As I have long argued, the greatest threat posed to our First Amendment assembly, speech, and religious free exercise protections comes from the homosexual community and the “trans” cult. Already state laws and judicial decisions have been eroding those protections, and last Thursday, the most dangerous threat yet emerged in Congress when U.S. Representative David Cicilline (D-RI) re-introduced the deceitfully titled “Equality Act,” which explicitly neuters religious protections when religious beliefs conflict with disordered sexual desires.

The Equality Act (H.R. 5) would add “sexual orientation” (i.e., homosexuality) and “gender identity” (i.e., cross-sex impersonation) to the current list of bases on which discrimination is prohibited in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Doing so is a means of abrogating 1. the right of free people to express moral judgments about volitional acts, 2. the right of people of faith to exercise their religion freely with regard to beliefs on sexuality, and 3. the right to recognize the scientific reality of sex differences in those places where sex differences matter most.

When leftists say that the Equality Act will protect “LGBTQ” persons from discrimination, they mean the Equality Act will prohibit conservative people from making decisions in accordance with their beliefs—including religious beliefs—about marriage, volitional sexual acts, and cross-sex impersonation. In other words, if the Equality Act passes, a new protected class based on or constituted by disordered subjective sexual feelings will be created and our first freedom will be abrogated.

The Equality Act, which has 223 co-sponsors—all Democrats—is supposed to be voted on this week after which it will move to the U.S. Senate. President Biden is urging Congress to pass it with all due haste, so he—the self-identifying Catholic—can sign into law the bill that will undermine religious protections for Catholics and Protestants.

The Equality Act makes clear the sweeping nature of the cultural changes leftists seek to impose via federal legislation.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer … people commonly experience discrimination in securing access to public accommodations—including … senior centers … health care facilities, shelters …  youth service providers including adoption and foster care providers. … Forms of discrimination include the exclusion and denial of entry, unequal or unfair treatment. … (with respect to gender identity) an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.

If this legislation passes, no senior center, health care facility, shelter, or adoption agency that partners with the federal government or receives federal money will be permitted to treat biological men who pretend to be women as men.

Shelters, senior centers, and hospitals with sex-segregated restrooms, showers, or sleeping quarters will be forced to sexually integrate those private spaces.

Catholic hospitals will be forced to perform surgical mutilations on men and women who seek to pass as the sex they are not.

Christian adoption and foster care providers will be forced to place infants, children, and teens in the homes of homosexuals and cross-sex impersonators.

Teachers in government schools will be forced to facilitate delusional “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices. Administrators, faculty, and staff will be required by law to use incorrect pronouns, which constitutes bearing false witness. And locker room supervisors will be forced to oversee students of the opposite sex undressing.

The Equality Act poses some as of yet unacknowledged ideological and pragmatic problems for Democrats. For example, on the same day Cicilline reintroduced the Equality Act, U.S. Representative Grace Meng (D-NY) reintroduced her bill that seeks to protect girls and women in refugee camp bathrooms. Meng explained,

Refugee camps should be safe havens for those who have been forced to flee their countries and that includes secure facilities for restrooms. … But unfortunately, many bathrooms in refugee camps do not provide appropriate safety protections. Many refugee camps lack adequate access to such facilities and often times the restrooms are mixed-sex, public, and without locks. … These conditions create a lack of privacy and dignity and make women and girls afraid to use the restrooms, fearing that they may be assaulted and subjected to violence while using the bathroom. These types of conditions are unacceptable. Nobody should have their safety jeopardized in order care for their most basic hygiene needs. My bill would finally combat this problem. (emphasis added)

David Cicilline is a co-sponsor of Meng’s bill, which means that Cicilline is the co-sponsor of a bill that prohibits mixed-sex bathrooms in federal refugee camps and the sponsor of a bill that mandates mixed-sex bathrooms in all federally funded facilities.

Oh, what tangled webs …

The Equality Act also includes the following:

A single instance of discrimination may have more than one basis. For example, discrimination against a married same-sex couple could be based on the sex stereotype that marriage should only be between heterosexual couples, the sexual orientation of the two individuals in the couple, or both.

Leftists define the belief that marriage is the union of two people of opposite sexes as a discriminatory “sex stereotype,” and they want to legally prohibit every American from acting in accordance with that belief. Of course, the leftist opinion that the cross-cultural and historical understanding of marriage is a discriminatory sex stereotype is neither an objective fact nor true. It is an ideological assumption.

As an end run around the First Amendment’s religious protection, the anti-constitutional, anti-liberty, anti-Christian, perversity-supremacy law—misnamed the Equality Act—states,

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 … shall not provide a claim concerning, or a defense to a claim under, a covered title, or provide a basis for challenging the application or enforcement of a covered title.

Anticipating appeals to equality for people of faith, who are currently protected by both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, the tyrants behind the Religious Bigotry Act Equality Act made sure that people of faith lose.

As I wrote two years ago,

The Equality Act would require that federal law recognize disordered subjective feelings and deviant behaviors as protected characteristics. Federal law would absurdly recognize homoeroticism and cross-sex masquerading as conditions that must be treated like race and biological sex, which are objective, 100 percent heritable conditions that are in all cases immutable, and carry no behavioral implications.

Once the law is enjoined to protect two groups based on their subjective sexual feelings and volitional sexual behaviors, we open a Pandora’s Box of evils that will inevitably result in conflicts between the new legal rights of those who embrace sexual deviance as “identity” and 1. the First Amendment rights of those who reject sexual deviance, 2. the moral right of businesses to require restrooms, locker rooms, and showers to correspond to biological sex, 3. the right of businesses to fire or refuse to hire a person who chooses to masquerade as the opposite sex, and 4. the right of public schools to fire or to refuse to hire a person who chooses to impersonate the opposite sex.

If the Equality Act passes, all it will take for other groups to have their sexual peccadillos deemed “sexual orientations,” is to organize and wait for the culture to do its dirty work.

Academia will jump aboard first, squawking in newly invented jargon and intellectual-ese about identity, authenticity, equity, tolerance, diversity, bigotry, hatred, and phobias.

Then the “arts,” will join in writing plays, novels, Hollywood scripts, and heartstring-pulling songs affirming all sorts of perverse sexual fetishes as authentic “identities.”

Next our polluted and politicized professional mental health and medical communities will manufacture “social science” studies to show how much happier polyamorists are when they are free to live in poly-pods without shaming judgments; and that brothers in love should be permitted to marry (after all, love is love); and that adults who identify as babies should be free to wear onesies to work in order to be their authentic selves, after which all of society will be  forced to ask our friends, neighbors, co-workers, and students what their preferred age is.

Christians will be legally prohibited from acting on their moral judgments about sexual perversion, and dissenters will be “othered,” cancelled, and shamed. Soon Christian-shaming will be the only shaming permitted in this brave new world where shame is unmoored from morality.

Americans are a tolerant and patient people, but their capacity for tolerating unjust oppression and suppression of their most fundamental rights is not unlimited. I suspect Pelosi, Schumer et al. realize that. I suspect they know that the radical anti-American, anti-liberty, anti-Constitution, anti-Christianity, Big Brother-esque agenda they have planned for Americans in the next four years may spark a rebellion. Hence the razor-topped wall surrounding the “people’s” house.

But, razor-topped barbed wire cannot keep standing a house divided against itself.

Take ACTION: (UPDATED) Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative our U.S. Senators to urge him/her them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.” If you know the name of your local official, you can also call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask the operator to connect you with his/her office to leave a message.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/audioThe-Equality-Act-Will-Lay-Waste-to-This-Already-Divided-House_01.mp3

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A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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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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On Friday, May 27, Hawthorn Middle School North in Vernon Hills organized an in-school field trip titled “CHOICES” (Create Hopeful Opportunities in Children’s Everyday Situations) that included six speakers, two of whom told middle school students that they were homosexual.

Prior to the event, parents were sent a brief parental notification letter/permission slip that purportedly identified the topics and speakers. Oddly, parents were not told that any speaker would share with students any information about his homosexuality.

Neither the school employees who organized the event nor any school administrator thought that parents deserved to know that the presentations might include information on the single most divisive topic in America, and one which involves voluntary sexual behavior that many parents believe is profoundly immoral.

At the end of the day, students were invited to write an optional thank-you note to one of the speakers. One seventh-grade student wrote a brief note to the self-identified homosexual former drug user, thanking him for his openness and suggesting that if he and his boyfriend were ever to consider using drugs again, they should ask themselves WWJD (What would Jesus do).

Seventh-grade science teacher, Ms. Tommie Arens, criticized the note’s reference to possible future drug use, so the student decided not to complete it and tossed it in the trash. Arens retrieved it from the trash and informed several other teachers who later called the student into a meeting to question him about his motives for writing.

In addition to being bothered by the student’s note, one of the teachers believed the student had used an inappropriate tone of voice when during the Q & A, he asked the homosexual former drug user whether he had ever asked himself “What would Jesus do?” Some later conversations revealed that a teacher believed that inappropriate snickering took place during the presentation. It’s quite likely that at some point during a day of presentations, some middle school boys snickered about something, but just what is anyone’s guess.

While pondering the issue of middle school snickering, I wondered if the indignant teachers ever considered the impact and wisdom of having speakers announce their sexual proclivities to a middle school audience — proclivities that many consider deviant. When the two speakers announced that they were homosexual, they brought the image of two men having sex to the churning minds of a roomful of adolescents. Middle school students are completely justified in finding the idea of two men engaging in anal or oral sex repugnant, and sometimes children and adults laugh about ideas that make them uncomfortable and which they find offensive. Government employees have no right to expect or implicitly suggest that children not find the idea of two men having sex repugnant. Deviant sexual acts should not be respected, and school employees have no right to imply that they should be.

What is most troubling about this entire debacle is not the disputed actions of a middle school boy but rather the indisputably inappropriate actions of the teachers.

During the meeting with the student and multiple teachers, another 7th grade science teacher, Mrs. Erin Brickman, became frustrated that the student did not acquiesce to her interpretation of events, told the student to “Cut the crap. I’m not going to take any more of this crap,” and marched out of the room. Such behavior on the part of a teacher is inappropriate and unprofessional.

Even more problematic, however, are two of the questions Mrs. Brickman asked the student. She asked him how he felt about homosexuality and what his church teaches about homosexuality. Later the same day, she asked the student’s mother those same questions. Those questions, which are inarguably none of Brickman’s business, reveal two deeply problematic phenomena in public education. First, many teachers have become intrusive and presumptuous. And second, liberal teachers believe their ontological and moral views about homosexuality are objective facts and, therefore, they have the right to promulgate them within the public school context.

In a subsequent meeting with Principal Tom Springborn, which I also attended, the mother of the student asked why the parental notification letter did not mention homosexuality. Springborn said that because the topics that the two homosexual speakers were there to discuss were bullying and drug use, and because the speakers just mentioned but did not discuss at length their homosexuality, parents did not need to be notified ahead of time.

I asked him if a speaker were in a romantic, sexual relationship with his sister and just announced it to seventh-graders but did not elaborate on it, would that be okay. He said, “Yes.” Taken aback, I asked him to confirm his answer. I asked, “Just to be clear, are you saying that it would be okay for a speaker to share with students that he was in a sexual relationship with his sister as long as he didn’t talk further about it.” Principal Springborn again said, “Yes.” He added that he would want to know about such a statement ahead of time.

Now, I can just hear liberals caterwauling about my comparison of homosexuality to adult consensual incest. They will argue that adult consensual incest is immoral but homosexuality is not. But, that’s the disputed issue. Despite what liberals believe on this issue, their moral beliefs are not facts.

Homosexuality is more akin to adult consensual incest than it is to race or skin color. Even the far left organization SIECUS defines “sexual orientation” as “attractions, fantasies, and sexual behavior.” How can a condition defined as such ever be compared to skin color? Those who continually compare homosexuality to race must be compelled to provide evidence for their idiotic analogy.

Furthermore, Mr. Springborn is not exactly correct. The two homosexual speakers did not merely announce that they were homosexual — which I would argue is no small thing in and of itself. They also said that they have always known that they’re homosexual.

Embedded in this incident are several problematic issues.

First, despite Mr. Springborn’s open-mindedness about incestuous speakers, most school administrators would not permit a speaker to announce their amorous relationships with siblings. Nor would any middle school permit polyamorists to mention their sexual proclivities. And why not? The reason such announcements would be prohibited is that school administrators and teachers believe that adult consensual incest and polyamory are immoral. Therefore, allowing homosexuals to announce their predilections points to the reality that administrators have concluded that homosexuality is moral.

Second, both homosexual speakers told the students that they always knew they were homosexual. Such a statement implies biological determinism. Were the Hawthorne students also told there is no scientific evidence proving that homosexuality is biologically determined? Were students told that many immoral impulses emerge at the earliest ages? Were they told that childhood molestation could cause, in the words of a therapist who appeared on Oprah, “sexual orientation confusion”? Were students told that early molestation might result in “sexual orientation” confusion at such a young age that someone may not recall a time when they didn’t feel attracted to their same sex?

I told Mr. Springborn that it appears that one or more of the teachers involved have strong feelings and beliefs about homosexuality that differ from the student’s. He acknowledged that that was, indeed, the case, and he also said the teachers should not bring those feelings and beliefs to school contexts.

He also acknowledged that questioning the student about his feelings about homosexuals or his church’s teaching about homosexuality was inappropriate.

There were yet more troubling issues. In another email to Principal Springborn, one of the teachers admitted that another student was called in to a meeting because a teacher had seen him stare at another student in a “bullying fashion.” So now, staring has become bullying? How is staring in a bullying fashion differentiated from staring in a non-bullying fashion? Is it the starer’s motives, beliefs, or feelings that determine whether an incident of staring constitutes bullying?

Moreover, does every unpleasant student action constitute bullying?

How minimally unpleasant does a student action have to be and how draconian will the school anti-bullying measures have to become before parents say no more? Every civilized adult opposes bullying, but not every unpleasant student action constitutes bullying. Once teachers start inquiring about students’ feelings or religious beliefs, they have gone too far.

The final insult to parental rights and real education occurred after the speakers had concluded their presentations. Students were shown a promotional video about Challenge Day, about which I’ve written two articles (to read about Challenge Day, click here and here).

Following the video, students were given a “reflection” assignment that left some students in tears, a common occurrence among students who participate in Challenge Day. Many teachers view tearful revelations about deeply personal issues as appropriate educational activities.

The mother of the ill-treated student has asked that a notice be sent home informing parents that two of the in-school field trip speakers spoke about their homosexuality and that the video Challenge Day was shown. She has also asked that this notice include an apology from the administration for their failure to provide this information in the parental notification letter and permission slip. Parents deserved that information in order to make an informed decision beforehand, and they deserve it now so that they can have follow-up discussions with their children if they so desire.

The mother is still awaiting a response from the administration.