Don’t let the word “debate” in the term “floor debate” fool you. Floor debates in Springfield are no more debates than transwomen are women. There is no cross-examination or rebuttal, for which most of our lawmakers must be deeply thankful in that they couldn’t argue their way out of an imaginary paper bag—at least not using logic and evidence.

Floor debates in Springfield are occasions for bill sponsors and supporters—almost always Democrats—to pontificate and for opponents to try to point out flaws that are promptly ignored by Democrats no matter how reasonable and justified. A floor debate in Springfield for Democrat-sponsored bills is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing but more government restriction of liberty, more government spending, and more moral chaos.

For an example, let’s look briefly at last Friday’s floor debate preceding the vote in the Illinois House on the pernicious sex ed bill that now awaits Governor J.B. Pritzker’s signature. According to the bill’s chief sponsor, State Representative Camille Lilly (D-Chicago), the bill was socially constructed by three far left organizations—”Advocates for Youth, SIECUS and the Answer”—all of which are dedicated to normalizing abortion, early sexual experimentation, and sexual deviance. It is noteworthy that this bill is so perverse and troubling that even Illinois Democrats were barely able to scrape together the 60 votes needed to pass it.

Before looking at the “debate,” here’s a reminder of what lawmakers in Springfield think government employees should be exposing other people’s children to.

If signed into law, this bill will require all personal health and safety lessons in Illinois public schools—including charter schools—to teach children in grades K-2 about unmarried moms and dads and families led by homosexual couples. These very young children will also be expected to define “gender identity’’—a euphemism for the disordered desire to be the opposite sex.

Government employees will demand that children ages 8-11 explain, describe, and define masturbation, homosexuality, bisexuality, cross-sex impersonation, the use of hormone blockers for children who pretend to be the sex they aren’t, and “gender expansiveness”—a socially constructed leftist term.

Then in grades 6-8, government employees will instruct other people’s children in the ways of oral and anal sex; the “methods of contraception that are available without a prescription”; the “many methods of short- and long-term contraception that are safe and effective and … how to access them”; and the meaning of intersex, queer, twospirit, asexual, and pansexual. And, of course, leftists have snuck in some critical race theory, so 11–14-year-olds will be taught as objective and true the socially constructed theory of “intersectionality.”

To ensure that religious Illinois school children graduate from high school ashamed of and detesting the faith of their mothers and fathers, government employees will teach them about the evils of what leftists call “homophobia” and “transphobia.” In the Upside Down where leftists live and move and have their being, the true belief that homosexual acts and cross-dressing undermine the image of God imprinted on all humans constitutes irrational hatred.

State Representative Avery Bourne (R-Raymond) was able to get Lilly to admit that this law—like the ever-shifting moral beliefs of leftists—is fluid. If the bill becomes law, it will forever be tied to the National Sex Education Standards which change as progressivism affirms additional forms of sexual perversion. Bourne’s question elicited this shocking confession from the hapless Lilly:

As the National Sex Education Standards are updated, the State Board of Education shall update these learning standards.

All the ideas related to sexuality just mentioned are socially constructed leftist terms embedded with leftist assumptions. All the terms tossed about with absolutist certainty by Democrats to justify the indoctrination of other people’s children, including “age-appropriate,” “developmentally appropriate,” and “culturally appropriate,” are defined by leftists using criteria established by leftists.

Virtually no theologically orthodox Christian believes it is “culturally appropriate” for their 5-8- year-olds to be taught anything about homosexuality or “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices. SB 818’s supporters like to emphasize the sop they’re tossing to conservatives: Any parent may opt their child out of perversion-positive training.

Doesn’t sound very inclusive to me. In addition, conservatives still have to pay for perversion-positive “personal health and safety” training.

Curiously, in the floor “debate,” the issue of moral development never arose. It’s clear that moral assumptions/conclusions are embedded in the National Sex Education Standards with which this law requires all health and safety curricula selected by schools to align. How do I know that moral conclusions are embedded in these standards?

I know because these “standards” do not require schools to teach about, for example, polyamory, zoophilia, or infantilism—all forms of “identity” for some people. Even though these are forms of identity, Springfield Democrats don’t—yet –require that Illinois schools affirm them. The reason is that not enough Democrats—yet—believe these forms of identity are moral. Currently, Democrats believe homosexual and cross-sex identities should be normalized via taxpayer-funded schools because Democrats have concluded they are morally acceptable.

Remember what this bill requires as I quote some of the dumb things Democrats said about it in their fatuous floor speechifying, starting with the foolish sponsor of the bill, Camille Lilly:

Under SB818 … the materials and instruction must be age and developmentally appropriate, medically accurate, correct, complete, culturally appropriate, inclusive. … SB818 is not a mandate. Under SB818 parents, guardians and others will still be able to review the materials used by schools. Parents are still able to opt out, and local control applies to the selection of courses and materials and the curriculum. In addition to reducing stigma, SB818 would result in creating and the creation of learning standards that reflect the diversity of all students here in the state of Illinois.

Some brief thoughts about Lilly’s claims:

• SB 818 is not age-, developmentally, or culturally appropriate. The claims by leftist sexperts do not change reality.

• If by “correct” Lilly means “conforming to truth” or “proper,” she is incorrect.

• Clearly, materials and instruction will not be “complete” because the NSES do not include any information about polyamory, zoophilia, infantilism, sadomasochism, or any other paraphilias. I wonder if Camille Lilly et al. hate polyamorists, zoophiles, infantilists, and sadomasochists.

• SB 818 is a mandate in that no school may teach anything on personal health and safety in grades K-5 unless the materials they choose align with the age-, developmentally, culturally, and morally inappropriate leftist National Sex Education Standards.

• Lilly should explain which stigmas she seeks to reduce because this bill stigmatizes the moral views of many Illinoisans.

State Representative Delia Ramirez (D-Chicago) asked Lilly if it were true that the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Association of School Boards are “neutral on the bill,” to which Lilly responded “Yes.” Then in an amusing and obvious manipulation of rhetoric, Ramirez changed the word “neutral,” saying, “So, educators don’t oppose the bill.” Well, it’s equally correct to say, “So, educators don’t support the bill.”

It would be interesting to poll anonymously all K-5 teachers in the state, asking if they are in favor of being required to teach about homosexuality, bisexuality, co-habitation, masturbation, cross-sex impersonation, hormone-blockers, and gender expansiveness in personal health and safety lessons.

And we should ask if they think there should be a law prohibiting all teaching on personal health and safety unless it includes those topics. No discussions of healthy eating permitted unless they’re accompanied by affirming discussions of cross-dressing, hormone-blocking, and self-pleasuring.

State Representative Maurice West (D-Rockford) apparently derives his hearty support for requiring public school teachers to instruct 5-year-olds in the intricacies of masturbation and 11-year-olds about anal sex from TLC’s programs about hoarders and obese people:

We view television shows on TLC like Hoarders, My 600-Pound Life, just for example, where they often recall their childhood experience with shame, emptiness, guilt, confusion from their dealings with that word: sex. This legislation’s primary focus is not about the birds and the bees. It’s about equipping our children with age-appropriate conversations about how they can be empowered within themselves.

Well, West is right on one thing: This bill is definitely not about the birds and the bees.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s not the job of education majors to sexually “empower” other people’s children with the pagan sexual beliefs of regressives.

Two questions for West and all leftists:

1.) Since when did it become the task, pedagogical obligation, or right of public school teachers to solve all societal ills?

2.) Are there any pedagogical, ethical, moral, emotional, or psychological problems potentially created by introducing sexual imagery, ideas, and beliefs to other people’s children who have never been abused or shamed and whose parents have successfully protected them from ideas they—the parents—believe are age-, developmentally, culturally, and morally inappropriate?

In case parents don’t yet realize it, this newest bill is centrally about normalizing homosexuality and “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices. In yet another statement made with a voice quivering with faux-emotion, lesbian activist with a burnt soul, State Representative Kelly Cassidy, made that clear:

For far too long, LGBTQ youth were either invisible or expressly stigmatized. And I remember that. It burned into my soul. …  I remember that. … And as a kid who didn’t understand why I didn’t fit in, who couldn’t define why I felt different, and whose parents were not an option to go to, I wish I had had a teacher I could turn to. I wish I had had a curriculum that didn’t call me unnatural.

The presumptuous Cassidy demands that public schools affirm her arguable belief that homosexuality is natural, and if parents disagree, Cassidy wants the state to come in between them and their children.

State Representative Ann Williams (D-Chicago) made this boneheaded statement:

[I]t’s hard to imagine why anyone would think our children should not learn about sex education in school, but rather should refer to the internet or Google to determine what sex is or what their questions are and get them answered there. Right now, if you Google any of these terms related to sex education, you’re going to get a lot more explicit information than anything would be provided in a curriculum.

Phew. I guess Illinois parents should thank Democrats. At least curricula aligned with leftist standards won’t be as bad as what kids can find on the Internet.

It’s unfortunate that Williams suffers from such a dearth of imagination. It’s true, many people don’t think children should learn about sex in public schools. Here’s something else that may surprise the unimaginative Williams. Many people don’t think children should be learning about sex in co-ed classes in public schools. They believe that talking about menstruation and nocturnal emissions in co-ed classes can be embarrassing, inhibit discussions, and undermine the virtue of modesty.

Poor Williams suffers too from an inability to reason logically. Suggesting that there exists only the choice between public schools and the Internet is a classic example of the fallacy of the false dilemma. In addition to leftist-controlled public schools and the Internet, there are parents, grandparents, churches, libraries, and bookstores that can and do educate children on sex. It is not the business of the government to step in and expose all children to assumption-riddled claims about sexuality because some parents are derelict in their responsibilities.

Here’s a modest proposal: Rather than devouring the hearts and minds of other people’s little ones, how about schools offer two classes in personal health and safety—a perversion-positive class and a truly age-appropriate class. The class descriptions should include all materials used, the name of all organizations that constructed the materials, all the standards employed by those organizations, and all the criteria used to determine what constitutes age-, developmental, and cultural appropriateness. Let parents opt-in to whichever class they want or none at all. And allow teachers to choose which class they want to teach. With their deep commitments to diversity, inclusivity, cultural sensitivity, and choice, leftists should love this modest proposal.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Gov. Pritzker’s administrative staff to urge him to VETO SB 818 as a terrible overreach of government. Impressionable students in public schools should not be exposed to body- and soul-destroying messages that promote leftist beliefs about sexuality.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Dumb-Things-Dems-Said-in-Sex-Ed-Floor-Debate.mp3

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The poorly written, poorly thought-out, partisan “comprehensive sex ed” legislation concocted by State Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago) should be roundly rejected. SB 1619, otherwise known by its obfuscatory title, “Personal Responsibility Education Act,” is yet another attempt by legislator-ideologues to use public money to normalize sexual immorality and perversion by inculcating children and teens with subjectivist, relativist assumptions about sexuality.
SB 1619 requires the following:

Provides that each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades 6 through 12 shall include instruction on both abstinence and contraception for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS (instead of instruction on the prevention, transmission, and spread of AIDS). Removes a provision that requires all public elementary, junior high, and senior high school classes that teach sex education and discuss sexual intercourse to emphasize that abstinence is the expected norm. Provides that all public elementary, junior high, and senior high school classes that teach sex education and discuss sexual intercourse shall satisfy specified criteria (instead of all sex education courses that discuss sexual intercourse shall satisfy specified criteria); makes changes to that criteria….Provides that the State Board of Education shall make available resource materials for educating children regarding sex education and may take into consideration the curriculum on this subject developed by other states, as well as any other curricular materials suggested by education experts and other groups that work on sex education issues. Provides that materials may include without limitation model sex education curriculums and sexual health education programs…. Provides that the Comprehensive Health Education Program shall include the educational area of evidence-based and medically accurate information regarding sexual abstinence (instead of the area of sexual abstinence until marriage).

The term “comprehensive sex ed” is a euphemism intended to convey positive connotations of wholeness and completeness. But as usual with sophistry, it is a deceit. The truth is comprehensive sex ed is incomprehensive, distorted and propelled by a subversive sexual ethic. Comprehensive sex educators seek to tell kids everything possible about sex except of course anything that challenges their subjectivist, relativist presuppositions and libertine social and political goals.

Below are a few of the “medically accurate” notions that comprehensive sexperts from the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) think our children need to know. All of the following bulleted points are direct quotes from the “Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education,” which is the bible of the comprehensive sex ed movement. Unless, conservatives create a firestorm of opposition, this is what’s coming to Illinois public schools:

Boys and Girls Ages 5-8

• Human beings can love people of the same gender and people of another gender.
• Some people are homosexual, which means they can be attracted to and fall in love with someone of the same gender.
• Homosexual men and women are also known as gay men and lesbians.
• Two people may decide to marry or make a lifetime commitment to each other because they love each other and want to share their lives with each other.
• Many people live in lifetime committed relationships, even though they may not be legally married.
• Two people of the same gender can live in loving, lifetime committed relationships.
• Touching and rubbing one’s own genitals to feel good is called masturbation.
• Some boys and girls masturbate and others do not.
• Masturbation should be done in a private place.
• Girls and boys have many similarities and a few differences.
• Some people may expect or demand that boys and girls behave in certain ways, but this is beginning to change.
• Vaginal intercourse – when a penis is placed inside a vagina – is the most common way for a sperm and egg to join.
• Values are strong feelings or beliefs about important issues.

Ages 9-12

• Sexual orientation refers to a person’s physical and/or romantic attraction to an individual of the same and/or different gender.
• Some people are bisexual, which means they can be attracted to and fall in love with people of the same or another gender.
• People of all sexual orientations can have relationships that are equally fulfilling.
• Gender identity refers to a person’s internal sense of being male, female, or a combination of these.
• Transgender is also used as a general term to describe many different identities that exist such as “transsexual,” “drag king,” “drag queen,” “crossdresser,” “genderqueer,” “shapeshifter,” “bigendered,” and “androgyne.”
• All societies and cultures have transgender individuals.
• Some cultures around the world recognize and have special roles for transgender individuals.
• Children may have a mother, a mother and a father, two mothers, two fathers, or any other combination of adults who love and care for them.
• Boys and girls receive messages about how they should behave from their families, friends, the
  media, and society.
• The belief that all people of the same gender should behave the same way is called a stereotype.
• People often expect girls and boys to behave stereotypically.
• People are sometimes discriminated against because of biological sex, appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity, family, and living arrangements.
• Discrimination can lead to lower self-esteem, unequal opportunities, and physical and emotional
  problems.
• Discrimination has negative consequences for the individual, family, community, and society.
• A woman faced with an unintended pregnancy can carry the pregnancy to term and raise the baby, place the baby for adoption, or have an abortion to end the pregnancy.

Ages 12-15

• Most people have masturbated at some time in their lives.
• Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual people come from all countries, cultures, races, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, and religions.
• People do not choose their sexual orientation.
• Many scientific theories have concluded that sexual orientation cannot be changed by therapy or medicine.
• Some people’s gender identity differs from their biological sex. “Transgender” describes people whose internal sense of gender (gender identity) doesn’t match what society expects of them based on their genitals and chromosomes (biological sex).
• Accepting gender role stereotypes can limit a person’s life.
• People’s lives are enriched when they understand and celebrate diversity.
• Many people experience sexual and erotic thoughts called fantasies.
• Fantasies are one type of sexual expression.
• The right of a woman to have a legal abortion is guaranteed by the Supreme Court, although there are restrictions in some states.
• Values should be freely chosen after the alternatives and their consequences are evaluated.
• No one has the right to impose their values on others.

Ages 15-18

• Masturbation may be an important part of a couple’s sexual relationship.
• Being sexual with another person does not mean that masturbation must or should stop.
• Some sexual behaviors shared by partners include kissing; touching; talking; caressing; massaging; and oral, vaginal, or anal intercourse.
• Abstinence means voluntarily choosing not to engage in certain behaviors.
• Sexual abstinence means not engaging in any sexual behavior that can result in a pregnancy or STD, including HIV.
• People may have different ideas about what constitutes abstinence, from no sexual contact of any kind including kissing, to only abstaining from sexual intercourse, and all points in-between.
• Sexual partners should discuss what they mean by abstinence.
• Young teenagers are not mature enough for a sexual relationship that includes intercourse.
• Many adults believe school-age teenagers should not have sexual intercourse.
• There are many ways to give and receive sexual pleasure without having intercourse.
• Sexual orientation is determined by a combination of a person’s attractions, fantasies, and sexual behaviors.*
• Respecting the diversity of values and beliefs of other people is important.
• Some people use erotic photographs, movies, art, literature, or the Internet to enhance their sexual fantasies when alone or with a partner.
• A person whose religious or cultural teachings prohibit contraception may have to decide between those teachings, the risk of unintended pregnancy or STDs/HIV, and his/her decision to have vaginal, oral, or anal intercourse.
• Emergency contraception (the “morning after pill”) is not a method of abortion.
• Gender role stereotypes are harmful to both men and women.
• A growing number of congregations openly welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

This sexual act, that is, SB 1619, also includes the following bit of tricksy rhetoric from the tricksy Senator Steans:

“Medically accurate” means verified or supported by the weight of research conducted in compliance with accepted scientific methods and published in peer-reviewed journals, where applicable, or comprising information that leading professional organizations and agencies with relevant expertise in the field have recognized as accurate, objective, and complete.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes or Antonin Scalia to deduce from this piece of sophistry where some mischief may derive.

• What does the phrase “where applicable” mean? Is it possible that there will be different standards used to evaluate abstinence curricula than comprehensive sex ed curricula? Might our comprehensive sex ed devotees demand that proposed abstinence-based curricula be supported by the weight of research published in peer-reviewed journals, while the same evaluative standards will be deemed not applicable when it comes to comprehensive sex ed curricula?
• Are the peers who are doing the reviewing biased in favor of the comprehensive sex ed ideology?
• Who decides which “leading professional organizations and agencies” will be used? Who determines what constitutes “relevant expertise” for determining accuracy, objectivity, and completeness? Clearly Siecus’ refusal to use the correct term “Gender Identity Disorder,” preferring instead the euphemism “transgender,” is evidence that Siecus is neither accurate nor objective.

In case our more obtuse legislators haven’t noticed, typical comprehensive sex ed curricula, like the one from Siecus, are dripping with subjectivity.

SB 1619 defines important terms, but guess which one is conveniently omitted: “abstinence.” Such a glaring omission should embarrass Steans, but nothing like a little intellectual sloppiness can embarrass or stand in the way of liberal dogmatists bent on shaping other people’s kids into their philosophical image using other people’s money.

Some questions for Senator Steans:

• What does “abstinence” mean in the castrated context of her bill? If with the stroke of a pen Steans severs abstinence from marriage, what does abstinence mean? Abstain for how long? Abstain for a month, a semester, a year? Abstain until when? Until age 16, 17, 18? Abstain until teens are “ready”? How is readiness measured? Abstain until teens are in a committed relationship? How is commitment determined? Abstain until they’re in love?
• Abstain from what? From just vaginal intercourse or all erotic interactions. Does abstinence include abstaining from sodomy, oral sex, mutual masturbation, bestiality, and paraphilias?

For those who are unfamiliar with Steans, her district includes the homosexual neighborhood colloquially referred to as “Boys Town.” She has sponsored legislation to legalize same-sex “marriage,” to provide domestic benefits to homosexual partners, to legalize homosexual civil unions, and to permit those who electively amputate healthy parts of their sexual anatomy to change their gender on their drivers’ licenses. Clearly, Steans has an unholy mission to transform the social, political, and legal landscape of Illinois, and her presumptuous scheme now includes Illinois children.

Some may wonder why the obsession with jettisoning the words “until marriage” from the Illinois law. There are two reasons: 1. Sexual subversives see no inherent value or meaning in reserving sexual activity for marriage and want to promote their desacralized, diminished view of sex to the next generation. 2. The panties of sexual subversives are all in a bunch because homosexuals can’t marry in Illinois. If our laws and sex ed curricula communicate that people should not have sex until marriage, then ipso facto, homosexuals should not have sex. There are certain ideas that our diversity disciples just won’t tolerate.

Illinoisans should oppose this bill like their kids’ lives depend on it.

* The extreme leftwing organization SIECUS explains that “sexual orientaion is determined by a combination of a person’s attractions, fantasies, and sexual behaviors.” Imagine permitting any other group constituted by attractions, fantasies, and behaviors–sexual or otherwise–to be established as a legally protected class. What fatuous thinking.