Written by Dr. Everett Piper

“I believe that raising a child is the responsibility of the community and that parents should not have the final say. Let’s be honest; some of you don’t know what is best for your kids. Parents believe they should be able to storm the school in the name of political and religious beliefs if something happens in the school that they are morally opposed to.

“They forget that we make a promise to prepare their children to live in a diverse world. We are not required to protect the misguided, bigoted views of their parents. If you want your children educated with your values, find a private school that will do it. The public education system is not here to serve your archaic beliefs.” ~Anthony Lane, English Teacher, Willis High School, Will Texas. Oct. 18, 2019

And there you have it. In these few short words, you now know everything you need to know about what is wrong with our country.

You now know why our culture is presently going to hell in a handbasket.

Through his brief, but clear, commentary, Mr. Lane has diagnosed the disease plaguing America better than any of the rest of us could dream of doing.

The disease?

Public education.

If there was any remaining question that today’s educational ruling class now believes that it should have absolute Orwellian control over all of culture and your kids, Mr. Lane’s quote should remove all doubt.

These are the people who believe they are smarter than you.

These are the people who think you are a rube and a relic.

These are the people who think they “are the ones we’ve been waiting for, and they are the change we seek.”

These are the enlightened ones, the Ubermensch, the superior class.

Never mind that they’re misogynists who deny that a female is even a biological fact.

Never mind that they’re misandrists who claim that every male, by definition, is toxic.

Never mind that they’re anti-natalist who believe that it’s a “human right to kill a human baby while, or even after, it exits the birth canal.

Never mind that they’re racists who tell us it is a moral good that there are more black children killed by abortion in New York City each year than are actually born.

Never mind that they are anti-children and believe in using boys and girls as lab rats in their gruesome adult game of sexual experimentation.

Never mind that these elite folks, with special knowledge, actually believe there are 46 genders and that it’s socially just for a man to appropriate the dignity of a woman by “blackfacing” her by pretending he’s a woman.

Never mind these poster children of arrogance and hubris actually claim they can do everything from stem the ocean’s tides to calm the tossing seas, and even stop hurricanes, tornados and earthquakes.

Never mind that these modern thinkers, these gods with gnosis, seem to believe that human beings are actually the imago dog rather than the imago Dei.

Never mind all this.

You’re the antique. You are the one who “doesn’t know what is best for your kids.” Your “views and religious beliefs” are “misguided, bigoted and archaic.”

This, my friends, is your local public school. This is the face of the 21st century “teacher class.”

As a former university president, I obviously believe in education. But I also know that as, America’s blue-collar voice, Mike Rowe, has rightfully said, the current educational model is broken. “We’re just disconnected,” says Mr. Rowe. “We’re rewarding behavior [and ideas] we should be discouraging … That’s nuts.”

In other words, by entrusting our kids to people like Mr. Lane and his school, we are giving them over to an education that isn’t just worthless financially, but deadly to their heart, mind, body and soul. We are producing graduates who not only can’t get a job but who also can’t even tell you a female is a fact and that a 7-year-old child doesn’t know much of anything, let alone how to choose his gender.

Indeed, “That’s nuts.”

Education has consequences. Good education has good consequences, and bad education has bad consequences. Education matters. It will always lead somewhere. It will either lead toward the liberty found in that which is right and just and real or toward the slavery and ugly hell made of our own dysfunction.

Entrusting your kids to people like Mr. Lane, and to the schools he represents, is not just “nuts,” it’s damning.

“All your life long you are slowly turning … either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature; either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.” — C.S. Lewis

Dr. Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).

Written by Abigail Ruth

I don’t write very often because, frankly, I find it difficult. As a witness to the events of our day, I am often overwhelmed by their significance and stymied by my own inability to put into words any analysis that seems to do justice to the magnitude of moral, spiritual and intellectual disintegration taking place all around us.

The Township High School District 211 school board meeting last Thursday night at Fremd High School was an example of just such an event. Although the results were expected (the school board voted 5-2 to grant special rights to “trans”-identifying students) it was still a surreal experience to witness. The approved policy will allow biological male students unrestricted access to girls’ locker rooms (and vice versa)—meaning that they will not be required to undress behind a privacy curtain. During swim class, everyone out in the locker room will be able to see each other’s genitalia. The new policy also opens the door to male and female students sharing hotel rooms on field trips.  In case you’re wondering, girls’ sports are an apparent non-issue. Male students who identify as female have been playing on the girls’ teams for years.

At the meeting, 25 randomly chosen members of the public were allowed 3 minutes each to address the board.  Many who spoke were in favor of the policy change. It was their comments that most arrested my attention. If insanity can be defined as a disconnect from reality, then surely insanity was on parade Thursday night at Fremd High School.

First and foremost, it must be understood that supporters of the purported “rights” of “trans”-identifying students do not claim that we must affirm such students’ erroneous perception of themselves as the opposite sex. No–and read this next part carefully: These people claim that a male student who perceives himself to be a girl actually is a girl. Chromosomes and genitalia count as nothing. Oh, and by the way, you are not to think of this as a “mental problem.” This is all perfectly “normal.”

Take a deep breath and let that sink in.

Those of us who aren’t quite educated enough to actually believe that males who believe they are females really are females are apparently expected to pretend we do. False gender affirmation was presented over and over again as a moral imperative. In fact, we were told essentially that if our schools fail to affirm gender dysphoric (GD) students as the opposite sex, we will all have blood on our hands. Why? Because, we are told, GD students will commit suicide if their delusion of being the opposite sex is not encouraged and supported. We’re told this in spite of the fact that the link between suicide and social treatment has yet to be scientifically established. Is it just me or does this strike anyone else as a conveniently warped version of emotional blackmail?

Now that we have apparently accepted this dubious claim and capitulated, is there any limit to what “LGBT” activists can demand of us? That is no longer a rhetorical question.

Do I dare point out the obvious? A mentally healthy person doesn’t commit suicide because other people refuse to pretend that he/she is something they are not–especially something as obvious and foundational as male or female. While all students–including students with GD–should be treated with kindness, anyone in their right mind understands that when it comes to biological sex, we are what we are. The best possible outcome for GD kids is to make peace with reality and learn to love and appreciate the healthy, beautiful bodies God gave them. How will they do that if everyone, including their schools are encouraging them in continued delusion?

Demanding that the whole world suspend reality because some people are either unwilling or unable to accept it does not begin to approach a reasonable solution. The whole issue illustrates a degree of intellectual and moral lunacy I had heretofore assumed humanly impossible except among the clinically insane.

And once again, where were the pastors and elders–those who are supposed to be the protectors and bearers of truth? There are over 90 churches in D211, and this was the last of four meetings where extensive public comment was heard on this policy. Apart from three notable exceptions our spiritual leaders were missing in action. If a pastor doesn’t stand up for truth on behalf of children in his own community will he ever?  Unfortunately I think we know the answer.

So, where do we go from here? When the Left eventually gains enough power in Washington D.C., the gloves will come off and “LGBT” activists will wage war against biblical Christianity under the guise of civil rights. This is a certainty. For the most part, it is only God’s people who offer any real resistance to their plans for our dystopian future. They know this. That is why they and their allies at the ACLU criss-cross the country looking for Christian business owners to sue. These actions stand as a warning to any who might dare cross them in the future.

The famous quote attributed to George Orwell seems to have been written for our day: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” Are we prepared to be revolutionaries? I am not sure that we are. But ready or not, we must be. God’s people are people of the truth. God help us.

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FROGS! GET OUT OF THE WATER! IT’S BOILING!

A lesbian activist who promotes cultural approval of both the “LGBT” ideology and the legalized slaughter of the unborn was invited to speak to 8-11-year-olds at Longfellow Elementary School in Wheaton, Illinois, home of America’s most prestigious evangelical college, Wheaton College; evangelical Christian publishing company Crossway Books; and approximately 45 churches. If this could happen in Wheaton, Illinois, it could happen anywhere.

The kinda, sorta good news is that the event was canceled the day before it was to take place in early October. The bad news is the school hopes to reschedule it. According to District 200 spokesperson Erica Loiacono,

The day before the author’s visit, a parent contacted Longfellow Administration with concerns about the process we utilize to inform parents about author visits and the contents of the presentation and promotion. It was at that time Administration was informed that the school did not communicate to Longfellow parents information about the content of the book being presented and promoted by the author…. Parents were only informed of the author’s visit, not the content of the book, presentation and promotion…. We look forward to speaking with the author and discussing the possibility of scheduling a visit to our school community in the future.

The author, Robin Stevenson, is on a book tour—you know, the thing authors go on to promote and sell their books. The particular book she is promoting right now is Kid Activists: True Tales of Childhood from Champions of Change, which tells “childhood stories through kid-friendly texts and full-color cartoon illustrations” of activists, including Harvey Milk, the infamous homosexual pederast and friend of murderous cult leader Jim Jones, and “Janet” Mock, a biological man who through cross-sex hormone-doping and extensive surgical body modification successfully passes as a woman.

Stevenson has also written Pride Colors, a colorful board book for children from ages 0-2 that “highlights #LGBTQIA+ families in a positive, glittery light,” and teaches babies the “meaning behind each color in the Pride flag.” And for 9-14-year-olds, she has Pride: Celebrating Diversity & Community, which glossily details the history of the movement to normalize sexual deviance.

Stevenson’s devaluation of the human person extends beyond homosexuality and cross-sex identification. She devalues humans in the womb as well and seeks to indoctrinate children with her twisted views. Stevenson’s book for children ages 12 and up, My Body My Choice: The Fight for Abortion Rights, is about the “long fight for abortion rights” that “is being picked up by a new generation of courageous, creative and passionate activists.” The School Library Journal highly recommends it saying, “Readers will appreciate and find value in the colorful photographs and illustrations, quotes, and comics provided and will finish the guide feeling empowered. Youth will be armed with concrete tips and advice on how they can help fight against abortion stigma.”

Can’t have anyone stigmatizing the slaughter of tiny vulnerable humans. No siree, can’t have that.

Stevenson chastises the superintendent and school board of Wheaton District 200, in an open letter on her website:

[B]eginning next year, Illinois public schools will be required to teach history lessons that include the roles and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in U.S. history. But schools should not need to be legislated to be inclusive. Many schools are already working hard to provide a safe and supportive environment for students to be themselves and to encourage all students to respect diversity and human rights….

In choosing to cancel the presentation…. You legitimized a concern rooted in homophobia, gave this priority over the wishes of the school administration and staff who had requested the visit.

Six thoughts about Stevenson’s thoughts:

1.) Wheaton parents should ascertain exactly which school administrators and staff requested that Stevenson be invited to speak. The identities of government employees who make these kinds of decisions should not be cloaked in secrecy.

2.) Commitments to “inclusivity” do not require schools to ignore moral precepts. I don’t see “progressives” clamoring to have the roles and contributions of polyamorists, kinksters, or zoophiles included in curricula. Why is that? Have no polyamorists, kinksters, or zoophiles contributed anything of value to society? Leftists believe known-kinkster Alfred Kinsey made significant contributions to society. Maybe in the service of inclusivity, schools should share his kinkster predilections with elementary school students. Or could it be that “progressives” believe only their moral precepts should dictate which sexual predilections must be shared with students?

3.) Assuring the safety of students does not require affirming all their feelings and behavioral choices, nor do school administrators (or likely Stevenson) believe it does.

4.) Regarding schools’ provision of a “supportive” environment for students to be “themselves”: Are government schools really obligated to “support” all the feelings—including all the sexual feelings—of all students or just those feelings approved by “progressives”? What does being “themselves” even mean? Does it mean that all powerful, persistent, seemingly intractable feelings determine both “identity” and morality? If so, the “LGBTQIAP+” community has split wide open a Pandora’s box of trouble.

5.) “Respect for diversity” is a deceitful slogan. “Diversity” per se is neither intrinsically good nor bad. Diversity simply means difference or variety, and not all differences are respect-worthy. What Stevenson really means is that students should be taught to approve of homosexual acts and cross-sex identification, but no government employee—in his or her professional role—has the right to teach other people’s children that.

6.) Christian disapproval of homosexuality and cross-sex identification is no more rooted in fear or hatred of persons than is Christian disapproval of adultery, fornication, or porn use. I wonder how “safe” and “supported” conservative students feel when Stevenson calls them homophobic.

On Saturday, Stevenson tweeted this:

Were parents specifically warned that not all the activists in the book [that she is selling] were cis and straight? No, and this should not be necessary.

There you have it, folks, the arrogance of leftists who refuse to respect the rights of parents who don’t want their young children exposed to leftist views of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation.

Stevenson is a proselyte for cultural approval of homosexuality, the science-denying “trans” ideology, and the legal right of women to have their offspring slaughtered, but who does the culture deem the bad guys in this scenario? The bad guys are any Wheaton parents who object to Stevenson preaching to their children. “Bigot” and “hater” growl Wheaton leftists on social media in the mellifluous tones of tolerance to which conservatives have become accustomed.

One Wheaton mom posted this on Wheaton Moms & Families Facebook page:

Wheaton doesn’t need to be the bigoted community it was 20-30 years ago. Times are changing, families are evolving but love is the ONLY thing that is remaining consistent. I’d rather my child learn about a gay rights pioneer and activist instead of Christopher Columbus who was a murderer and rapist.

(I’ll set aside her disturbing admiration for Harvey Milk who, as an adult, sexually abused teenage boys.)

Is she suggesting that Christians are bigots and that affirming Scripture is unloving? If so, that raises the question, is she bigoted and unloving for harshly condemning beliefs that are central to the identities of Bible-believing Christians?

As Christians know from Christ’s example, genuine love—as opposed to the treacly stuff that passes for love today—does not entail approval of all feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts of others. Every parent knows this as well.

Genuine love is inseparable from truth. Genuine love requires knowing what is good and true, and desiring that for others even when they desire that which is destructive.

A 2018 Wheaton North High School graduate who currently attends Emerson College wrote this on the Wheaton Moms & Families Facebook page,

PARENTS, by rebuking and establishing that people that live differently from you are dirty and bad and deviant to you children…. You are creating ignorant children, because ignorance is LEARNED.”

She provided no evidence that any parent is telling their children that those who choose to embrace a homosexual or cross-sex identity “are dirty or bad or deviant” people. There is a difference between saying ideas are false or behavioral choices are wrong or deviant, and saying people are “dirty and bad and deviant.” By rebuking people who live differently than this college student does—people like theologically orthodox Christians—is she saying they are “dirty and bad”?

This college student made one point with which I would agree: Ignorance is learned.

Another Wheaton mom responded to the comment, “Thank God [the event] was canceled,” by saying, “you are a horrible hater.” In the upside-down “progressive” world of self-righteous and hollow claims about tolerance, love, and respect for diversity, opposition to a pro-feticide, pro-homosexuality lesbian activist promoting her book to elementary school children is a sign of hatred.

Other “progressive” scolds sniff that Stevenson wasn’t even going to talk about Harvey Milk, but that’s beside the point. First, she was shilling her book—a book the contents of which many parents would find objectionable.

Second, many parents believe that anyone who affirms homoeroticism as intrinsically good and places her homoerotic attraction at the center of her identity is an inappropriate role model for their young children. Government schools have no right to treat those parents’ beliefs and feelings any differently than the beliefs and feelings of leftists.

While culturally regressive parents find conservative beliefs on the nature and morality of volitional homosexual acts and cross-sex impersonation “bigoted” and “hateful,” others find leftist beliefs bigoted and hateful. If leftist ontological and moral assumptions are wrong, promoting them is neither enlightened nor loving. And if government schools may not present conservative moral positions to captive audiences of young children, because leftists view them as false and destructive, then government schools should not present leftist moral positions to young captive audiences, because conservatives view them as false and destructive.

(This is the point in discussions on “LGBT” issues when regressives, rubbing their hands together with a “gotcha” gleam in their eyes, wind up and toss in the manifestly dumb analogy comparing skin color to homosexual attraction and cross-sex identification. So, once more for the analogically challenged: There are zero points of correspondence between skin color per se, which is 100% heritable, immutable in all cases, and has no constituent behavioral features, and homosexual attraction or cross-sex identification, which are constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts.)

Now back to the umbrage of leftists about the cancellation of Robin Stevenson’s misbegotten visit: Let’s imagine for a moment that Longfellow Elementary School were to invite an author to talk to young children about activism. Some of her books, replete with colorful comics, promote the views of Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer who favors the legalization of infanticide for defective babies. Some of her books advocate for the “civil right” of polyamorists to marry as many people as they love and for consenting relatives of the same sex to marry each other (love is love, ya know). In another book, she pleads for the right of those who identify as amputees to socially and surgically “transition.”

Or let’s imagine that Longfellow Elementary School were to invite an author who has written books that promote the right of the unborn to be protected from slaughter, the right of girls and women to be free of the presence of biological men in their private spaces, the right of children to be raised by a mother and a father, and that promote the view that marriage has a nature central to which is sexual differentiation? What if this author’s books included profiles of Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood director/now pro-life activist; abortion survivor and pro-life activist Gianna Jessen; Walt Heyer, former cross-sex identifier who has now detransitioned; Katy Faust, who was raised by two lesbians and opposes same-sex marriage; and Ryan T. Anderson, an activist for true (i.e., sexually-differentiated) marriage? To be inclusive of diverse perspectives would “progressive” parents approve of their 9-year-old children attending a presentation by such an author? Should conscientious objectors to such a speaker be publicly vilified as bigots and haters?

Christians are commanded by God to train up their children in the way they should go. That cannot happen in institutions that seek to cultivate love for acts that God detests. Conservative parents must exit these bubbling cauldrons of witches’ brew, formerly known as schools, before their children are boiled alive.

Here in Illinois, as in California, New Jersey, and Colorado, it is no longer merely possible that young children with impressionable minds and tender hearts will be exposed to positive images and ideas about sexual deviance. Thanks to the bill passed by regressive lawmakers and signed into law by Illinois’ feckless governor, J.B. Pritzker, it is now mandatory that this indoctrination takes place.

Parents must exit government schools, and churches must facilitate that exit. For those families who, for a variety of reasons, cannot homeschool, churches must either create affordable, distinctly Christian schools, or make funds available to church members who want to send their children to existing Christian schools but can’t afford the often cost-prohibitive tuition.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Longfellow-3.mp3

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A recent headline of a Chicago Sun-Times article alarmingly reports that a Chicago Public School watchdog is fielding 3 complaints of sexual misconduct per school day. This comes on the heels of a 2018 Chicago Tribune report that exposed Chicago public schools of having more than 520 sexual assault cases all across the city over the past decade.

According to the Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR), only 38 percent of Illinois public school students meet proficiency expectations in English Language Arts, only 32 percent of students meet proficiency expectations in math. This despite the fact that the NEA reports that taxpayers pay $16,925 per student per year in Illinois. For that kind of investment, the vast majority of students should not only be meeting proficiency expectations but exceeding them.

In addition, we now have the serious problem of gender-confused boys demanding unrestricted access to girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms, and school boards and administrators affirming this nonsense. We also have a new state mandate that requires all students in K-12 public schools be taught, in a positive manner, about the “roles and contributions” of homosexuals and opposite-sex impersonators; as well as, textbooks purchased must include discussions of the those purported “roles and contributions.”

And let’s not forget that we have a state mandate in favor of highly objectionable sex ed material for the impressionable minds of government school children in 6th through 12th grade.

As if that isn’t enough, government schools are using instructional time to promote left-wing political views on climate change; open borders and global citizenship; Islamic studies and prayers to the god of Islam; Howard Zinn’s warped view of America’s Founding Fathers; and the pernicious ideology of “intersectionality” that is designed to divide and pit Americans against each other.

Christian parents and grandparents must seriously consider the great options they have for their students, and make the move away from government schools. The prevalence of perversion, subversion, and indoctrination are becoming more pronounced, and in order to protect the hearts and minds of our children, it is wise to consider other options.

We invite you to join us on Saturday, April 25th, to hear from a great line up of experts as we explore what we need to do to begin to rebuild the culture through education. The event is free and open to the public. Click HERE for a flyer for this event.

2020 IFI Education Forum

WHEN: Saturday, April 25th
WHERE: Church of Christian Liberty
  502 Euclid Avenue
Arlington Heights, IL  60004
TIME: 9:30 AM – 1:00 PM

Our tentative schedule includes:

9:30-10:15        Rescuing Our Children from Government Schools (Alex Newman, The Liberty Sentinel)

10:15-11:00       Homeschooling: What in the World is Going On? (Dr. Brian Ray, NHERI)

11:00-11:30       Home Education is Possible (Kirk Smith, Illinois Christian Home Educators)

11:30-Noon       The Benefits of Christian Schooling (Rev. Calvin Lindstrom, Christian Liberty Academy)

Noon-12:15        The State of Education Choice in Illinois (Lennie Jarret, Heartland Institute) 

12:15-1:00         Q&A Session

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Last week School District 65, which serves the racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse Evanston and Skokie, Illinois communities, went whole hog on disseminating a controversial ideology to captive audiences of other people’s children who came to school with open minds and hearts into which “progressives” poured  poison masquerading as inarguable truth. District 65’s celebration of “LGBTQ+ Equity Week” offers a glimpse into the kind of pernicious indoctrination that the cunningly named “Inclusive Curriculum” bill signed into law by Governor J. B. Pritzker will bring to Illinois school children.

The mess of poisonous pottage was a project of the Gender and Sexuality Educator Alliance (GSEA), “a group of educators in Evanston/Skokie School District 65 who seek to advocate for inclusive schools for parents, students, and staff.” The GSEA has some eye-popping goals that include,

Creating inclusive and safe school spaces for all identities, especially LGBTQIA+ identities; Creating a community and safe space for all gender expressions and sexual orientations represented in our district staff; Growing a community of LGBTQIA+ allies within District 65 staff; Working to provide educators, staff, and families in District 65 with the necessary training to support inclusive school cultures; Creating LGBTQIA+ focused newsletters and resource guides to improve district wide inclusive pedagogy. (emphasis added)

Don’t let the Newspeak deceive you. “Inclusion” of all “identities” really means affirmation and celebration of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation. “Necessary training” really means compulsory indoctrination.” “Safe spaces” really means spaces where dissenting voices are prohibited, and theologically orthodox Christians are unwelcome and excluded.

So, what did the leftist activists instruct faculty to teach other people’s children? Here’s just a bit from the guidelines:

Pre-K and kindergarten: The unit for the littlest ones is titled “Family/Flag/Identity.” Introducing pre-K and kindergarten students to “family” means conditioning them to understand that “all families are different” and to believe that all these different family structures are “cool!” The view, however, that all family structures are “cool” is not a fact, and it’s not even a view that “progressives” hold. If they did, why didn’t they introduce pre-kindergartners to polygamous and polyamorous family structures?

Leftists have concluded that families headed by homosexuals who intentionally deprive children of either mothers or fathers are “cool,” so they will use government schools to advance that idea. But family structures they don’t view as “cool” are omitted. But here’s the rub. Some people don’t view families led by homosexuals as cool and they don’t want their children exposed to any images of or ideas about them—and certainly not leftist views of the coolness of them.

Some naïve readers may think the reference to the “flag” is to the American flag. No such luck. It’s a reference to the rainbow and “trans” flags that 4 and 5-year-old children—who should know nothing about cross-sex passing and homosexuality—were expected to be able to “explain the importance of.” Our government schools are not only introducing preschoolers to sexual perversion but also affirming it to them.

First grade: For five days straight, six-year-olds were to be taught Leftist pronoun rules using a book titled They, She, He easy as ABC, which is described on Amazon as “a… much-needed picture book about pronouns and gender fluidity.” It begins with this: “Ari loves to arabesque. They hold their pose with ease.” Ari, a single child, is referred to by the third-person plural pronoun “they.”

Children were to “introduce themselves, choosing pronouns” from those in the book—which includes “ze” and “tree” as pronouns—and “explore foundational concepts in pronoun use, presentation, and bias.” Whose understanding of bias do you suppose the children were exposed to? To be clear, public school teachers are teaching 6-year-olds incorrect grammar in the service of advancing a Leftist sexuality ideology.

Grades 2 and 3: “Students will analyze a traditional fairy tale through an inclusive lens, ensuring gender neutrality and culturally relevant content. Students will learn basic LGBTQ+ vocabulary. They will recognize and discuss stereotypes, and create their own inclusive folk tale to share with lower grades.” Did you catch that? District 65 teachers were encouraged to force 2^nd and 3^rd graders to disciple younger students in the “LGBTQ+” religion.

Grades 4 and 5: Teachers were instructed to have 9, 10, and 11-year-olds play a matching game in which they would match terms to definitions. The terms were cisgender, gay, lesbian, binary, gender identity, gender expression, sex assigned at birth, bisexual, transgender, and preferred pronouns. Teachers were urged to have students examine “androgyny” and study these photos:

By the end of the week students were to have created “their own gender inclusive and diverse advertisement for a product,” which they would then “present and ‘sell’… to the class.”

Grades 6, 7, and 8: The title for the week’s unit for 11-14-year-olds was “Activism: Breaking the Binary.” The curriculum overview explains that “During this week-long curriculum, students will interact with content that encourages the allyship, visibility, and activism for the LGBTQ+ community. Students will… think outside the binary norms of society. They will become familiar with LGBTQ terminology in order to become better allies, learn significant historical events & people that contributed to the LGBTQ rights movement, and take a deeper look at the relationship between activism strategies and major change.”

Wowzer. No need to speculate about the agenda of leftists for taxpayer-funded schools. They’ve got the power now, so subterfuge is no longer necessary. Their goal is to transform the moral, political, and ontological beliefs of other people’s children and turn them into activists who will continue promoting the anarchical sexual revolution. No matter if these leftist beliefs conflict with the moral, political, ontological, or theological beliefs of these children’s parents. Leftists are presumptuous and self-righteous enough to violate both parental trust and their pedagogical obligations. This curriculum goes far beyond the requirements of the school indoctrination law—which itself goes beyond proper ethical boundaries. This curriculum is a totalitarian imposition of controversial leftist assumptions about sexuality.

Virtually every term, presupposition, and concept employed by the cultural regressives who designed and approved this indoctrination curriculum is debatable. Will dissenting definitions, presuppositions and concepts ever be taught? Lol. No way. Regressives have proclaimed from on high that dissenting views are hateful and, therefore, they rationalize their censorship of them.

In the service of concealing the non-factual, controversial nature of the “LGBTQ+” ideology that the GSEA and its accomplices are dumping on and pouring into children, they do what Leftists always do: manipulate language. In other words, they engage in Orwellian Newspeak. Just slap the magic words “equity,” “inclusivity,” “safety,” or “cultural competency” onto whatever moral or political dung they want to preach, and abracadabra, assumptions become “facts” and indoctrination becomes “education.” It should be clear to everyone by now that the biased ideologues, censors, and oppressors who foster intolerance, division, and exclusion and transform education into indoctrination are regressives who absurdly call themselves “progressive.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Progagandists-Call-K-8-Indoctrination-Equity.mp3

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He’s a well-known socialist. Not the chic, hipster socialist making a comeback these days who hangs with the cool kids. No, he’s a dyed-in-the-wool, cherry-red socialist.

His first job out of college was as an organizer with the United Steelworkers in North Carolina. After moving to Chicago, he became a teacher and his wife worked for Haymarket Books, an independent publisher run by socialists.

Over the last several years, he was a leading member of the International Socialist Organization prior to its dissolution in April 2019. In July, he chaired a plenary session (“Welcome to Red Chicago”) at Socialism 2019, which brought together “hundreds of socialists and radical activists from around the country to take part in discussions about Marxism, working-class history, and the debates and strategies for organizing today.”

Most remarkable, though, is that he’s now the current president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). Meet Jesse Sharkey.

Like a bad case of déjà vu, Sharkey and the CTU have voted to authorize a strike for the third time this decade. Some 25,000 teachers have said they will walk off the job on October 17 if their demands for more money, more staffing and lower class sizes aren’t met.

In addition, the unions representing bus monitors, special education assistants, lunchroom workers and Chicago Park District employees (who cared for students during the 2012 strike) are threatening to strike at the same time. That would make it tough for mayor Lightfoot to keep the schools open for some 360,000 displaced students.

As a result, parents will be under pressure to arrange care for their children. And because strikes are open-ended, there’s no telling how long the kids (and parents) will be forced to wait for their education to resume.

The CTU wants a three-year contract with annual pay raises of 5 percent and a decrease in employee health care contributions. In addition, they are demanding a nurse and librarian at every school, more social workers and class size limits.

In response, CPS has offered teachers a 16 percent pay raise over 5 years, including 3 percent raises in each of the first three years and 3.5 percent in the last two. There would be no increase in employee health care contributions for the first two years but increases totaling 1 percent over the last three years. CPS claims the average teacher would see a 24 percent raise over the life of the contract.

What’s not to like? But the union flatly rejected the offer, with Sharkey declaring, “We’re about more than just money. We’re trying to get an agreement that is both fair to people in the schools and people who go to the schools.”

While that may sound noble, there’s more going on here than meets the eye. The CTU is making its demands at a time when CPS has a junk status credit rating. While financially better off due to a 2015 tax increase, CPS deferred much of its required annual pension payments and is now about $11 billion in the red. A pay increase and hiring more staff will only dig a deeper hole.

Add to that the underachievement of CPS students (only 28 percent met or exceeded the PARCC assessments), a substantial shortage of teachers, the elimination of a requirement to pass a basic skills test to be a licensed teacher, and fifteen years of declining enrollment—and the union’s demands begin to seem unreasonable.

That’s not to say there’s no merit to what they’re asking for. Adequate numbers of school nurses, librarians, social workers and manageable class room sizes can all contribute to a better experience for students. (You can see some of how some of the big questions are progressing here.)

Given the current financial condition of CPS, though, the union’s call for increased pay, teachers and staff plus reduced classroom size (requiring more teachers), is disturbing. Why make demands that will only drive up taxes or push a financially-troubled district further into debt?

In case you slept through your social studies class, socialism is a political and economic system in which the means of production (i.e., businesses) are owned by the laborers. In a capitalist society like the U.S., socialists pit laborers—the working class—against business owners—the capitalists—because capitalists take for themselves the profit the workers produce instead of the workers owning it themselves.

Socialists believe such an arrangement is unjust. Therefore, socialists engage in a “class struggle” for equality: the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie. To do this, they organize. And the largest, most organized sector in the United States is education.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) have nearly 4 million members between them. Public schools dot every county, city, town and village in the country. By virtue of the role they play in society, educators are connected directly to the working class: students and their families.

That brings us back to Sharkey. In addition to classroom demands, the CTU is also making “social demands,” including sanctuary status for illegal alien students and increased affordable housing. While those issues have nothing to do with collective bargaining, they have everything to do with galvanizing the working class’s support.

If you listen closely, you can hear the socialist undercurrents.

“Sharkey has warned that if teachers strike, it could end up being a ‘massive labor movement’ that could have ripple effects throughout the city. The CTU is timing the possible walkout with two other unions, one representing other school staff, such as security guards and custodians, and another representing Chicago Park District workers. Both of those unions already have voted to authorize a strike.” (Emphasis mine.)

Sharkey is pitting the laborers, i.e., teachers and support staff, against the owners, i.e., the city and school administration. It’s a power struggle and a strike is the most effective weapon the union has.

That’s why Sharkey and the CTU rejected the city’s five-year deal, even though it offers more money. Five years is too long to wait until they’re able to use a strike again to advance their interests.

The most effective lies dress up as truth. “For Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:14-15).

On the surface, Sharkey’s claim that “we’re about more than just money” is true. But don’t be fooled. Under the surface, he and the CTU are masquerading as “servants of righteousness” using Chicago’s unwitting children and their families as pawns in a class struggle.

A Night With Rev. Franklin Graham!
At this year’s annual IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st. You don’t want to miss this special evening!

Learn more HERE.

Folks, if you hope to defeat “trans” activism in your public schools, public libraries, the Springfield Swamp, and halls of Congress, you must first find those old rubbery spines that have been gathering dust in your attics. Then muster some courage to speak truth to Leftists who have been winning gold medals in epithet-hurling. Their tongues are now the strongest part of their bodies, while apparently their brains are the weakest. Try getting them to answer a few foundational questions that emerge from their incoherent, science-denying “trans”-ideology and watch them bob and weave, evasively changing subjects in between screeching “hater” at you. Just keep repeating to yourself the old adage your parents taught you: Sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will never hurt you. More on those foundational questions shortly.

Before you go on your spine search, please pay close attention to what has been happening in District 211—the largest high school district in Illinois with 12,000 students and 5 high schools—where local control has secretly been wrested from the community by a group of Leftists “colluding” secretly with “LGBTQ” activists outside the community—way outside the community—to sexually integrate student locker rooms.

Last week, I wrote about the purchase of the District 211 school board seats in 2017 by Laurence (aka “Lana”) Wachowski, “trans” director of the Matrix movies who lives in Chicago; a “trans” architect from Pennsylvania;  the lesbian head honcho of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network from New York; a state senator from Chicago; a homosexual CEO from D.C.; a “trans” activist from Maryland; a homosexual activist from Chicago; and two “trans” activists from Chicago who secretly funded the defeat of three excellent school board candidates.

Since then, it’s been revealed that Illinois’ premier “LGBTQ” activist organization, the grossly misnamed Equality Illinois, sent a representative to the District 211 School Board meeting on September 19 at which the proposal to sexually integrate all locker rooms was discussed. Equality Illinois boasted on its website about sending its “civic engagement coordinator,” Anthony Charles Galloway, who is the former Project Coordinator at Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region & Southwest Missouri.

Last Monday, Vicki Wilson, president of D211 Parents for Privacy, and Tracey Salvatore, an epithet-hurling mother of two District 211 elementary school children, were invited to appear on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight to be interviewed by Carol Marin.

Salvatore is the activist I mentioned in last week’s article who, instead of explaining exactly why private spaces should correspond to “gender identity” as opposed to biological sex, hurled epithets at parents who believe girls and boys should not be allowed to access the private spaces of opposite-sex peers.

Before I get to what Tracey Salvatore said on Chicago Tonight, it bears mentioning that for some odd reason her coach—er, I mean, escort to the Chicago Tonight studio was Ed Yohnka, communications director for the ACLU in Chicago. I wonder why Salvatore invited him?

Salvatore managed to refrain from her customary hate speech when making her points on Chicago Tonight. Perhaps her escort helped her avoid that pitfall.

In response to Carol Marin’s question about the prior policy requiring “trans”-identifying students to change behind privacy curtains (still bad policy but marginally better than unrestricted access) if using opposite-sex locker rooms, Salvatore said,

I do feel that it fell short of full inclusion, full equity, full access just by singling out transgender students as requiring them to use the privacy curtains.

Well, it rightly did prohibit “full access” because the person seeking “full access” to the girls’ locker room was a biological boy. But “transgender” students are not being “singled” out. The boy to whom Salvatore was referring singled himself out by asking for special treatment. He asked to be allowed unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room—something other boys are not allowed.

“Trans”-identifying persons, like all other humans, have a sex, which is objective, immutable, and meaningful. Schools, like every other place of public accommodation, have sex-separated spaces in which humans engage in personal bodily acts like undressing and going to the bathroom. Treating a boy as a boy is the epitome of equity. Conversely, including a biological boy in girls’ private spaces is the antithesis of fairness, impartiality, and equity. Treating a boy as if he is a girl in girls’ private spaces means treating him specially and violates the privacy rights of girls.

If girls have a right to be free of the presence of objectively male peers in their private spaces, that right is not abrogated by the feelings of some boys about their biological sex. If women have no right to be free of the presence of objectively male peers in their private spaces, then why have any sex-separate private spaces, including for staff and faculty. If biological sex has no intrinsic meaning relative to undressing and engaging in bodily functions, why have any sex-separate spaces?

Commitments to “inclusion” and “equity” do not require that persons who wish they were the sex they aren’t have access to opposite-sex private spaces. Their feelings about their maleness or femaleness do not grant them the right to dictate that private spaces no longer correspond to biological sex.

Grotesquely exploiting the words of Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren in Brown v. Board of Education, Salvatore said, “separate but equal is not equal.” Warren said this:

We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

Segregating blacks from whites in schools or other places of public accommodation was a pernicious practice based on the erroneous belief that whites and blacks are by nature different and based on white hatred of blacks. Separating boys from girls in private spaces is based on the true belief that boys and girls are sexually different and that those differences matter when undressing and engaged in personal bodily functions. The desire to be free of the presence of persons of the opposite sex when undressing has nothing to do with hatred. Salvatore’s claim is patently foolish.

Salvatore’s third claim is equally foolish:

Transgender individuals are not a threat…. Transgender people are not a safety concern to anyone, not in a locker room, not on the street, not anywhere else.

First, the primary issue is not concern about predation—though that is an issue, particularly outside of schools. But how can Salvatore know with absolute certainty that “transgender people are not a safety concern” to anyone anywhere ever? Of course, she can’t and doesn’t know any such thing. While it is unlikely that a “trans”-identifying boy will sexually assault a girl in the girls’ locker room, can prognosticator Salvatore say with absolute certainty that no such boy ever will? Can she say with absolute certainty that no such boy will look at girls who are undressing? Can she say with absolute certainty that no such boy will ever expose himself in the presence of girls?

And what about students who have been victims of sexual abuse. Estimates are that 1 in 4 girls (and 1 in 6 boys) will be sexually abused by the age of 18, which means in District 211, there are likely 1,500 girls (and 1,000 boys) who are victims of sexual abuse. In contrast, the Williams Institute estimates that .7 percent of teens identify as “trans,” which would mean that there are about 42 biological boys who identify as “trans”  in District 211. Many, perhaps most, sexually abused girls feel uncomfortable changing clothes in the presence of opposite-sex persons. They should not be compelled to leave their own locker rooms in order to feel safe.

Though the issue of protecting the feelings of children who were victims of sexual abuses is critical, it is not the primary issue either.

The primary, foundational issue is the meaning of sexual differentiation. Do our sexed bodies have meaning or not? Cultural regressives, like Salvatore and school board member/sexpert Kim Cavill, essentially say that physical embodiment as male or female has no intrinsic meaning relative to feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when engaged in personal acts like undressing and going to the bathroom, which is absurd and destructive nonsense. Three times Salvatore mentioned “respect,” and none of those times referred to the respect due to students who have a right to a locker rooms free from the presence of opposite sex peers.

Salvatore then made this baffling statement:

I think people have learned that transgender individuals are just like human beings.

Well, “transgender” individuals are not just “like” human beings. They actually are human beings, and I don’t know a single person who thinks otherwise. Recognizing “trans”-identifying persons as humans includes recognizing that they have a sex and that in private spaces their sexual identity is all that matters. Prohibiting students from using opposite-sex private facilities does not deny their existence or their humanness.

Salvatore assures the Chicago Tonight viewing audience that “the reality is that people are not getting naked in the locker room.” That may be true, but it’s hard to believe that students who are taking a swim class or are on swim teams, diving teams, or water polo teams are never naked as they change from clothes to swimsuits. That, however, is beside the point.

Unrestricted access means that if girls in girls’ locker rooms are permitted to be in their underwear or fully nude, so too is a biological boy who pretends to be a girl permitted to be in his underwear or fully nude in the girls’ locker room. And a biological boy who is permitted unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room is also permitted to be anywhere in the locker room when girls are changing into swimsuits. Whether any particular boy chooses to partially undress, fully undress, or be in the area where girls are changing into swimsuits is irrelevant. It’s the principle that matters.

Finally, here are the questions that every school board member, administrator, and supporter of the sexual integration of private spaces should be required to answer before any votes on policy proposals are taken:

• Why should locker rooms correspond to “gender identity” as opposed to biological sex?

• Who decided that in private spaces biological sex is subordinate to subjective feelings about maleness and femaleness and by what authority did they make such a radical decision?

• Do humans have an intrinsic right not to undress in the presence of persons of the opposite sex? If so, is that right abrogated by the feelings of “trans”-identifying persons or their aesthetic deception?

• If humans have no such right, then why retain any sex-segregated private spaces anywhere?

• Why is it reasonable for “trans”-identifying students to refuse to use restrooms/locker rooms with students who don’t share their “gender identity,” but it’s hateful for other students to refuse to use restrooms/locker rooms with peers who don’t share their sex?

• Why should girls in girls’ locker rooms who don’t want to undress in the presence of biological boys be forced to change behind a privacy curtain? Why can’t biological boys in the boys’ locker room who don’t want to undress in the presence of biological boys use a private changing area in the boys’ locker room or nurse’s office?

• If schools can’t discriminate based on either sex or “gender identity” in private spaces, wouldn’t prohibiting normal students (i.e., “cisgender” students) from using opposite-sex facilities constitute discrimination based on sex and/or discrimination based on “gender identity”?

• What should school restroom and locker room policy be for “gender fluid” students?

• In the “trans” community, girls who “identify” as boys are boys, so why should they be free to use girls’ private facilities? Should girls who “identify” as boys be required to use boys’ locker rooms?

• Are lesbians and homosexual men who oppose the sexual integration of private spaces—especially the private spaces of girls and women—demonizing, bullying, intimidating, hateful bigots as Salvatore characterized those who oppose the sexual integration of District 211 private spaces?

So many essential questions asked by no one even as we deny human nature and the fundamental rights of girls and boys.

Correction: This article has been corrected with regard to estimates of number of abuse victims and of teen boys who identify as “trans.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/What-Conservatives-Should-Know.mp3

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-and, please-

Buzzfeed has an article about social media attacks on the tweens and teens whom Leftist adults are exploiting as shields by allowing these children to lead the climate change charge.

Since every adult knows what a poisonous and malevolent force social media is, why are these kids’ parents allowing them to be exploited by Leftists, thereby becoming social media targets? If Silicon Valley parents and conservative parents can keep their kids from having smart phones, iPads, and social media accounts, can’t Greta Thunberg’s parents keep her from traveling across the ocean to thunder at adults at the U.N.?

The article quotes a climate scientist from Texas Tech University who claims these kids—who have been unjustifiably terrified by Leftist doomsday prognostications—are being attacked because they’re “effective.” Nope. These kids are being attacked because they’re kids sanctimoniously lecturing adults. Of course, not even presumptuous words from children justify malignant social media attacks, but it’s not the kids’ effectiveness that grates on adults.

Here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine how “progressives” would respond if a weeping conservative teen were to deliver this revision of Greta Thunberg’s screed:

My message is that we’ll be watching you.

This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!

You have stolen our dreams and our childhood with your false and destructive words about sexuality. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. The bodies, hearts, and minds of thousands of children in developed countries are being destroyed. We are in the beginning of a mass delusion, and all you can talk about is fairy tales about the existence of 100 genders and if it feels good, do it. How dare you!

For more than 50 years, the hard science has been crystal clear about the reality of biological sex, the health risks of sexual promiscuity, and that the product of conception between two humans is a human being. And social science has been crystal clear about the good effects on children of being raised by their biological parents in an intact family. How dare you continue to look away from both science and morality! You’re doing nothing when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.

You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.

Children are being commodified, with their genetic material bought and sold like meat on a commodities exchange. They are being deliberately denied mothers or fathers. They’re growing up in a world awash in sexually transmitted infections and pornography. They’re being taught in schools about anal sex and homosexuality. They’re being sterilized and mutilated by doctors at the behest of parents. And at the behest of their own mothers, they’re being exterminated before they breathe their first breath.

You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.

We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

I’m sure inclusive, compassionate, equitable “progressives” fully committed to diversity would welcome such a speech with the tolerance to which we conservatives have become accustomed.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/greta-thunberg-parody_mixdown1.mp3

IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now

-and, please-

In the previous article, we looked at the first two myths about neutrality in education:

• Myth #1: Neutrality is possible.
• Myth #2: Neutrality is acceptable.

Let’s move on now to the third of the Neutrality Myths. 

Myth #3: Neutrality Is About Facts; Worldview Is About Spin

This myth may not be as pervasive as the first two, but I wonder if it may affect some Christian parents. It’s the wrong idea that neutrality is all about facts and that anyone who brings a worldview to the discussion is going to skew or spin the truth.

Yes, it’s true that some worldviews distort, ignore, or manufacture their own “facts.” In truth, all worldviews except Christianity are guilty of getting some facts wrong. But we must never forget that the Christian worldview is, in reality, true. It is not neutral, but it is true. This is a key distinction and one we must understand. Presenting our children with a distinctively Christian education is not a disservice to them, as if they won’t understand the real world if they are taught according to the Bible. Indeed, only Christians can properly understand the world, because Christianity—the biblical worldview—is all about reality.

Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey point out in their book How Now Shall We Live? that every worldview follows a three-part grid: Creation (how did we get here?), Fall (what is the problem with the world?), and Redemption (what is the solution to mankind’s problems?). Only Christianity offers the correct answers to these questions and thus gives us an accurate view of the world around us.

The greatest truths in the world are that God exists, He has spoken, and He has sent His Son in the person of Jesus Christ to redeem a lost world marred by sin. This is true reality, and God intends that these truths shape everything about our lives. For the Christian, neutrality must retreat in the face of this truth.

God is the Author of all truth. Thus, an education centered on a correct understanding of God and His Word will never be neutral, but it will be factual, truthful, and an accurate representation of the world as it really is.

This brings us full circle to my opening point in Part 1 that we often overlook the significance of education in the lives of our children. Neutrality tells us the ultimate meaning of nothing and tries to keep us from taking sides, even if truth demands it. We would never think of joining a neutral church nor of being a neutral family. So why is it that we believe neutrality in education is no big deal? Why do we take such a large slice of our children’s lives and say it doesn’t really matter what the content is or how it is presented? We have lost sight of what education is meant to be.

A True Education

Biblically speaking, education is not meant to be a purely intellectual transfer of facts from one mind to another. God is certainly not anti-intellectual; He does, after all, command us to love Him with our minds as well as our hearts. But to reduce education to a completely intellectual pursuit is to make it something God never intended it to be.

Let’s go back to the study of history as an example. In Psalm 78:4–8 we read:

We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done. For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments: and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God.

We see here an overtly spiritual purpose to the typically intellectual (and secular) study of history. In God’s model, the study of history involves the mind and the heart. As knowledge of their past was gained, the goal was for children to learn of God and follow Him. The heart and mind were both engaged.

Israel Wayne points out in his book Full-Time Parenting that, biblically speaking, education is discipleship. In other words, education is meant to be something more than the mere transfer of information. As planned by God, it is meant to be transformational, impacting the complete person, both mind and heart.

If this is true, then we have a clear mandate to center education on God and His truth. Even academic subjects should be taught within a biblical framework. This means that attempted neutrality, rather than being desirable or acceptable, should be banished. God calls us to something far higher.

Moving Boldly Forward

If we are to raise up a generation that is everything God desires it to be, we must reject convictionless education. We must reject the idea that our public schools are neutral and that neutrality would be acceptable even if it were possible. We must embrace the biblical concept of education, which is to shape and mold our children’s hearts as well as their minds. And we must stand boldly on the Word of God, centering our educational efforts on God’s eternal truth. We must teach our children in the fear of the Lord, for it is this—and not a hollow mask of neutrality—that is the foundation of all wisdom and knowledge.

A Night With Rev. Franklin Graham!
At this year’s annual IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st. You don’t want to miss this special evening!

Learn more HERE.

It’s no secret that vast numbers of America’s evangelical teenagers are anemic in their faith. There are undoubtedly many factors involved, but one that shouldn’t be overlooked is education.

Too often as Christians in America we overlook the significance of education. It’s not that we believe education is unimportant. On the contrary, we all know it is important, and we encourage our children to get the best education possible.

Our problem isn’t that we think education is unnecessary, but that we typically overlook how transformational it can be and is meant to be. We view it as purely intellectual, detached from all other aspects of our children’s being.

This comes, I believe, as a result of buying into some dangerous myths that have already done tremendous harm to Christian families, the church, and our culture at large. Left unchecked, they will continue their destructive work.

I call these false beliefs the Neutrality Myths.

Myth #1: Neutrality Is Possible

The first of these three myths says that neutrality in education is possible—that children can be taught without any agenda, bias, or worldview getting in the way of a plain presentation of raw academic facts.

But is this true? Is it really possible to provide our children with an education that’s rigorously factual and simultaneously devoid of personal or institutional bias? In a word, no.

That’s not to say that certain subjects—math being the most obvious example—are necessarily worldview-heavy. But when we take K-12 education as a whole, bias can’t be eliminated. Neutrality isn’t possible.

To suggest otherwise is to overlook how pervasive worldviews are and how they impact our entire lives. At the very least, an acknowledgment or lack of acknowledgment of God will communicate a message to the students and place the lesson outside the realm of neutrality.

Twentieth-century theologian Gordon Clark made the following statement:

Public schools are not, never were, can never be, neutral. Neutrality is impossible. Let one ask what neutrality can possibly mean when God is involved. How does God judge the school system, which says to him, “O God, we neither deny nor assert thy existence; and O God, we neither obey nor disobey thy commandments; we are strictly neutral.” Let no one fail to see the point: The school system that ignores God teaches its pupils to ignore God; and this is not neutrality. It is the worst form of antagonism, for it judges God to be unimportant and irrelevant in human affairs. This is atheism.

Christ Himself left no room for neutrality, telling us plainly in Matthew 12:30 that we are either for Him or against Him. The existence of God and the reality of Christ’s lordship demand a response: we either acknowledge it, deny it, or ignore it. None of these options is a neutral choice.

But beyond this, the public schools of America have taken overt stances against neutrality. Whether it’s the theory of evolution taught as fact during science class, or “health” classes that embrace unbiblical views of morality, or questionable reading selections in Language Arts, the schools have gone beyond simply ignoring God’s existence and are instead actively teaching concepts that are contrary to God’s truth.

Simply put, neutrality isn’t possible.

Myth #2: Neutrality Is Acceptable

A second myth believed by Christian parents is that neutrality is acceptable. Ignoring for a moment that neutrality is possible, would it even be desirable to Christian parents concerned about how God says we should raise our children? Again, the answer is a simple no.

As Christians, Scripture is to be our guide. Search the Bible and find one verse commanding—or even recommending—neutrality in any aspect of training our children. I have yet to find one. God’s model banishes any hint of neutrality and instead mandates that education be unashamedly, unreservedly centered on Him and His truth. Period.

In other words, neutrality isn’t desirable even if it were possible.

Consider the very concept of neutrality. If an education could be truly neutral, it would have no position, no conviction beyond raw facts. It would offer no worldview, no perspective on reality beyond what is indisputably verifiable. It is convictionless.

Why would we want to embrace such an empty, vapid approach to teaching our children?

Take history as an example.

We could attempt to teach this subject in a completely neutral way, which would require us to reduce the study to absolutely no more than a collection of names and dates—the fodder of notoriously boring historical study.

Or we could teach from a distinctively biblical worldview. The scriptural perspective is not that history is simply the unfolding of random events, nor that it’s the story of economic factors and class warfare or the outworking of other geopolitical or socioeconomic factors. It’s the story of God working out His eternal purposes in His creation. It’s the story of human agents promoting goodness, justice, and righteousness while others promote wickedness, malice, and hate. It’s the ongoing account of a great conflict centered around an eternal standard of right and wrong that is rooted in the holiness of God Himself.

Which is more exciting? The lifeless collection of names and dates parading under the banner of attempted neutrality, or an epic story of right versus wrong in which the student himself is an active participant?

Beyond the excitement factor is the issue of reality. We can try to separate God from history, but we won’t get a true picture when we do. In other words, our view of reality will be skewed.

This brings us to a third myth we must debunk, which we’ll look at in Part 2.

A Night With Rev. Franklin Graham!
At this year’s annual IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st. You don’t want to miss this special evening!

Learn more HERE.

A remarkable and revelatory debate took place on IFI’s Facebook page on Sunday between me and Alan Mills, the executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, who received his undergraduate degree in philosophy from Ivy League Brown University and his law degree from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. I don’t want to speak ill of the irrational, so I will let you figure out what this debate reveals.

It all began with this question from another commenter: “Does it create a better environment if 1 percent of the students are uncomfortable getting undressed and dressed for gym class, or 99 percent of the students?”

Mills responded, “Would you apply the same test to racial segregation? Why not?”

And the debate was afoot.

Laurie:  I would think that with an Ivy League education and law degree from Northwestern you would have greater facility with analogies.

First, in order for your analogy to work there have to be some points of correspondence between opposite-sex “identification” (or impersonation) per se and race or skin color per se. There are none.

Second, there would have to be some points of correspondence between racial segregation everywhere and sexual segregation in private spaces where sexually differentiated humans undress. There are none.

Segregating races in buses, restaurants, and housing was based on false beliefs about the races. There are no ontological differences between races that meaningfully bear on riding buses, eating in restaurants or being housed. In contrast, sexual segregation in restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, jails, and prisons are based on real ontological differences between biological men and biological women. Moreover, these differences meaningfully bear on undressing and engaging in bodily functions.

If sexual segregation per se is as intrinsically evil as racial segregation per se, then there should be laws prohibiting all sexual segregation. Is the Uptown People’s Law Center fighting for the eradication of all sex-segregated spaces?

Alan Mills: This is not about sexual segregation. It is about insisting that biological differences justify discrimination. That is EXACTLY what racial segregation was about. Just like sex, there is indisputably a biological difference between white and black skin. The question is whether that difference in biology justified treating people as second class citizens.

Laurie: Yes, the issue is precisely about sexual segregation—sexual segregation in high school locker rooms.

You evidently didn’t understand my argument, so, I’ll try again.

I did not argue that there are no biological differences between blacks and whites. I argued that those differences did not bear meaningfully on riding buses, eating in restaurants, or being housed. In contrast, the differences between men and women do, indeed, bear meaningfully on private spaces. In fact, those real differences between men and women are the reason sex-segregated spaces exist. The reason drinking fountains exist is decidedly not to recognize racial differences.

Nice try with the “second-class citizen” comment, but treating all men as men and all women as women does not constitute treating any man or any woman as a second-class citizen. Treating sex differences as real and meaningful in contexts where sexually differentiated humans (who are often strangers) undress does not constitute treating anyone as a “second class citizen.”

Not all forms of “segregation” (a loaded term chosen by leftists for its political loadedness) are created equal. I’ll choose a better term: separation. Not all bases on which humans separate are analogous. Some forms of separation are not merely acceptable but good.

Racial segregation was based on erroneous and pernicious beliefs about white superiority and on white hatred of blacks. Sexual segregation in private spaces is based on the true belief that boys and girls, men and women are biologically different and that those differences are meaningful when it comes to being unclothed. Such separation does not reflect any animus of women toward men or vice versa.

Again, biology is irrelevant to the acts of riding buses, drinking at fountains, eating in restaurants, and being housed. Racial segregation was based on animus. In contrast, biologically based sex segregation is relevant to undressing and engaging in personal bodily functions. Separate facilities for men and women when undressing or engaging in personal bodily functions are based on these real differences—not on false beliefs or animus. The reason women don’t want men in their locker rooms is not based on sexual hatred.

So, I’ll ask again, if you believe sexual “segregation” is as intrinsically evil as racial segregation, are you fighting for the end of all sexual “segregation”? How do you justify leaving some sexually segregated spaces? Would you allow some racial segregation to remain legal? Using your deeply flawed analogy, would you allow some “whites only” spaces to remain if some whites wanted them?

Alan Mills: You specifically said that trans women unlike any other women need to use special changing areas—segregated from all other women. Sounds exactly like racial segregation to me.

Laurie: I specifically said no such thing. “Trans-women” are biological men (also known as men), and I specifically said that no biological men should use the private spaces of biological women, which is wholly different from separate lunch counters and drinking fountains for blacks and whites. While skin color differences have no meaning relative to eating, drinking or riding buses, sex differences have profound meaning relative to undressing. In fact, sex differences are the very reason we have sex-separated private spaces for men and women.

Trying a third time: If you believe sexual “segregation” is as intrinsically evil as racial segregation, are you fighting for the end of all sexual “segregation”? How do you justify leaving some sexually segregated spaces? Would you allow some racial segregation to remain legal? Using your deeply flawed analogy, would you allow some “whites only” spaces to remain?

Alan Mills: Gender differences are the reason, not sex differences. As I say, you are demanding that women who do not conform to your notion of what a woman should look like should be segregated, because it would make women who look different uncomfortable.

This is exactly the argument used for segregated neighborhoods, separate drinking fountains, public accommodations, etc.

Laurie: Leftists define “gender” as the aggregate of arbitrary socially constructed conventions that we associate with maleness and/or femaleness, both, or neither. Your claim about the reason for segregated private spaces is patently and demonstrably false in addition to being idiotic.

“Gender” differences are not the reason society created separate restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, dorm rooms, semi-private hospital rooms, jails, and prisons. Biological sex differences between men and women are the reason we have sex-separate private facilities for women and men.

I have never “demanded” that “women who do not conform to” my “notion of what a woman should look like” be segregated in private spaces. Rather, I am asserting that biological men should not be in the private spaces of biological women, which—as I have explained—is wholly different from racially segregated drinking fountains, neighborhoods, or restaurants. Skin color differences are irrelevant to eating and drinking. Whereas racial segregation was based on irrelevant biological differences and animus, sex-segregation in private spaces is based on biological differences relevant to undressing and has no basis in biological sex animus.

My father, my husband, my son, my sons-in-law, and my male friends do not want biological women in their locker rooms. My sister, my daughters, my daughter-in-law, and my female friends do not want biological men in their locker rooms. None of these relatives and friends believes they are superior to persons of the opposite sex, nor do they hate persons of the opposite sex. Rather, they know that sexual differentiation matters when it comes to undressing.

Trying a fourth time: If you believe sexual “segregation” is as intrinsically evil as racial segregation, are you fighting for the end of all sexual “segregation”? How do you justify leaving some sexually segregated spaces? Would you allow some racial segregation to remain legal? Using your deeply flawed analogy, would you allow some “whites only” spaces to remain?

CONCLUSION

Well, that’s where our debate ended. Alan Mills employed lousy analogies; grossly misrepresented my statements, actually lying about what I said; grossly mispresented history; and refused to answer direct questions. Figuring out whether he is obtuse or engaging in deceitful lawyerly rhetorical manipulation is above my pay grade. What I do know is his beliefs based on nonsensical analogies and lies are dangerous and destructive.

Once the term “gender identity” is added to antidiscrimination policies and laws, sex-segregated private spaces begin their slow but ineluctable death march. Banning discrimination based on both sex and feelings about sex (i.e.,“gender identity”) spells the end of all sex-segregation everywhere. If society can no longer separate humans according to either biological sex or “gender identity,” then there remains no legal rationale for retaining any sex-segregated private spaces for anyone anywhere.

For example, if a school allows one boy who “identifies” as a girl to use the girls’ locker room, there is no legal rationale for preventing normal boys (i.e., “cisgender boys) from doing likewise. The school could not prohibit normal boys from using the girls’ locker room based on the fact that they’re biological boys for that would constitute discrimination based on sex (In addition, they’ve already allowed one biological boy to use the girls’ locker room). And schools could not prohibit “cisgender” boys from using the girls’ locker room, because that would constitute discrimination based on gender identity.

Unless the masses of people tethered to reality and morality rise up and oppose this irrational ideology, this is the end of physical privacy, my friends, the end.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Uptown-Peoples-Law-Center.mp3

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Just when you thought civilized first-world countries had deposited mythology and science-denying irrationality in the dustbin of history, the “trans” cult emerged seeking to force science-loving Americans to embrace the solipsistic, “trans”-centric worldview in which biological sex has neither reality nor meaning. Worse, you have ostensibly non-mentally ill school leaders capitulating to the “trans” cult’s absurd and offensive demands—people like Township High School District 211 superintendent Dr. Daniel Cates. Cates wants District 211—the largest high school district in Illinois with 12,000 students and five high schools—to sexually integrate locker rooms.

Cates wants to allow students who pretend to be the sex they aren’t to have unrestricted access to opposite-sex locker rooms. If Cates gets his druthers, whatever girls are permitted to do in girls’ locker rooms, boys who pretend to be girls will be permitted to do also. If girls are permitted to partially undress or wholly undress openly in girls’ locker rooms, then boys who pretend to be girls will be allowed to do so as well. Presumably, if girls are permitted to shower nude, so too will pretend-girls (aka boys) be allowed to shower nude.

Prior requirements that these boys change in private changing areas will be rescinded. In an email sent to parents on Thursday, Sept. 12, Cates referred to boys and girls in tortured, hilarious, politically correct language, calling them “adolescents with different anatomy.” I kid you not. He said that.

Cates is jim-dandy with girls and boys undressing together in locker rooms. How do I know Cates—who should be fired—is jim-dandy with co-ed locker rooms? I know because he said this in his pro-“trans” email:

[U]nderstanding and acceptance of transgender identity have advanced—societally and in our immediate communities—for the better. In our district and countless others, students, families and staff honor, respect and celebrate all manifestations of the human condition. (emphasis added)

Did an educated man really say that? Does he celebrate all manifestations of the human condition? How about racism, disease, intergenerational love, Genetic Sexual Attraction, polyamory, infantilism, sadomasochism, and zoophilia?

How does Cates demonstrate respect for those who believe “adolescents with different anatomy” should not undress or engage in bodily functions in the presence of peers of the opposite sex? How does he communicate his respect for those who believe the sexual integration of locker rooms undermines the belief that modesty derives from anatomical differentiation?

Cates has explicitly and unequivocally announced that the district has embraced a radical set of Leftist ideological assumptions created and advanced by the “trans” cult, without providing a persuasive reason why private space usage should correspond to subjective and often fluid “gender identity” as opposed to objective immutable biological sex. Nor has he shared his view on which locker rooms “gender fluid” students use.

Someone should ask Cates this question: Is it legitimate, valid, sound, reasonable, and good for girls not to want to share private spaces with opposite-sex persons? If it is, then what difference should it make to girls if opposite-sex persons wish they were girls? If it’s not legitimate, valid, sound, reasonable, or good, then why have any sex-segregated private spaces?

“Progressives” often ask snottily, “So, are we going to have genitalia police outside restrooms and locker rooms to confirm the presence of the right genitalia before people enter,” to which I reply, “Are we going to have ‘gender identity’ police outside restrooms and locker rooms to prove that the man seeking to enter really is ‘trans’ rather than a predator pretending to be ‘trans?’”

Since “gender identity” is subjective and internal, how do, for example, boys who “identify” as girls know the “gender identities” of the students in the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms? Let’s try this thought experiment: If most of the boys in the boys’ locker room at a particular school were to identify internally as girls and most of the girls were to identify internally as boys, which locker room should boys who impersonate girls use and why? It’s likely Leftists would answer that they should use whichever private spaces they want. And that, my friends, is where this is headed: The end game is the eradication of public recognition of biological sex everywhere for everyone, which means no private spaces anywhere for anyone.

Cates has either become a true believer in the “trans”-cultic mythology or he has sacrificed his principles and integrity on the altar to the almighty god of the greenback. Faced with a lawsuit against the district by a boy who pretends to be a girl, perhaps Cates—a graduate of the University of Notre Dame—would rather sacrifice science and the privacy and modesty of girls and boys than either district money or his job.

A man of real courage, principle, and integrity would never adopt such a foul policy. Rather, a man of courage, principle, and integrity would resign instead of adopting a policy that teaches girls and boys that biological sex has no meaning relative to feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when undressing.

A man of courage, principle, and integrity would resign before adopting a policy that implicitly teaches that opposition to sharing locker rooms with opposite sex peers is ignorant, bigoted, and hateful.

A decent and wise leader would know that it’s wrong to put normal children in the awkward position of having to ask for special accommodations because they don’t want to change clothes or go to the bathroom in the presence of opposite-sex peers.

A decent and wise leader would know that such a pernicious policy will desensitize children and teens to engaging in private acts in the presence of opposite-sex peers, thereby undermining what is left of respect for the necessary virtue of modesty.

I’ve had “progressive” parents tell me that their daughters are fine undressing in the presence of “trans”-identifying male peers. These parents are happy about their daughters’ socially constructed, unnatural feelings. They—like Cates—view the belief that biological sex has no meaning relative to modesty and privacy as social and moral progress. Compassion—in their distorted worldview—demands we pretend maleness and femaleness have nothing to do with biological sex.

Ironically, while rejecting the importance of biological sex, which wholly determined by biochemistry, “progressives” believe that if biochemistry influences the desire to be the opposite sex, such desires are supremely important and morally legitimate to act upon. But do they apply that principle consistently? If biochemistry influences the desire to be an amputee (i.e., Body Integrity Identity Disorder), should we allow students to socially transition at school? Should schools allow anatomically whole students who identify as amputees to use handicap parking spaces, use a wheelchair in school, and be given extra passing-period time?

Since we know that biochemistry can be disordered and influence both thoughts and feelings, how do “trans” cultists know that when there is a mismatch or incongruity between their biological sex and their “gender identity” (i.e., their subjective, internal sense of their maleness, femaleness, both, or neither) the error resides in their bodies rather than their minds?

How many dads and moms will show up to publicly and courageously oppose this feckless policy proposal? How many staff or faculty charged with supervising locker rooms will oppose supervising students of the opposite sex who are undressing?

District 211 encompasses a large geographic area in which there are many churches. It will be interesting to see if any pastors—who are citizens that enjoy the privilege of self-government and whose congregations include children in this district—will turn out to oppose the sexual integration of locker rooms. (Don’t hold your breath.)

Conservatives, get your kids out of government schools now. No child should be trained up by foolish, cowardly adults who refer to boys and girls as “adolescents with different anatomy” and let them undress together. Trust me, no matter what empty blather “progressive” government school administrators and faculty members spew about respecting diversity and “all manifestations of the human condition,” they don’t like conservatives or want them around—especially conservative Christians, you know, the “haters.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Largest-Illinois-High-School-District-Opposes-Single-Sex-Locker-Rooms.mp3

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On August 15, I wasted a half hour of my day by agreeing to be interviewed by Chicago Tribune reporter Hannah Leone for an article she was writing on the “LGBTQ” school indoctrination bill that Governor J.B. Pritzker recently signed into law and which takes effect July 1, 2020. Before I talk about her article, I should explain more about the interview.

Leone asked what my primary concern is with the law, which is a difficult question because there are so many problems with it. I responded that my primary concern is that our culture-makers—including the Tribune, lawmakers, and “educators”—never discuss the arguable presuppositions on which this law depends, and which “progressives” simply assume are inarguably true.

Those presuppositions are that homosexuality and cross-sex identification are ontologically analogous to race and, therefore, the actions that emerge from homosexual feelings and the desire to be the opposite sex are morally benign or good. I told her that if “progressives” are asked to identify the specific points of correspondence between homosexuality or cross-sex identification per se and race per se, they come up empty.

I further said that “IFI supports the teaching of historically significant cultural contributions. We object, however, to teachers identifying the sexual predilections of historically significant cultural contributors and to basing the selection of cultural contributions on the sexual predilections of cultural contributors.”

She then asked me,

What about movements/milestones like the stonewall riots, HIV/AIDS epidemic, don’t ask/don’t tell, and legalization of same-sex marriage?

I responded,

Because of the complex and controversial nature of these cultural events, they should not be presented in elementary school at all. In middle and high school, they should be presented only if teachers are willing to spend equal time exploring fairly, neutrally, and comprehensively both sides of debates regarding whether these movements have served the culture in positive ways or corrupted culture. Such presentations must include discussions of foundational presuppositions. If teachers are unwilling to present the best resources on both sides of the debate or unwilling or unable to discuss neutrally foundational presuppositions, then they have a pedagogical obligation not to introduce the topics. If they present only affirming views of these movements, they transform education into indoctrination. If they believe reading criticism of these movements will make some students too uncomfortable, they should avoid the topics. If they believe students are too young to understand the foundational presuppositions, then the topics are age-inappropriate. I would argue that most public school teachers are intellectually ill-equipped to address the foundational presuppositions, which are critical to the entire project mandated by this law.”

I also addressed the reason we don’t see leftists fighting for the roles and contributions of polyamorists and zoophiles to be taught to children and teens, which is that lawmakers and “educators” understand that teaching about their roles and contributions would contribute to normalizing polyamory and zoophilia, which they don’t want to do because they’ve concluded polyamory and zoophilia are immoral. And there you have it: Lawmakers and “educators” are imposing their moral beliefs about homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation on Illinois children.

Leone initially told me her article would be published sometime the following week. When it wasn’t, I asked her when it would be coming out. On Monday night, Sept.2, she told me it would be out Tuesday and told me this:

We had a limited amount of space to work with and your interview did not get included, but your perspective still helped inform the article, so thanks for your time anyway.

Then Monday, I read her front-page, lengthy, 2,136-word article. For perspective, the average newspaper article is between 600-1,500 words.

Here are just some of the nuggets of Fool’s Gold in Leone’s biased advocacy masquerading as a news story:

1. The Inclusive Curriculum Law, signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Aug. 9, mandates that by the time students finish eighth grade, public schools must teach them about contributions to state and U.S. history made by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Note that the law mandates that indoctrination must begin before eighth grade. And it must include contributions to state history made by homosexuals and opposite-sex impersonators, which tells you that the contributions chosen will not be based on historical or cultural significance but on the sexual predilections of contributors.

2. “This law will give more young people the opportunity to see themselves in those who came before us and recognize they are not alone,” [Chicago mayor] Lightfoot said in a statement to the Tribune.

What about the young people who experience other types of powerful, unchosen, seemingly intractable subjective, internal desires that they choose to act upon? What if they or their many parents identify as polyamorous? What if they identify as kinksters or zoophiles? Should people from those marginalized communities have an opportunity to see themselves in those who came before them and recognize they are not alone?

When I pose this question to “progressives,” they get all judgy-judgy, huffing indignantly that it’s offensive to compare homosexuality or opposite-sex impersonation to zoophilia or any other sexual identity they view as disordered or immoral. Their indignation reveals that the Leftists who run the Springfield swamp and public schools have, indeed, arrived at ontological and moral conclusions about homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation and treat them as indisputable facts. And now they’re imposing their subjective beliefs on all Illinois families who have the misfortune of not having a choice on where their children are educated.

President of the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools, Mark Klaisner (who carries around a bit of baggage), who is “Helping compile resources for schools to draw from,” whines about the possibility that the “vagueness” of the law will result in schools not indoctrinating enough:

3. Being that vague could mean a simple unit or a few lessons at one grade level in the school, which I think is insufficient.

Can’t have positive portrayals of what many view as sexual perversion be foisted on other people’s children for a mere unit. That’s not nearly enough time for propaganda to take effect.

Imagine an “educator” saying, “a simple unit or a few lessons about polyamory or Genetic Sexual Attraction at one grade level is insufficient.”

Even more troubling is feckless Klaisner’s view on the appropriate age at which to introduce children to ideas about homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation:

4. For younger students, it may make sense to introduce names and fewer details, and wait until around third grade to mention someone identified as gay or transgender. (emphasis added)

Third grade—an age at which children are wholly incapable of understanding the conservative and “progressive” foundational assumptions about homosexuality and opposite-sex identification—is the age by which Klaisner wants these topics introduced.

Michelle Vallet, mother of a daughter who “identifies” as (which in plain language means pretends to be) a boy, disagrees with Klaisner:

5. Vallet said she doesn’t think it’s ever too early to bring up [these topics]…. Normalizing these identities early is key.

There you have it in plain, unguarded English. The goal of Leftists is to use curricula, taxpayer money, and captive audiences to normalize abnormal, disordered sexuality.

Leone writes that one of the law’s sponsors, State Representative Anna Moeller (D-Elgin), is not yet satisfied:

6. [T]hough passing the law reflects an advancement in civil rights, more still needs to be done, Moeller said.

Then Moeller trots out the tired and absurd comparison of homosexuality and opposite-sex identification to race:

In the way schools have become required to teach about African Americans, Latinos, women and other marginalized communities, now they’ll be required to include… some discussion of LGBT.

Moeller doesn’t explain in what specific ways homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation per se are like race or biological sex per se. Nor does she say whether she ultimately wants schools to be required to discuss all “marginalized communities” or just the ones whose volitional acts she deems morally acceptable.

Like Moeller, Garcia High School biology teacher Bryan Meeker has disturbing hopes for students:

7. Meeker said he’d also love to see students in English classes reading works by Harvey Milk, a San Francisco politician and one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States before his assassination in 1978.

Yikes! A high school teacher wants the works of an ephebophile (i.e., an adult who is sexually attracted to teens) to be taught in government schools in order to change the perception of teens toward homosexuality? Harvey Milk was a “short-tempered demagogue” and ephebophile who exploited multiple suffering teen boys for his own sexual gratification. And he was not a martyr for the cause of “equality.” He was murdered for “petty” political reasons by a supporter of “gay rights.” Milk was also a friend and promoter of cult leader Jim Jones. Are schools now going to teach positively about the “roles and contributions” of ephebophiles and murderous cult leaders?

Perhaps high school teachers should teach Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco. And English teachers who teach The Laramie Project should include as a companion piece The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard written by homosexual journalist Stephen Jimenez.

The only “opponent” of the law Leone cited in her article was retiring State Representative Margo McDermed (R-Mokena) who voted against the “LGBTQ” school indoctrination bill but only for fiscal reasons:

8. “It’s not … that it’s not a good cause…. I vote against mandates no matter how worthy the topic may be, and of course this is a worthy topic.”

With Republican friends like this, conservatives definitely don’t need enemies.

Leone reveals her bias when she refers to “milestones such as marriage equality.” “Marriage equality” is a Leftist term. Conservatives would refer to “marriage redefinition.” Defining marriage in law as the union of two people of opposite sexes is no more evidence of inequality than is defining marriage in law as the union of only two persons or of only persons not closely related by blood, definitions which exclude plural and incestuous marriage.

Experience both in my current job and my former job in the writing center at Deerfield High School has taught me that many—perhaps most—”progressives” violate with regularity their purported commitments to tolerance, respect for diversity, inclusivity, and critical thinking. They substitute epithet-hurling for argumentation and evidence, and they censor dissenting views. As everyone knows, this is most common when it comes to issues involving homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation. What is remarkable and troubling is that the hatred of progressives is virulent and directed at those who hold theologically orthodox views, including those who are Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Orthodox Jews.

My views on these issues are historical, mainstream theologically orthodox views. They are not fringe positions. I’m just willing to express them publicly. And why do so few Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestants express their views as boldly and publicly as I do (and as progressives express theirs)? They recoil from being falsely called “haters” or losing their jobs. Toxic progressivism has led to religious discrimination of a kind never seen in America, and it’s getting worse.

It’s also remarkable and troubling that the Chicago Tribune seems so incurious about these topics. There are brilliant men and women writing about these issues eloquently, intelligently, and piquantly. I suspect most Trib writers and editors (and public school teachers and Springfield swampsters) haven’t heard of them, haven’t read their material, and don’t have any interest in interviewing them for articles, book talks, or festivals.

Perhaps the Trib’s incuriosity is bolstered by the bias evidenced by news reporters like Hannah Leone who must have thought I just tumbled off the proverbial turnip truck. She seemed to think I would believe that in a front-page, 2,100-word article, she had insufficient space to include anything from our interview or any comment from any other conservative opponent.

I’m not sure how my “perspective helped inform the article” as Leone claimed it did unless she’s referring to this one sentence about opposing positions: “But some detractors see the state forcing local districts to promote an agenda conflicts with their personal or religious beliefs.” If so, wow.

Word to presumptuous lawmakers and propagandists who identify as educators and journalists: It is not the role of government-employed teachers to make students feel good about their subjective sexual feelings—not even those sexualities that Leftists have deemed the darling identities ‘o’ the day.

Word to conservative parents: GET OUT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS!

Word to churches: Help parents get their children out.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Toxic-Schools.mp3

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Written by Dr. Everett Piper

Once there was a prominent landowner who had a son. Even though the boy was quite well cared for and had everything he needed, he became restless. One day he approached his dad and said: “Father, I don’t want to wait for my inheritance. Frankly, I am suffocating living under your rules and your expectations. I want my freedom. I want my money. It is time for me to move out of the house, get my own place, and live as I want.”

Well, even though the father was understandably brokenhearted, he relented. He gave his son the freedom and the money he demanded. He let the boy decide how to use (or abuse) his inheritance. He permitted the prodigal to leave home. He gave his son his own way.

So, the son packed his bags and moved to the big city and rented an apartment. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he squandered everything he had. He had his freedom. He had his money, and he wasted it all by living his own way.

About the time he was spending his last few dollars of inheritance, a severe recession occurred. Having nothing left, the young man began living on the streets and scavenging in back alley dumpsters for food. He was so hungry he resorted to eating garbage to survive.

As the story goes, one day, this wayward son woke up. He came to his senses and said to all his vagabond friends: “All the ranch hands back home working for my father are much better off than we are. They, at least, sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I am going back home.”

Reflecting on this parable of the arrogant and wayward son causes me to think of today’s colleges and universities.

I think of higher education’s “birthright and inheritance” as seen in the original mission statements of many of our nation’s seminal institutions: Of Harvard’s Christo et Ecclesia, “For Christ and the Church,” of Princeton’s Vitam Mortuis Reddo, “I restore life to the dead,” of Yale’s expressed goal for its students “to know God in Jesus Christ and … to lead a Godly, sober life.”

I think of the academy’s prodigal path, where colleges and universities, contrary to their founding creeds, now refuse even to allow traditional Judeo-Christian ideas to be openly discussed and freely debated on their respective campuses.

I think of faculty who have been denied tenure because they dared to assume they could engage in an open exchange of ideas on matters such as human origins, climate change, identity politics, intersectionality and critical race theory.

I think of the consequences of “living our own way” and eating from the “back alley dumpsters” of safe spaces, gender-neutral pronouns, trigger warnings and micro-aggressions.

I think of the routine reports of binge drinking, date rape, sexual abuse, escalating suicide rates and the pandemic reality of STDs.

But, I also think of our father and his provisions and his teachings: of Veritas; of “Truth”; of Harvard’s early affirmation on its school shield – “If you hold to my teachings you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

Finally, I think of the historical “home “of the academy and the intellectual freedom we used to have under our father’s roof as opposed to the ideological fascism we now experience at the hand of our arrogance and rebellion.

In the story of the prodigal son, Jesus tells us: “Not long after squandering his birthright, there was a bad famine in the land, and the son began to hurt. Having nothing left but his “way,” this young man began working in the fields, feeding the pigs, thinking he must do so to survive. He was so hungry he was now eating the corncobs in the pig slop.”

As a lifelong educator, I look at my academic peers in today’s colleges and universities and I can’t help but ask myself, “has our own way resulted in what we expected when we told our father we wanted to move out of his house?” Did we get what we wanted when we spent our inheritance? Is our chosen path as liberating as we hoped?

Have “our wildest dreams” led us to where we expected or have we stumbled into a nightmare, wading in fields of pig slop and eating the “corncobs” of abuse, dysfunction, selfishness and addiction? Did we get the freedom we hoped for when we left home or have we become slaves to the consequences of frivolous spending and childish irresponsibility?

One last question: Is it possible that “Dad” was smarter than we thought he was all along?

Perhaps it is time for American education to leave the corncobs behind and go home.

Dr. Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).

Written by Michelle Thomas

If you remember the late, great financial teacher Larry Burkett, your life is likely the better for it. I worked with Larry for several years in his Gainesville, Georgia headquarters of Christian Financial Concepts (and continued to work for the organization from home for many years after my children started coming along). In my mind, he ranks right up there with some of our Founding Fathers in his wisdom, love for this country, and amazing foresight in economic and political issues. He even left this world on the same patriotic day as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe—on Independence Day, 2003, at the young age of 63. His teachings, which were straight from Scripture, changed my life and bent the twig for my children and hopefully future generations.

The department in which I worked was tasked with answering constituents’ financial questions, so I had to be quite the student of Larry Burkett. In preparation for answering a certain e-mail, I had the opportunity to skim through the pages of Larry’s 1991 best seller, The Coming Economic Earthquake. The book was updated in 1994 to reflect the happenings of the Clinton era, and it’s amazing how accurate Larry was in his foresight of what was coming for our economy and for the nation, in general. He touched on many topics in the book, but some jumped out at me as especially relevant for today.

In light of the battles over the Common Core agenda that was shoved down the nation’s collective throat, Larry said, “Check out the curriculum being taught in your local schools and see if it is anti-free-market. It would shock most Americans to realize that a great deal of the economic information being fed their children in elementary schools, high schools, and especially state universities is blatantly socialistic, if not openly communistic.”

He went on,

The only place that communism still seems to flourish is in the American classroom. It is often labeled ‘socialism’ but, in reality, it is the same doctrine that was taught in the Soviet Union prior to the communism collapse: Government is the protector of the downtrodden; capitalism is inherently evil; people deserve decent incomes, regardless of their desire to work or not; and last, the government is a better purveyor of the nation’s resources than the wage earners are.

Sound familiar? The very issues that Larry saw as major problems 25 years ago have escalated at an alarming rate.

The government takeover of health care that was attempted during the Clinton administration was delayed only a few years until Obama came into power and had the political backing to force it onto the nation. Larry had great wisdom and forethought in this matter: “Let me say that if the federal government is allowed to take control of health care, which represents approximately 14 percent of our total economy, it will be the stake in the heart of our free enterprise system. The government cannot solve our health care problems—it is the problem!”

Larry continued,

Only twelve cents of every government dollar spent on health care now actually reaches a patient. It is a grossly inefficient system. There are two old sayings in Washington that describe what will happen to health care as soon as the political system gains control of that area too: ‘A camel is a horse designed by a government committee,’ and ‘An elephant is a mouse designed to government specifications.’

Wow. If only we had heeded his warning, maybe we wouldn’t be facing the disastrous effects of the government hijacking of our health care system.

Regarding abortion coverage, Larry said, “I rather suspect that, if abortion is accepted as a ‘necessary benefit,’ there would be heavy pressure put on those who oppose abortion to participate or be subjected to financial penalties.” Isn’t this exactly what we’re seeing today? Ministries and faith-based companies (Hobby Lobby and James Dobson’s Family Talk are some of the most recognizable) have been forced to sue the federal government over the abortion mandate in Obamacare. Larry added,

Christians will have to take a stand on this issue, regardless of the consequences. We should have acted with one voice when the Supreme Court decided that somehow an unborn human has no rights. Once abortion is funded through a national health care plan, the number of abortions will likely escalate. God’s people must wake up to this offense now! There is no nation that will survive God’s wrath for long, if and when it decides to kill its young (and old).

When writing The Coming Economic Earthquake, Larry reported that at the current rate of growth, the national debt would swell to $8.7 trillion by the year 2004. Even Larry couldn’t anticipate the rate of reckless spending by the most liberal president in the history of our nation–Barack Obama. Thanks to democrats and republicans alike, I believe Larry would be utterly shocked to know that the national debt is now nearly three times his predicted 2004 level, and it is higher than the Gross Domestic Product of our entire nation.

Writing about the forecasted 2004 national debt of $8.7 trillion, Larry said,

There has never been anything approaching this level of debt funding in the history of mankind in so short a period of time, even on a percentage basis. The effects of this will be felt throughout the U.S. and ultimately the world’s economies…..Either the government will take the necessary steps to control the budget and reduce the deficits drastically, or they will resort to monetizing the debt by printing massive amounts of new currency.

We know which option our leaders chose.

Larry went on to say that,

Logic and common sense seem to play small parts in our present society….The answer [to these and all other issues] is found in God’s Word. All of these things are but symptoms. The real problem is that we have removed God from the decision-making process in America today. When any nation does this, evil will prosper. This is not the fault of the politicians; they are responding to the wishes of the most vocal groups. It is that the unprincipled people around us seem to be more committed to their agenda than the true ‘moral majority’ is to theirs.

Larry urged us to get involved in the political process and the issues of the day so that we could make a difference for the better. I would add that if we want to leave this great nation intact for our children and grandchildren, we have no choice but to hold our leaders accountable for their foolish decisions and force them to make changes that will lead us back to the founding principles that made us exceptional.

Some wise thoughts that Larry left us:

The one certainty is that God is still in control no matter what happens….However, knowing that God is in control does not remove our responsibility to do everything possible to change what is happening or to prepare ourselves for some difficult times. As Proverbs 16:9 says, ‘The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.’

We are to witness to those around us that God is sufficient in all things….God desires followers who will serve Him regardless of the costs. Adversity seems to strengthen us, whereas prosperity tends to weaken us. As the Prophet said in Proverbs 30:8-9, ‘Keep deception and lies far from me, give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is my portion, lest I be full and deny Thee and say, “Who is the Lord?” or lest I be in want and steal, and profane the name of my God.’

Larry Burkett left this earth entirely too soon. We need his wisdom now more than ever.

Michelle Thomas is a Christ follower, wife to Trevor Thomas, and homeschooling mom of four. Her books include a devotional for moms, Lord, I Need You, a book about her grief journey, Through Deep Waters, and a chronicle of their financial journey, Debt-Free Living in a Debt-Filled World. Her website is KingdomCrossing.com, and her email is michelle@kingdomcrossing.com.

This article was originally published at TrevorGrantThomas.com.