President-elect Barack Obama claims to desire to unify the country. In one of his notable speeches, he said, “So I ask you to walk with me, and march with me, and join your voice with mine, and together we will sing the song that tears down the walls that divide us, and lift up an America that is truly indivisible … .”

And how does he seek to do this? He invites V. Gene Robinson, pivotal figure in the ongoing dramatic disunification of the Episcopal Church in America, “to deliver the invocation at a concert held at the Lincoln Memorial. The concert, which will be held on Sunday, January 18th, is the first inaugural event the president-elect will attend.” (Source: http://www.hrc.org/11873.htm.)

For those who may not be familiar with Vicki Gene Robinson, he is the divorced, “first openly gay, non-celibate priest to be ordained a bishop” in the Episcopal Church. His ordination was the precipitating event in the decision of dozens of conservative Episcopal dioceses to split from the national denomination.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Robinson has said that “he would not use the Bible in his address because “‘While that is a holy and sacred text to me, it is not for many Americans. . . . I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer. This is a prayer for the whole nation.'” Someone may want to inform the bishop that, though there are many gods, there is only one God, and He is the God of the Old and New Testaments.

If ever there were a divisive character in American church life, V. Gene Robinson is one. His open and unrepentant engagement in homosexual conduct and his public defense of homosexuality in defiance of Scripture render Robinson not merely divisive, but dangerous. Our next president, the unifier, has invited a heretic to deliver the invocation at the Lincoln Memorial.

Next week, the Chicago Board of Education will vote on the proposed Social Justice High School-Pride Campus that Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan has endorsed. Rumors are circulating that, despite Mayor Richard Daley’s explicit opposition to the school, the board intends to vote in favor of it.

The Windy City Times, a Chicago newspaper serving the homosexual and “transgender” population, explains that “the school will exist as a training hub on LGBT issues and social-justice curricula for teachers, both locally and nationally. Social-justice history, practices and discussion will be embedded in the curriculum, allowing for all students, including LGBTQ youth, to find representation in the courses they are taking in school.” (See “Social Justice or Educational Injustice“)

It is critical to understand that the taxes of all Illinoisans, not just Chicagoans, will be used to subsidize this subversive project, because all public schools receive state funds. Arne Duncan and any member who agrees with Duncan that the state should subsidize this school had to have come to prior conclusions that homosexual conduct is safe and moral. If Duncan had concluded otherwise — if he had concluded that homosexual conduct is neither safe nor moral-he would never have recommended approval of this proposal.

It is clearly far outside both Duncan’s area of expertise and his professional responsibilities to make implicit proclamations on the nature and morality of homosexuality, and it is inappropriate to demand that taxpayers subsidize his controversial and unproven philosophical and moral conclusions.

The Windy City Times has taken notice of IFI’s efforts to oppose this school and is urging its readers to fight back, calling our letter-writing and email campaign “negative.” Our opposition to this school is only negative if our beliefs are wrong. If, however, our beliefs that homosexual conduct is volitional, unsafe, and immoral are correct, then our opposition to this school is a positive effort to protect teens, preserve a proper understanding of the nature and morality of homosexuality, and prevent our money from being used to promote radical, subversive ideas about homosexuality that will ultimately destroy marriage, destroy the natural family, and undermine fundamental First Amendment speech and religious rights. 

It is cruel and tragic that those in positions of authority today are so bereft of both knowledge and wisdom that they claim that sexually confused teens deserve to have a homosexual identity affirmed. It is cruel and tragic that, despite the absence of any supporting research, so-called “educators” tell sexually confused teens that they were “born that way” And it is a grievous offense to demand that the public subsidize this ignorance, arrogance, and cruelty. If we truly love these teens, we will speak the truth. 

Public schools must stay away from subjects that fall far outside the appropriate purview of public education. We have one week left to express not merely our opposition to, but our outrage about the proposed Social Justice High School-Pride Campus.

TAKE ACTION: Contact CPS Chief Arne Duncan and the Chicago Board of Education to express your opposition to the use of public funds to subsidize a school that affirms disputable and divisive views on homosexuality and gender-confusion.

Additional Contact Information
E-mail Arne Duncan at aduncan@cps.k12.il.us with your letter of opposition. To cc the Chicago Tribune, e-mail ctc-tribletter@tribune.com. To cc the Chicago Sun-Times, e-mail mcooke@suntimes.com. 

To mail or fax a letter, send it to:

Mr. Arne Duncan, Chief Executive Officer
Chicago Public Schools
125 S. Clark, 5th Floor
Chicago, IL 60603

The fax number is 773-553-1502.

To send to the board of education, mail a letter to:

Chicago Board of Education
125 S. Clark, 6th Floor
Chicago, IL 60603

The fax number is 773-553-1601.

Next Wednesday, October 22nd, the Chicago Board of Education will consider a proposal for a “gay”-friendly high school for homosexual and gender-confused students. The proposal already has the recommendation of School CEO Arne Duncan.

Despite the fact that 70 percent of Chicago high school students are testing below state standards and the sad reality that almost half of Chicago high school students fail to graduate, Chicago Public School (CPS) officials are seriously considering investing time, energy, and hard-earned tax dollars toward social engineering and the promotion of controversial views of homosexuality. 

TAKE ACTION: Contact CPS Chief Arne Duncan and the Chicago Board of Education to express your opposition to the use of public funds to subsidize a school that affirms disputable and divisive views on homosexuality and gender-confusion. 

Pasted below is a copy of a certified letter IFI’s Division of School Advocacy sent to the Mr. Duncan and the Chicago Board of Education.

RE: Social Justice High School-Pride Campus

Members of the Board of Education, 

The Illinois Family Institute strongly urges you to vote against the creation of a new and controversial Social Justice High School-Pride Campus. Subsidizing this school would represent a gross misuse of public funds. 

Public educators have no business taking a position on the nature and morality of homosexuality and “transgenderism,” which Arne Duncan necessarily has done in recommending approval of this school. 

Will the board of education also consider a high school for students who are harassed for myriad other reasons, most of which, unlike homosexuality and “transgenderism,” have no moral implications? 

Will the board of education and administrators in this high school commit in written policy to allotting equal time and equivalent resources to all sides of the cultural debate on homosexuality and cross-dressing? 

Will you ensure that curricula that address these topics are unbiased and uncensored, or will you permit only biased, censored curricula that exclusively affirm controversial, unproven theories on the nature and morality of homosexuality? 

How will the faculty and administration teach critical thinking skills on the divisive issue of homosexuality and gender identity disorder if they have previously committed only to affirm homosexuality as normative and morally defensible? 

Are the board of education and administration prepared to provide justifications and evidence for claims that homosexuality is biologically determined or that disapproval of behavior constitutes bullying?

Are the board of education and administration prepared to provide justifications and evidence for the implicit claim that volitional behavioral choices that may emerge from biologically influenced impulses are inherently moral?

Are you prepared to apply consistently to all behaviors the principle that disapproval of behavior makes students “unsafe”?

It is an outrage that Mr. Duncan would recommend and the board of education consider using the hard-earned money of Chicago taxpayers to subsidize a school whose curricula will violate fundamental educational principles regarding intellectual diversity and exploration that give public education legitimacy. 

And it is an outrage that Mr. Duncan and the board would consider using public funds to undermine the values of many members of the community who supply those funds.

If this school is approved, it will become obvious to all that the promulgation of controversial, unproven socio-political theories has replaced academic inquiry as the guiding principle of the Chicago Board of Education.

Again, we strongly urge you to vote against this proposal.

Sincerely,

Laurie Higgins, Director
Division of School Advocacy
Illinois Family Institute

A broad coalition of individuals and organizations is urging parents to oppose the Day of Silence (DOS), a political action sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), because it politicizes the classroom for ideological purposes. 

The explicit purpose of DOS is to encourage sympathy and support for students involved in homosexual behavior and cross-dressing whose voices have been allegedly silenced by the disapproval of society. The implicit purpose is to undermine the belief that homosexuality is immoral. Parents should no longer passively countenance the political usurpation of public school classrooms through student silence.

Parents should call their children’s middle schools and high schools to ask whether the administration and/or teachers will be permitting students to remain silent during class 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. The DOS requires that teachers either create activities around the silence of some or many, or exempt silent students from any activity that involves speaking. Furthermore, DOS participants have a captive audience, many of whom disagree with and are made uncomfortable by the politicization of their classroom. 

Some administrators assert that DOS merely seeks to promote “acceptance.” They fail to clarify, however, what precisely they want students to accept. While it is legitimate to teach students that there exist diverse opinions on this issue, it is not legitimate to imply that one of those opinions is preferable to another. While it is appropriate to teach acceptance of people, meaning that we should treat all with civility, it is not appropriate to suggest that students need to accept the view that homosexual conduct is moral. These important distinctions are rarely, if ever, made in public school discussions of “acceptance.”

One oft-repeated mantra is that the goal of DOS is to keep LGBTQ students safe. The problematic rhetoric of “safety,” however, substitutes speciously for the more accurate term of “comfort.” To suggest that in order for those who self-identify as homosexual or “transgender” to be “safe,” no one may disapprove of homosexual conduct is both absurd and dangerous. If this definition of “safety” were to be applied consistently, virtually all statements of disapproval would be prohibited.

Day of Silence participants claim they seek to end discrimination. There is, however, a problem with the way “discrimination” is defined in public discourse today. Groups like GLSEN believe that statements of moral conviction with which they disagree constitute prejudice or discrimination. While relentlessly promoting this view, administrators are never asked to provide evidence for the dubious presuppositions on which claims of discrimination are based. They are never asked to provide evidence for the arguable claim that homosexuality is equivalent to race; or that disapproval of homosexual conduct is equivalent to racism; or that homosexual impulses are biologically determined; or that the presence of biological influences in shaping desire renders a behavior automatically moral. The time is long past that parents demand justification for those claims.

If we allow schools to define discrimination so expansively as to prohibit all statements of moral conviction, character development is compromised and speech rights are trampled. And if administrators continue to define discrimination in such a way as to preclude only some statements of moral conviction, they violate their pedagogical commitment to intellectual diversity and render the classroom a place of indoctrination. 

Finally, DOS supporters contend that one of their purposes is to end harassment. What they fail to acknowledge is that the worthy end of eliminating harassment does not justify the means of exploiting instructional time. There are myriad other ways to work toward that end. DOS participants have a First Amendment right to wear t-shirts, or put up posters, or host after-school speakers, or set up tables from which to distribute informative materials. They ought not to be allowed to manipulate instructional time in the service of their socio-political goals.

Here are responses to some common concerns about calling children out of school on DOS:

• Some parents believe that there is value in having students who hold traditional views on sexual orientation in class on the DOS. This belief is flawed for two reasons. First, the adolescent culture is liberal, and adolescents desire to fit in. The vast majority of conservative kids do not feel comfortable vocally opposing their culture and will not do so. As those who are more public in opposing the normalization of homosexuality can attest, very few adults have the courage to oppose the dominant culture; we cannot expect teens to do what adults don’t do. 

  Moreover, the goal of calling students out of school on DOS is not to communicate an alternative message to that of DOS. The goal is to remove GLSEN-sponsored political action from taxpayer-funded classes.

• Some parents express concern over the possibility of teachers exacting revenge through grading. First, it would be highly unethical for a teacher to treat a student punitively because of the teacher’s subjective assessment of the parents’ reason for calling a student out. If a teacher were to attempt to punish a student in such a way, parents should address the problem with the administration. Second, some students are willing to accept this possibility, viewing the cause as worthy of the sacrifice. Finally, those parents and teens who are not willing to risk even the remote possibility of teacher retribution can call their child out of school and not send a letter expressing their objections to DOS. 
• Some have argued that calling students out of class represents an attempt to deny free speech. Calling students out of class does not represent an attempt to deny free speech to students; rather, calling students out of class represents opposition to the exploitation of instructional time for socio-political action. Students are free to express their views in multiple ways mentioned above.
• Some claim that those who oppose DOS must not care about the suffering of LGBTQ teens. It is utterly specious to suggest that parents, teachers, and administrators who oppose political action in the classroom support harassment. Put another way, this claim implies that the only way parents, administrators, and teachers can prove they oppose harassment of homosexual or transgendered teens is to allow the politicization of the classroom. It also represents a classic ends justifies the means argument: If the ends, in this case, combating harassment of homosexual teens, are good, then any and all means are justified. 

  There are countless worthwhile goals that should not be promoted during class. Some might consider ending the tragedy of teen drunk-driving deaths, or the war in Iraq, or abortion to be worthwhile goals, and yet it would be equally inappropriate to use the classroom to promote them. The truth is that parents, teachers, and administrators can oppose harassment while concomitantly opposing the politicization of instructional time.

Schools have the right to prohibit student silence in the classroom if they deem it “disruptive.” It is our hope and belief that if schools have one group of students silent and another group called out, they will eventually decide that classroom silence is “disruptive.”

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) may be voted on in US House this week. Please read this note and take action as recommended. Then please forward this note to everyone you know, and especially to anyone associated with a Christian business, charitable organizations, or religious school!

ENDA would prohibit employers from making employment decisions — such as hiring, promotions and firing — based on an individual’s “actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.” While the bill purports to exempt religious groups, it really doesn’t do that. The court has to decide if your purpose is sufficiently religious enough in character.

ACTION: Please tell your U.S. Representative in Washington D.C. to please vote ‘NO’ on ENDA (H.R. 2015)!

ENDA would add gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons to the list of federally protected groups included in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This bill would institutionalize homosexuality and other long condemned sexual and social behaviors to a protected right under the law, and it would punish employers, landlords and others who discriminate in any way against such persons.

ENDA will require the accommodation of language, dress and “gestures” by ENDA-covered individuals, including transvestites and others experimenting with their “gender identity” at public facilities that provide services for CHILDREN or whose facilities are frequented by children.

Please contact your Congressman today!

Background

Here is more information about ENDA (H.R. 2015) from our friends at the Family Research Council:

• ENDA affords special protection to a group that is not disadvantaged.
• The issue is not job discrimination: It is whether private businesses will be forced by law to accommodate homosexual activists’ attempts to legitimize homosexual behavior.
• The first “religious exemption” clause is very narrow and offers no clear protection to church-related businesses: Religious schools or charitable organizations, religious bookstores, or any business affiliated with a church or denomination fall outside this narrow definition, and could presumably be required to hire homosexual applicants. 
• The second “religious exemption” clause fails to offer protection for all hiring by church-related organizations or businesses. The position of a teacher of religion at a church-related school would be exempt, but, e.g., that of a biology teacher would not. Thus, most of the teachers and staff at a religious school would be covered by ENDA, which means that the church would be forced to hire homosexual applicants for such positions-despite the fact that their lifestyle would be in direct opposition to the religious beliefs of the organization or company. 
• It is unlikely that the “religious exemption” included in the bill would survive court challenge: Institutions that could be targeted include religious summer camps, the Boy Scouts, Christian bookstores, religious publishing houses, religious television and radio stations, and any business with fifteen or more employees. 
• ENDA violates employers’ and employees’ Constitutional freedoms of religion, speech and association. The proposed legislation would prohibit employers from taking their most deeply held beliefs into account when making hiring, management, and promotion decisions. This would pose an unprecedented intrusion by the federal government into people’s lives.
• ENDA would approvingly bring private behavior considered immoral by many into the public square. By declaring that all sexual preferences are equally valid, ENDA would change national policy supporting marriage and family.