available on the Stay Home on the Day of Silence website along with answers to frequently asked questions.

Conservative Teachers: You too have a role in opposing this GLSEN-sponsored political action. You should plan activities that require students to participate verbally. There is far too much cowardice and acquiescence among conservative teachers to homosexuality-affirming activities. Both parents and teachers have an obligation to resist inappropriate curricula and activities in schools.

Here’s something else parents don’t know: Many teachers—including even some on the political Left—dislike the Day of Silence because it disrupts the school day and requires them to create or revise plans to accommodate student silence. And conservative students, many of whom have friends who identify as homosexual, dislike the Day of Silence because they know it implicitly condemns their moral, religious, and/or political beliefs. They know that the Day of Silence is not centrally about eradicating bullying, but rather about eradicating moral disapproval of homosexual acts.

Here is a list of the organizations that are urging parents to keep their children home on the Day of Silence:

 For further information, including parental instructions and the sample calling out letter, visit http://www.doswalkout.net/

Click HERE to support the work and ministry of Illinois Family Institute.

Google’s recent “doodle” announces to the world that Google is gaga over homosexuality-affirming propaganda for minors. Google’s doodle pokes a virtual rainbow-colored flag in the eye of Russian president Vladimir Putin for signing into law a bill that protects minors from homosexuality-affirming propaganda. A financial blockbuster of a company with roots in the country founded to “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty” pro-actively endorses the propagandizing of children while a corrupt totalitarian cockalorum opposes it. Curiouser and curiouser.

The fanciful notion that having “two mommies” is ontologically and morally indistinguishable from having a mother and a father is not a fact. Presenting that non-fact to, for example, five-year-olds in government schools is propaganda. And presenting this non-fact to children is not a loving act even if it “feels” good to “educators” who don’t think about or discuss the issue deeply.

The motive of the imperious Putin for signing into law Russia’s anti-propagandizing-to-minors bill may be to exploit moral beliefs he actually disdains in order to divide various and sundry constituencies around the world for his pernicious purposes, but a law that prohibits propagandizing to minors is not in itself pernicious.

Two people or two groups of people may have very different motives for pursuing the same goal. The fact that one person or group is motivated by hate and/or error doesn’t render the goal inherently evil or wrong. Some politicians may oppose the legalization of same-sex “marriage” because of their sincere (and true) belief that marriage has a nature fundamental to which is sexual complementarity. Other politicians may be motivated to oppose same-sex “marriage” by self-serving political ambition. The selfish motives of the politician who cares only about getting elected have no bearing on the soundness of the goal of opposing same-sex “marriage.” Only chuckleheads and Machiavellian political tacticians confuse motives and goals.

A defense of a law that seeks to prevent the exposure of minors to homosexuality-affirming dogma is not a defense of Putin, the cagey and cunning political animal.

Physical assaults on homosexuals, like physical assaults on any human being, are reprehensible and should be punished in accordance with laws prohibiting assault. But there is no evidence—to my knowledge, at least—that the legal prohibition of propagandizing to minors causes violence.

And here in the United States, there is no evidence to substantiate the related “progressive” claim that orthodox Christian doctrine and those who love Christ cause violence. The fact that hateful people may quote and misapply Scripture in defense of violent physical assaults or ugly verbal assaults on homosexuals no more means they’re Christians than the fact that someone quotes and misapplies Scripture in defense of same-sex “marriage” means they’re Christians. Humans have for hundreds of years abused Scripture for their own sinful ends.

Exposing minors to homosexuality-affirming propaganda is nowhere more troubling than in our public schools where neither children nor teachers are encouraged to study in depth all sides of issues related to homosexuality. Quite the contrary. Curricula and supplementary resources and activities are controlled by “progressive” dogma, the kind of dogma promulgated by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). (Privately, “progressive” teachers actually scoff at the suggestion that there are sides other than theirs worthy of study.)

The propaganda begins in professional development opportunities for teachers in which teachers are never exposed to resources that dissent from the ideology of the “LGBTQ” community. GLSEN assumptions are treated as settled fact:

• There are no discussions of whether or in what ways homosexuality per se is analogous to race.
  
  
• There are no discussions of whether government employees (i.e., teachers) have the ethical right to introduce homosexuality in early elementary school when many children have never heard of homosexuality, their parents object to both the age-inappropriateness and bias of the presentations, and when they’re too young to understand the nature of objections to homosexual acts.
  
  
• There are no discussions of whether it is the right of educators to promote approval of homosexuality, which necessarily entails prior ontological and moral conclusions—conclusions that are shaped by subjects teachers were not hired to teach and for which they have no training.
  
  
• There are no discussions of whether homosexual acts are objectively moral, and if not, what right do government employees have to promote the approval of immoral or possibly immoral acts.
  
  
• There are no discussions of whether it’s the proper role of government employees to expose minors to every sexual phenomenon that can be found in the human community. For example, would it be proper for elementary school teachers to promote approval of polyamory since it exists and is on the rise? If not, why not?
  
  
• There are no discussions of whether disapproval of homosexual acts actually constitutes hatred of persons or causes violent acts.
  
  
• There are no discussions of whether disapproval of racism, promiscuity, over-eating, plagiarism, and drug use constitutes hatred of racists, promiscuous students, obese students, plagiarists, and “druggies,” or of whether such disapproval may lead to physical or verbal assaults against them.
  
  
• There are no discussions of resources written by conservative scholars that affirm the idea that marriage is at its immutable core sexually complementary, even as teachers expose students to pro-same-sex “marriage” resources.
  
  
• There are no discussions of how schools define “safety” (i.e., as “emotional comfort”) and whether safety has any inherent connection to objective reality. 

Ask any conservative public school teachers if their colleagues or administrators ever present resources that challenge “progressive” ideas about homosexuality in professional development meetings. And ask them if they feel as free to express their moral and political beliefs in faculty meetings (or in the classroom) as their “progressive” colleagues do.

“Agents of change,” secure in their tenured positions in public schools, share a certain esprit de corps with totalitarian regimes. They all hatch plans sub rosa to control the beliefs of others. Unfortunately, those victims—I mean, students—happen to be other people’s minor children.

Until our publicly subsidized educators relinquish their white-knuckled grip on curricula with their de facto enforcement of censorship, perhaps we need an anti-propagandizing-to-minors law.

Click HERE to support Illinois Family Institute (IFI). Contributions to IFI are tax-deductible and support our educational efforts.

Click HERE to support Illinois Family Action (IFA). Contributions to IFA are not tax-deductible but give us the most flexibility in engaging critical legislative and political issues.

This Friday, April 19, 2013 is the National Day of Silence which is sponsored by the homosexuality-affirming advocacy group, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). GLSEN’s raison dêtre is to transform the moral and political views of our nation’s children through our publicly subsidized government schools. The Day of Silence is GLSEN’s central socio-political tool for achieving that purpose.

GLSEN urges students in high schools and middle schools to refuse to speak for an entire day—including during class—in order to draw attention to the plight of those students who are purportedly silenced and bullied because of their homosexuality or cross-dressing.

IFI is again partnering with a broad coalition of conservative pro-family groups to encourage parents and guardians to express their opposition to the exploitation of instructional time for this Leftwing political cause. We are urging parents to ask their school principals if students and/or teachers are permitted to refuse to speak in class on the Day of Silence. If your principal says they are not permitted to refuse to speak, ask how that is communicated to parents, students, and faculty.

If your principal says students and/or teachers are permitted to refuse to speak, keep your child at home, which costs schools money. We also encourage you to send an email to your superintendent, principal, department chairs, school board members, and your student’s teachers explaining why you are keeping your child home. Click here  for a sample “call out” letter.

It is critical for parents, school administrators, students, and school board members to know that the ACLU has stated that students “have a right to participate in Day of Silence and other expressions of your opinion at a public school during non-instructional time: the breaks between classes, before and after the school day, lunchtime, and any other free times during your day. You do NOT have a right to remain silent during class time if a teacher asks you to speak” (emphasis added).

Despite what the Day of Silence advocates claim, this political event does, indeed, create disruption, distraction, divisiveness, and discomfort. Imagine if students were allowed to refuse to speak in class on other days for other socio-political causes. What if one group were allowed to refuse to speak in class to draw attention to the silenced voices of women in Afghanistan, or Christians in China, or political prisoners in Cuba, or suspected terrorists held at Gitmo, or animals used in scientific research, or dolphins caught in tuna nets? We have opened a Pandora’s box of pedagogical problems by allowing this form of political activism in the classroom. Many teachers and students on both the Left and Right dislike the Day of Silence, but no one hears about that. Teachers and administrators are afraid to admit publicly that they wish the Day of Silence would end.

What GLSEN does not admit is that their central goal is not the eradication of bullying—which is a goal every decent person shares. GLSEN’s “anti-bullying” emphasis is merely a strategic tool for effecting their central goals, which are the eradication of conservative moral beliefs and the creation of a social, political, and legal environment in which it’s impossible to express them. GLSEN believes that the existence of conservative moral beliefs creates an environment ripe for bullying and violence. Therefore, their goal is to transform the moral beliefs of other people’s children using public resources (i.e., public schools).

Homosexuality, like polyamory and hypersexuality, is a condition constituted by subjective feelings and volitional sexual acts. Our public schools would never permit a day of silence for students who are bullied for their polyamory or hypersexuality. Clearly, no administrator or teacher wants students to be bullied for these conditions, so what’s the difference? Educators fully understand that such a “day” would do far more than signal opposition to bullying. Such a day would implicitly teach that polyamory and hypersexuality are morally acceptable—which is not the right of educators to do. Allowing students to refuse to speak in class on the Day of Silence necessarily means that school administrators and teachers believe homosexual acts are inherently moral and are comfortable promoting that moral conviction—which is not the right of government employees to do.

GLSEN, correctly assuming that conservatives are cowardly, understands the efficacy of promoting homosexuality through bullying prevention activities. They know we’re too afraid to be accused of endorsing bullying to oppose their efforts. The truth is, however, that it’s entirely possible to oppose both bullying and the dishonoraable efforts of GLSEN to undermine the conservative moral beliefs of other people’s children using public funds.

It is entirely possible to work toward preventing bullying without specifically mentioning every condition for which students are bullied. The Day of Silence privileges two conditions for which students are bullied—homosexuality and gender-confusion—over all others. Broader, more general, more inclusive non-enumerated activities and events are fairer, more compassionate, more respectful of “diversity,” and less politically divisive.

If we don’t start opposing the use of public schools to undermine the moral and political beliefs of our children, it will not only continue, it will increase.

Call your school now.

 Click HERE to make a donation to the Illinois Family Institute.

Don’t tell me the sexual predilections of our lawmakers are irrelevant. Lesbian activist and State Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago), perfervid promoter of all things homosexual, will be introducing a homosexuality-affirming Day of Silence resolution next week.  Rep. Cassidy in cahoots with the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is attempting to use the government to affirm “progressive” assumptions about homosexuality and to exploit instructional time in public schools to advance these beliefs.

Here’s the “Policy Alert” GLSEN just sent out asking Illinoisans to urge their lawmakers to co-sponsor and vote for this resolution:

GLSEN is proud to announce that for the first time ever, state legislators are taking part in the Day of Silence! Representative Kelly Cassidy (IL-14) of Chicago will introduce a Day of Silence resolution in Illinois!

Despite potential opposition, Rep. Cassidy needs your support to get it passed! With the deadline approaching quickly, we need your help today! Show your state legislator that this is an issue which urgently deserves their attention.  

Urge your state representative to support the Day of Silence Resolution in Illinois. Sign-on requests need to be submitted by April 11 at 5:00 PM! 

If this partisan resolution that Rep. Cassidy is wasting lawmakers’ time with should pass, will our lawmakers spend their work days refusing to speak? (In the case of some, that may be a good thing.)

This proposal is a cunning strategic machination. The Left uses efforts like this to play “gotcha” with cowardly lawmakers and the too-gullible public. If someone refuses to support it, the Left screeches, “Aha, Lawmaker X supports bullying!” Of course, rational people know full well that opposing the Day of Silence does not constitute endorsement of bullying. This ugly ad hominem ploy of the Left works only if we let ourselves be bullied into complicity.

Take Action:  Please click HERE to contact your lawmaker and urge him/her to oppose GLSEN and Cassidy’s attempt to impose their particular moral and philosophical beliefs on all of Illinois.

Galling Justice Department Initiative

The Justice Department has implemented a de facto affirmative action program for the recruitment and training of homosexual and gender-confused, cross-dressing teachers. You heard that right. In the service of “diversity,” the Justice Department is imposing on the nation “progressive” and pernicious views of what our children need in order to learn effectively. And what do they need? More men who sexually desire men, more women who sexually desire women, and more men and women who electively amputate healthy body parts and cross-dress. Makes sense to me. 

And all this time, I thought the “social issues” (that is to say, those issues most essential to the health and welfare of society) were supposed to be on the backburner until the economy was fixed. Apparently the all-knowing moderate Republican Poobahs forgot to pass that directive on to Cassidy and the Justice Department.

Parents: Keep your children home from school on the Day of Silence if your administration permits students and/or teachers to refuse to speak during class.

Click HERE to learn more about the Day of Silence Walkout.

Click HERE to support the work and ministry of Illinois Family Institute.

In addition to cowardice, one of the reasons that conservatives fail to oppose the myriad ways “progressives” exploit public schools to transform other people’s children into their social and political image is that we dismiss each new effort of theirs as insignificant. Such dismissiveness is proving costly.

In an effort to paint a more accurate (and therefore darker portrait) of public schools, this week I’ll  look at some recent events pertaining to public schools of which IFI subscribers may be unaware. Our hope is that these exposés will help parents (and others) understand why they must start taking a stand against the use of government schools/our taxes to affirm homosexuality and gender confusion. And one of the easiest ways to take a stand is to keep your children home from school on the Day of Silence, which is the homosexuality-affirming event sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) on Friday April 19, 2013.

Many IFI subscribers are well aware of the troubling anti-conservative hatred of the Southern Poverty Law Center which has led to its pernicious “hate groups” list that includes the Family Research Council, American Family Association, and IFI.

In keeping with the Left’s obsession with imposing their moral and political views on other people’s children, the SPLC created an “educational” arm called Teaching Tolerance. In a recent email to its subscribers, inluding countless public school teachers and administrators, they recommend that schools adopt a number of presumptuous Leftwing policies creepily called “nurturing practices.”

These are the “nurturing practices” they urge administrators, counselors, and teachers to adopt:

• “Enforce dress codes among all students equally.  A school cannot Constitutionally (sic) forbid male students to wear dresses, for instance, if other students are allowed to wear dresses….Check your dress code today. Are there rules that apply only to some students? If so, take immediate steps to remove them from your student handbook.”
•  “Help students whose gender is incorrectly listed on paperwork to correct the situation and ensure school staff and students address them using their preferred pronouns.”
• “Allow each transgender or intersex student to use the restroom in which that student is most comfortable, whether it’s the gender-neutral restroom or the restroom that corresponds with the student’s self-identified gender.”
• “Evaluate your administrative forms and communications. Do they use gender-neutral language or provide an opportunity for students to communicate their gender identity? If not, make the needed updates.”
•  “Educate event organizers about students’ First Amendment right to attend events with a same-sex date and to wear clothing of their choice.”
•  “Never reveal a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity without the student’s permission—even to the student’s family.”
• “Conversion Therapy, [a]lso known as reparative or sexual reorientation therapy, this pseudo-scientific “therapy” has been denounced by all major medical and psychological associations and may cause a student great psychological harm. Educate school staff about myths perpetrated by those who conduct conversion therapy. It is impossible to “turn” an individual from gay to straight.”
• “Prepare counselors and teachers to support students who are coping with the emotional side effects of conversion therapy.”
• “Our article, ‘Therapy of Lies,’ http://www.tolerance.org/toolkit/toolkit-therapy-lies is a great resource for educating school staff about conversion therapy.”
• “Religion can be a hot topic when discussing LGBT issues. All students are entitled to their religious viewpoints, but those viewpoints may not intrude on the rights of others.”
• “Include language specifically prohibiting harassment based on nonconformity to gender norms, gender identity and gender expression. Give examples of harassment based on actual or perceived sexual orientation.”
• Conduct student and teacher training once a year that discusses “The importance of diversity (including nonconformity with gender norms) in the student body.”

According to Teaching Tolerance, here are the practices that student members of homosexuality-affirming clubs (i.e., “gay-straight alliances or GSA’s) should adopt:

• They should communicate their homosexuality-affirming views during daily announcements or school assemblies or by hanging posters on the wall.
• They should “Publicly praise staff members who actively promote an inclusive environment.”
• “At end-of-the-year award ceremonies,” they should “present special ‘Diversity Leader’ certificates to educators who actively promoted an inclusive school environment throughout the year.”

Some thoughts on these “nurturing practices”:

• I will have to add “nurturing” to my growing list of words the Left is cunningly redefining. What they’re “nurturing” is compulsory affirmation of Leftwing beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality and cross-dressing. That’s not nurturing. That’s indoctrinating.
• Someone should teach the dogmatists at Teaching Tolerance that “equality” does not mean sameness, and that treating different things differently does not constitute inequality.
• No bullying prevention curriculum or policy specifically mentions or treats affirmatively every condition for which students may be bullied, so why should bullying prevention curricula or policies specifically mention or treat affirmatively homosexuality and gender-confusion? It’s as possible to work to eradicate bullying of homosexual students without affirming homosexuality as it is to work to eradicate bullying of promiscuous students without affirming promiscuity.
• Teaching Tolerance expects us to believe that there are so many homosexual high school students who are homosexual and who have undergone reparative therapy and been harmed by it that public schools should spend valuable time and limited resources teaching teachers about Leftwing views of reparative therapy.
• Can you imagine an outside organization encouraging students, teachers, and administrators to affirm conservative beliefs about heterosexuality and homosexuality in public schools? And can you imagine any conservative teacher using public resources (i.e., their jobs and curricula) to promote their views that volitional homosexual acts are harmful to those who engage in them and that widespread cultural affirmation of homosexuality will harm children, families, religious liberty, speech rights, and parental rights?

Please take a principled stand against the continued exploitation of public schools to propagandize your children with your money. Email your children’s teachers—particularly English, social studies, world language, and theater teachers—and ask them if they present any resources on issues related to homosexuality or gender confusion or if they initiate discussions on those topics. If so, ask them if they spend equal time having students study the best resources from both sides of the debate—which rarely if ever happens. Most “progressive” teachers in their infinite ignorance of all things conservative, won’t even know who the best conservative scholars, blogs, or websites are. Depending on their responses, you may want to either change teachers or opt your child out of any pro-homosexuality classroom activities.  

And finally, if your school is allowing students to refuse to speak during instructional time (that is, during classes) on Friday, April 19, 2013, keep your child home.  Read more about the Day of Silence Walkout here .

Click HERE to support the work & ministry of Illinois Family Institute.

On Friday April 19, 2013 the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is once again exploiting public schools to promote homosexuality and gender confusion as moral and normative through the political protest called the Day of Silence.

A coalition of pro-family groups* is urging parents to keep their children home from school on the “Day of Silence,” if your school is allowing students to refuse to speak in class.

GLSEN’s Day of Silence, which began on college campuses and is now disrupting the academic environment of thousands of high schools and middle schools around the country, exploits legitimate anti-bullying sentiment to undermine the belief that homosexual acts are immoral.

GLSEN shamelessly exploits teen suicide in order to falsely impute culpability for teen suicide to conservative moral beliefs.

GLSEN’s end game is the eradication of conservative moral beliefs and the creation of a social and political climate in which it is impossible to express them. Their cultural vehicle of choice for this radical social experiment is public education. What a strategic coup for homosexuals and their ideological allies: use our money to capture the hearts and minds of our children.

Efforts to exploit public education for the purpose of eradicating conservative moral beliefs are dramatically increasing every year. Homosexual activists and their allies are aggressively targeting younger and younger children through “anti-bullying” laws, policies, and curricula; through the effort to nationalize “comprehensive sex ed”; through laws mandating positive portrayals of homosexuality and gender deviance in curricula; and through events like the National Coming Out Day, Ally Week, Spirit Day, LGBT History Month, LGBT Pride Month, and the Day of Silence.

And conservatives do virtually nothing. Our complacence makes us complicit in the damage done to our children and our culture.

Moreover, we teach our children by example to be cowardly conformists. It’s time to resist and there’s no easier way to resist than to call your children out of school on the Day of Silence.

Parents and Guardians: Call your children’s middle and high schools and ask if students and/or teachers will be permitted to refuse to speak during class on Friday, April 19, 2013. If your administration allows students and/or teachers to refuse to speak during class, call your child out of school. Every student absence costs school districts money.

When administrators refuse to listen to reason and when they allow the classroom to be exploited for political purposes, parents must take action. If they don’t, the politicization of the classroom and curricula will increase.

If your administrator tells you that they do not permit students or teachers to refuse to speak in class, ask him or her how that is communicated to faculty and students and how it is enforced.

The ACLU has issued this statement to students regarding silence in class:

“You do have a right to participate in Day of Silence and other expressions of your opinion at a public school during non-instructional time: the breaks between classes, before and after the school day, lunchtime, and any other free times during your day. You do NOT have a right to remain silent during class time if a teacher asks you to speak.” 

The idea that homosexual acts are moral, good, or normative is not a fact. It is a non-factual, controversial moral belief. As such, no government employee or publicly subsidized institution has the ethical right to teach it to children implicitly or explicitly. It is entirely possible for schools to work toward the important goal of eradicating bullying without affirming or even mentioning homosexuality or gender confusion. There are many conditions for which students are bullied that are never mentioned or affirmed in public schools.

It is unconscionable that conservative parents remain silent, acquiescent, fearful non-participants in our public schools while homosexuals and their ideological allies engage continuously in vociferous, vigorous, and bold action.

Conservatives need to start acting and speaking as if we think our moral beliefs are objectively true. Conservative teachers need to create activities that require students to speak on the Day of Silence, and conservative parents need to teach their children by example to take a stand for truth.

Please call your children out of school if your administration permits students to refuse to speak on the Day of Silence. 

For further information, including parental instructions and a sample calling out letter, visit http://www.doswalkout.net/ . 

ADF letter supports board’s decision to listen to concerns of community

There’s a remarkable news story coming out of Erie, Illinois. A wise and courageous school board has voted to remove a homosexuality-affirming picture book titled The Family Book from its elementary school library. Further, it has voted to remove all materials created by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a partisan advocacy group committed to using public schools, including elementary schools, to advance their moral, political, and ontological beliefs. 

The Family Book was written by homosexual author Todd Parr and recommended by GLSEN. The “Alternatives to Marriage Project” highly recommends The Family Book for managing “both to naturalize and celebrate family diversity” and describes it as a favorite “among the toddler set.” “Naturalize” seems an ironic choice of words to describe a book that includes types of “parental” relationships that are unnatural and, by design, sterile. The “Alternatives to Marriage Project”  is a group committed to “equality and fairness” for “same sex couples and those in relationships of more than two people.”

Treating homosexuality and heterosexuality as equivalent is not a neutral position

Treating homosexuality as equivalent to heterosexuality does not reflect a neutral ideological position. Treating homosexuality as equivalent to heterosexuality is a leftist position. Believing that homosexuality and heterosexuality are morally and ontologically equivalent is a controversial, unproven belief that public schools — particularly elementary schools — have no ethical right or obligation to promulgate.

Leftists try to make the case that including books that treat homosexuality positively reflects ideological neutrality and balance since there are already so many books that depict heterosexuality positively. But that argument is based on prior acceptance of yet another Leftist assumption, which is that homosexuality is simply the flip side of the sexuality coin. It’s not. Homosexuality is a disordering of the sexual impulse.

Humans were quite obviously created anatomically and biologically as heterosexual beings. Using any objective criteria, all humans are heterosexual.  There exists no argument about the morality of heterosexual acts per se, so the number of books in a library that depict heterosexuality positively is irrelevant to any discussion of the appropriateness of including a book that depicts homosexuality positively. Publicly funded schools have no right to make available to young children ideas and images that many believe are profoundly immoral.

What neutrality or true diversity of opinions would look like in public schools

A neutral position would take one of two forms: Neutrality on topics involving homosexuality can be demonstrated by simply not addressing it at all; or neutrality can be demonstrated by including picture books that affirm homosexuality and picture books that portray homosexuality as immoral and destructive. Of course, neither side of the debate is going to like the second option.

Further, the opposite of a homosexuality-affirming book is not a heterosexuality-affirming book. The opposite of a homosexuality-affirming story would be a story that is critical of homosexuality. A picture book that dissents from the view that homosexual-led familes are equivalent to heterosexual-led families is not a book that depicts heterosexual-led families positively. A picture book that offers a dissenting view from one that positively depicts homosexual-led family structures would be one that negatively depicts homosexual-led family structures.

Who really censors?

The use of the terms “book banning” and “censorship” represents yet another “tool” in the bulging toolbox of manipulative and hypocritical strategies used by those who have lost their moral compasses and seek to pervert the moral compasses of other people’s children in public schools. Teachers make choices all the time about what books should be purchased with limited resources. And particularly in elementary schools, the criteria used to determine book choices include considerations of age-appropriateness. Although leftwing extremists may think picture books that affirm homosexual family structures are appropriate, they, leftist ideologues, are not the ultimate arbiters of appropriateness.

Charges of censorship are leveled at only conservatives. When, for example, high school teachers refuse to have their students study any resources on the topic of homosexuality written by conservative scholars while at the same time having them read novels, plays, or articles that espouse liberal ideas, we rarely if ever hear them called censors.

I’m speculating here, but I doubt whether any school district that chose not to purchase a picture book that positively depicted polyamorous families or families in which the parents were siblings would be accused of book banning or censorship.

I can already hear the cacophonous howls of indignation from “progressive” ideologues. How dare I compare morally neutral homosexual relationships to immoral polyamorous and incestuous relationships. But that’s the crux of the debate that homosexuals think is settled: Many still believe that homosexual acts are profoundly immoral.  And if homosexual acts are, indeed, objectively immoral, then family structures that center on homosexual couples are inherently morally flawed.

Are picture books that address homosexuality centrally about love?

The problem with picture books on the subject of homosexuality is that they ignore — as they must — the central issue: the morality of homosexual acts. That’s what makes this debate about picture books so dishonest and so dishonorable: In picture books for young children, leftists can’t address the fundamental and abstract question of sexual morality, and, therefore, they get away with saying with feigned wide-eyed innocence, “But this book is just about love.” No, it’s not, and they know it.

Homosexuality, unlike heterosexuality, is constituted by only subjective feelings and volitional acts, which are legitimate objects of moral assessment. The morality of homosexual acts is central to any presentation of homosexuality, and it is the morality of homosexual acts that is intellectually, pedagogically, and developmentally inappropriate in elementary schools.

The Family Book vividly captures the emotive dimensions of families in colorful, whimsical, and appealing illustrations, which makes it all the more troubling. Books like Parr’s lure little ones into an ideological snare before they’re old enough to realize it. It doesn’t matter that Parr in his moral ignorance thinks he’s doing a good thing. His good intentions, shaped as they are by moral delusion, do not mitigate the offense of presenting perversion as positive. Adding sugar to poison doesn’t make it less toxic; it makes it more likely to be consumed.

Should minor positive references to homosexuality get a pass?

And the fact that in his book, the positive images of homosexual families are few, doesn’t justify the inclusion of this book in a public elementary school library. Should libraries include picture books with just one or two positive references to polyamorous families? As I have written earlier, cultural change rarely happens through dramatic, single events, but rather through the slow, accretion of little events that we ignore or dismiss as minor. All that pro-homosexual dogmatists have to do to get their resources into public schools is make sure their references to homosexuality are few and indirect. Once in, they gradually increase the number and directness of homosexuality-affirming messages.

Must bullying prevention efforts include affirming homosexuality?

Of course, homosexual activists are dragging in the bullying issue again as a means to intimidate the Erie administration and school board. They’re making the case that choosing not to include resources that affirm homosexuality will contribute to bullying of students who identify as homosexual or whose caretakers are homosexual.

Should we apply that principle consistently? Will the absence of resources that affirm polyamory contribute to bullying of students who identify as polyamorous or whose caretakers so identify? Will the absence of resources that affirm promiscuity contribute to the bullying of promiscuous students? Will the absence of resources that affirm laziness contribute to the bullying of “slackers”? (Just to be clear to homosexual activists who seem to struggle mightily with analogies: I’m not comparing promiscuity and laziness to homosexuality–homosexual acts are far more serious moral offenses. I’m extrapolating the argument that absence of affirmative resources contributes to bullying to conditions other than homosexuality.) No elementary school librarian, teacher, administrator, or school board member would entertain the fanciful notion of including polyamory-affirming resources in school libraries or curricula as a means to combat the bullying of students being raised by polyamorists.

The homosexual website Chicago Pride reports that a lesbian teacher from Minnesota says that choosing not to include homosexuality-affirming resources in elementary school libraries sends “a strong message that gay and trans issue [sic] are inappropriate to discuss in a classroom setting.” In other words, she believes that it’s important to discuss homosexuality and “transgenderism” in elementary school classrooms. Wow.  We now have educators that believe that it’s important in elementary schools to discuss issues related to the sexual predilections and acts of  1.7 percent of the population.

Is it the responsibility of elementary schools to affirm every family structure or sexual phenomenon?

It’s important is to understand that the mere fact that a particular family structure (or sexual phenomenon) exists does not mean public schools are compelled to teach about or affirm it. It’s tragic that selfish adults deliberately create motherless or fatherless family structures, but schools have neither the obligation nor the right to affirm those immoral structures even in order to make children feel better.

Some questions for this homosexual activist teacher:

• Why should her pedagogical view that controversial topics like homosexuality and gender confusion should be discussed in elementary school classrooms be imposed on every school district?
• What is her defense for the belief that these topics, for which moral considerations are central, are intellectually and developmentally age-appropriate?
• Since she believes that these topics should be discussed in elementary schools, is she willing to have children exposed equally to resources that affirm homosexuality and those that disapprove of it?

GLSEN is quoted as saying that they are “’reaching out’” to the Erie Community Unit School District to “’understand their decision to reject the unanimous decision of a community-based committee in favor of the adoption’” of GLSEN’s Ready, Set, Respect! curricula about which IFI has written.

Questions about curricula selection committees

I wonder who served on this community-based committee. How many people served on it? How were they selected? Did those who formed the committee ensure that all ideological views on homosexuality and its presence in elementary school curricula were represented? How many character development curricula were reviewed? What criteria were used in the selection process? Who established the criteria? Did all members of the committee read all the curricular resources? Did they investigate the biases and controversial history of GLSEN, including that of its founder, Kevin Jennings?

These are some of the questions that should be asked in order to hold accountable those who made the boneheaded decision to use GLSEN resources.

This news story shouldn’t be remarkable, but because we see so few public school administrations and teachers with the wisdom and spine to oppose the efforts of homosexual activists to impose their beliefs on public schools — or infuse curricula with their beliefs — the courage of the Erie Community Unit School District stands out.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to offer words of encouragement and support to the School Board President Charles Brown and Superintendent Bradley Cox, who you can bet your bottom dollar will be on the receiving end of vicious attacks from the advocates of “tolerance.”

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