Written by Peter Heck

I got thinking the other day that I probably needed to start paying attention to some of what I was writing for others to read.  Here’s what I mean: I wrote a couple times recently about former tennis great Martina Navratilova, a woman who came out of the closet as a gay athlete long before it was culturally cool to do so, who was plowed over by the tidal wave of transgenderism in our culture.

Martina voiced her opposition to having to compete against a biological male in a woman’s sport just because he says he thinks he’s a female.  And while I wrote about that to draw attention to the hostility transgender ideology has for the entire construct of biological sex (something that provides the foundation for homosexual ideology), I realized that I needed to take heed myself.  If it’s a tidal wave in the culture, I’m not going to be spared as it washes ashore.

So, what am I doing to prepare not just myself but my kids?  Beyond that, how can I prepare when this revolutionary movement is happening quicker and with more extreme manifestations than anyone predicted?  There’s only one answer: Christianity.

Actual Christianity.  Biblical Christianity.  Christianity that teaches submission to God’s will, not our own.  That’s why I was so excited to see this piece by Dan Doriani that outlined the three basic principles that we Christians need to be ingraining in our children’s heads every day, without hesitation, without fail.

First, God created all things.  And in so doing, He chose to create humanity male and female.  Doriani does an admirable job pointing out that much of what we think about gender is socially constructed.

Wearing ties and tuxes as men versus wearing dresses and rompers as women is totally arbitrary.  It is socially constructed by our culture.  Differences like an affinity for cooking or sports are also socially constructed and many times boys will cross over into “girl” activities and vice versa.  We should point this all out to our children as we encourage them to express themselves freely in their interests and hobbies.

But when it comes to sexual identity, the Word and the world it informs is clear:

Activities like giving birth and nursing are creational, not social. Reproduction is basic to how God designed us. People are male or female in every cell of the body, in both nerves and hormones—not in the reproductive organs alone.

Secondly, Doriani stresses the importance of teaching our children that their bodies are gifts, not a problem.  While sin is a problem and it has impacted our bodies in negative ways, our bodies have been given to us by God for our use.  Doriani writes,

Parents, help your children appreciate that they are fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. 139:14). Tell and show them that God enables their bodies to do marvelous things. We can run and shout. We can be still. We can dance, sway, and sing. Parents, let your children see you performing acts of dexterity and skill—making music, juggling and drawing, throwing and catching, making and fixing.

This is particularly important in the age of video games and iPads.

Finally, the author encouraged us to help our children see the gifts God has given each of us to use for His glory.  Doing all these things help kids develop a healthy and well-adjusted understanding of the relationship between our physical bodies and our metaphysical minds:

Our culture constantly tells us to “Follow your heart” to find our identity by looking within. The Bible never says, “Follow your heart.” In fact, Jeremiah 17:9 makes it plain: “The heart is deceitful.”

True, we may question roles that family and society have thrust upon us. Yet it is good, not evil, to find our place in the world through the body God gives us. If we believe in the sovereignty and goodness of God, we tell our children this truth applies to them.

Amen.  Standing athwart the rising tide of sexual insanity in the culture, our children need to cling to something reliable, fixed, and unmoving.  Here’s a good place to start.

This article was originally published at PeterHeck.com.

An arm of, arguably, the most tyrannical, divisive, hateful, and destructive political movement in the country will once again urge children and teens to disrupt government schools for an entire day on Friday April 12, 2019. And for the 23^rd year in row, spineless Christians will take it on the chin. They tolerate the intolerable—not for principled reasons—but out of cowardice.

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) sponsors and promotes the political protest called Day of Silence whose goal is to exploit taxpayer-funded middle and high schools for the purpose of transforming the moral, political, and ontological views of other people’s children. GLSEN even provides a guide for “educators” that teaches teachers how to promote Leftist views of homosexuality and the “trans” phenomenon on Day of Silence.

GLSEN urges students to refuse to speak for the entire day—including during instructional time—in the service of normalizing disordered feelings and sexual acts that God abhors. And Christians shamefully say and do nothing.

Day of Silence uses government schools to propagate arguable assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexual acts and relationships and of biological-sex impersonation. And Christians rationalize their capitulation as fostering unity and demonstrating “niceness.”

Why are “LGBTQ” activists more impassioned, tenacious, and persevering in promoting wickedness than Christ-followers are in opposing it? Do Christians not remember that we are to deny ourselves and take up our crosses daily, to hate evil and love good, to expose the unfruitful works of darkness, and to count it all joy when we encounter trials because of our identity in Christ?

Have Christians forgotten these words of Jesus: “It is inevitable that stumbling blocks will come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be thrown into the sea than to cause one of these little ones to stumble”?

As children and teens are inculcated with a body-, mind-, and heart-destroying ideology, one must wonder if Christians love—or even like—their neighbors.

There is something Christian parents can do. They can contact their children’s middle and high school administrators to ask if students and/or teachers will be permitted to refuse to speak on Day of Silence. If the answer is “yes,” keep your children home. Stop acquiescing to every moral offense the sexually deviant among us do in the service of their ideology.

Schools have a legal and pedagogical right to prohibit students from refusing to speak during class time. Schools may prohibit any actions they deem disruptive, and surely refusing to speak during instructional time is disruptive.

Imagine if another group of students refused to speak for an entire day to draw attention to the plight of women in Muslim countries, or the plight of Christians in China, or to object to American military intervention around the world, or to oppose socialized medicine, or endorse the Green New Deal. Such hijacking of government schools is disruptive and inappropriate. Students can engage in political action on their own time and their own dime—not in public schools supported by the hard-earned money of diverse peoples, many of whom object to the assumptions of the “LGBTQ” ideology.

A month ago, a Fresno, California high school spokesperson prohibited students from wearing MAGA hats, implying that the hats would be “distracting.” Translated: She feared intolerant leftist high school students would respond obnoxiously to the presence of peers wearing MAGA hats.

It’s well-known that conservative kids are far less likely to respond obnoxiously to “progressive” paraphernalia or political action than Leftist kids would to conservative paraphernalia or political action. Therefore, only conservative paraphernalia and political action are deemed distractions and banned. Leftist brats, bullies, and boors win again.

If the Leftists who control government schools really cared about creating a learning environment free of political distractions and disruptions, they would establish policies that prohibit all clothing with political messages and all controversial political action. But they don’t.

I learned from my experience working at Deerfield High School on Chicago’s North Shore that the claims of Leftist teachers about their commitments to tolerance, inclusivity, and diversity are lies. They don’t value true tolerance, inclusivity, or diversity. They don’t seek to make schools “safe” places for all students. They don’t care if Orthodox Jews, Muslims, or theologically orthodox Christians feel excluded, uncomfortable, and “unsafe.”

The central pedagogical goals of Leftist “teachers”—better known as agents of change—are ideological not pedagogical. And they’re shameless in their hyp0crisy.

Conservative Parents: If your middle or high school allows students to refuse to Speak on Day of Silence, please keep your children home.

Click here for more information.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/mp3-What-the-World-Needs-Now-is-Some-Conservative-Civil-Disobedience_01.mp3

IFI works diligently to serve the Christian community in Illinois with email alerts, video reports, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences and cultural commentaries. We do not accept government funds nor do we run those aggravating popup ads to generate funds.  We depend solely on the support of readers like you.

If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI, please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.  It does make a difference.

Back in 2012-2013, Illinois State Senator Kimberly Lightford (D-Chicago) introduced legislation to lower the mandatory age for school attendance in Illinois from 7 to 5 years-of-age.  Springfield lawmakers eventually compromised, passing a bill to make mandatory school age at age six.

This year, Illinois Senator Lightford is taking another shot at lowering the school age to five with SB 2075.  In other words, she believes the state knows best about how early our children should be subjected to formal education, or in many cases, the indoctrination process. There is absolutely no reason for the government to usurp our God-given authority as parents to direct the upbringing of our children by turning them over to the state at an even younger, more impressionable, age.

The last thing parents need in Illinois is more government control and influence in their lives and this is especially true for our young and impressionable children.  We all need to wake up and realize the level of indoctrination already occurring in our public schools, including the promotion of man-made global warming, Darwinism, LGBTQ+ affirmation and the elimination of genders, population control, feminism, reproductive ‘choice’ and other social and political issues.

Veteran and prize winning public school educator John Taylor Gatto asks, “Do we really need school?  I don’t mean education, just forced schooling:  six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years.  Is this deadly routine necessary?”  Gatto goes on to list Americans who were spared the public school routine and nevertheless managed to achieve some modest success in life:  George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.  He concludes they were, “Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.”

The truth may be that public schools aren’t about education at all.

The decision of when to start children in public schools, which increasingly serves the political ends of liberals, rests with parents, not school administrators or lawmakers.

IFI is working with the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and Illinois Christian Home Educators (ICHE) in defense of parental rights and in opposition to this proposal.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to email or fax your state senator to ask him/her to vote against SB 2075 and the expanding role of government in the lives of Illinois families.  Click HERE for his/her contact information to make a call or, better yet, to visit him/her.

Read more: Invasive International Survey Targeting Pre-K Students Is Coming to U.S.

IFI works diligently to serve the Christian community in Illinois with email alerts, video reports, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences and cultural commentaries. We do not accept government funds nor do we run those aggravating popup ads to generate funds.  We depend solely on the support of readers like you.

If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI, please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.  It does make a difference.

How did they vote?

This afternoon, the Illinois House of Representatives voted 60-42 to pass HB 246, which will mandate that all students in K-12 public schools be taught about the “roles and contributions” of homosexuals and opposite-sex impersonators and that textbooks purchased include discussions of the roles and contributions of homosexuals and opposite-sex impersonators.

Click HERE to see how your state representative voted on this legislation, or look at the graphic below. The chief sponsor of this legislation in the Illinois House is State Representative Anna Moeller (D-Chicago).

It is interesting to note that in the Illinois House, 44 Republicans and 14 Democrats did not vote for this LGBT indoctrination scheme. On the pro-family side, the only lawmaker to speak against the passage of this unfunded mandate to indoctrinate your children was Tom Morrison (R-Palatine).

This legislation now moves to the Illinois Senate where it is has a good chance of passing unless there is a  tsunami of opposition from Christians across Illinois. Governor J.B. Pritzker is also expected to sign this legislation into law. Thanks for nothing to the 60 feckless state representatives who demonstrated again why Illinois is such a sorry state.

Take ACTION: Send a message to your state senator and to Gov. Pritzker to let them know that a good many Illinois voters oppose this effort to politicize curricula in order to advance biased beliefs about sexuality to children in our tax-funded government schools.

**UPDATE: This legislative mandate passed the Illinois House by a vote of 60-42 on March 13, 2019 and then in the Illinois Senate by a vote of 37-17 on May 23, 2019. It was sent to Governor Pritzker’s desk on June 21st. He is expected to sign it into law. Read more about the 2019 Spring Session HERE.

The official Illinois House roll call of this vote:

IFI Worldview Conference

This Saturday, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting our annual Worldview Conference. This year, we will focus on the “transgender” revolution. We will hear from Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians; Walt Heyer, former “transgender” and contributor to Public Discourse; Denise Schick, Founder and Director of Help 4 Families, and daughter of a man who “identified” as a woman; and Doug Wilson, who is a Senior Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, and pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho .

The Transgender Ideology:
What Is It? Where Will It Lead? What is the Church’s Role?
Click here for more information.

“Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
(Proverbs 22:6)

“Progressives,” also known as cultural regressives, have long had their sights on the hearts, minds, and bodies of other people’s children. Now that they control Big Government schools, regressives can control the ideas to which children are exposed. And boy, oh, boy are regressive Illinois lawmakers going for broke—morally speaking. They’ve already achieved fiscal bankruptcy.

Regressives in the ethical swamp known as Springfield are stampeding forward to impose the “LGBT” indoctrination bill regardless of whether it makes Orthodox Jewish, Muslim, theologically orthodox Christian, or secular conservative kids feel “unsafe” or whether it deeply offends those children’s parents. To heck with inclusivity. It’s the leftist low way or the highway.

If passed, this bill (HB 246)—which was created by three homosexual activist organizations—will require all students in k-12 public schools to be taught about the “roles and contributions” of homosexuals and opposite-sex impersonators and that textbooks purchased include discussions of the roles and contributions of homosexuals and opposite-sex impersonators. A quick, thoughtless skim of the bill might lead someone to think it’s innocuous. Critical analysis and deeper reflection—not the strengths of Springfield swamp creatures—expose the noxiousness of the bill.

The notion that homosexuality is the ontological flipside of and morally equivalent to heterosexuality is an arguable, leftist assumption—not an inarguable, objective fact. Others believe homosexuality represents a disordering of the sex drive. Government schools—supported by the hard-earned money of all taxpayers—have no ethical or pedagogical obligation or right to base curricular decisions on arguable, controversial assumptions—not even assumptions leftists really, really, really believe are true.

In order to teach all children in grades k-12 about the roles and contributions of homosexuals and cross-dressers, lawmakers and school leaders must have first determined that there is nothing morally questionable about homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation. To prove that’s the case, ask yourselves if Illinois lawmakers would pass a bill that requires schools to teach about the roles and contributions of polyamorists, polygamists, kin-lovers, or zoophiles.

We all know they wouldn’t. If there were a polyamorist, kin-lover, or zoophile who had contributed something monumentally significant—so significant that it must be discussed—educators would talk about the contribution, while remaining mum about the contributor’s sexual peccadillo. If the peccadillo were brought up, teachers  certainly wouldn’t describe it positively.

Why not? Surely, there are some kids who experience unchosen, powerful, and persistent sexual attraction for multiple people at the same time, or for a relative, or for animals. Why wouldn’t lawmakers require that the contributions of polyamorists, kin-lovers, and zoophiles be taught and that their sexual proclivities/identities be positively affirmed? Is the reason that they’re judgmental, puritanical, non-inclusive, intolerant, or hateful bigots?

Homosexual and “trans” activists reading this are likely to be at this very moment consumed by anger that derives from the kind of “judgmentalism,” “intolerance,” “hatred,” and “bigotry” of which they constantly accuse conservatives. Leftists become apoplectic when homosexuality and cross-sex identification are compared to the “sexual minorities” of polyamory, kin-loving, and zoophilia—”sexual minorities” that they view as morally offensive. Leftists are unwilling to grant to others the right to object to positive teaching about homosexuality and cross-sex identification on the same grounds that they—leftists—object to positive teaching about polyamory, polygamy, consensual incest, or zoophilia.

To be clear, I believe nonconsensual incest between adults and children and bestiality are more grievous moral errors than homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation, but I believe homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation are far more grievous moral errors than polyamory, which public schools would not present positively to students—at least not yet.

Schools have long taught about the contributions of important historical figures who experienced homoerotic attraction, people like Oscar Wilde, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and Sally Ride, so why do Springfield swampsters want this bill? The reason is that their central concern is not that contributions be taught but that the sexual predilections of cultural contributors be explicitly taught. And what would be the reason for that?

Leftists will say this bill is needed in order to provide role models for students who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. Equality Illinois, one of the homosexual activist groups that created this odious bill, says that an “LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum can have a positive effect on students’ self-image and make their peers more accepting.”

First, is improving self-images and promoting acceptance of homosexuality and the “trans” ideology the task of government employees charged with educating other people’s children?

Second, why aren’t “progressives” pushing a bill that would require curricula to teach about the roles and contributions of polyamorists, polygamists, kin-lovers, and zoophiles? To be consistent , shouldn’t they want curricula to positively affect the self-images of students who so identify? Shouldn’t they want peers of those students to be more accepting?

Now we’re getting to the dark heart of the matter. Leftists aren’t concerned centrally or solely with acceptance of persons. They’re centrally concerned with fostering approval of particular sex-related behaviors—not all sex-related behaviors—just the ones they have concluded are moral.

They want to use cultural contributions as a means to transform the feelings and moral beliefs of students about homosexuality and cross-sex identification. Homosexual and “trans” activists know that if positive contributions are associated with homosexuality or cross-sex impersonation, the good feelings students have about contributions will transfer to homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation.

Since the goal of these propagandists is not to ensure that children learn about the most important contributions in literature, science, and math but, rather, that curricula be used to transform feelings and beliefs about homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation, curricula will elevate lesser contributions of homosexuals and cross-dressers to the exclusion of more significant contributions by heterosexuals.

Leftists use public money and public schools to promote arguable assumptions as if they’re unassailable, objective truths, and they censor with shameless arrogance all assumptions they reject. They rationalize their censorship by declaring that if children were to study the ideas Leftists don’t like, some would feel “unsafe,” by which they mean uncomfortable. Oddly, they’re willing to expose other children to ideas that make them feel “unsafe.”

Christian parents need to think seriously about whether their children can be properly trained up in the way they should go by adults who believe homosexuality is morally equivalent to heterosexuality; who believe marriage has nothing to do with sexual differentiation; and who don’t believe that the differences between boys and girls are profound, meaningful, and must be respected.

Churches need to think seriously about how they can facilitate the exit of Christian children from government schools hell-bent on destroying their hearts, minds, and bodies.

Springfield swamp creatures want to infect all Illinois children with a diseased sexuality ideology via indoctrination centers identified as schools. Cunning, perhaps even demonic, wouldn’t you say, to get parents to pay for the blighted indoctrination of their own children?

“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” 3 John 1:4

Please, fight this bill, and while you’re doing that, plan an escape route for your children from government schools.

Take ACTION: Send a message to your state representative to ask him/her to reject this effort to politicize curricula in order to advance biased beliefs about sexuality to children in government schools.

**UPDATE: This legislative mandate passed the Illinois House by a vote of 60-42 on March 13, 2019 and then in the Illinois Senate by a vote of 37-17 on May 23, 2019. It was sent to Governor Pritzker’s desk on June 21st. He is expected to sign it into law. Read more about the 2019 Spring Session HERE.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/HB246.mp3

IFI Worldview Conference

On Saturday, March 16, 2019, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting our annual Worldview Conference. This coming year, we will focus on the “transgender” revolution. We already have commitments from Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians; Walt Heyer, former “transgender” and contributor to Public Discourse; Denise Schick, Founder and Director of Help 4 Families, and daughter of a man who “identified” as a woman; and Doug Wilson, who is a Senior Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, and pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho .

The Transgender Ideology:
What Is It? Where Will It Lead? What is the Church’s Role?
Click here for more information.

U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Ny), the darling of the new socialist Democrats in this country, recently referred to the three branches of government. She said, they are the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives. John Roberts, call your office.

Ocasio-Cortez is not alone in a great misunderstanding of our history. Many Americans have an abysmal knowledge of our history and some of the basics of American civics.

The results of a recently-released survey (2/15/19) are not encouraging. The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation reports that, “in the highest-performing state, only 53 percent of the people were able to earn a passing grade for U.S. history. People in every other state failed; in the lowest-performing state, only 27 percent were able to pass.” [Emphasis theirs.]

The states that did the best were Vermont, Wyoming, and South Dakota. The states that did the worst were Louisiana, Kentucky, and Arkansas. When I first read that, I thought, “Then, what are those Vermonters doing, voting for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders again and again?” As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Some examples of the common ignorance of Americans uncovered by the survey:

• 57% did not know that Woodrow Wilson was the Commander in Chief during World War I.

• 85% could not identify the correct year the U.S. Constitution was written (1787).

• 75% could not identify how many amendments have been added to the document (27).

• 25% did not know that freedom of speech was guaranteed under the First Amendment.

The Foundation concluded: “[A] waning knowledge of American history may be one of the greatest educational challenges facing the U.S.”

This survey is consistent with other findings through the years. We have dumbed down our schools.

Our loss of the knowledge of basic history and civics is a tragedy. We suffer from what I call, American Amnesia. I even wrote a whole book about it. God is the source of our freedom, but we forget this to our peril. As John F. Kennedy put it, “[T]he rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

I once interviewed the late Mel and Norma Gabler of Longview, Texas, who reviewed textbooks, from a Christian and conservative perspective. They told me of a textbook which dedicated seven pages to Marilyn Monroe, but only a paragraph to George Washington—and in that paragraph it mentioned that he had false teeth.

Our young people today know more about the trivia of today’s celebrities than they do the men and women who sacrificed everything to bequeath our freedoms to us.

Karl Marx once said, “Take away a people’s roots, and they can easily be moved.” Dr. Peter Lillback, with whom I had the privilege to write a book on the faith of George Washington, said in his book on church/state relations, Wall of Misconception, “One of our great national dangers is ignorance of America’s profound legacy of freedom. I firmly believe that ignorance is a threat to freedom.”

Lillback compiled the following quotes on the link between education and freedom:

• Thomas Jefferson said, “A nation has never been ignorant and free; that has never been and will never be.”

• James Madison observed, “The diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty….It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”

• Samuel Adams pointed out the importance “of inculcating in the minds of the youth the fear and love of the Deity and universal philanthropy, and, in subordination to these great principles, the love of their country.” God and charity first, said the Lightning Rod of the American Revolution, country second.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, says the Bible, which was in the first 200 years of America the chief textbook in one way or another. That includes the small but powerful New England Primer, which trained whole generations in Christian theology (in the Calvinist tradition), while teaching them even the basics of reading and writing.

Even their ABC’s were based on Biblical truths. Says the New England Primer: “A, In Adam’s Fall, We Sinned All. B, Thy Life to Mend, the Bible Tend. C, Christ Crucif’ed, For Sinners Died,” and so on.

Back then, with a Bible-based education, literacy was so high that John Adams said that to find an illiterate man in New England was as rare as a comet. It is too bad that as a society we continue to forget God, and we continue to reap the consequences, including the loss of our history and heritage of liberty.

Why does this matter? George Orwell, a former British Marxist, told us why in his classic novel, 1984: “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com

An Illinois lawmaker’s bill to publicly display the motto “In God We Trust” in public schools is the latest challenge to the secularism that is the status quo in many public schools across the country.  Though displaying the motto would not be mandatory, State Representative Darren Bailey (R-Xenia) says his legislation (HB 341) would encourage a return to Christian principles: “As a God-fearing Christian, I believe that the lack of such is the problem in our country today.”

This bill has three co-sponsors in the Illinois House thus far: State Representatives Andrew Chesney (R-Freeport), Chris Miller (R-Robinson) and Brad Halbrook (R-Shelbyville).

Illinois is the latest state with legislation that would permit the posting of “In God We Trust” in public schools.  Lawmakers in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee have recently voted to require or allow the motto to be posted in public schools.  Sheriff’s deputies in Jefferson County, Illinois, have joined the movement by voluntarily placing “In God We Trust” decals on their squad cars.  Similar bills have already been introduced this year in Alaska, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York and South Carolina.

Atheists like Hemant Mehta of friendlyatheist.pathos.com are outraged by attempts to refer to a Higher Power:

“We certainly don’t need religion to teach common decency and morality when it’s the Christians currently running the government who provide us with a steady stream of corrupt acts and cruel policies.”

Evidently not a very “friendly atheist.”  Critics also say the motto can be alienating to students who are not religious, and allege that it is a violation of the separation of church and state.

But that cornerstone of American secularism – the vaunted “separation of church and state” – never appears in the United States Constitution, but rather first appears in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association dated January 1, 1802.  Jefferson’s chief concern appears to be avoiding the establishment of any denomination as the “state church.”

Garrett Epps, writing in The Atlantic, and arguing against public expressions of faith, claims that the concept of the “separation of church and state” originated not with Jefferson, but with the American theologian Roger Williams, founder of the first Baptist congregation in the British New World.  According to Epps, Williams coined the phrase in 1644 to “signify the protection that the church needed in order to prevent misuse and corruption by political leaders.”

Epps is seemingly unaware that he has undermined his own argument.  The “separation of church and state” is meant to protect the churches from government intrusion – not the populace from exposure to religious teachings.

Those who oppose the influence of Christianity in society are fond of (mis)quoting Thomas Jefferson, one of several deists among the Founding Fathers.  But deism is not atheism, and while Jefferson did not believe in supernatural revelation, he affirmed his belief in one God as well as in divine providence, the divine moral law, and in personal judgment including rewards and punishments after death.

The opponents of Christianity would also do well to study the life of George Washington, the first president of the United States.  George Washington was a devoted Anglican his entire life.  As General of the Army of the Potomac, Washington openly endorsed religious practice – this, mind you, while as a public servant.  He encouraged his soldiers to attend to their religious duties, including “to implore the blessing of Heaven” upon the nascent American Army.  Washington’s archived papers contain hundreds of biblical quotations, figures of speech, idioms, proverbs, and allusions related to his Christian faith.

George Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787 during the time when the writing of two key founding documents in American history were written: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  The Constitution explicates how the new United States was intended to function.  The Declaration of Independence lays out the rationale for the new nation, and in so doing mentions God four times and states that our rights come from our Creator.

It seems inconceivable that important aspects of American history are deliberately withheld from public school students – especially when the vast majority hold to a belief in God and subscribe to Christian beliefs.  A Pew Research Center survey found that “an overwhelming majority of the youngest adults continue to believe in God or a higher power: Eight-in-ten of those ages 18 to 29 say they believe in at least some kind of spiritual force.”

It is the height of duplicity to deny the posting of what was unanimously declared by the 84^th Congress to be the official national motto of the United States, and which appears on the currency in the purses and wallets of students.  The “In God We Trust” movement is a welcome reaffirmation of the Divine guidance upon which our great country was built.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state representative to ask him/her to support and co-sponsor HB 341.  Simply acknowledging God does nothing to establish a church or a religion, but subtly points to the fact that we are dependent daily on God’s goodness, mercy and grace.

Christian Life in Exile
On February 22^nd, IFI is hosting a special forum with Dr. Erwin Lutzer as he teaches from his latest book, “The Church in Babylon,” answering the question, “How do we live faithfully in a culture that perceives our light as darkness?” This event is free and open to the public, and will be held at Jubilee Church in Medinah, Illinois.

Click HERE for more info…

Michelle Grissom, a social studies teacher at Mountain Ridge Middle School in Douglas County, Colorado, has been put on leave following her horrendous tweets about a Covington Catholic High School student. In her vindictive and indefensible quest to harm a student by “doxing” him, she mistakenly doxed the wrong student. “Doxing” refers to “searching for and publishing private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the Internet, typically with malicious intent.”

She attempted to publicly smear Nick Sandmann, the teenage boy whom Native American drummer Nathan Phillips tried to intimidate, but she instead identified Covington student Jay Jackson—who wasn’t on the trip to Washington D.C. She tweeted these words:

“His name is Jay Jackson. His twitter account is closed to non followers so we won’t interfere with his training #HitlerYouth.”

Bullying and death threats ensued. Jay Jackson’s father, Dr. John Jackson, then sent this tweet to Grissom:

I assure you this is not Jay Jackson…he played in a varsity basketball game last night in Park Hills, Kentucky and another game today in Middletown, Ohio the person has been identified please remove this post and apologize for accusing someone without evidence

With galling arrogance and lack of empathy for what she had done to Jay Jackson, she responded to his father:

Listen, I’m happy to retract his name if that’s not him. Though according to his school’s schedule, he didn’t play today unless he’s playing for another team. His name is all over twitter, so you’ll want to convince more than me.

A rational and fair person doesn’t accuse first and then demand proof of her error before retracting her accusation. A rational and fair person does not make accusations without proof.

Dr. Jackson sent proof. Finally convinced of her egregious and dangerous error and with a insufferable hostility and a stunning absence of humility, she tweeted,

I officially retract using Jay Jackson from Covington Catholic High School’s name as the racist and disrespectful student who mocked Native American, Nathan Phillips. I apologize to Jay Jackson and his family.

No evident remorse for the harm she did and the danger she put this boy and his family in. No tweets about the inappropriate, disrespectful, confrontational actions and subsequent deceit of Phillips—aka Nathan Stanard. No tweets about the “Black Hebrew Israelite” hate group hurling all manner of anti-homosexual, anti-Native American, and anti-white epithets.

Her tweets reveal not only her arrogance, hatred, ideological bias, lack of compassion, and poor judgment but also her unfitness for teaching in a public school. Her tweets violated school policy on the use of social media by district employees which states the following:

Whenever you use social media, use good judgment…. Avoid using statements, photographs, video or audio that reasonably could be viewed as malicious [or] unprofessional.

While not all government teachers would engage in behavior so reckless and destructive, you better believe countless “change-agents” feel this way about conservatives and seek to socially construct such views in other people’s children using public funds.  Their goal is to transform other people’s children into ideological clones of themselves—on the public dime, of course.

Grissom has been put on leave. Let’s hope the district administration and school board have the good sense to fire her.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/CovingtonHS.mp3

Save the Date!!!

On Saturday, March 16, 2019, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting our annual Worldview Conference. This year’s conference will focus on the “transgender” revolution. We already have commitments from Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians; Walt Heyer, former “transgender” and contributor to Public Discourse; Denise Schick, Founder and Director of Help 4 Families, and daughter of a man who “identified” as a woman; and Doug Wilson, who is a Senior Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, and pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho .

The Transgender Ideology:
What Is It? Where Will It Lead? What is the Church’s Role?
Click here for more information!

This past weekend, I contacted a committed Christian friend who is a public middle school administrator in another state to ask if his school mandates that staff, faculty, and administrators use incorrect pronouns when referring to “trans”-identifying students. He responded that his school does not currently have any such students; that neither the administration nor school board has discussed the issue; and that if or when a “trans”-identifying student demands to be referred to by incorrect pronouns, the administration will consult school attorneys about what to do.

I was, as the British say, gobsmacked.

The “trans” issue has been roiling the cultural waters for years now. Students who masquerade as the sex they are not are suing school districts; teachers are being fired for refusing to use incorrect pronouns (i.e., they refuse to lie); a male middle school teacher was disciplined for refusing to supervise a masquerading girl as she used the boys’ locker room; Obama sent “Dear Colleague” letters to every public school in the country ordering them to treat sexual delusions as reality; children are being taught that in order to be compassionate, they must share restrooms and locker rooms with opposite-sex peers; and girls and boys are being forced to compete in sports against opposite-sex peers. In the face of this science-denying, privacy-eradicating, intellectually and morally vacuous ideology, it’s both incomprehensible and indefensible that school districts are burying their heads and moral compasses deep in the shifting sand.

It’s also baffling that deeply committed Christ-followers who work in public schools have not begun preparing for the inevitability that they will be ordered by the government—that is, their employer—to speak lies in the service of a body- and soul-destroying ideology.

In answer to a question regarding how Christians should refer to “trans”-identifying persons, esteemed pastor, author, and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary, John Piper, writes that he would “probably… submit to [using the preferred first name] in the short run at least” because the gender-association of proper names is arbitrary and shifting. For example, the name “Joycelyn” is a boy’s name in France, and “Aubrey” is a boy’s name in England, whereas both are deemed girls’ names in the United States. More important, Piper provides the reasons Christians must not use incorrect pronouns when referring to “trans”-identifying persons:

[I]f in the office…  I was compelled to identify every so-called transgendered person by the pronoun they preferred in all of my emails, or conversations… or I would get disciplined… I would say to my superiors, I cannot treat he’s as she’s and she’s as he’s.

“I will draw a line and say that I will not call he ‘she.’ I will not call she ‘he.’”

…. I would be lying to call a he a “she”…. And it would be contrary to my understanding of sexuality and I would start looking for another job.

The same thing applies to bathrooms, locker rooms, and hotel rooms where women identify as men or vice versa. I would refuse to have a roommate who said she was a man, even though I share a room in my travels with my assistant all the time. He is a man, and I know he is a man, and that is a perfectly normal thing to do. But if they insisted that I share the same bathroom, share the same locker room, or share the same hotel room, I am looking for another job.

…. Naming may have a certain ambiguity and arbitrariness to it, but the language of “he” and “she” and the use of bathrooms and hotel rooms does not. And I will draw a line and say, I will not call he “she.” I will not call she “he.” And I will not intrude on the sexual privacy of a person of the opposite sex or walk into a situation where they would intrude upon mine.

So, what should every Christian administrator and teacher employed by Big Brother in government schools do? They should immediately ask their superiors and school board this question:

If a “trans”-identifying student were to request that I use incorrect pronouns when referring to them, would I be required to do so even if it conflicts with beliefs about sexuality and about lying that derive from my religious faith?   

No parent should place their children in a purportedly educational environment in which the adults charged with teaching do not respect the reality and meaning of biological sex, who use incorrect pronouns, who pretend that boys can be girls or vice versa, who teach implicitly or explicitly that compassion and inclusivity require students to share private spaces with opposite-sex peers, and who require them to lie about the sex of peers through the use of incorrect pronouns. So, parents too should ask their administrators and school board these questions now:

1.) If a “trans”-identifying student were to request that teachers use incorrect pronouns, will teachers be doing so?

2.) If a “trans”-identifying student were to request that peers refer to them by incorrect pronouns, would peers—like my child—be required to do so?

3.) If a “trans”-identifying student were to request use of opposite-sex locker rooms and restrooms, will they be permitted to use them? If so, would those students whose parents do not permit them to share private spaces with opposite-sex peers—like my child—be forced out of restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their sex?

4.) Will teachers be telling students—like my child—that in order to be compassionate and inclusive, they must use incorrect pronouns when referring to “trans”-identifying students and should share private spaces with opposite-sex peers?

Parents are entitled to this information and should have it sooner rather than later so that they can make informed decisions about how and where to train up their children in the ways they should go. And Christian employees in public schools are entitled to this information because they need to know whether they should start looking for alternative employment.

We don’t get to choose whom God calls to the frontlines of cultural battles or to what task he may call us. Right now, it seems obvious that he has called—among others, including church leaders—Christians employed in wedding-related businesses and in government schools to the frontlines. I hope I’m wrong, but it appears that, apart from a handful of notable cases that become court cases and news stories, Christians are taking the broad and easy road, seeking the approval of man over God.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Christian-Teachers-and-Parents-What-Will-You-Do.mp3

Save the Date!

On Saturday, March 16, 2019, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting our annual Worldview Conference. This coming year, we will focus on the “transgender” revolution. We already have commitments from Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians; Walt Heyer, former “transgender” and contributor to Public Discourse; Denise Schick, Founder and Director of Help 4 Families, and daughter of a man who “identified” as a woman; and Doug Wilson, who is a Senior Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, and pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho .

The Transgender Ideology:
What Is It? Where Will It Lead? What is the Church’s Role?
Click here for more information.

Thursday night, the school board of West Point High School in West Point, Virginia voted 5-0 to fire well-liked and well-respected French teacher (and Chicago Native) Peter Vlaming for his refusal to use incorrect pronouns when referring to a freshman girl who pretends to be a boy. Vlaming, a Christian, had agreed to use her newly adopted name and to avoid using pronouns as much as he could. Because of his faith, what he could not do is be complicit in a body- and soul-destroying fiction. According to the Virginia Gazette, the girl’s parents became angry “after an incident where the student was wearing virtual reality goggles and almost ran into a wall in the hallway and Vlaming shouted ‘don’t let her run into the wall.'” In his concern for the immediate safety of this girl, Vlaming accidentally used the correct pronoun, and the girl’s parents claimed “‘it is unhealthy for their child to remain in Vlaming’s class.'”

At the school board meeting, recently hired principal Jonathan Hochman made this astonishingly ignorant statement:

“I can’t think of a worse way to treat a child than what was happening. That was very threatening.”

Chasco Middle School in Port Richey, Florida did what many presumptuous and foolish k-12 schools around the country are doing: The administration unilaterally decided to sexually integrate the boys’ locker room with no notification to either the boys or their parents. The boys, and shortly thereafter their parents, learned about it when an objectively female student who seeks to pass as a boy humiliated them when she entered the boys’ locker room while they were in their underwear. The boys immediately left the locker room and sought help from two P.E. teachers—Robert Oppedisano and Stephanie Christensen—who according to Liberty Counsel, “were powerless to respond, because administrators had placed a gag order on them, and told them that they could not answer the boys on these questions.”

To be clear, not even student and parental notification would make this unjust and foolish decision right. Providing no notification just made a lousy decision worse.

Liberty Counsel further outlined the outrageous nature of the Chasco administration’s decision:

Robert also objected to administrators’ order that he continue to walk into and supervise the locker room, despite a girl potentially being nude or undressed in that area. The administrators told him that the girl in question had “every right to use the locker room,” including the right to disrobe in the open locker area, and shower in its open showers, where Robert is required to periodically walk in and supervise. Robert will not knowingly place himself in a position to observe a minor female in the nude or otherwise in a state of undress. Now, Robert has been told by administrators that he will be transferred to another school as discipline for “not doing your job in the locker room.”

Now, as a result of the incoherent “trans” ideology, a male P.E. teacher could be fired for intentionally being in the presence of an undressed objectively female student if she’s satisfied with her biological sex and a male teacher could be fired for refusing to be in the presence of an undressed objectively female student, so long as she is dissatisfied with her biological sex. What if a male teacher is in the presence of a genderfluid objectively female student who, while changing clothes on a day when she’s “identifying” as a boy, suddenly “identifies” as a girl? Yikes.

Some questions for the Chasco Middle School administration:

• Do students have any right not to be seen partially or fully unclothed by students, staff, faculty, or administrators of the opposite sex?

• Should “trans”-identifying coaches be treated as if they were the sex they pretend to be? For example, should the objectively male swim coach who pretends to be a woman be allowed full access to the girls’ locker room? If not, why not?

• Do staff and faculty who believe it is profoundly wrong to see pubescent students of the opposite sex partially or fully unclothed have any rights?

• Why do we have any sex-segregated locker rooms and restrooms in public schools if objective biological sex has no intrinsic connection to feelings of modesty and the desire for and right to privacy when engaged in intimate bodily functions or changing clothes?

Ironically, while violating the physical privacy of children, the Chasco administration is trying to cloak its secret plan to sexually integrate private spaces by appealing to—you guessed it—privacy. But neither privacy policies nor laws prohibit the administration from notifying students and parents that the school has adopted—with no board vote—a new practice of sexually integrating locker rooms and restrooms and that boys and girls can expect that they will be sharing private spaces with persons of the opposite sex. (As an aside, I wonder how female faculty or administrators would feel if they were in their underwear in a women’s faculty locker room when without notification an objectively male colleague walked in.)

The brains behind this “trans”-cultic operation to violate the privacy of and humiliate students is Jackie Jackson-Dean who consulted with every pro-“LGBTQ”-advocacy organization she could find—including the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) government school indoctrination arm, ironically called “Teaching Tolerance.”

The weedy thicket of Dean’s recommendations include encouraging the school to participate in every pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” event sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), encouraging teachers to use incorrect pronouns when referring to students who masquerade as the opposite sex, and publicly praising teachers who affirm pro-“LGBT” orthodoxy (thereby implicitly shaming those who don’t).

Jackson-Dean’s Twitter account reveals she’s a hardcore, far-left pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” activist who loves the SPLC and opposes Brett Kavanaugh.

There’s an odd omission in her rainbow-adorned document. She neglected to mention this which comes right out of a document to which she links:

On the federal side, the Title IX regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Education allow schools to provide separate but comparable bathrooms, locker rooms, and shower facilities on the basis of sex…. While there is no definitive national legal authority on the issue, federal courts in non-school cases have recognized a fundamental right to privacy or acknowledged the legitimacy of safety concerns in cases involving individuals undressing, using the restroom, or showering in an area to which a member of the opposite birth sex has access. Moreover, a federal district court recently asked the question whether a university engages in unlawful discrimination in violation of Title IX or the Constitution when it prohibits a transgender male [i.e., a biological female] student from using restrooms and locker rooms designated for men on campus. The court concluded: “The simple answer is no.”

If adult coaches are required to be in the presence of partially or fully undressed students of the opposite sex who “identify” as “trans,” there remains no rational reason to prohibit adult coaches from being in the presence of partially dressed or fully nude students of the opposite sex who accept their sex. In short, the “trans” ideology has invalidated objective, immutable biological sex and its anatomical manifestation as having any relevance in separating humans in spaces where bodies are exposed.

I’ve tried to warn that the ultimate goal and logical outworking of the “trans” ideology is to eradicate all public recognition and valuation of sex differences. According to the “trans” ideology, all it takes to “identify” as the opposite sex is a declaration. No gender dysphoria diagnosis or experience of gender dysphoria, no surgery, no cross-sex hormone-doping, not even cross-dressing is necessary to identify as the opposite sex. Further, society is obligated to treat “trans”-identifying persons in all ways and in all contexts as the sex they declare they are. Therefore, a girl with intact breasts who identifies as a boy should be free to undress and shower naked with the boys, and a boy with an intact penis and testicles who identifies as a girl should be free to undress and shower with girls. A girl with intact breasts who identifies as a boy should be allowed to swim on the boys’ swim team wearing a boys’ Speedo. Male coaches who enter boys’ locker rooms should treat girls who pretend they’re boys and are changing no differently than boys who are changing.

So, now what would have once been too scandalous to even imagine is being or going to be required.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Chasco.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.

Perhaps you missed the disturbing news story about University of California Berkeley student Isabella Chow who was the only member of the 18-member student senate to abstain from voting in favor of a bill condemning President Donald Trump for the commonsense decision to make clear that in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the term “gender” refers to biological sex—which it clearly did when written. Chow bravely and graciously explained her decision to her dogmatist senate colleagues:

I have said and will always say that discrimination against or harassment of any person or people group is never ever okay. I certainly acknowledge any pain and experiences of individuals in this room who have gone through what no human being should ever go through. My heart breaks for you even more so if your pain has come at the hands of bullies and bigots who purport to be Christians but show no ounce of the love and understanding that Christ came to give. These shameful individuals only perpetuate the toxic stereotypes that my community and I vehemently abhor and even fight tooth and nail to strike from our identity in Christ.

My God is one who assigns immeasurable value to and desires to love each and every human being. In God’s eyes and therefore my own, every one of you here today in the LGBTQ+ community as a whole is significant, valid, wanted, and loved—even if and when our views differ. Jesus only had the deepest love and compassion for all who came to him. I hope that my actions and words, in addition to the relationships you and I have cultivated together, over the past couple years have only demonstrated the same depth of love and compassion.

That said, I cannot vote for this bill without compromising my values and my responsibility to the community that elected me to represent them. As a Christian, I personally do believe that certain acts and lifestyles conflict with what is good, right, and true. I believe that God created male and female at the beginning of time and designed sex for marriage between one man and one woman. For me, to love another person does not mean that I silently concur when, at the bottom of my heart, I do not believe that your choices are right or the best for you as an individual.

Where this bill crosses the line for me is that I am asked to promote a choice of identity that I do not agree to be right or best for an individual, and to promote certain organizations that uphold values contrary to those of my community. After lengthy conversations with many of my community leaders and advisors, I have chosen to abstain from voting on these bills tonight.

In closing, I again affirm with all my heart that each one of you in this room deserves nothing less than respect, acknowledgment, legal protection, and love, no matter your beliefs. I humbly ask that you extend the same respect and acknowledgment to my community as we continue this dialogue together. The Christian community is here to love and serve this campus in the way that we best know how. Thank you for your understanding, and please feel free to reach out to me at any time if you want to discuss this or anything else.

Chow did not vote against the bill. She abstained and in so doing freely exercised her religion.

So, how have those tolerant, free-thinking, anti-bullies at Berkeley responded? The campus newspaper, the Daily Cal, condemned her in an editorial, saying that her words were “appalling” and “homophobic and transphobic according to Daily Cal’s standards.” (Curiously, the gracious words of a theologically orthodox Christian are censored, while a deviant sex column written by a Daily Cal editor fits their “standards”). Those pesky Daily Cal exegetes claimed that Chow “chose to voice her personal—and highly problematic—interpretation of Christian scripture.”

The unhinged ideologues opined that “This abject dismissal and non-acceptance of gender identities goes far beyond personal opinion. Chow’s language erased and dehumanized individuals… Chow must stop framing these remarks as personal opinions or views. These statements are offensive and disturbing invalidations of human beings.” What exactly does it mean to erase and invalidate human beings? Disagree with their ideas and beliefs? Disapprove of their actions? Define differently the meaning of their subjective feelings?

What about the Daily Cal editors’ personal opinions and views? Do they go “far beyond personal opinion” (whatever that means)? Does their description of theologically orthodox Christian identities as “appalling,” “offensive,” “dehumanizing,” and “disturbing”—by their definition—erase, marginalize, and dehumanize Christian human beings?

The Daily Cal despots—who ironically recently published an op-ed titled “Vote to uphold UC Berkeley’s free speech legacy”—then refused to publish Chow’s self-defense. I wonder if she felt marginalized.

The Berkeley suppressors and oppressors weren’t done yet. They started a petition to force her to resign. They spent three hours in a subsequent meeting publicly condemning her while she sat under a huge banner that said, “Senator Chow Resign Now.” I guess they couldn’t find a pillory and scarlet thread.

On social media, she was called a “‘horrible person’” and a “‘mental imbecile.’” Regan Putnam, president of the Queer Alliance Resource Center (which brought the bill idea to the senate) and apparently a cross-dressing man, falsely accused Chow of “shrouding hate in ‘love.’” He didn’t define “hate,” but as near as I can tell, “hate” to him means holding moral propositions about volitional acts with which he disagrees. To be clear, the beliefs of the Berkeley tyrants that homosexual acts are moral, that marriage has no intrinsic connection to sexual differentiation, and that cross-sex “passers” are entitled to access to opposite-sex facilities are arguable, subjective moral propositions.

If the Berkeley Arbiters of Acceptable Moral Propositions believe that minority opinions on the nature and morality of homosexual acts and cross-sex “passing” should be censored, and if they believe that any student who holds those views should be prohibited from serving in the student senate, should professors who hold those views be similarly silenced or fired? Should books that express those views be allowed to be published? Should men and women who hold those views be prohibited from being elected to office?

At least as disturbing was the poor showing of support for Chow. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that only three students spoke in defense of this courageous young woman. Those theologically orthodox Christian students who knew about this controversy and failed to attend the public pillorying of Chow and speak in her defense should be ashamed.

The kind of indoctrination that masquerades as education and results in this kind of repugnant behavior does not start in college. For Leftists, there is no age too young to begin indoctrinating other people’s children, no means too devious, and no public cost too high. Here in Illinois, Leftist legislators continue to try to foist their personal ontological, moral, and political beliefs on children by concealing them in curricula. Leftists in Springfield are still pushing the “LGBT” sexuality indoctrination bill (SB 3249) which, if passed, will require that any “book or book substitute that will be used as a text or text substitute” in grades K-12 include the “role and contributions” of homosexuals and of men and women who adopt opposite-sex personas (also known deceptively as “transgender”). In other words, all materials used in schools will be required to address the roles and contributions of people who define themselves by their disordered sexual desires and sexual behaviors.

As I wrote in April 2018, there are no good reasons for teachers or textbooks to mention or discuss the sexual interests of contemporary or historical figures who have contributed something noteworthy to society. Their exceptional accomplishments should be noted, but their sexual proclivities—especially controversial sexual proclivities that many view as both immoral and destructive—have no place in public schools.

Homosexual and “trans” activists are not centrally concerned about ensuring the accomplishments of Sally Ride, James Baldwin, and Oscar Wilde are included in curricula; they already are. Homosexual and “trans” activists are centrally concerned about ensuring that students know that Ride, Baldwin and Wilde were sexually and romantically attracted to persons of the same sex. Homosexual and “trans” activists seek to transfer the good feelings children and teens have about accomplishments to homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation. It’s a ploy to render disordered feelings and immoral actions innocent by association with accomplishment.

But the quasi-religious ontological and moral dogma of the homosexual and “trans” communities regarding biological sex, “gender,” and “gender identity” are not facts and are not neutral. They are articles of faith—arguable beliefs—that government schools have no right to propagate either explicitly or implicitly. Taxpayers should no more be forced to subsidize material based on the quasi-religious beliefs of homosexual and “trans” activists than they should be forced to subsidize material based on the beliefs of, for example, the polyamorous community.

Would any lawmaker vote in favor of mandating that schools teach about the “roles and contributions” of polyamorists and poly-activists, or the roles and contributions of other communities whose identities are constituted by what many view as disordered desires and immoral volitional activities, like “amputee-wannabes,” infantilists, zoophiles, sadomasochists, and sibling-lovers (i.e., “Genetic Sexual Attraction”)?

“LGBTQ” activists take umbrage at such comparisons, declaiming that their sexual predilections constitute an authentic identity somehow set apart from those who identify as polyamorists, amputees, or babies, to which others may respond, “Who are you to judge?”

What if children or their parents experience such desires, engage in behaviors impelled by such feelings, or identify as poly, “amputee wannabes” or “infantilists”? What if they experience unwanted “minor attraction,” “genetic sexual attraction” or zoophilia? If homosexuals and “trans”-identifying persons should be able to see their predilections represented in curricula, shouldn’t other identity groups be able to see themselves represented in curricula? Should the accomplishments of people throughout history who experienced such feelings be excluded simply because they don’t yet have a powerful lobbying group that invents language that cloaks their beliefs in the appearance of objective facts?

We all know that schools—at least for now—wouldn’t teach about the accomplishments of polyamorists, “amputee-wannabes,” sibling-lovers, zoophiles, infantilists, or sadomasochists. Even if school leaders believed the feelings of persons in these groups were powerful, persistent, and unchosen, and even if school leaders believed biochemistry influences the development of their feelings, school leaders would not allow k-12 students to be taught that an important historical figure was a polyamorist, “amputee-wannabe,” sibling-lover, zoophile, infantilist, or sadomasochist. Why is that?

The reason is not merely that no one has yet demanded that they do so. The reason is that school administrators and board members—at least for now—believe the behaviors integral to those conditions are unhealthy, disordered, and immoral and that teaching about the role and contributions of those who engage in them would serve to normalize the phenomena.

Well, here’s an inconvenient truth: many believe the same about homosexuality and the science-denying cult of biological sex-rejection. What right have arms of the government (i.e., public schools) to treat the beliefs of Leftists on those two issues—homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation—as if they were objectively true?

Leftists are not helping to develop citizens who value the good, the true, and the beautiful. They’re constructing ignorant, arrogant, bigoted, hateful ideological tyrants like the Berkeley bullies—not free thinkers. Don’t let the indoctrination get any worse here in Illinois.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to both your state representative and state senator, urging them to reject this effort to politicize curricula in order to advance biased beliefs about sexuality to children in government schools. Contact them repeatedly.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/New-Recording-4-1.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.

Another invasion of children’s privacy and another attack on parents who object to their children’s privacy being invaded has taken place, this time at Rotolo Middle School in Batavia, Illinois. Without any notification to parents whose children’s privacy in restrooms and locker rooms would be invaded—which is potentially every girl—Rotolo administrators and school board members gave their unholy blessing to a boy who pretends to be a girl to use girls’ restrooms and locker room with no restrictions.

When the parent of a girl complained about the administration’s decision to sexually integrate girls’ private facilities, the principal, Bryan Zwemke, suggested her daughter use a restroom in the nurse’s office, or use a restroom near the front door that the boy may but is unlikely to use due to its location, or to holler in restrooms first to make sure they are being used by only girls, or to have a school monitor stand outside while she’s in the restroom. Zwemke also recommended that girls who don’t want to change clothes in front of or near the boy in the girls’ locker room should change in a small utility closet.

Really? Does Zwemke really think those options are just, reasonable, and compassionate? “Progressives” argue that “trans”-identifying children who aren’t comfortable using facilities with persons of their same sex should not be expected to use separate facilities but now administrators expect students who aren’t comfortable sharing facilities with opposite-sex persons to use separate facilities. Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.

At a recent school board meeting in which three parents respectfully expressed their concerns (from 17:30-25:50) about the introduction of co-ed restrooms and locker rooms, unhinged board member John Dryden melodramatically walked out for several minutes and then later posted this on his Facebook page:

Sometimes School Board meetings are like Mr. Toad’s wild ride. (Enjoy it on BATV) You can watch me try really hard not to launch myself over the table and strangle an anti-transgender lynch mob. The Board Comments at the end are worth listening to. Cheers Batavia – let’s move ahead, not backwards….

A report in the Daily Herald reveals more of Dryden’s bigotry:

I watched a lot of people throw a middle school kid under the bus.

In Dryden’s skewed view, opposing co-ed restrooms and locker rooms constitutes throwing children under a bus. Nice rhetorical attempt to silence dissent.

Following Dryden’s break for the vapors, two additional speakers expressed concern over the sexual integration of private spaces: two actual girl students (26:10-28:10). It appears big, burly board member John Dryden called three moms and two middle school girls a lynch mob that he wants to strangle. Clearly, Dryden neither respects nor tolerates the diversity within his own community as he embraces an intellectually incoherent ideology and morally bankrupt policy.

Near the end of the meeting, after Dryden mustered the wherewithal to resist his urge to strangle three moms and two little girls, he smugly, incorrectly, and perhaps dishonestly lectured the purported “lynch mob” on Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, saying this (1:01:49-1:03:42):

Federal law Title IX requires, allows the right to be treated according to one’s gender identity, that the name and pronouns used for that individual will match the gender identity. They cannot be forced to used separate facilities. The right to use restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity is protected under Title IX.

Here’s what Dryden failed to say. He failed to admit that Title IX says precisely nothing about “gender identity” or pronouns. Title IX does, however, say something about restrooms and locker rooms. Here’s what Title IX says:

A recipient [of federal funds] may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex, but such facilities provided for students of one sex shall be comparable to such facilities provided for students of the other sex.

Moreover, the Illinois Human Rights Act, which is state law, states this:

The Act permits schools to maintain single-sex facilities that are distinctly private in nature, e.g., restrooms and locker rooms. 

And the Illinois Association of School Boards explicitly acknowledges that the Illinois Human Rights Act permits schools to maintain single-sex restrooms and locker rooms.

Neither Dryden’s wishes, nor Obama’s edicts, nor the lawsuits of “trans” activists have transformed Title IX (or the Illinois Human Rights Act) into a command to sexually integrate private spaces in government schools or to mandate untruthful speech (i.e., incorrect pronoun-usage). The board must correct this misstatement, and Dryden owes the moms and girls a public apology.

Dryden wasn’t done yet. He next scolded parents who used pronouns correctly:

I hope in the future when we’re discussing publicly this issue that we can respect the person’s right to be addressed by their preferred pronoun.

No person has a right to compel others to participate in a fiction, speak a falsehood, or compel others to adopt their new politically constructed grammar rule. For those who believe that the “trans” ideology is both false and destructive—which it is—referring to boys who think they are or wish they were girls is a destructive lie. Believing that referring to boys as girls is respectful or good depends on prior assent to Leftist assumptions, which no one is obliged to do. Neither Dryden-the-Scold, nor the “trans” community, nor this boy and his family have a moral right to dictate how people think or speak about this science-denying ideology.

Board member Tina Bleakley made this ironic statement:

To come publicly to speak about a child disappoints me.

The administration, apparently in cahoots with the school board, allow a boy to invade the private spaces of girls and then has the audacity to suggest that this unnamed boy’s privacy has been violated by the expression of opposition to the policy? Surely Bleakley jests. It is the adult leaders of Rotolo Middle School who have committed a disappointing act, which is expecting girls to feel comfortable sharing private spaces with a peer of the opposite sex.

Here are some questions that the administration and board should be asked and should answer:

• What is “gender identity”? If the administration defines it as subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex, or maleness, or femaleness, on what basis do “trans”-identified children determine their “gender identity”?

• Why should private spaces correspond to subjective, internal feelings about one’s maleness or femaleness as opposed to objective, immutable biological sex?

• Why is it legitimate for girls to oppose sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male peers who accept their sex, but not legitimate for girls to oppose sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male peers who reject their sex? Why should a boy’s subjective feelings about his objective sex affect girls’ feelings or beliefs about undressing or going to the bathroom in front of or near him?

• Does objective, immutable biological sex have any intrinsic meaning relative to modesty and privacy? If not, why do we have any sex-segregated restrooms or locker rooms anywhere? Why not make all of them co-ed for everyone?

• If this objectively male student should be permitted to use facilities with only girls, why shouldn’t objectively female students be permitted to use facilities with only girls?

• Will the administration allow those who identify as gender fluid choose daily which restrooms and locker rooms they will use?

• Since, according to Leftists, anatomy is irrelevant to “gender identity” and privacy, should boys who identify as girls be allowed to shower with objectively female peers? If not, why not?

• Should other subjective, internal feelings be reflected in policy and practice? For example, should those who identify as amputees (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder) be allowed to use wheel chairs and handicapped parking spots at school? Should they be allowed to leave class early to have more time to get from one class to another?

• Are the feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when engaged in personal activities—which are the reasons for sex-segregated restrooms, locker rooms (not to mention dressing rooms, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, dorm rooms, nursing home room assignments)—pathological?

• Those who identify as “trans” claim their biological sex as revealed in anatomy is unrelated and irrelevant to their “gender identity” (which is a subjective, internal feeling) and that anatomy doesn’t matter when it comes to restrooms, changing areas, and showers. They further claim they want to use restrooms with only those whose “gender identity” they share. So, why do boys who identify as girls demand to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms? How do they know the males using the boys’ restrooms do not “identify” as girls, and how can they be sure that the females using the girls’ restrooms do “identify” as girls? Is it possible that boys who identify as girls are basing their restroom choices on biological sex as revealed in anatomy? If so, why are they permitted to do so but actual girls are not?

School board members and administrators are never asked these questions. Nor are they confronted with the fact that de facto co-ed restroom mandates teach all children that unless they are willing to relinquish their privacy and their beliefs about the profound meaning of biological sex; unless they accept unproven, Leftist assumptions about biological sex, “gender” and “gender identity”; and unless they silence the expression of their beliefs, they will be deemed ignorant, hateful, intolerant bigots hell-bent on lynching those who identify as the sex they are not and never can be.

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Written by Anthony J. DeBlasi

At Columbia University’s Teachers College, in the early years of the 20th century, a handful of men inspired by “laws of social evolution” gathered to presume a “science” of education linked with a “science” of human behavior.  They were no mere researchers.  Their sights were on nothing less than the establishment of a new social order.

Laws?  Science?  The scientific method bends out of shape over things like the will.  Love, hate, loyalty, treachery, humility, arrogance, and many other common items of human experience melt science down to its core.  And the study of humans by humans is – well, circular, is it not?

The intellectual arrogance, not to say quackery, of men like John Dewey may be forgiven as a human weakness.  But lording over one’s fellows by presuming to make of them a better breed smells not only of conceit, but of treachery.  In this plot – a good one for mad scientist movies – parent and pastor were to take a back seat while behavioral “experts” rewired the strands of human behavior, using schoolchildren as experimental subjects.  Their motive?  A new age was dawning.  It was a matter of when, not if, collectivism and socialism would come to America.  Was it not the task of the public educator to prepare its subjects for the new order?  Was it not the job of the public teacher to change basic perceptions, attitudes, social relations?

That such high horsing violates democratic basics meant nothing to these “progressives.”  To them, democracy was less a form of government than a means for “reforming” society.  Today’s “liberals” still believe that.  For them, “majority” meant a body to be molded.

The founders of our republic labored diligently to ensure a level political playing field for themselves and for posterity.  But reformist heavyweights of the early 20th century saw fit to tilt the field their way or risk failing in their mission to groom American society for a collectivist future.

Their methodology was and remains to indoctrinate the public through school, media, and church, under the rubrics of “science” and “experts” and “studies” and – most conniving of all – “the changing times.”  Individuals who think for themselves and express unorthodox views must be marginalized and denied equal access to media, market, and due process.  Collectivist agenda operatives are still as anxious as ever to ram their great ideas down the public throat.  If it means becoming “journalists,” political activists, “social justice” mercenaries, or “pastors,” lying and deceiving are not a problem.

How can any majority weed out bad ideas when ideas don’t circulate freely and compete in an open market?  When journalists spread political narratives instead of reporting the news?  When the curiosity of the child, who asks why-why-why, is dulled or washed out by graduation time?  When church and school become conduits of propaganda instead of places for reflection and learning?

It was from the early-twentieth-century Pandora’s box of questionable theory and Marxist fever that the missionaries for educational reform issued.  The minds of the young in this country – particularly those who as teachers and leaders were to transmit the gospel of a new social order – were subverted by Marxist activists a long time ago.

Do you wonder why you never got this in history?

Reorienting the mind

I thought it silly, while in school in 1946, to let kids do what they wanted to do in school.  For me, and for a school pal, the “Progressive” experiment was great fun.  My friend Bob and I were permitted to cut classes we didn’t care for in favor of painting murals on the walls of Brooklyn’s Halsey Junior High School.  That we both succeeded academically proves not the wisdom of Dewey’s theories but that diligent students manage to transcend obstacles to their progress.

Progressive educators now wire young minds via satellite, assuming an unfounded desirability of forming a global community of similar (washed) minds.  What’s wrong with globalist thinking is a subject for a library.  But the right to be different and to associate with those of like kind and mind continues to shelve the one-world notion of human association under “Fiction.”

Quality of life faded after “group” trumped individual, a side-effect of progressive leveling.  The pressure to conform replaced the incentive to rise.  Group orientation made it easier to alienate youth from family and tradition, a precondition for forming a collective social order.  This is a society that links generation with generation in shared values and cultural ties interferes with establishing a collective society under totalitarian rule.

New-age honchos like to operate behind the scenes, à la the Wizard of Oz, pulling levers of screen, magazine, lyrics, and stage to alter society by filling budding minds with “politically correct” images and ideas, playing on youth’s innocence and natural idealism, stirring passions untempered by reflection.  The result of a long plague of such brainwashing and indoctrination is a base of voters with moral and intellectual disability and an abiding aversion to family, country, God, and truth.

The mental holiday declared by early progressive educators spawned a most dangerous social myth, that of value-neutral ethics.  A value-neutral society is for all purposes a valueless society.  Freed of timeless standards of ethical behavior, people act as though anything-goes is normal and right, unaware that they have become valueless selves that no therapy or “self-esteem” program can prop up with real confidence or sinless theology fill with lasting hope.

“Progress”

The original goals and tactics have been forgotten.  Today’s public-school educators are unaware of their own history and why they think and teach as they do.  But though the memory is lost, the desire for bringing forth a “new social order” remains imbedded in their consciousness.

Sadly, the world caves in on minds when they actually face the reality that the only possible reform is self-reform, when better communities and a “better world” can be had only with better selves, so crucial in a democratic form of government.

In conclusion

The “education problem” in America is not one of inadequate funding or management.  It is one of defective educational philosophy.  The legacy of early Marxists on their way to a “global” future under some species of collectivism has been the worst possible foundation for a sound education system.  Established educational philosophy is mired in misconceptions regarding both the nature and the business of education.  Public-school
teachers are victims of teacher education that emphasizes ideology over substance, relativism over enduring values.

Fundamentals that must be restored include the following: school authority is subservient to parental authority.  The school has no business vilifying tradition, slurring religion, or disallowing individual accountability.  In short, it has no mandate to alter society.

And so sparks will continue to fly between those who want parents to be in control of the education of their children, in an atmosphere where multiple points of view may compete fairly, and those who insist on dragging the outdated baggage of their Marxist ancestors to its ultimate destination: the dustbin of history.

This article was originally published at AmericanThinker.com

Written by Walter E. Williams

I’m thankful that increasing attention is being paid to the dire state of higher education in our country. Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has just published “The Diversity Delusion.” Its subtitle captures much of the book’s content: “How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.” Part of the gender pandering at our universities is seen in the effort to satisfy the diversity-obsessed National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, each of which gives millions of dollars of grant money to universities. If universities don’t make an effort to diversify their science, technology, engineering and math (known as STEM) programs, they risk losing millions in grant money.

A UCLA scientist says, “All across the country the big question now in STEM is: how can we promote more women and minorities by ‘changing’ (i.e., lowering) the requirements we had previously set for graduate level study?” Mac Donald says, “Mathematical problem-solving is being deemphasized in favor of more qualitative group projects; the pace of undergraduate physics education is being slowed down so that no one gets left behind.”

Diversity-crazed people ignore the fact that there are systemic differences in race and sex that influence various outcomes. Males outperform females at the highest levels of math; however, males are overrepresented at the lowest levels of math competence. In 2016, the number of males scoring above 700 on the math portion of the SAT was nearly twice as high as the number of females scoring above 700. There are 2.5 males in the U.S. in the top 0.01 percent of math ability for every female, according to the journal Intelligence (February 2018).

In terms of careers, females are more people-centered than males. That might explain why females make up 75 percent of workers in health care-related fields but only 14 percent of engineering workers and 25 percent of computer workers. Nearly 82 percent of obstetrics and gynecology medical residents in 2016 were women. Mac Donald asks sarcastically, “Is gynecology biased against males, or are females selecting where they want to work?”

“The Diversity Delusion” documents academic practices that fall just shy of lunacy at many universities. Nowhere are these practices more unintelligent and harmful to their ostensible beneficiaries than in university efforts to promote racial diversity. UC Berkeley and UCLA are the most competitive campuses in the University of California system. Before Proposition 209’s ban on racial discrimination, the median SAT score of blacks and Hispanics at Berkeley was 250 points below that of whites and Asians. This difference was hard to miss in class. Renowned Berkeley philosophy professor John Searle, who sees affirmative action as a disaster, said, “They admitted people who could barely read.” Dr. Thomas Sowell and others have discussed this problem of mismatching students. Black and Hispanic students who might do well in a less competitive setting are recruited to highly competitive universities and become failures. Black parents have no obligation to make academic liberals feel good about themselves by allowing them to turn their children into failures.

Many readers know that I am a professor of economics at George Mason University. A few readers have asked me about “Black Freshmen Orientation,” held Aug. 25 and advertised as an opportunity for students to learn more about the black community at George Mason University. GMU is not alone in promoting separation in the name of diversity and inclusion. Harvard, Yale, UCLA and many other universities, including GMU, have black graduation ceremonies. Racial segregation goes beyond graduation ceremonies. Cal State Los Angeles, the University of Connecticut, UC Davis and UC Berkeley, among others, offer racially segregated housing for black students.

University administrators and faculty members who cave to the demands for racially segregated activities have lost their moral mooring, not to mention common sense. I’m sure that if white students demanded a whites-only dormitory or whites-only graduation ceremonies, the university community would be outraged. Some weak-minded administrators might make the argument that having black-only activities and facilities is welcoming and might make black students feel more comfortable. I’m wondering whether they would also support calls by either white or black students for separate (themed) bathrooms and water fountains.

This article was originally published by Creators Syndicate.