Why are so many public schools in Illinois keeping so many secrets from the public? Last August, Christopher Rufo disclosed that Lurie’s Children’s Hospital, unbeknownst to parents or the general public, was collaborating with Chicago area schools to promote “radical gender theory, trans activism, and sexually explicit materials in at least four Chicago-area public school systems: District 75, District 120, District 181, and District 204.” Three of these school districts are elementary districts and one is a high school district.

We don’t know how many other school districts receive training from Lurie. But we have learned of at least one other, Palatine School District 15, another elementary school district. In January, Dawn Ravine, Lurie’s Sexuality Education Program Coordinator reportedly provided training to the District’s P.E./Health teachers during a planned institute day.

When parents learned of this training that was provided to the teachers, it came as a surprise since the District had voted to reject the National Sex Ed Standards. Why are the teachers being taught about subjects that were part of those standards, the parents asked? The District 15 school board did nothing to resolve the confusion. Instead of explaining the purpose of the training, the board Chair attacked the critics as liars at the most recent board meeting last week.

Does the school board even know why the training was held?

It appears that this training first exposed by Rufo has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not the National Sex Ed Standards will be implemented by any specific district. Instead, it appears to be the result of guidance directed by the Illinois State Board of Education found here.

Several acts and suggested policies were developed after Governor JB Pritzker issued an executive order in 2019 to create a task force to investigate and report on creating affirming and inclusive schools to welcome, support and affirm transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming children and adolescents.  The Task Force issued its report in January, 2020.

It doesn’t look like there was a single conservative, or even a liberal with a differing view, on the Task Force. The ACLU was represented, but neither ADF nor the Thomas More Society were anywhere to be seen. There were several students on the Task Force, but no former students who had de-transitioned. The Task Force sought the views and advice of the Trevor Project, but not the position of the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine. Do you suppose the Governor decided what the report would say before it was written?

The laws, regulations and suggested policies under Pritzker’s administration fully embrace the view that children suffering from gender dysphoria should be affirmed, that children should be allowed to “transition” without parental knowledge or involvement, that trans girls should be allowed to use the same facilities as biological girls and that they be allowed to play on girls teams.

Under Governor Pritzker’s guidance, the Illinois State Board of Education has set up a network of laws, regulations and suggested policies that seemingly tie the hands of local school boards. Ideologically, the board administrators and elected board members in Illinois schools mostly are not inclined to push back against the ISBE. If a majority of the board were so inclined, they likely would get advice from the board lawyers that the schools have to go along with what the state wants. Besides, they would be (and have been) told, suing the state over any issue would be very costly and not good stewardship of public tax funds.

Lost in the discussion is consideration for what is best for the children and what parents want.

Parents are not powerless, however. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on numerous occasions that parents have a right to control what their children are taught. Given the current state of education in Illinois, it might be best for parents to home school their children or to send them to a private faith-based school that focuses on STEM subjects and English. If enough children are pulled out of school, it might prompt a more child and parent friendly environment.

If home schooling or sending children to a sane private school is not possible, the only thing that can be done is for parents to opt their children out of everything they don’t like—sex ed, SEL, counseling by any member of the school staff or any contractor, instruction on any subject other than math, science, biology, engineering, technology, English, or other subject the parents might approve. At the very least, though, parents will have to closely monitor what their children are taught in those classes–what textbooks, websites, videos, research projects, etc.

Illinois government, the ISBE, local boards along with the lawyers and administrators they hire, the teachers’ unions, and activist teachers have proven themselves to be completely secretive and untrustworthy. Inaction and inattention have brought us to this point. The result is we get exactly the government we deserve and there is nobody out there to fix it for us.

Unless parents get involved like they did in Virginia, nothing is going to change.

I guess Fox News hasn’t learned any lessons from CNN’s self-inflicted wounds and rapid descent into ratings hell, the chief interrelated lessons of which are 1. don’t promote lies as truth, and 2. don’t promote evil as good. Fox News just did both and created a firestorm of anger among its faithful viewers. Last week, Fox News (channeling CNN) aired a segment about an ignorant mother and father in California who are raising their now fourteen-year-old daughter as a boy.

Dana Perino introduced the story that was narrated by Brian Llenas.

The story begins with the deceitful claim that Brian Llenas’ story about Ryland Whittington’s “transitioning journey is helping other families.” Chemically stopping natural, health puberty and then inducing puberty natural to children of the opposite sex is not “helping” other families, no matter how deeply Whittington’s parents, Hillary and Jeff, “feel” it is.

Then Llenas goes off the deep end, asserting that Ryland is a “typical Southern California teenager.” While to Midwesterners, California seems to be a place where an inordinate number of people engage in unnatural body modification, the country is not yet at a point where cross-sex bodily mutilation among children is typical.

Llenas in cahoots with Ryland’s publicity-loving parents then tests the gullibility of viewers by claiming that “somehow before Ryland could even speak, he [sic] managed to tell his [sic] parents that he [sic] is a boy.”

According to her parents, while Ryland was still in a non-verbal stage of life, she told them that she is a boy via her resistance to wearing feminine clothes. Credulous viewers are expected to believe that a non-verbal toddler already knows which clothes are feminine and which are masculine.

Children typically start speaking between 12-15 months. They are forming simple sentences by about age 18 months. So, we are expected to believe that sometime before 12-18 months, Ryland knew she was a boy. Further, Ryland’s parents would have us believe, her toddler resistance to wearing feminine clothing styles is proof positive that Ryland’s brain is male while her body is female. We are also expected to believe that Ryland’s certainty during her toddlerhood that she is a boy would have persisted.

Relevant fact: Before the advent of the “Trans” Age, the percentage of young children who suffered from gender dysphoria was exceedingly small and most were boys. Studies have shown that unless children are affirmed socially and chemically in their corporeal masquerade, upwards of 80% will eventually accept their biological sex.

So, the question is, how did Ryland’s parents know the feelings of their five-year-old daughter would never change. Moreover, should a persistent delusion always (or ever) be affirmed? What about children who persist in their identification as amputees (Body Integrity Identity Disorder)? Should they be affirmed, aided, and abetted in their quest for an elective limb amputation?

Llenas admiringly reports, “when Ryland came out at age five. … he [sic] had the full support of his [sic] parents.”

Llenas omitted from his sanguine tale that Ryland was born deaf and had surgery at age one to implant cochlear implants, which have enabled her to hear and speak. It’s interesting that Ryland’s parents would have surgery to restore normal functioning to her ears, while using chemicals (and perhaps at some point surgery) to disrupt the normal functioning of Ryland’s sexual anatomy.

Llenas oddly attributes Hillary Whittington’s support for “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices to her “conservative Christian” faith. Hillary explained:

For me, it’s just a deep spiritual belief that you believe in God. And he … created us the way he wanted us. Well then, yes, he created Ryland just the way he is.

God creates us. He does not create birth defects, disease, confusion, sinful desires, obsessive thoughts, or mental illnesses. We are born into a fallen world and the world’s fallenness affects our minds (thoughts), bodies, hearts (desires), and wills. Did her conservative Christian church not teach her about the fall?

Jeff also cited statistics from the far leftist Trevor Project on “transgender” self-harm as a reason for their support. But Trevor Project statistics have been widely criticized, as have been many studies purporting to prove that not only are “trans”-identifying youth more like to commit suicide, but also that the cause is societal disapproval. Somehow most of our intrepid reporters, in the news media—including Brian Llenas—haven’t been able to find such criticism.

Just this past Monday, the Heritage Foundation, published a study on suicide among young people that upends the narrative leftists use to terrorize parents into collaborating with the “trans”-industrial complex in harming children:

The Heritage study released Monday found that 2020 saw 1.6 more suicides per 100,000 residents ages 12 to 23 in states that allow minors access to puberty blockers and other gender-reassignment procedures without parental consent.

That represents a 14 percent increase in suicides.

A 2011 study found another troubling trend:

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.

Nor have our intrepid and objective journalists managed to dig up exactly how many and who in our esteemed medical and mental health organizations come up with their “trans”-affirming positions. Let’s just say, it’s a small number of handpicked, biased members who create policy positions that the rest of the members do not vote on. As I have twice written, only about 30 members of the American Academy of Pediatrics—all leftists—created its pro-“transition” position. No minority report, no votes of all members taken.

Within a year of five-year-old Ryland’s “coming out,” her parents made a video and Ryland became an Internet sensation by the time she turned six. Exploiting their own children’s gender dysphoria has become a cottage industry.

Dyson, the princess boy.

There’s the mom, Cheryl Kilodavis, who wrote the book My Princess Boy about her then five-year-old son Dyson who masquerades as a girl. She trotted him out on a talk show in a purple tutu where he, visibly uncomfortable,” twirled at the urging of Meredith Viera. Dyson is now 16 and identifies as homosexual.

Then there’s Desmond is Amazing and Lactatia, two little boys whose mothers introduced them to drag, facilitated the creation of drag personas, and then made bank on parading them around dressed in drag.

And who can forget Jazz Jennings (born Jarod Seth Bloshinsky), the now 21-year-old obese eunuch, who pretends to be a woman and whose parasitic parents have profited from his suffering on the TLC show I Am Jazz.

The foolish, narrowminded sycophant Llenas concludes his rhapsodic segment by thanking Ryland and his family for their “extraordinary courage” in sharing Ryland’s story. Yet another lie. It takes virtually no courage for this family to share their story, which they’ve shared for almost a decade in a viral video, book, legislative hearings, and interviews for the Human Rights Campaign.

Llenas repeats the tired trope that “people are often afraid of what they do not understand,” implying that ontological and moral assumptions that are different from those of the “trans”-cult are born of fear. Has he spent anytime asking counselors, physicians, pastors, and detransitioners who disagree with the “trans”-cult if their beliefs are born of fear?

The controversy this story generated is well-deserved. On the “trans” (and homosexuality) issue, Fox News has segued into advocacy for lies and evil that are harming children, families, religious liberty, and speech rights.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Fox News Channel to let them know how disappointed you are that they are caving into a radical child abuse agenda. Urge them to stop contributing to the “trans” contagion, and ask them to stop lying to us by using incorrect pronouns. This left-wing social agenda is antithetical to science and will alienate both their conservative Judeo-Christian viewers as well as many on the left who oppose what is being done to children.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/FNC-Airs-Story-that-Celebrates-Trans-Cultic-Experimentation-on-Children.mp3

Some may remember the scene from the film Moonstruck in which Cher slaps Nicholas Cage upside the head and yells “Snap out of it.” Somebody better slap the conservative community upside its collective head before the federal government spends all its time cooing at homosexuality.

Recently, the lovestruck Department of Justice, White House, and Congress have wasted valuable time and public resources servicing homosexual activists via a White House conference, a Department of Justice video, and three proposed bills.

Last week, President Barack Obama held an “anti-bullying” (nudge nudge, wink wink) conference at the White House to which he invited the infamous homosexual “safe schools” czar Kevin Jennings; openly homosexual Fort Worth city councilman Joel Burns; the 16-year-old executive direct of Gays and Lesbians United Against Discrimination; at least two representatives from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight “Education” Network; someone from the Human Rights Campaign; someone from the National Center for Transgender Equality; and someone from the Trevor Project.

The White House also invited the foul-mouthed, anti-Christian homosexual activist Dan Savage, creator of the “It Gets Better” project. Savage said the conference was “of tremendous symbolic importance,” but also complained that “What was never addressed is when the parents are the bullies.” Someone should ascertain exactly what Savage views as parental “bullying.”

The government has created a website dedicated to ending bullying, a noble mission concealing an ignoble ultimate goal and troubling underlying philosophy. The underlying philosophy includes three central assumptions: 1. Homosexuality is equivalent to race, 2. Homosexuality is morally positive, and 3. The expression of conservative moral beliefs constitutes illegitimately discriminatory speech, which contributes to bullying.

The ultimate goal is the eradication of conservative moral beliefs and the creation of a social and legal climate that make it impossible for them to be expressed. For those who have eyes to see, the website offers clues to this goal and philosophy.

There are three image links at the bottom of the homepage: one is a link to information on cyberbullying; one is a link to information on the White House Conference; and one is a link to information on “LGBT Bullying.” Remarkable. Of all the conditions for which students may be bullied, there’s a special image link and section dedicated to only two: homosexuality and “transgenderism” (more accurately, Gender Identity Disorder). Not one other disorder gets special attention — not attention deficit disorder, not attention deficit hyper activity disorder, not Asperger’s Syndrome.

And homosexuality and “transgenderism” are the only conditions constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts that many consider immoral that get special attention. Promiscuous students and drug-users, for example, are often bullied. Why don’t those conditions get image links to their own special sections?

This Obama administration effort follows close on the heels of a pinheaded and inappropriate decision by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to create a video for Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas Perez showed the DOJ video to public high school students in Silver Spring, Maryland. Here are a few of the comments made by DOJ employees, most of whom identify as homosexual, in their roles as government employees:

• “Being different is cool.”
• “Don’t be ashamed of who you are. Keep being yourself.”
• “If I knew when I was eight that the thing that was causing me so much pain… would actually define me in a way that makes me very, very proud, I would get through it.”

These should be shocking comments to hear in a publicly funded project of the federal government. The federal government has made the astonishing public claims that homosexuality is “cool”; that no one should be ashamed of homosexuality; and that homosexuality should be a source of pride. The individuals who appear in this video are, of course, entitled to their own non-factual ontological and moral beliefs. In their roles as government employees, however, they have no right to promote those unproven, subjective, non-factual beliefs.

This video should be a public scandal. Imagine if philosophically conservative government employees appeared in a publicly funded video in their professional roles, saying that it is not cool to engage in homosexual acts; that homosexual acts are shameful; and that homosexuality is not something of which to be proud.

It is objectively true that no one should be bullied. It is not objectively true that homosexuality is cool; that people should keep living a homosexual life; or that homosexuality is worthy of pride or respect. No employee of the government acting in their official position has any right to promote those arguable moral beliefs.

At the conclusion of the high school propaganda session, likely held during Mr. Perez’s working hours, students were invited to sign the “It Gets Better” pledge, the first sentence of which states, “Everyone deserves to be respected for who they are.” A feckless statement, but oh so persuasive with non-thinking people. The statement suggests without stating that those who identify as homosexual should be respected for their homosexuality. That is a moral proposition which is widely rejected and which no representative of the government has any right to promote in their professional role.

Everyone deserves to be respected because they’re human beings created in the likeness of God. It should be obvious, however, that not every subjective feeling or behavioral choice is worthy of respect. Humans deserve to be respected for their humanness in spite of their disordered inclinations and immoral volitional acts.

But it’s not just the executive branch that’s dancing to GLSEN’s gay tunes. Our homosexuality-affirming legislators have been busy little bees of late, including our very own junior U.S. Senator, Mark Kirk. The technically Republican Kirk, who has a special fondness for all pro-homosexual legislation, has joined 18 Democratic senators and one independent to introduce the Senate version of the Safe Schools Improvement Act — S. 506, which will deny elementary, middle, and high schools federal funds to combat drugs and violence unless they also agree to explicitly address homosexuality and transgenderism.

Openly homosexual U.S. Representative Jared Polis (D-CO) and comedian U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) have re-introduced their recently moribund Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA) bill — H.R. 998. According to the Human Rights Campaign, this act “would prevent schools from discriminating against students because of the actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity of a person with whom that student associates or has associated.” If passed, SNDA will be used to censor any resources that express the view that volitional homosexual acts are not moral acts.

The Human Rights Campaign makes the amusing claim that SNDA has “broad support.” Here are the organizations that they offer as evidence of breadth of support:

SNDA is has broad support from over 33 national organizations, including: The American Association of University Women, American Federation of Teachers, American Civil Liberties Union, American Psychological Association, American School Counselor Association, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Family Equality Council, Gay-Straight Alliance Network, GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders), GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network), Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), National Association of School Psychologists, National Association of School Safety and Law Enforcement Officials, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Center for Transgender Equality, National Council of Jewish Women, National Council of La Raza, National Education Association, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, National Women’s Law Center, PFLAG (Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays), People for the American Way, SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education), School Social Work Association of America, The Trevor Project and Transgender Law Center.

But that’s not all, two New Jersey lawmakers have recently reintroduced the troubling “Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act,” which will require colleges and universities that receive federal funds to add “sexual orientation” to their anti-discrimination policies, and asks for a “$250 million grant program to help schools form or expand campus anti-bullying programs.” The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is repeating its warning about the dangers this bill poses to First Amendment rights.

And if our busy legislative bees fail in these efforts to pollinate our schools with their unproven, unstated ontological and moral propositions on homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder, it is reported that they will simply hide their dubious pieces of legislation in the Elementary and Secondary School Act, which is “the key federal statute governing primary and secondary education.”

When will our ideologically askew and overreaching administration compel Americans to abandon their cowardly, unilateral “truce” on the “social issues”? C’mon, conservatives, snap out of it!

Take ACTION: Contact your federal elected representatives and tell them not to support any legislation or taxpayer subsidized efforts that espouse either implicitly or explicitly the following ideas: that homosexuality is normative, good, a source of pride, ontologically analogous to race, or morally equivalent to heterosexuality. Such ideas are non-factual, unproven, controversial assumptions. No arm of the government has any business using public money to advance them.

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