Extreme sexualization and LGBTQ+ indoctrination of children at younger and younger ages in public schools is now ubiquitous nationwide—and it’s part of a much broader agenda that goes well beyond just encouraging confusion and promiscuity for its own sake.

The real goal is ultimately to destroy the nuclear family as the foundation of civilization, experts say. As Karl Marx and countless other totalitarians understood, the state will step in to fill the void left by the family unit. In short, sex-ed is aimed at undermining the very building blocks of society.

In the not-too-distant past, so-called sex-education for young children and normalizing gender confusion in tax-funded schools would have been unthinkable and even criminal.

Today, the most extreme forms of sex education imaginable—including encouraging young children to engage in fornication, sodomy, group sex, abortions, and even “sex-change” surgeries—is a reality in the United States and beyond.

If it were not for exceptions offered to school employees in state obscenity laws, it would still literally be a crime to give children much of the material being used in classrooms nationwide under the guise of “sex education.”

But the worst is yet to come. If the well-funded sex-education behemoth gets its way, sexualization of children in schools masquerading as “health” and “Comprehensive Sexuality Education” (CSE) will undermine the final restraints on unchecked government control over the individual.

Liberty, family, and civilization are all in the cross-hairs now. The stakes could not be higher.

What It Looks Like in School

Virtually all of the curricula being used to teach sex to children are deeply problematic to anyone with a shred of decency, modesty, or common sense.

In many states and districts, the sexualization starts as early as kindergarten, with children being introduced to homosexuality, gender fluidity, homosexual parenting, “anatomy” that includes graphic images of genitalia, and more. Oftentimes, the sexualization and LGBT material is mandated under state law.

One of the most frequently used resources in public schools across America that has been endorsed by state and local officials nationwide as “compliant” with state mandates is known as “Rights, Respect, Responsibility” (3Rs).

Created by sexual revolutionaries at Advocates for Youth, a partner of tax-funded abortion giant Planned Parenthood, the program has shocked parents from across the political spectrum—for good reason.

Starting as young as kindergarten or first and second grade, children learn (pdf) that girls can supposedly have male genitalia and vice-versa. This self-evidently fraudulent claim is emphasized over and over again throughout the child’s younger years, causing widespread confusion among impressionable youngsters.

When they become teens, the program teaches them about “pansexuality,” among other absurdities and perversions.

Throughout elementary school, children are exposed to obscene images that have been widely condemned as pornographic, including “cartoons” in books such as “It’s Perfectly Normal.” The book features cartoon images of naked children, sexual intercourse, children masturbating, and more.

Under 3Rs, by the time the children are around 11, they are taught how to seek out information about sex on the internet. The children are constantly taught to rely on Planned Parenthood for information and “services,” too.

Before becoming teens, they learn about “making changes in the world” through “LGBT advocacy.”

At around age 12, abortion is introduced as an “option” to deal with unwanted pregnancies. And by age 13, years before they reach the legal age of consent, the children are taught how to obtain various forms of contraception and birth control.

Gender Confusion

Throughout the curriculum, which is aligned with the National Sex Education Standards (pdf) developed by Advocates for Youth and other advocates of sexualizing children, young people are led to believe that they can choose their gender and that they may have been born in the wrong body.

Worse, they are taught how to act on it, putting them at risk of seeking out dangerous hormonal and surgical “treatments” with lifelong consequences. Studies show most children confused about their gender end up growing out of it by adulthood.

This indoctrination is despite the fact that the American College of Pediatricians (pdf) argues it’s “child abuse” for adults to try to convince children that a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal or healthy.

Another frequently used resource is “Teaching Tolerance” (now known as “Learning for Justice”) created by the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

As part of promoting “tolerance” to children, the SPLC recommends the highly controversial book “10,000 Dresses” by Marcus Ewert for students in kindergarten through second grade.

Among other lessons, the book teaches the children, typically aged 5 through 8, to ignore their parents and impersonate the opposite sex if they feel they were born in the “wrong” body.

Numerous state education bureaucracies and officials have endorsed the extreme SPLC program despite the objections of parents.

Making matters worse, those officials sometimes act on it, too. From California to Florida, school districts are using “Gender Transition Plans” to help students start “transitioning” to a new gender, even without the consent of parents.

Public-school efforts to confuse children have been so successful that a 2017 UCLA study found more than one in four California children ages 12 through 17 are now “gender non-conforming.”

Even in ultra-conservative Utah, state prescription data show that the number of minor girls undergoing “gender transition” processes increased by about 10,000 percent from 2015 to 2020.

Dangerous Lies and Propaganda

While the creators of the 3Rs program claim it is “medically accurate” to comply with state law, that is objectively false.

On a worksheet for 7th graders purporting to outline the risks of various sex acts, for example, children ages 11 and 12 are taught “anal sex using a condom correctly” is a “low risk” activity.

In reality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that they are only 60 to 70 percent effective in preventing HIV even with perfect and consistent use. The Food and Drug Administration has never approved condoms for anal sex.

In other words, children who believe the sex-ed lies being taught in government schools are at serious risk of becoming infected with deadly venereal diseases.

Similarly, consider Planned Parenthood’s “Healthy, Happy and Hot“ booklet (pdf), which tells youth infected with HIV that they do not have to inform their partners about their infection. In fact, the document even claims that laws requiring disclosure “violate the rights of people living with HIV.”

Another Planned Parenthood sex-ed document (pdf) recommends teaching children 10 and under that “sexual activity” can be part of “commercial sex work,” and that they have a “right” to “decide when to have sex.”

The same toolkit encourages teaching children under 10 about homosexuality, masturbation, gender fluidity, and more. It also teaches them that they have a “right” to abort their unborn child.

Planned Parenthood, funded by the American taxpayer, is one of the world’s largest peddlers of sex-ed resources. Its materials are used and promoted in government schools worldwide.

Incredibly, despite the group’s rhetoric about “choice,” women’s rights advocate Reggie Littlejohn has repeatedly exposed Planned Parenthood’s cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party’s forced abortions and other brutal population-control schemes.

The Last Taboos

The pervasive sexualization of children in public schools is now pushing the boundaries against one of the last taboos: pedophilia, pederasty, and adult sex with children.

Under California’s LGBT mandate for schools, the Brea Olinda Unified School District (BOUSD) was caught including ancient Greek men’s proclivity to have sexual relations with boys—considered child rape in every state in the union—as part of teaching children LGBT history.

When confronted by outraged mother Stephanie Yates of Informed Parents of California, BOUSD Assistant Superintendent of Curricula Kerrie Torres said the children were being taught about it “because we are talking about historical perspectives of how gender relations and different types of sexual orientations have existed in history.”

Yates, the mom, sounded incredulous. “So sex between a man and a boy is a sexual orientation?” she asked.

The assistant superintendent held her ground. “It’s something that occurred in history, and so this is really important for us to include,” Torres said.

Despite there being a video of the exchange, frantic “fact checkers” tried unsuccessfully to quell the outrage, bizarrely defending the lessons.

But the truth is there for all to see. Increasingly, public schools are working to normalize sexual relationships between adults and children.

The message throughout 12 years of sexualization and indoctrination in school in essentially all the sex-ed major programs is simple: If there’s “consent,” nothing else matters, anything goes, and there are no rules when it comes to sex.

This view flies in the face of the teachings of all the world’s major religions and civilizations for thousands of years. In fact, it’s practically unprecedented in human history, with the possible exception of what the Bible records in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Outside ‘Sex Ed’ and Intersection With Critical Race Theory

Even outside of sex-ed classes, where in some states parents can technically opt their children out, the extreme sexualization and perversion has reached epidemic levels.

In English classes, for instance, children are told to read abominable “books” that feature extremely graphic descriptions of sexual acts and sexual violence.

There is also an intersection between the radical sexualization and the Critical Race Theory indoctrination exposed in part 19 of this series.

One exercise with endless variations that has been deployed in government schools nationwide has children “deconstruct” their identities and examine their “power and privilege” based on their race, gender, and sexual identity.

As part of the scheme, children are taught that being “cisgendered” (not transgender) or “heterosexual” gives them power and privilege, along with being white, while being transgender or homosexual makes them oppressed.

In such an exercise forced on 7- and 8-year-old government-school victims in Silicon Valley, the children were offered an example to drive the point home: “a white, cisgender man, who is able-bodied, heterosexual, considered handsome and speaks English has more privilege than a Black transgender woman.”

Just like Marxists have divided populations for over a century, children are classified into “oppressor” or “oppressed” categories based on whatever fault lines the subversives can concoct—with “sexuality” and “gender” now a key part of the mix.

Global Problem

This is not just happening in America. The United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), exposed in an earlier part of this series, is at the forefront of the effort to sexualize children worldwide, and especially in the West.

Indeed, many of the most outrageous elements of America’s most frequently used “sex-education” programs are perfectly consistent with UNESCO’s 2018 “International technical guidance on sexuality education.”

Citing Planned Parenthood’s ideologically driven “research” and “evidence” more than 20 times, the UN sex-ed standards call teaching children about “sexual pleasure” before they hit 10.

Incredibly, by age 5, children are supposed to describe how “gender and biological sex” are supposedly “different.”

By age 9, the UN guidelines teach children about masturbation and call for children to “describe male and female responses to sexual stimulation.” Children should also “demonstrate respect for diverse practices related to sexuality” and “explain how someone’s gender identity may not match their biological sex” by 9, the standards say.

By 12, children are expected to believe that “non-penetrative sexual behaviors” are “pleasurable” and less likely to result in infection than normal sex. The UN’s “learning objectives” demand that 12-year-olds “support the right for everyone” to “express their sexual feelings.”

Critics have blasted this as “grooming” children.

The UN document even includes helpful tips for educators on how to handle outraged parents and religious leaders concerned about the indoctrination.

Of course, there’s a reason the UN sex-ed document calls for sexualization of children “from the beginning of formal schooling.”

As UN LGBT czar Vitit Muntarbhorn put it in a 2017 interview with an Argentinian newspaper, to change the mentality of the population in favor of new sexual norms, “it is so important to start working with young people, the younger the better.” (Emphasis added).

Real Agenda

The focus on sex and perversion is clearly and literally ubiquitous in government schools across America and beyond. But why?

This was not seen as even acceptable until very recently—much less necessary. In fact, prior to the grotesque pseudo-science of pervert Alfred Kinsey, it would have been considered a criminal offense to subject children to these obscenities.

Advocates of sexualizing children as early as possible typically frame their arguments in terms of reducing STDs and unwanted or teen pregnancies while pursuing nebulous notions of “health” and “reproductive freedom” or “reproductive justice.”

Despite the fact that the explosion in teen pregnancies and venereal disease coincided with the sexualization of children in school by sexual revolutionaries, the tax-funded behemoths behind the push pump out endless junk studies purporting to support their fraudulent claims.

But obviously, if children were not having sex outside of marriage, the problems that “sex education” purports to solve would virtually cease to exist.

In short, there’s a much darker agenda at work. The sex “educators” themselves barely bother to hide it anymore.

Consider SIECUS, the group that grew out of Kinsey’s perverted pseudo-science. While it was once known as the Sexual Information and Education Council of the United States, now it is just SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change. And indeed, “social change” is the goal—radical, horrifying “social change.”

As far back as 1979, the CDC admitted there was an ulterior motive. In a report headlined “An Analysis of U.S. Sex Education Programs and Evaluation Methods,” researchers revealed that the “goals” of sex education in American schools had become “much more ambitious” than parents realized. Those goals included “the changing of … attitudes and behaviors.”

The government has long understood the consequences of this. Late psychoanalyst Dr. Melvin Anchell, who worked on President Lyndon Johnson’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, warned that these sexual indoctrination programs targeting children cause “irreparable harm” to their victims—damage that lasts their entire lives.

Among other dangers, Anchell identified severe damage to children’s future marriages, families, relationships, and lives. In some cases, it can even contribute to psychopathy, suicide, and mass murder, he warned.

Long before that, communist revolutionaries sought to demonize marriage and obliterate the family, too, producing unprecedented disaster. Consider, for example, the horrifying experience of Soviet Russia in the decade after the Bolshevik Revolution.

Sexual revolutionaries in the West have understood this for over a century, too. Atheist “psychiatrist” Dr. Wilhelm Reich, a self-styled “Freudo-Marxist” who was a Communist Party member and an associate of sex fanatic Sigmund Freud, saw what he first termed the “sexual revolution” not as an end in-and-of itself.

Instead, Reich saw it as a means to obliterate the family, and thereby facilitate the destruction of religious values. Ultimately, the hope was to achieve the breakdown of Western civilization by destroying the familial transmission belt by which values are passed on from one generation to the next.

The goal: allow Marxism to truly take root on the blank canvas created by the destruction of the old order.

To that end, Reich strongly encouraged “sex education” in school to “divest parents of their moral authority.”

As the family and the church are weakened through the unleashing of sexual anarchy via “sex education,” the government steps in and takes over in the roles formerly reserved for those two divinely ordained institutions.

The World in the Cross-hairs

Sharon Slater, president of Family Watch International and co-chair of the national Protect Child Health Coalition, told The Epoch Times that the goal is eventually to get the world onboard with this new value system.

“If they can raise up a generation indoctrinated in their harmful abortion rights, promiscuity rights, and radical transgender ideology, they will have indoctrinated the future leaders of the world,” she said.

“In fact, CSE is the number one tool of the abortion rights and LGBT rights lobby to promote their agendas worldwide by shaping the views of youth,” added Slater, who works to counter the agenda at the UN.

One of the most important tools created by her organization is a documentary called “The War on Children: The Comprehensive Sexuality Education Agenda.” It shines a light on the horrors being forced on children.

“CSE is a dangerous worldwide agenda intended to sexualize children at the youngest ages,” she explained. “I couldn’t sleep at night knowing what I knew and knowing most parents had no idea their children were being taught such harmful things.”

Sex Educators Sound the Alarm

Even former sex-ed teachers have blown the whistle on the subversive agenda behind sex ed. Monica Cline, for instance, spent a decade working as a comprehensive sex educator with Planned Parenthood before defecting and starting an organization dedicated to countering that.

“A big piece of this, which for some people, it’s something I think [is] hard for them to understand, is that there is a huge movement through socialism that really wants to do away with the nuclear family,” she explained to The Daily Signal, noting that abolishing private property is also part of the agenda.

“Sex education is a big piece of that, because when you teach children to dehumanize themselves, to take intimacy and family and marriage out of sex, even to the point of killing your own children through abortion, you are essentially killing the family,” Cline continued. “You’re destroying the family.”

Encouraging people to “read any curriculum” being used in sex-ed programs to see the tactics and graphic nature of the material, Cline noted that parents are always cut out of the picture when it comes to sex education.

“They want the children dependent on the government, or on public health, whatever it may be, but they do not want the children to be depending on the parent anymore,” she said. “And so, all of this really is to break down the family. And they’re essentially … we’re watching it happen.”

Disintegration of Family, Sterility, Slavery

In extended comments to The Epoch Times, Kimberly Ells, author of “The Invincible Family” and a longtime researcher and activist against the global sexualization of children, warned that the radical CSE programs have dangerous objectives that must be resisted.

“He who wins the youth wins the future,” she explained, echoing a common axiom. “So if government schools shape children’s views on sex, gender and family formation—and if those views reject the family as the core of civilization—then the core of civilization is up for grabs, and the government intends to grab it.”

Among other concerns, Ells warned that these programs are undermining parental authority, family values, and even family formation by encouraging children to reject their parents’ teachings and view sex as merely a pleasurable “right,” rather than part of a stable marriage.

The results of undermining family and marriage were predictable: over 40 percent of American children are now born out of wedlock (pdf), with almost one in four American children now living in a single-parent household.

The consequences of this family disintegration are horrific—and the problem is getting worse. But even beyond the crime, dependence, and poverty is the danger of tyranny stepping in to fill the void left by parents and families.

“Children who become slaves to the sexual appetites of their bodies early are more likely to become slaves in other areas of their lives,” added Ells, who has spoken at the UN.

Teaching children to reject biological sex as a relevant characteristic of one’s identity is even more nefarious. “At its core, this two-pronged ideology rejects the biological family—based on physiologically oppositional sex—as the fundamental unit of society,” she said.

“The T in LGBT is by far the most problematic,” Ells warned. “Same-sex marriage annihilates the idea that men and women are complementary. But transgenderism annihilates the idea that men and women inherently exist at all.”

Already, she said, legal movements around transgenderism are setting the stage for the “marginalization” of mothers, fathers, and families by law.

“When parents’ ties to their children are obscured or weakened it creates an environment hospitable to government intervention and socialist-communist revolution,” Ells continued. “That is why Marx’s Communist Manifesto openly called for the ‘abolition of the family.’”

“Dethroning the family creates a void that can and must be filled—though it is impossible to adequately fill it,” she said. “If we are to avoid the disembowelment of the family and the domination of the state that follows its disembowelment, we must resist efforts to cancel biological sex.”

Ells called on parents and policymakers to resist the erasing of male and female and end funding for UN agencies peddling the dangerous agenda. She also urged the removal of “sexual rights” advocates such as Planned Parenthood from schools and an end to CSE programming at all levels.

Protecting Children

Governments and school boards all across America have failed in their duty to protect children from the ubiquitous evils that now pervade the so-called “public education” system masquerading as “health” and “tolerance.”

In an earlier part of this series, the gut-wrenching history of this abusive sexualization of children in school was exposed featuring extensive interviews with Dr. Judith Reisman, who recently passed away. It literally goes back to perverts who sexually molested large numbers of children under the guise of “science.”

Americans are now confronted with a tax-funded monster that threatens not just the innocence of their children, but their liberties, families, and even the very future of their civilization.

Obviously, government at all levels has failed to protect children from the dangerous agenda they themselves unleashed. That leaves parents as the last barrier.

If the grotesque sex-ed extremism destroying America and her youth is going to be stopped, it will be up to loving moms and dads to lead the fight.

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This article as originally published by The Epoch Times, and is one report in a series of articles examining the origins of government education in the United States.

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More information:

Reasons to Exit Illinois Government Schools

Illinois School Proficiency FAILURE

Did You Know?

How to Rescue Our Children

“Comprehensive” Sex Education

For Parents, Grandparents and Church Leaders

Overcoming Objections

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When I came to faith as a 16-year-old, drug-using, hippie rock drummer, I was told that Jesus was returning very soon. The end of the world was near. Very near. Today, there is a new religious narrative, especially among young people, with a new “end of the world” scenario. But this one is depressing and grim, with nothing redemptive about it.

I’m talking about the new religion of manmade global warning.

It has it unique gods (like Mother Earth).

It deifies the created world (with seminarians confessing to plants in a chapel service).

It has its high priests and religious leaders (the climate change gurus and radical environmentalists).

It has its patron saints (like Sweden’s Greta Thunberg).

And it has its own doomsday scenario: The end of the world is near. Very near.

To be clear, I do not have the credentials to comment on scientific questions related to global warming.

But I do have the credentials to comment on the effect that environmental activists are having on our culture, especially the younger generation.

An Australian website offers counsel to help people (especially young people) deal with stress and anxiety related to climate change. It notes that, “There are lots of reasons why young people might feel stressed about climate change.”

These reasons include: 1) They feel like planning for the future is hopeless. 2) They are angry that the people around them aren’t doing anything to help. 3) They are frustrated that there’s nothing they can do now to change things. 4) They are worried about whether it’s responsible to have children. 5) They feel like everything is out of their control.

A May 2 headline on Science News for Students states, “Climate change poses mental health risks to children and teens.”

And a September 19 article on Conversation.com warned that, “Ignoring young people’s climate change fears is a recipe for anxiety.”

In fact, as far back as 2016, the American Psychological Association (APA) claimed that, “Climate change is threatening mental health. A federal report that tapped psychologists’ expertise outlines the ways climate change affects us all.”

But herein lies the rub. It is not “climate change” that is “threatening mental health.” It is the apocalyptic way it is being reported that is threatening mental health.

After all, when I was told in 1971 that Jesus was coming back soon, it was an exciting prospect. The end of the age is fast approaching and we will be with the Lord forever! This world is falling apart, but God will come to redeem us!

But there is no such hope in today’s gloom and doom climate change reporting. Instead, it produces fear and provokes frustration, especially for young people: “Our world is being destroyed, and you’re not doing anything about it! Don’t you care?”

To quote Greta Thunberg directly,

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. . . . We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth – how dare you!”

But there’s a reason for her fears.

An October, 2018 headline proclaimed: “We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN.”

Six months later, in March, 2019, the UN website echoed these sentiments:

“Only 11 Years Left to Prevent Irreversible Damage from Climate Change, Speakers Warn during General Assembly High-Level Meeting. Ambition, Urgency Needed to Address Global Emergency, Secretary-General Says.”

No wonder teenaged Greta and her generation are up in arms. No wonder they are so stressed. No wonder they are angry. “It is your policies and your greed and your selfishness that have stolen our future!”

As reported on September 26,

“Around climate-change protests, tears linger. Youthful activists cite all-too depressing science and develop angst. They grieve for a future they worry they’ll never have.

“Many young climate activists say they feel hopeless and overwhelmed. . . . ‘It’s really hard to grow up on a planet full of ifs,’ said This is Zero Hour co-founder Jamie Margolin, a 17-year-old from Seattle, who is finding hard to buckle down and apply to colleges. ‘There’s always been a sense that everything beautiful in this world is temporary for my generation.’”

How very, very sad – but not because it’s all true.

Instead, as John Nolte pointed out,

“For more than 50 years Climate Alarmists in the scientific community and environmental movement have not gotten even one prediction correct, but they do have a perfect record of getting 41 predictions wrong.

“In other words, on at least 41 occasions, these so-called experts have predicted some terrible environmental catastrophe was imminent … and it never happened.”

Consequently, he asks, “Why would we completely restructure our economy and sacrifice our personal freedom for ‘experts’ who are 0-41, who have never once gotten it right?”

So, young people are being stressed about something that may never happen. They are growing up waiting for the shoe to drop, not being able to enjoy because of fear for tomorrow.

The innocence of youth is being robbed from them, and everyone is to blame. Yet an article on the Teaching Tolerance website urges that, “Teachers’ Silence on Climate Change Violates Students’ Rights.”

I would urge instead that there needs to be a lot of soul searching and circumspection, from our children’s educators to the popular media. Are you sure the information you are sharing is accurate? Are you positive the fears you are instilling are warranted? Are you certain that you are not playing with the emotions of impressionable young people?

From my perspective (and leaning into my areas of expertise), I would rather say this: It’s true that this world will not endure forever. One day, Jesus will return and make a new heaven and earth. So, live your life here with passion, in expectation of His return, making every moment count. That way, whether you live to be 100 or if He comes back in 10 years, your life will be full and blessed.

I challenge a climate change religionist to come up with a better message than that.

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This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

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 .

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The Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) educational arm Teaching Tolerance created yet another school event intended in part to normalize homosexuality and gender confusion. The SPLC claims that 2,800 schools across the country participated in this event, which is called Mix It Up Day.

According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, the SPLC claims that Mix It Up Day “makes no explicit mention of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population.” That’s a very peculiar claim to make in light of these activities listed on the Teaching Tolerance website for Mix It Up Day:

1.     Allies: A Discussion Activity   Mix It Up Day

Level: Grades 1 to 2, Grades 3 to 5

• Ask students to think of times when they witnessed some kind of oppression. This might be someone ignoring a child who is waiting to be served in favor of an adult (adultism)…[or] one student calling another a “faggot” or a “lezzie” (homophobia).

  From there, engage students in role-plays or discussion about how they can interrupt bullying or other oppressive behaviors, using…provided examples: You’re on the playground and one of your friends tells you not to invite Marcus to be in the game because he’s a “homo.” What do you do?

2.     Controversial Issues   Mix It Up Day

Level: Grades 6 to 8, Grades 9 to 12 

Materials: Explain to students that they’re going to be discussing a controversial topic in class….The model we’re providing is on the common, everyday put-down, “You’re so gay!”… This is a lesson in crossing the social boundaries of ideology.

[H]ave them read the Controversial Topic Handout on “You’re so gay!” silently for at least five minutes:

I think saying it is wrong because…

It is bullying.

There is nothing wrong with being gay in the same way that there’s nothing wrong with being heterosexual.

It’s hurtful to people.

Sometimes if people aren’t really masculine or feminine they get called gay and they aren’t.

A ‘faggot’ literally means a stick for kindling and it’s used to denigrate gays and lesbian because in medieval times they used to use gay men as kindling to burn women accused of witchcraft.

“Gay men are effeminate” is a stereotype. Plenty of gay men are not and plenty of heterosexual men are. There is no such thing as a typical gay or lesbian person.

Thinking that effeminate is negative is sexist.

Gay people believe they are born gay, that it isn’t a choice. Therefore, it’s not a sin.

Extension: As a follow-up, share with your students…articles on school-age children who have recently been killed or taken their own lives because of anti-gay bias in schools. Remind students that the words we use can either give life or death — that’s how important they are.

3.     Stay in the Mix for Valentine’s Day   Mix It Up Day 

Level: Pre K to K, Grades 1 to 2, Grades 3 to 5, Grades 6 to 8

Celebrate Valentine’s legacy of love and resistance!

Did you know…The origins of the Valentine’s Day holiday are rooted in resisting injustice. Most stories focus on a man named Valentine who lived in the third century, during the Roman Empire. In one, the emperor, believing unmarried men would make better soldiers, issued a decree banning soldiers’ marriages. Valentine believed this was unjust and performed secret marriages. Imprisoned for doing so, Valentine fell in love with the jailer’s daughter and sent her letters, which he signed, “Your Valentine.”

Student Voices

Injustices routinely occur during Valentine’s Day — moments of exclusion and ostracism, assumptions of a heterosexual norm. Here [is a story from a student] addressing such injustices:

[When I wanted to take a same-sex date to a school dance] my vice principal told me I’d need a note from my parents. The note was supposed to acknowledge that they were aware we were taking someone of the same sex to the dance, and that there could be security problems. I was told I’d need a note for every dance I attended. So would my date.” (Pointing out that no African American, physically challenged or heterosexual students were being forced to obtain permission to attend a dance, the student called the requirement discriminatory.) “[The vice principal] said, ‘There’s good discrimination and bad discrimination.’ I told him that discrimination is discrimination.”
— Jason Atwood, then 17, whose demands sparked a student walkout and other protests leading to a removal of the restriction just prior to that year’s Valentine’s Day dance

Discussion Questions

What do you think of Jason’s story? Could — or has — that happened at your school?

Activity Ideas

State bans on gay marriage — and the proposed Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage — echo the “soldier marriage ban” in the Valentine story. An excellent, and balanced, lesson is available free on the PBS website. With the extensions provided, the lesson also is ideal for structured dialogue within — or between — extracurricular clubs. (Grades 9-12)

No public school should use any resources from the dishonest Southern Poverty Law Center or its propaganda project, Teaching (in)Tolerance, both organizations of which use public schools to promote their unproven moral and political assumptions.

I was just sent a link to the blog of Neuqua Valley High School math teacher and not-so-friendly atheist Hemant Mehta who seems to spend a fair amount of time monitoring my writing. He is particularly exercised by my suggestion that parents request teachers for their children who do not abuse their government-subsidized positions to promote their personal “progressive” views on controversial moral or political issues.

“Progressive” teachers who view themselves as “agents of change” promote their views on a number of topics, particularly on American history, Critical Race Theory/Critical Pedagogy (although they may not use those terms in class), homosexuality, and gender confusion. They promote their views through their own classroom comments; the films, novels, plays, essays, and newspaper and magazine articles they choose; the speakers they invite; and through their refusal to introduce resources that explore competing views, that is to say, their de facto censorship.

In my article “Challenge Teachers, Not Texts,” I offer some ways for parents to try to ascertain who the “agents of change” may be in their schools, which I learned from working for ten years at Deerfield High School and from putting four children through the same school.

I want to make clear that not all teachers who hold Leftist moral and political views exploit their classrooms to advance them. I have known some exceptional teachers who hold far Left views but have no interest in exploiting their autonomy and public resources to promulgate them. Their interest is in teaching their subject matter, not proselytizing.

But it is equally true that the teachers who most often exploit their autonomy and public resources to try to change the moral and political beliefs of other people’s children are “progressives.”

Do Public Schools Challenge Students to Think Critically About Homosexuality?

What is most laughable about Mehta’s critique of my suggestions is that while mocking my reference to “cool teachers,” he tries to make the case that “cool teachers” are those “who challenge students’ thinking from all sides and make them see things in different ways.”

I would completely agree that the best teachers are those “who challenge students’ thinking from all sides,” which is exactly what does not take place in public schools on the topics of homosexuality, gender confusion, or Critical Race Theory. Can you imagine a public school teacher even using the terms “homosexuality” or “gender confusion”? Teachers who choose to address those topics will use only the rhetorical inventions of the Left: for example, gay, gender identity, or transgenderism.

While working at Deerfield High School, I kept a list of the resources presented to students that affirmed, espoused, or embodied liberal views of homosexuality. Starting freshman year and continuing through senior year, students were exposed to lectures, classroom comments from teachers, magazine articles, plays, novels, films, skits, theater department performances, gay-straight alliance presentations, and activities that affirmed liberal views of homosexuality, while not once in four years being asked to read even a single essay by a conservative scholar like Princeton Law Professor Robert George. Is that what Mehta sees as challenging “students’ thinking from all sides”?

Unfortunately, this ideological monopoly is not unique to Deerfield High School. This is a nearly universal pedagogical and ethical problem in public schools.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, Education, and Critical Thinking

The Huffington Post has picked up Mehta’s silly and dishonest critique and included in their post the Southern Poverty Law Centers’ canard that IFI is a hate group. What many don’t know is that the ethically impoverished Southern Poverty Law Center has an “educational” project disingenuously called “Teaching Tolerance.”

The “educators” at Teaching Tolerance, like so many agents of change, foster a peculiar kind of education that encourages students to “think from all sides” and “see things in different ways” as long as those ways conform to “progressive” dogma.

Here’s one of their recent projects for elementary schools: 

Queerness Meets Early Childhood Ed

Are you a gay or lesbian teacher who has addressed queerness with your young students? An LGBT parent with P-2 children? We want to hear your stories. Send a description of 200 words or less, along with your contact information, to editor@teachingtolerance.org.

Here’s another lesson for kindergarten through fifth grade:

Do Something! Transforming Critiques of Gender Stereotypes into Activism

One of the most empowering ways to overcome the damage done by internalized gender stereotypes is to counteract them actively—on a daily basis….Children benefit from participating in such activism because it helps them understand the socially constructed nature of gender. Activism also encourages constructive change so that they are not damaged by stereotypes.

In this lesson, students will discuss the meaning and nature of activism. They will brainstorm daily strategies they can use against gender stereotypes. They will also come up with ideas for bigger social action projects in their schools and communities.

“Progressive” agents of change believe in teaching preschoolers about “queerness” and teaching elementary school students to be activists in the service of a radical sexual ideology.

Mehta, Symbols, Logic, and Truth

For someone who prides himself on his logic, Mehta, the atheist, uses little of it in his critique of my recommendations. Distracted by his own glib pseudo-cleverness, he ignores the substance of the issues I address. For example, in order to help parents know which teachers may be “agents of change,” I listed some of the symbols of the homosexuality-affirming movement, which activist teachers affix to their “spaces” to announce their moral and political beliefs, one of which is the lambda symbol (λ).

Mehta then mocked me for “going after physics and chemistry classes,” conveniently eliding the fact that the lambda is a well-known symbol of the movement to normalize homosexuality. While reveling in his ridicule, he forgets to mention that two homosexual advocacy organizations include “lambda” in their names: Lambda Legal and the Lambda Literary Awards.

Who Brings Their Views into the Classroom: “Progressives” or Conservatives?

Mehta was completely undone by my suggestion that parents find out who sponsors of Leftist clubs at their children’s schools, calling my suggestion “crazy.” He ranted:

Why? What would it matter? Teachers are legally allowed to be sponsors of those groups. If the GSA needed a faculty sponsor, I’d step up. If an atheist group ever formed at my school, I’d sponsor that, too. And if a Christian group couldn’t find a sponsor, I’d bite my tongue and help them out because they also have a right to meet after school and discuss their beliefs.

Just because teachers are sponsors of religious or political groups doesn’t mean they endorse the groups nor does it mean they espouse those views in the classroom.

But IFI won’t say that…. they just try and scare Christian parents into thinking that liberal teachers ought to be avoided at all costs….They have to make up problems to solve because no real ones exist. Anything they accuse liberal teachers of doing, they know Christian teachers have done the exact same things in a much more egregious way.

First, I never suggested it was illegal for teachers to sponsor extracurricular clubs.

Second, does Mehta actually believe that conservative Christian teachers have been using the classroom to promote their beliefs in a “much more egregious way” than have progressive agents of change, particularly on the topic of homosexuality? Can he provide evidence of conservative teachers assigning any resources that espouse conservative views on issues related to homosexuality?

Can he provide evidence that liberal teachers who assign resources that espouse liberal views of homosexuality also assign resources that espouse dissenting views?

Third, Mehta and I agree on one thing: Sponsorship of clubs is not the same as endorsement. But the reality in public schools is that the sponsors of gay-straight alliances are usually homosexuals or their ideological allies, and the sponsors of Leftist political activist groups like AWARE are usually Leftist political activists. Similarly, the sponsors of Christian groups are usually Christians. The difference is that conservative sponsors of conservative groups tend not to use the classroom as their personal platform for proselytizing.

Hemant Mehta’s Deceit

Mehta goes on to say, “They (IFI) want to rail against liberal teachers — even ones like me, who keep our religious beliefs out of the classroom.”  I rarely criticize liberal teachers who keep their keep their religious, irreligious, moral, and political beliefs out of the classroom. Generally, I wouldn’t rail against such teachers. I would applaud them.

It is true, however, that I have criticized Mehta, but he omitted the issues for which I criticized him. I criticized him first for suggesting on his very public blog that homosexuals come and kiss in front of my home. Most school districts have policy regarding how their teachers interact with the public, which I believe Mehta violated when he publicly called for homosexuals to kiss in front of my home. It was both irresponsible and unprofessional of him to make such a suggestion even in jest.

I also suggested that his very public blog reveals something of his character and his beliefs about which parents of impressionable teens may be concerned.

On his very public blog, he ardently promotes atheism, commonly uses obscene language, and has provided platforms for the advocacy of polyamory. I suggested that parents who believe that teachers are role models for their children and who recognize that adolescents can be mightily influenced by teachers may not want him as a role model for their children. Teaching is unlike other professions. Teachers, whether they want to be or not, are role models. Mehta has every right to express anything he likes on his blog, and parents have every right to decide they don’t want their children under his tutelage—even for math.

Does Student Safety Require Faculty Affirmation?

Mehta, implies that my concern with teachers posting symbols that indicate affirmation of homosexuality means that I want students to feel “isolated, abnormal, and lost,” which is an ugly lie.

In order to treat students kindly and let them know that they are welcome and even loved does not require teachers, however, to affirm all of the feelings, beliefs, values, or life choices of every student. Does Mehta believe that unless teachers announce their affirmation of polyamory, polyamorous students will feel “isolated, abnormal, and lost”?

The vast majority of teachers believe that students should be free of verbal harassment and physical abuse. It is entirely possible to enforce policy designed to curb bullying without addressing personal beliefs about homosexuality or gender confusion.  The problem is that “progressive” agents of change believe schools can’t make students who identify as homosexual or “transgender” safe unless they—the teachers—affirm “progressive” views on the nature and morality of homosexuality.

No government employee, however, has the right in their professional role to affirm controversial, unproven, subjective beliefs about homosexuality or gender confusion.

Those teachers who express their Leftist moral or political views on homosexuality or gender confusion; or their views on same-sex marriage; or on same-sex adoption; or who assert that homosexuality is analogous to race; or who suggest that opposition to same-sex marriage is analogous to opposition to interracial marriage; or who choose to teach The Laramie Project are neither ensuring student safety nor “challenging students’ thinking from all sides.” Those teachers don’t care about diversity, critical thinking, or “honoring all voices.” Those teachers who expose students to resources from only one side of an issue are not educating. They are propagandizing.  

Parents Must Oppose the Efforts of “Agents of Change”  

Parents need to take a stand against public school employees using the classroom to advance their views on controversial moral and political issues. If school administrations won’t establish policy that requires teachers who assign resources on these kinds of issues to spend equal time on dissenting resources and if school administrations won’t establish policy that prohibits teachers from expressing their personal moral and political views in the classroom, then parents should request that their children be placed in the classrooms of teachers who demonstrate such integrity on their own.

Two notes:

The back-to-school article that Mehta is criticizing will be re-posted next week. It was not supposed to have been posted until it was reformatted with IFI’s new logo.

For more on Mehta, click here, here, here, here.

For background on the dubious Southern Poverty Law Center, click here and here.

Decades ago, summer was the time that necessitated increased parental vigilance. School was the safe place. But the times they have a’changed. Self-righteous “agents of change” stand ready at the schoolhouse door to mold other people’s children into ideological replicas of themselves. So now the school year has become the time that necessitates increased parental vigilance.

One organization that warrants particular attention is “Teaching Tolerance,” which is laughingly called an “educational project,” but is, in reality, the pernicious propaganda project of the leftwing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This is the organization that has listed the Illinois Family Institute, Family Research Council, and the American Family Association as “hate groups.”

The propagandists — I mean educators — at Teaching Tolerance are taking full advantage of the propensity of parents to remain blissfully unaware of what their children are being taught. These “tolerance teachers” count on parents remaining ignorant of their goal to undermine conservative moral and political beliefs.

Here is the newest resource spawned by the manipulators of children at the SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance of which parents should be aware:

Planning to Change the World: A Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers 2011-2012

This handbook for teachers begins with a quote from the Brazilian Marxist, Paulo Freire, who is the guru for “social justice teachers” and wrote their bible, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

The introduction makes clear that liberation from oppression supersedes sound, apolitical education:

Planning to Change the World is a plan book for teachers who believe their students can create meaningful social change. It is the product of a collaboration between two education networks — the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) and the Education for Liberation Network — and is published in partnership with Rethinking Schools. The information and ideas featured on its pages come from teachers, college students and activists who, like you, struggle daily to put their values into practice. As educators, our vision of teaching for liberation often gets buried under the everyday realities of teaching. Bombarded with paperwork, tests, curriculum mandates, we feel frustrated, overwhelmed, alone.

…Planning to Change the World is packed with important social justice birthdays and historical events, words of wisdom from visionary leaders, lesson plans, resources, social justice education happenings and more. [Emphases added]

The planning book includes quotes from radical historical revisionist Howard Zinn, homosexual activist Staceyann Chinn, and controversial labor leader Cesar Chavez. It also includes dozens of resources for teachers, most of which are extreme leftwing resources, including resources that promote far leftist assumptions about homosexuality, economics, religion, and American “imperialism.”

Here are some of the historical events honored just in November by the SPLC’s “educators” from Teaching Tolerance:

• Transgender Day of Remembrance
• The 50th anniversary of the first openly gay person to run for public office
• Eid al-Adha: an Islamic holiday
• Muharram, the first day of the Islamic calendar
• The 170th anniversary of the Creole revolt
• First day of Native American Heritage Month
• 80th anniversary of the beginning of the removal of the Choctaw Indians from their lands
• Thanksgiving: Teaching Tolerance recommends that teachers use resources from the anti-American organization, Oyate, about which I have previously written.

Teaching Tolerance also recommends an activity they created called Thanksgiving Mourning:

[S]tudents will review two written works by Native American authors. The first — a speech written by Wamsutta James in 1970 — gave birth to the National Day of Mourning, which is observed on Thanksgiving by some indigenous people. To them, Thanksgiving is ‘a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the relentless assault on their culture.’ The Day of Mourning, on the other hand, is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest of the racism and oppression that Native Americans continue to experience.”

I wonder if Teaching Tolerance would revise their list of important “social justice” historical events to include mention of Joseph Scheidler, father of the pro-life movement. He is the indefatigable pursuer of social justice for the most vulnerable in America: babies in utero, whose developmental immaturity or imperfections put them at risk of legalized extermination.

As I’ve written before, “teaching for social justice” is, in a nutshell:

repackaged socialism with its focus on economic redistribution. Social justice theory emphasizes redistribution of wealth and values uniformity of economic and social position over liberty. Social justice advocates seek to use the force of government to establish economic uniformity.

Its other dominant features pertain to race, gender, class, and sexual orientation/ identity/ expression. Social justice theory as I’m describing it encourages people to view the world through the divisive lens of identity politics that demarcates groups according to which group constitutes the “oppressors” and which the “oppressed.” Those who are identified as the “oppressors” need not have committed any acts of actual persecution or oppression, nor feel any sense of superiority toward or dislike of the supposed “oppressed” class. The problem with social justice theory is that it promotes the idea that “institutional racism,” as opposed to actual acts of mistreatment of individuals by other individuals is the cause of differing lots in life.

Social justice theorists cultivate the racist, sexist, heterophobic stereotype that whites, males, and heterosexuals are oppressors. This is an offensive, prejudiced stereotype that robs minorities of a sense of agency in and responsibility for their own lives, telling them that their lots in life cannot improve through their own efforts but only through an appropriate degree of self-flagellation on the parts of the purported oppressors. It cultivates a sense of perpetual victimization and powerlessness on the parts of minorities and an irrational and illegitimate sense of guilt on the parts of whites, or men, or heterosexuals.

Finally, social justice theory is distinctly anti-American and hyper-focuses on America’s mistakes and failings. Social justice theory diminishes or ignores the remarkable success America has achieved in integrating virtually every ethnic and racial group in the world, and in enabling people to improve their lots in life through economic opportunity and American principles of liberty and equality.

To learn more about the ethically and intellectually bankrupt Southern Poverty Law Center’s deeply troubling ideology, goals, and tactics, click HERE (this is a very recent and important article from an immigration reform organization on the SPLC’s “phony claims”), and HERE.

When you’re done, email your children’s teachers, some of whom likely subscribe to Teaching Tolerance’s free online newsletter for educators, asking whether they will be using any resources or activities from Teaching Tolerance. Then make it clear that should they decide to use any resources created by, or recommended by Teaching Tolerance, you want to be notified so you can opt your child out.