My goal in these next couple of articles is to make three basic points.

First, after every mass murder, whether at a school or nightclub or concert venue, conservatives write many excellent op-eds effectively addressing nearly every aspect of the tragedy. Unfortunately, too few Americans actually hear or read those commentaries. That failure in the information war continues to plague the nation.

Second, so many Republican politicians and candidates fear the “social issues.” Several days ago when a shooting took place in that Florida school, these “leaders” still failed to grasp the connection between a failing and corrupt culture and mass murder.

Third, in a terrific piece over at The Federalist, Stella Morabito asks a question about the public (government-run, taxpayer-funded) schools. Here is the title and lede of her article:

“13 Ways Public Schools Incubate Mental Instability In Kids”
The correlation between public school environments and the deteriorating mental health of children has been intensifying for decades.

Stella Morabito’s point is one I’ve been making for years when I have referred to the public schools as “Lord of the Flies child warehouses.” “Lord of the Flies” is a reference to a novel that has been made into a movie twice about 30 schoolboys who are marooned on an island where they attempt to govern themselves and instead become savages.

The long-running national discussion about bullying in public schools always raises the question to which few good answers are offered: Where are the adults in these schools?

The “child warehouses” part gets to the point about what constitutes a proper learning environment. It’s not complicated: no child can learn when the atmosphere is not conducive to learning. You can read more of my argument here.

Here is the opening of Morabito’s article:

Why doesn’t anyone investigate the toxic effects of today’s bureaucrat-run mega-schools in the wake of a school shooting? It’s high time we place a share of the blame there.

Apologists for these noxious systems continue to shift blame for their failures using the media, various left-wing lobbies, and the kids themselves as programmed mouthpieces for statist agendas like gun control. Meanwhile, they keep feeding the beast by mass institutionalizing kids.

The correlation between public school environments and the deteriorating mental health of children has been intensifying for decades. We ought to consider how these settings serve as incubators for the social alienation that can fuel such horrors.

First, consider how common it is for a public high school today to house thousands of teenagers for most of their waking hours for four solid years. (More than 3,000 students attend the Florida school where the most recent shooting took place.) During their time in that maze, kids learn to “socialize,” basically by finding their place in a school’s hierarchy of cliques.

This sort of pecking order dynamic tends to breed resentment, status anxiety, and social dysfunction. Combine that with the toxic effects of social media and family breakdown, and you’ve got a deadly brew. Public schooling is increasingly unhealthy for kids’ emotional stability.

You can read her entire post here.

To the second point: Conservative office-holders and candidates have no clue how to fight the information war and, therefore, have no ability to stand up for what’s right when it comes to the culture. In a recent op-ed at American Thinker titled “A Weak and Crumbling Foundation,” Deana Chadwell writes:

If we grew up certain:

· that God is just a convenient fairy tale;
· that the government’s purpose is to take the place of indulgent parents;
· that sexual desires, all sexual desires should be fulfilled ASAP;
· that people are just the evolutionary top of the food chain;
· and are merely animals and therefore expendable;
· that drugs are enlightening;
· that truth is nonexistent;
· and that, most important of all, utopia is within our reach because we know better than God how to organize a nation,

…then what do we do when we see even our most important leaders functioning as if there is no moral code? What do we think when the people we see as special turn out to be sexual predators? How are we to understand our misery when our children OD on opioids, kill themselves over Facebook bullying, or kill others just because they are angry or want to be famous? How do we handle it when we pray to the God we no longer believe in and get no response at all?

What do we do? Most people look around desperately for someone else to blame, or even better, some inanimate object to hold accountable. Ban guns! It takes no moral courage to blame a thing, but it takes massive internal fortitude to look in the mirror and blame the unsustainable ideas we’ve held dear now for several generations.

It’s hard to look at the slaughter of our children in a schoolyard, but we are still willing to kill them by the thousands in an abortion facility. It’s horrifying to see the damage wrought by social media, but we don’t have the stomach to face down our spoiled children and deny them access. It makes us sick to see the sexualization of our young children, but we’re too spoiled ourselves to limit our own indulgence in nearly pornographic television. We don’t seem to have the national backbone to admit our part in the destruction of our offspring.

. . .

And the screamers don’t follow up their hollering with careful thinking about what taking guns out of our society would look like. There are over 300 million privately owned firearms in this country. We understand — those of us who know anything about history — how important it is that we keep them. We know that all our other rights rest on the right to defend ourselves against tyranny. I’m not giving up mine without a fight, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. The confiscation of guns in America will be a bloodbath that makes Parkland look insignificant.

“The Parkland shooting proves that our culture is a disaster,” she writes, “not that our gun policies are. We need to be able to face that fact, or there will be hell to pay.”

Up next: A Case Study: Pro-Second Amendment Arguments Do Not Reach Enough Americans.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services has issued a policy regarding allocation of $260 million for the Title X family planning program.

Americans United for Life attorney Deanna Wallace told OneNewsNow that the federal program is designed to provide for women what many existing organizations do not do.

“It emphasized not only the department’s focus on funding programs dealing with a broad range of life-affirming planning – such as preconception care, natural family planning and fertility care – but they also make it clear that none of that funding would be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning,” Wallace informed.

OneNewsNow has previously reported that Planned Parenthood services and the number of their clients have been dropping every year for some time – and their clinics reach a limited number of people … compared to the need.

“Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer prenatal care, they don’t offer infertility care, [and] they don’t offer well[ness] woman visits for the vast majority of Americans, so we think this funding should be rerouted to those comprehensive centers that can actually offer woman a lot more,” Wallace insisted.

The all-encompassing centers to which Wallace refers would essentially be the many thousands of local, federally qualified health clinics – ones that could provide vastly more efficient and varied assistance that Planned Parenthood does not offer women.

Read more HERE.

This article was originally published at OneNewsNow.com

**CAUTION: Not for younger readers**

Leave it to Chicago Tribune lifestyle expert Heidi Stevens to come up with another dumb idea. In an essay titled “Who do we become if we give teachers guns?,” in which she ruminates on the proposal to allow teachers to volunteer to be trained to use a gun in those rare instances when a mass killer starts killing school children, Stevens offers this deep thought:

Asking teachers to die for our children is very different from asking teachers to kill for them.

When did parents or anyone else ask teachers to die for our children? And to my knowledge, no one has proposed even asking teachers to carry and be trained to use guns—or as Stevens puts it, “to kill” for our children. She obviously phrases it like this to imply that defensively killing someone who is attempting to murder innocents is no different from murder. Killing is killing in the Upside Down in which Leftists live and move and have their being.

Here’s a more accurate description of what some have proposed: Knowing that there are many teachers who are already licensed and trained gun owners, some have proposed asking teachers if they would like to carry and be trained to use guns at school.

Stevens’ fatuous statement implies that asking teachers to die for our children is acceptable but asking if they are willing to kill a murderer to protect our defenseless children is beyond the pale.

Stevens quotes Al Vernacchio, a Pennsylvania teacher whose “writings” she follows:

I would rather throw my body in front of one of my students than raise a gun against an assailant. I may lose my life, but I will have preserved my humanity.

Vernacchio signals his virtue by claiming that “preserving” his “humanity” demands he use less effective ways of protecting his defenseless students from a murderer than more effective ways. Somehow in his twisted world—and it is twisted—his humanity is preserved by not killing a murderer, thereby making it more likely his students will be killed.

I wrote about the troubling Al Vernacchio in 2011. He’s a 54-year-old homosexual “sex scholar” and former Catholic who is “married” to a man and teaches English and human sexuality at a private Quaker school in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, where he promotes Leftist views of sexuality to teens. Of course, Leftist Stevens would follow Vernacchio.

A 2011 New York Times article on sex education features Vernacchio and shares the topics he covers in his class on sexuality for teens. Vernacchio encourages kids to share and discuss colloquial metaphors relating to sex and explains their meanings. He discusses penis sizes, giving and receiving oral sex, and shaving pubic hair. He shows a “research video… of a woman ejaculating… and a couple of dozen up-close photographs of vulvas and penises.” Vernacchio has handed out worksheets “with the five senses printed along the top and asked the students to try and list sexual activities that optimized each. (There were examples to prod their thinking: under hearing, for instance, was ‘listening to your partner read an erotic story.’)” Vernacchio, who says he doesn’t “necessarily see the decision to become sexually active when you’re 17 as an unhealthy one,” also “rarely misses a chance to ask his students to examine gender bias in their sexual attitudes or behavior.”

This is the kind of person who Stevens looks to for insight.

Stevens urges Americans to carefully consider “what we sacrifice when we fill our classrooms with guns. What we sacrifice when we fail to examine, thoroughly and honestly, why this country has one of the highest rates of death by firearm in the developed world, why mass shootings have broken out in churches and movie theaters, college campuses and a nightclub, an outdoor concert and, again and again, schools.”

Stevens’ hyperbolic claim that allowing  gun-owning teachers to choose to carry at school constitutes “filling our classrooms with guns” is demagogic nonsense. Even having one armed teacher in every other classroom would not constitute “filling our classrooms with guns.”

Since this country has always had a significant number of armed citizens, Stevens is wise in asking why we are now seeing such high rates of firearm deaths and mass shootings at churches, theaters, college campuses, schools, and music venues. What’s changed over the past thirty or so years?

Could it be the breakdown or rejection of the nuclear family?

Could it be exposure to violence in our video games, television shows, and movies?

Could it be the loss of small community schools and the concomitant growth of large schools that breed social hierarchies and are inhospitable places for those who are different?

Could it be the rejection of transcendent meaning and objective truth by a post-modern culture that reveres subjectivism, relativism, nihilism, Gnosticism, and even solipsism?

Could it be the abandonment of faith in Jesus Christ?

Stevens characterizes the proposal to allow trained, gun-owning teachers as an admission of “defeat in the fight to keep guns away from our children and decide, instead, to forever link ‘school’ with ‘killing ground.’”:

Who do we become when we arm our teachers? We become a nation that no longer trusts our collective humanity to triumph over evil. We commit to being so enamored of guns, so inured to bloodshed, so unwilling to imagine a better way, that we’d weaponize our classrooms.

Nice platitudinous rhetoric that ignores reality. Because of doctrinaire Leftists, we can no longer collectively agree on something as obvious as it’s inhumane to force women to share private spaces with men.

Moreover, one way to triumph over evil is to stop it dead in its tracks, which guns do better than throwing one’s body over the body of one student and better than appealing to some vague notion of “collective humanity.”

How grotesque, dishonest, and—dare I say—inhumane of Stevens to suggest that arming willing, trained teachers against people with murderous intent against defenseless children constitutes being “enamored of guns” or “inured to bloodshed.”

Does the presence of armed security at parades, the Olympics, the Capitol, and the White House mean Americans are enamored of guns or are inured to bloodshed?

Acknowledging the reality in which we live is not the same as being inured to bloodshed. Wanting to provide willing teachers a better means than their own bodies for defending children against armed assailants is not equivalent to being enamored of guns.

Stevens closes by quoting a teen who made this statement at CNN’s anti-gun advocacy spectacle that was promoted as a townhall meeting: “If a kid throws a rock at another kid in a sandbox, you don’t give every other kid a rock.”

So much wrong with that analogy, so little time.

Let’s start with the obvious: rocks aren’t guns. Generally, rocks don’t kill.

Second, any adult present when a little child begins to throw rocks could physically stop the child because adults are more powerful than small children. In other words, the physical strength of adults provides a superior defense against the rock-throwing assault of a little child.

Third, let’s imagine a sandbox full of very young children who for some reason can’t escape. A young bully approaches and starts hurling rocks that have the potential to grievously harm or kill the young children. Also present is an adult, but she is confined to a wheel chair with no ability to physically stop the rock-thrower. The rock-thrower is pelting the little ones. They’re screaming and crying. Some are unconscious, some are bleeding. The adult now notices a pile of rocks beside her on the ground. Should she simply sit there, or should she use the rocks to try to stop the carnage? Which of these terrible choices poses a greater threat to her humanity: meeting force with commensurate force, or letting the little ones be mowed down?

Fourth, Nikolas Kruz is not a little child. He is a young adult.

Generally, it’s not wise to look to teenagers for wisdom. They have limited life experience. For the most part, they aren’t particularly well-read. If they’re in public schools, they’re likely not particularly well-taught. The impulse-control part of teenage brains is not fully developed. And they tend to be rebellious. It’s especially unwise to look to traumatized, grieving teens for wisdom or answers to complex social problems.

A commenter on IFI’s Facebook page asserted that arming teachers turns a non-violent place into a place of violence. No, it doesn’t. Killers turn non-violent places into places of violence. Arming teachers is one proposal for preserving schools as non-violent places.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Virtue-Signalling-from-Leftists-on-Arming-Teachers_01.mp3

RESCHEDULED: IFI Worldview Conference May 5th

We have rescheduled our annual Worldview Conference featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet for Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture.

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

While conservatives squeak “uncle” about the “social issues” from the dark recesses of their homes and churches where they hide, the jackbooted Left marches boldly forward obsessed with making the “social issues” the central plank of everything. They’re especially obsessed with transforming the hearts and minds of other people’s children using taxpayer-funded government schools in which they have an audience of cultural captives.

The newest brazen effort to exploit public money in the service of propagandizing Illinois children is a creation of Equality Illinois and the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, two of Illinois’ dubious “LGBTQQAP” activist organizations, and their most reliable allies in Springfield, State Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago) and State Representative Anna Moeller (D-Elgin) who have sponsored SB 3249 and HB 5596 respectively.

If passed, this “Inclusive Curriculum” bill will require that any “book or book substitute that will be used as a text or text substitute” 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 must address the roles and contributions of people who define themselves by their disordered sexual desires.

In addition, this bill will require that “the teaching of history of the United States in public schools shall include a study of the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this State.”

But, wait, the activist sponsors aren’t done:

This instruction shall be designed to teach that LGBT individuals have a rich history and have made substantial and valuable contributions to society, including government, arts, sciences, mathematics, sports, education, and in the economic, cultural, and political development of society. The instruction shall teach about the rich advocacy among the LGBT community and the LGBT community’s allies to be treated equally. Instruction shall reinforce that all people, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression [i.e., cross-dressing], have a right to be treated with civil, legal and human rights, and as full human beings above all else.

When possible, adults, including school district employees who openly identify as LGBT and other openly LGBT adults in the community that the school district may decide to consult with, should be involved in the development and delivery of this instruction at the discretion of the LGBT individuals.

This bill applies to kindergarten through 12^th grade. You read that right. Leftists seek to mandate that five-year-olds be exposed to positive portrayals of perverse sexuality, and they want this exposure to be reinforced every year for the next 13 formative years.

Don’t be deceived by the language of “civil rights,” “legal rights,” or “human rights.” Neither homosexuals nor “trans”-identifiers are being denied any civil, legal, or human rights. To be clear, men and boys have no civil, legal, or human right to use women’s or girls’ private spaces, and women and girls have no civil, legal, or human right to use men’s or boys’ private spaces.

Equally deceptive is the reference to “full human beings.” “LGBT” activists relentlessly assert that disapproval of homosexuality or opposite-sex impersonation constitutes treating those who identify as homosexual or “trans” as less than full human beings. This language and this bill are intended to use cultural accomplishments to transform children’s view of homosexuality and biological-sex rejection and to silence dissent.

This bill’s advocates seek to use cultural achievements to suggest without stating that homosexuality and biological sex-rejection are good because people who affirm homosexual or “trans” identities did great things. The strategy employs a kind of false syllogism that goes something like this:

Sally Ride was a physicist, astronaut, and the first American woman in space.

Sally Ride was a lesbian.

Therefore, homosexuality is good.

Rational people who have developed the ability to think properly about morality will not be duped by this propaganda technique. Mature people who have been trained to think rationally about morality recognize that people can be kind, creative, brilliant, funny, and/or generous and yet at the same time experience disordered feelings and engage in immoral acts.

The problem is that children, teens, and even many adults have a poorly developed moral compass. Children and teens are especially predisposed to thinking that those they love or admire are perfect in every way.

Can those who choose to place their unchosen same-sex attraction at the center of their identity do great things? Of course they can. And so too can people who experience other disordered desires and engage in other types of immoral acts. But subjective sexual feelings and the volitional acts impelled by those feelings have nothing to do with their great achievements. So, why mention them?

Leftists seek to associate homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation with achievement in order to transfer the positive feelings people have about achievements to homosexuality and gender confusion. Leftists want to inculcate young minds and hearts with arguable propositions without actually having to make an argument with evidence and without allowing dissenting arguments to be made. The Left treats their arguable assumptions about the morality of homosexuality and biological-sex rejection as if they were unassailable objective moral truths. And they’re counting on no one noticing or addressing what they’re sneakily doing.

An NPR reporter asked me how I would respond to a homosexual teen who complains that he’s not seeing himself represented in curricula. I responded that I would ask the teen what he thinks should be done about a polyamorous student who complains that he doesn’t see himself  represented in curricula, or the girl who’s in love with her brother (remember, love is love, and who are we to judge) and doesn’t see herself represented in curricula, or the girl who embraces promiscuity as central to her identity and complains that she doesn’t see herself represented in curricula.

Lawmakers, administrators, and school board members would never allow teachers to present to students resources that include the role and contributions of polyamorists, sibling-lovers, or promiscuous persons. Or rather, they wouldn’t allow teachers to identify the polyamorous predilections, incestuous identities, or promiscuous propensities of men and women whose achievements are shared with students. And why not?

Because—at least for now—lawmakers, administrators, and school board members believe polyamory, consensual incest, and promiscuity are immoral and unhealthy. And therein lies the problem: Many people—including Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, and the Eastern Orthodox—believe that homosexual activity and opposite-sex impersonation are equally immoral. Public schools—which are funded by all taxpayers and serve a diverse population—have no business treating homosexuality or opposite-sex impersonation as if it were objectively and inarguably moral.

Furthermore, this bill puts homosexuals–both inside and outside schools–in charge of curricula, and it requires that “LGBT” activism be taught. Obviously, such activism is to be taught positively. Schools are expected to teach about “LGBT” activism as they would teach about the Civil Rights Movement. But it’s not like the Civil Rights Movement because homosexuality per se is not analogous to race per se.

If this indoctrination bill is passed, “agents of change” (formerly known as teachers) will base their text selections not on the quality of a text but, rather, on whether it was written by a homosexual or by someone who adopted an opposite-sex persona or on how it depicts homosexuality and the “trans” ideology. Curricula will become–even more than it is already–a political tool.

If this bill is passed by the Illinois Senate and House and lands on “No-Social-Agenda” Rauner’s desk, is there any doubt that he will sign the bill into law? Remember, he just attended a swanky fundraising soiree hosted by Equality Illinois (which, by the way, was honoring Planned Parenthood). “No-Social-Agenda” Rauner spoke at and donated $15,000 to Equality Illinois to help it in its effort to eradicate moral truth about sexuality from the public square.

Former intelligence analyst and senior contributor at The Federalist, Stella Morabito, warns about the harms done to children through the kind of politicized curricula that Equality Illinois, Steans, and Moeller are pushing:

Identity politics and leftist politicization in the schools is pervasive these days…. Radical education reform has gutted school curricula of meaningful content, replacing it with identity politics, fads, and political activism.

…

The highly politicized nature of today’s public schools serves to draw virtual targets on the backs of students whose beliefs don’t align with its own. A bully is free to target with the taunt “bigot” any child who comes from a traditional Christian home, and the curricula will back them up.  

While conservatives are badgered relentlessly to shut up about the “social issues,” Leftists rub their hands in glee. Unrestrained by anyone in their own party and with conservative obstacles largely removed, “LGBTQQAP” activists and their Leftist toadies advance their perverse positions on the “social issues.”

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

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

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Wait-Till-You-See-What-LGBTQQAP-Activists-Have-Planned-for-IL-Schools.mp3

RESCHEDULED: IFI Worldview Conference May 5th

We have rescheduled our annual Worldview Conference featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet for Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture.

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

The massacre of seventeen students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is just the latest in what seems like an accelerating manifestation of school shootings. Parents, students, citizens, activists and law makers are justifiably angry.

Demands to “do something” are loud and urgent, driven by a dread that the next shooting will be at my child’s school. Even some staunch defenders of the Second Amendment are shaken, agreeing that “it’s time for a national conversation about the Second Amendment, gun violence, gun safety, protecting our children and self-defense.”

There is a problem—and it’s getting worse. “During the 1950s, there were 17 school shootings. In the 1960s, 18. In the 1970s, 30. In the 1980s, 39. In the 1990s, 62. In the first decade of this century (2000-2009), 60 school shootings. From 2010-2018, 153.”

In the search for a solution, tension inevitably develops between protecting our constitutional right to “keep and bear arms,” and preventing the horrific acts committed by people with guns who are bent on murder and mayhem. On the extremities, one side advocates for an all-out ban on guns, while the other fends off any attempt to diminish the weight of the Second Amendment. Between the two are myriad proposals for restricting everything from what type of guns can be bought to how they can be purchased to how many can be owned to what accessories are permitted.

If there is one point of agreement, it is that any kind of mass slaughter, whether in Parkland, Las Vegas, Orlando or Richmond, is unacceptable. “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13) is a universally recognized human ideal.

A gun ban is unconstitutional and impractical

We can rule out a ban on all guns for at least two reasons. First, American citizens have the legal, unassailable right to possess and carry firearms. Ratified in 1791, the Second Amendment was a prescient measure put in place by our Founders specifically as a counterweight to the centralized power of the federal government. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld that right as recently as 2008 (District of Columbia v. Heller) and 2010 (McDonald v. City of Chicago).

Second, while estimates vary, there are probably more than 300 million guns in the U.S., which has the highest gun ownership rate in the world at 88 guns per 100 citizens. Nine million Americans pack a loaded handgun monthly and three million carry daily. It is impossible to imagine confiscating or running a gun buy-back program for that number of weapons. Guns are here to stay.

Some restrictions are allowable

We can also rule out unrestricted access to any and all kinds of guns at any age that the constitutional purist may want. Political historian and pundit, Jay Cost, writes that a proper understanding of the Second Amendment recognizes that it “establishes an individual right for a public purpose — and it therefore follows that the people, acting through their representatives, can properly set the terms of how that right will be enjoyed.”

In other words, we have the individual right to keep and bear arms for the specific purpose of defending ourselves and our neighbors, and the weapons we bear should reflect that purpose. That gives us all some latitude to debate proper restrictions. For example, machine guns were banned from private ownership during the Reagan administration, a law that is still in effect today. Certain semi-automatic rifles defined as “assault weapons” were outlawed for ten years during the Clinton administration (though with little effect).

Laws like those prove that there are reasonable limits the public is willing to have imposed. Keep in mind, however, that “firearms are the most-regulated common consumer product in the United States.” It could be argued that our legal framework surrounding guns is in “infringement” territory already.

Some practical things to do instead

As we consider where to (re)draw the lines on the continuum between unrestricted access and sensible limits to gun ownership, there are other things we can do to reduce the risks of school shootings.

Train and arm teachers. Force must be met with force and the sooner during an incident, the better. After a 1974 attack at a school in Israel, the country “passed a law mandating armed security in schools, provided weapons training to teachers and today runs frequent active shooter drills. There have been only two school shootings since then, and both have ended with teachers killing the terrorists.” It’s already being tried in Colorado, where teachers “are being trained to carry guns in classrooms” in order to respond quickly to attacks.

Hire armed guards. Closely associated with arming teachers is the idea of employing security guards at public schools. We already have a pool of qualified candidates: many of America’s veterans are unemployed, yet are trained to use deadly force. We might also hire retired police officers. Having armed guards on location makes them first responders who can eliminate the unprotected gap between when an attack starts and law enforcement arrives.

Use gun-violence restraining orders. Writing in National Review, David French promotes the idea of Gun-Violence Restraining Orders (GVROs). As he explains, a GVRO is “an evidence-based process for temporarily denying a troubled person access to guns,” and that the “concept of the GVRO is simple, not substantially different from the restraining orders that are common in family law, and far easier to explain to the public than our nation’s mental-health adjudications.” Such an approach addresses an individual rather than an entire category.

Home school your kids. The Columbine massacre was a watershed moment for the country. It was also a watershed moment in our decision to home school our children. While it has its challenges, home schooling not only keeps your children physically safe, but you are the primary influence on their intellectual, emotional and spiritual development. If home schooling isn’t for you, consider a private Christian school. “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

It’s not the guns: it’s us

Whatever we decide to do in response to this latest horror, one fact is inescapable: we are no longer a virtuous society that can be categorically trusted with firearms. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

It is getting harder and harder for us to claim to be “a moral and religious people.” At one time we could plausibly make that claim, but not anymore. We are more like the nation of Israel during the time of the judges: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit” (Judges 17:6).

The issue is the human heart soaked in a secular culture that devalues human life, despises authority, promotes victimhood, mocks religion, glories in debauchery, embraces radical autonomy and rages at the slightest offense.

The breakdown of the family has led to a quarter of our children living in fatherless homes.  Psychotropic drugs are prescribed to more than 8 million children, some as young as 18 months, to control depression, anxiety, and a lack of focus. Ten percent of our children are addicted to video games, many of which are violent. Add a steady diet of movies, music and media that glorify unrestrained sex, violence and drug use, and we’ve got a volatile cocktail of generational depravity that would make Caligula blush.

It all started when we began to systematically remove God from the public square. C.S. Lewis summed up our situation in his work, The Abolition of Man:

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

By all means, let’s adopt additional measures for the safety and security of our children. But let’s also be clear that until we regain our virtue, new policies, laws and strategies won’t put an end to the violence. They never have.

RESCHEDULED: IFI Worldview Conference May 5th

We have rescheduled our annual Worldview Conference featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet for Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture.

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

With this being the season we celebrate the birthdays of two of our greatest presidents—Lincoln and Washington—I thought it would be fitting to share a quote from our first president that still has tremendous relevance today.

Washington understood the power of education and its influence on young minds. In a letter written in 1795, he shared the following:

It has always been a source of serious reflection and sincere regret with me that the youth of the United States should be sent to foreign countries for the purpose of education. Although there are doubtless many, under these circumstances, who escape the danger of contracting principles unfavorable to republican government, yet we ought to deprecate the hazard attending ardent and susceptible minds, from being too strongly and too early prepossessed in favor of other political systems before they are capable of appreciating their own.

The wisdom encapsulated in this paragraph from Washington’s letter holds a lot of relevance for us today, albeit in a different context. While Washington was concerned about foreign ideas of government, today we need to be equally—if not more—concerned about worldviews and value systems contrary to the Word of God (and not just regarding government, but also morality, ethics, and every other area of life).

Just as it was Washington’s desire to see more young people educated here in America rather than abroad, my desire is to see fewer young people from Christian homes educated in secular schools and more given a distinctively Christian education.

Let’s break this quote down and look at some of the wisdom it contains.

SINCERE REGRET

Washington begins by observing how solemn his concern is, noting that this has “always been a source of serious reflection and sincere regret” for him. Indeed, the possibility of our young people adopting contrary worldviews and belief systems is (and ought to be) a matter of “serious reflection.”

SENT AWAY

Washington lamented young Americans being sent away to foreign nations. In our day, however, it’s not foreign countries we need to be concerned about so much as the institutions in our own country that are foreign to our worldview and beliefs. Sending our children away to these institutions brings risk just as surely as sending an eighteenth-century American student to Europe did.

FOR THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

Here we come to the crux of the matter. These young Americans in Washington’s day weren’t being sent overseas merely as tourists or sightseers, but as students—“for the purpose of education,” as Washington put it. And that’s a key distinction. When we send our students to schools where we know the worldview is contrary to our own, we have contradictory hopes. We hope our children do learn what we want them to learn, but at the same time, we hope they don’t learn what we don’t want them to learn. Do you see the dilemma? We hope the school is effective, but not too effective. We hope our children learn and believe some of what is taught, but not all of what is taught.

How are our children supposed to know the difference? How are they going to parse it all out and embrace the good while rejecting the bad? It’s a tall order for a young mind.

Never forget: the purpose of a school is education; the foundation of education is ideas; and the content of our ideas determines our direction in life.

ARDENT AND SUSCEPTIBLE MINDS

Here we come to another important point. Washington knew that many of the young people sent overseas for their education were bright, intelligent . . . and susceptible.

Think about some of the synonyms for susceptible: vulnerable; prone; liable; at risk.

Washington knew that young minds are often ardent, but that this ardor can bring vulnerability to wrong ideas. That was his concern in 1795, and it’s no less a concern today. 

TOO STRONGLY AND TOO EARLY

Washington’s fear was that these young Americans would be impressed with contrary ideas “too strongly and too early” for their own good and the good of their country. And his concern wasn’t unfounded. Indeed, the combination of youth and inexperience is a dangerous blend. Mix in some wrong influences, and you’re inviting disaster.

CAPABLE OF APPRECIATION

The final point in Washington’s argument is insightful: he recognized that these young people were not yet capable of completely understanding their own nation—what it offered and what it represented. They would be susceptible to other ideas of government because they had not yet come to a point of full appreciation for the American experiment and the value of individual liberty.

Is it any different today, in the realm of other ideas and beliefs? Are our children so wise and mature that they can recognize the value of the Christian worldview and hold it as the precious thing it is, even in the face of conflicting belief systems?

EMBRACING THE WISDOM OF WASHINGTON

The father of our country was rightly hesitant about sending our young nation’s students abroad to be educated in countries that didn’t share our values of liberty and self-government. He recognized that a young person’s inexperience, ardor, and susceptibility would all combine to make him or her uniquely vulnerable to embracing foreign ideas of government. And in turn, this would be dangerous to the nation he had dedicated his life to building.

In our day, we’re seeing young people walk away from the church in droves. Perhaps we should take a cue from the wisdom of Washington and stop sending our young people, with their “ardent and susceptible minds,” to be educated by those who share neither our faith nor our worldview. Let’s handle the education of our children with the care and concern it deserves.

In August 2017, the Illinois General Assembly passed the Invest in Kids Act as part of a budget package and allocated $75 million for scholarships through tax-credit contributions. This legislation funds scholarships for qualifying low-income students to attend the nonpublic school of their choice.

The Children’s Tuition Fund of Illinois (listed as ACSI Children Education Fund on the state website) is officially authorized to serve students, schools, and contributors as a Scholarship Granting Organization and began accepting contributions on January 2, 2018. Your contribution can help private Christian schools across the state and, in the process, help families escape government schools.

Contributors to this scholarship program receive 75% of their contribution as a state tax credit. This is much more than just a deduction.

For example, if you owe $750 in Illinois state income tax and you contribute $1,000 to CTF IL, you eliminate your entire income tax liability because 75% of $1000 is $750. Almost all of your contribution ($950) goes to your designated school(s) for scholarships! Both businesses and individuals can participate. Please note that this credit is for the 2018 tax year—not for the 2017 tax year.

Since donations have been capped at only $75 million for the entire state, it is critical to make your donation quickly now that the system has opened on January 2, 2018.

To make a donation, you first need to register. This requires going to https://MyTax.Illinois.gov, registering on the site, and awaiting a confirmation “Letter ID” from the State. There is a great video of the process on the Invest in Kids Act website. Once you receive your Letter ID you must go back into MyTax.Illinois.gov and complete your registration.

If this sounds interesting to you, please take the first step of getting a Letter ID from the state so that you can finish the registration process. My letter only took a few days to receive, but if possible do this first step today!

Please visit https://MyTax.Illinois.gov today! Then select REGISTRATION in the menu on the upper right. And then choose “Sign up for a MyTax Illinois account.”

In Christ,

Pastor Calvin Lindstrom
Christian Liberty Academy

Another feckless judicial decision from another feckless judge.

In a 15-page decision, Federal Judge Jorge Alonso—an Obama appointee—explained his reasoning for refusing to stop Township High School District 211’s co-ed restroom and locker room practices. District 211, the largest high school district in the state, includes Conant, Fremd, Hoffman Estates, Palatine, and Schaumburg High Schools.

Fifty families are suing the district to overturn a policy that allows students who pretend to be the opposite sex to access opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms. The district decided that the feelings of students who want to share private spaces with opposite-sex students trump the feelings of  students who want to share private spaces with only persons of their same sex. No administrator or board member has explained why subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex rather than objective biological sex should determine private space-usage policy.

According to ABC News, Alonso “said courts have ‘correctly recognized’ that ‘federal protections against sex discrimination are substantially broader than based only on genitalia or chromosome.’”

What he’s saying is that laws pertaining to “sex” actually have no necessary connection to sex.

Alonso went on to cite Judge Ann Claire Williams of the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals who said this about a case in Wisconsin in which a teenage girl who masquerades as a boy fought successfully to use the boys’ restrooms:

A transgender student’s presence in the restroom provides no more of a risk to other students’ privacy rights than the presence of an overly curious student of the same biological sex who decides to sneak glances at his or her classmates performing bodily functions.

Wow.

How can it be that we have judges so foolish or so depraved that they actually believe it is no greater an invasion of privacy for a teenage girl to see a male peer urinating than it would be for an “overly curious” boy to “sneak glances” at a male peer urinating?

Ubiquitous attorney John Knight, director of the ACLU of Illinois’ LGBT and HIV Project, made this egregiously dishonest statement:

‘Throughout this litigation, one thing remains clear: The groups who filed this case remain unable to demonstrate any harm to their clients resulting from sharing restrooms and locker rooms with students who they perceive as different,’… adding that judge ‘confirmed there is no constitutional right to refuse to share a restroom or locker room with students because they are transgender.’

First, the parents suing the district did not merely perceive the boy as different from girls. He actually is different from girls.

Second, no student has refused to share restrooms or locker rooms with students “because they are transgender.” Some objectively female students object to sharing restrooms and locker rooms with students because of their objective, immutable male biological sex. Knight knows that. He also knows—as do the two male students who have sued the district—that the sex of humans can never change.

Third, objectively male persons have no constitutional right to use restrooms and locker rooms designated for persons of the opposite sex.

Fourth, Knight failed to define “harm.” Many would argue that children and teens are harmed by teaching them through such restroom/locker room practices that biological sex has no intrinsic meaning relative to modesty and privacy.

They are harmed when the government through such radical practices desensitizes students to engaging in private activities like going to the bathroom, changing clothes, or showering in close proximity to unrelated persons of the opposite sex.

They are harmed by practices that teach them that their good and natural feelings of reluctance to share private spaces with opposite-sex students constitute ignorant, hateful bigotry.

And they are harmed when ignorant school administrators, board members, and activists like Knight implicitly teach a form of dualism, which holds that the human person is composed of body and mind–which in their view are severable–with the material body subordinate to the workings of the mind.

The harm done is spiritual, intellectual, emotional, psychological, and moral. The harm is no less real and serious even though it may not be measurable or demonstrable.

Vicki Wilson, one of the parents in the group suing District 211, expresses concern for all students, including those who don’t want to share private spaces with opposite-sex students:

This practice is happening all over Illinois and children are fearful of being labeled if they say anything since administrators have intimidated them into ignoring their own needs for basic privacy and dignity…. All children need to be considered and there is a very simple solution that many school IL board members are refusing to even consider: provide a changing space outside either the girls or the boys locker rooms for children who request it.

If, as the silly people in the photo below claim, “separate is not equal” when it comes to restrooms and locker rooms, then why should we maintain any sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms anywhere? If, as the idiotic placards imply, separate restrooms and locker rooms for males and females are as unjust as separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites were, how can we possibly justify maintaining any separate spaces for males and females anywhere?

Either objective, immutable biological sex has intrinsic and profound meaning or it doesn’t. If it has intrinsic and profound meaning, then what District 211 is doing is pernicious. If, on the other hand, physical embodiment as male or female has no meaning, there remains no reason to maintain any sex-segregated spaces for anyone anywhere. If biological sex has no meaning relative to modesty and private spaces, then there is no reason to allow only “trans”-identifying boys in girls’ private spaces. Schools should permit “cisgender” (i.e., normal) boys in girls’ spaces as well. And if biological sex has no meaning, then co-ed private spaces should have no restrictions. After all, in the mixed up, muddled up, shook up world of “progressives,” wouldn’t separate showers for boys and girls be inherently unequal?

Lying seems to come naturally to Knight. He said this about the District 211 student (since graduated) that the ACLU of Illinois represented in 2015:

“What our client wants is not hard to understand. She wants to be accepted for who she is and to be treated with dignity and respect – like any other student.”

The student to whom Knight was referring was not asking to be accepted for “who she is.” The student was asking that others accept him as something he is not and never can be: a girl. He wants the whole world to pretend along with him. But there is no dignity in lies. Facilitating his disordered desires and delusional beliefs would represent an act of disrespect. School administrators, board members, and activists like Knight have put on a veneer of love, but it’s not real love. It’s an empty, fake, sickening, saccharine pseudo-love that enables them to feel good while doing evil. Real love is built on a foundation of truth.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Judge-Alonso-Worker-of-Lawlessness.mp3

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Written by Dr. Frank Turek

Just when you thought the state of higher education couldn’t get any lower, the Young America’s Foundation surveyed 50 major colleges to see what courses they are offering as legitimate “higher education” in the 2017-18 academic year.  As is evident by a reading of the complete survey, the new religion in America – “the religion of sex” – has taken over part of the academy and made it their temple.  Here’s just a small sampling of the crazy courses now being offered:

Up at Northwestern University there’s a course that typifies many being offered at campuses all over the country.  It’s called, Beyond the Binary: Transgender and Race.  Apparently,after thousands of years of human civilization and scientific advancement, college professors have abandoned biology and just discovered that gender and race have no scientific basis.  They can be changed on a whim (this from the crowd who just ten minutes ago were asserting that sexual feelings, like race, are fixed because “we’re born this way”).

True to the current fad, Medieval Sexuality, also offered at Northwestern, investigates the “fluidity of sex and gender roles in an age before ‘sexual orientation’; impact of and resistance to Christian theology’s negative assessment of sexuality; the cult of chastity.”  Well, who could disagree with that?  I mean, if only people would be less chaste in our society, then things would really get better.  Right?

Indiana University is offering Topics In Gender Studies (We’re All A Little Crazy: Gender, Madness, & Popular Culture). (I wish I could tell you what this college course is about but the description it too profane to print.)

Not to be outclassed by Indiana, the University of Michigan is finally offering Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music (parents have been demanding it for years!),as well as Drag in America (which is now a laudable way to dress up a degree).

Amherst College has constructed The Cross-Cultural Construction of Gender, apparently without correction from the biology department.

Wellesley College offers the ever-necessary Rainbow Cowboys (and Girls): Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality in Westerns, a course that might even earn a blush from Wellesley alum Hillary Clinton as she rides out of town.

Over at Swathmore College you can participate in Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology. “Key themes include: gender; embodiment; masculinity; liberation; sexuality; feminist and queer theory.”   If that’s not queer enough for you, don’t miss Queering the Bible.  It’s stated goal?  “By reading the Bible with the methods of queer and trans* theoretical approaches, this class destabilizes long held assumptions about what the Bible – and religion – says about gender and sexuality.”

The University of Maryland offers Homophobia in the U.S. Society in the New Millennium, the stated goal of which is not to educate, but to activate students to take up a political crusade.  Its purpose is to “focus on students’ powers and responsibilities within struggles to end discrimination based on sexuality.”

Davidson College offers Oppression & Education (which ironically is not a commentary on higher education).  They also list Marriage in the Age of Trump, which has nothing to do with the kind of marriage that has perpetuated and stabilized civilization since, well, it created civilization.  Instead the course examines “meanings of marriage for same-sex couples, including marriage as material right, marriage as protest, and marriage as validation.”

At the University of Georgia you’ll be asked to swallow Gendered Politics of Food and adopt a completely new method of learning by taking Feminist Research Methods.

At Ole Miss, there’s this golden oldie: Sex, Gender and the Bible – an obvious staple of higher learning.  (Grandma, don’t you remember taking that course while Grandpa was overseas saving civilization from the Nazis?)

Down in Sweet Home Alabama, the University of Alabama has a course called Contemporary In(queer)ies, which is about as bad as their football team is good.  The allegedly more conservative Texas A&M calls a similar course Alternative Genders (whoop, whoop).

At the University of Kentucky you can take – and I’m not making this up— Vampires: Evolution of a Sexy Monster.  “This course answers the following questions: What is a vampire? Where do they come from? Why do we have an obsession with the walking dead, especially with fanged monsters?”  (What employer couldn’t use a graduate with the answers to those puzzling questions?)

DePaul University answers another question puzzling society with Are We Still Fabulous?: Queer Identity in Contemporary Drama.  Meanwhile, over at Providence College students with less pigmentation in their skin will learn that they are guilty for any perceived social inequality when they take The Power of Whiteness.

The Ivy League Brown University is apparently proud to offer Prostitutes, Mothers, + Midwives: Women in Pre-modern Europe and North America, as well as Feminist Theory for a Heated Planet which, according to the description, has something to do with “the eruption of Gaia.”

Columbia University advocates personal and political action with its course on Queer Practice, only to be outdone by another queer course at Cornell University called Nightlife, which appears to study what might or should happen at gay nightclubs.

Dartmouth is teaching The United States of Queer as well as Radical Sexuality: Of Color, Wildness and Fabulosity.  (In other news, leftist sociologists remain baffled by the current wave of sexual harassment charges – what could possibly give sexual deviants justification to radically and wildly ignore traditional sexual boundaries?)

The “Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department” at Yale University is peddling Globalizing Gender and Sexuality.  And the once great Harvard University (founded by John Harvard to train pastors) now offers such biblically edifying courses as Gender, Religion and Scripture and Leaning In, Hooking Up, which will “critique ideological formations of gender, particularly as bounded by race, class, and sexuality.”  Indeed, it offers “new models for sexuality” that, apparently, were beyond the provincial mind of Jesus.

And that’s only a small sample of what’s being taught at just 50 schools; it’s actually worse and more widespread than that.

Do you think those courses sound like elements of a quality education or more like the weekly worship services of the religion of sex?  Sure, they have the ruse of education.  But they are really promoting a dogmatic secularism with a kind of religious fervor intent on urging students to abandon reality and live in their own sexual fantasy world.  And the culture they help justify demands that the rest of us live in their sexual fantasy world too. Their worshippers will preach “inclusion, tolerance and diversity.” But if you fail to celebrate their fantasy they’ll immediately brand you a heretic and exclude you for being “intolerant” enough to believe that there actually is a reality outside of your mind.

While conservatives believe in changing their behavior to fit reality, today’s new liberals seem hell-bent on changing reality to fit their behavior.  That will not end well for them personally or our country.

Now, the professors who teach these courses may have the best of intentions. They may think that what they are doing is right and true (all the while declaring that truth and gender are relative).  But you don’t have to support their dogmatic delusions. Parents and alumni: if you love your kids (and civilization) more than your football and basketball tickets, then stop giving these schools your children and your money.

A new controversy has erupted in School District U-46, and this time it doesn’t involve compulsory co-ed locker rooms or offensive statements from board member Traci O’Neal Ellis. This time 18 local religious leaders have objected to school board member Jeanette Ward’s Facebook post about a controversial article on religion assigned in a sixth-grade class.

A teacher had her sixth-graders read an article by Australian history of religion professor and agnostic Philip Almond and then answer questions based on that reading. Here are some of the controversial statements from that article:

“Judaism, Christianity and Islam are three of the world’s major religions. While they have many differences, they all believe in the same God.

“Some of the prophets that Jews follow were Noah, Abraham and Moses. Christians follow these prophets too. They also think that Jesus was another prophet of the same God.”

“Jesus, Muhammad and the Hebrew prophets all described the same God.”

“The God of the Old Testament can be both good and evil.”

“Like the prophets of the Old Testament, Jesus predicted a day when God will punish humankind and will be merciless in doing so.”

 “Muslims, Christians and Jews all worship the same complex God. But each religion believes that its books and teachings reveal the true nature of that God. This disagreement has shaped the course of history. The followers of each religion believe that only they will be saved by God. They see all others as damned. This way of seeing people, as damned by God and beyond saving, has led to violence and hatred.”

After reading the assignment, Ward posted the entire article by Almond along with these innocuous comments:

Do you know what your children are being taught: Muslims believe in the same God as Christians and Jews?

My 6th-grader came home with this assignment today. She was supposed to read the article and answer the questions. (She will not be completing this assignment). The full text of the article is below. Quiz questions are depicted in the pictures. This article is utterly incorrect and false on many levels. This is one of the many reasons I voted no on this curriculum resource.

In response to Ward’s Facebook comments, a statement signed by 18 religious leaders—mostly from apostate denominations—was read at Monday’s school board meeting (see names and affiliations below*). They began by mildly critiquing Almond’s article for its lack of “nuance” and “generosity”:

None of us saw our faith traditions represented in their fullness in the article as represented from the school’s curriculum.

The central problem with the article was not lack of “nuance,” “generosity,” or  “fullness.” The central problem was theological errors taught to children as facts. For many Christians such theological errors are offensive, and having government employees present such errors to their children as facts compounds the offense.

Then, with insufficient nuance and generosity, these religious leaders criticized Ward’s Facebook comment:

[W]e feel that more important than the content of the article is the question of how we are to engage with inevitable differences of opinion, theology, and world view. Here, we strongly take exception to Ms. Ward’s approach… We believe that these instances represent a valuable opportunity to practice civil discourse and to express our differences with both respect and humility.

Seriously? Ward’s “approach” is more important to purported Christian pastors than a public school presenting resources that teach children that the God of the Old Testament is evil and that Allah and Jesus are the same?

Moreover, what specifically did Ward write that is uncivil, disrespectful, or prideful? Maybe these faith leaders could tell everyone exactly what the permissible ways to “engage with inevitable differences of opinion, theology, and world view” are.

One wonders why these religious leaders didn’t publicly chastise school board member Veronica Noland when she referred to opponents of co-ed locker rooms as “narrow-minded fear mongers.” And why didn’t they condemn school board member Traci O’Neal Ellis’ “approach” when she three times referred to Republicans as the equivalent of KKK’ers. Curiouser and curiouser.

This theologically imbalanced coterie of critics next claimed it’s the job of some unnamed persons to correct the misinformation provided to young middle schoolers by government employees:

[W]hen such articles and statements are presented to our children, we believe it is helpful to use these instances as opportunities to teach our children why we disagree with the information being presented and how to do so with respect and humility. Indeed, we believe teaching our children to identify, understand, and even challenge ideas with which they do not agree is helpful training for them as students, citizens, and people of faith.

The subject of their recommendation remains unclear. Who should teach children that the material presented at school is incorrect? Religious leaders? Parents? How can religious leaders or parents engage in the work of correcting misinformation if they don’t know that such misinformation was disseminated to their children?

This raises critical questions: Who selected this article? Did a department chair and curricula review committee read it? And why are teachers using resources that present arguable assumptions and errors as facts?

Continuing their criticism of Ward under the guise of offering their definition of proper leadership, the faith leaders inadvertently revealed their fealty to government employees as opposed to parents and other taxpayers:

[F]aithful, respectful leadership means engaging teachers and administrators directly.

This may be the most troubling part of their troubling statement. They failed to mention that the primary responsibility of school board members is to directly engage parents and other stakeholders—you know, the people who elected them and for whom they work.

How can Muslim, Jewish, or Christian parents have the kind of conversations with their children that this group of mostly “progressives” recommend unless a school board member or members engage directly with those parents to inform them of what was taught? Clearly the teacher didn’t do that.

From working for a decade in a public school, I learned that there is an unwritten principle that teachers, administrators, and board members cling to as if it were sacred. The rule is that if parents have a concern with resources, they should first express their concerns to teachers, and then if unsatisfied with the response, move up the food chain. In my humble opinion, that’s an arbitrary, socially constructed rule that parents need not honor.

Ironically, teachers, administrators, and board members who believe there’s no need to honor the practice of segregating boys from girls in restrooms and locker rooms think parents must honor the practice of keeping controversial resources on the down-low in order to avoid controversy. How “progressives” arrive at their ethical and moral imperatives is baffling.

Unfortunately, given the desire of “progressives” in government schools for absolute autonomy and their self-identification as “change agents,” controversy is both inevitable and necessary. To borrow from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in “Letter from Birmingham Jail”:

[W]e who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

There’s a lesson to be learned from this mess. It’s that “progressives” control schools in part because they act. Perhaps at the next board meeting, 20, 25, or 30 theologically orthodox Christians could make a statement about the problem of using taxpayer money to teach young children that Jesus and Allah are the same God or that the God of the Old Testament is evil. Surely there are a few pastors in the Elgin area who find such teaching objectionable. And surely  there are some who feel empathy for Jeanette Ward who stands in the gap for children when no other school board member does.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Faithless-Faith-Leaders-Protest-Jeanette-Wards-FB-Post_01.mp3

*Lois Bucher, associate pastor, First Congregational Church (United Church of Christ), Elgin; Richard T. Carlson, pastor, First United Methodist Church, Elgin; David Daubert, pastor, Zion Lutheran Church, Elgin; Marlene Daubert, deacon, Zion Lutheran Church, Elgin; Dr. Paris Donehoo, senior pastor, First Congregational Church (United Church of Christ), Elgin; The Reverend Dr. Nathaniel Edmond, Second Baptist Church, Elgin; Rev. Donald J. Frye (“married” to a man), rector, St. James Episcopal Church, West Dundee; Sulayman Hassan, Baitul Ilm Academy, Streamwood; Ed Hunter, chaplain, Presence Saint Joseph Hospital, Elgin; Margaret Frisch Klein, rabbi, Congregation Kneseth Israel, Elgin; Steven J. Peskind, rabbi and chaplain, Streamwood; Fred Rajan, reverend (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) and vice president, Office of Spiritual Care, Advocate Hospital; Karen Schlack, reverend, First Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), Elgin; Jill Terpstra, reverend, St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, Kane County; Katie Shaw Thompson, pastor, Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren; Rev. Denise Tracy, president, Coalition of Elgin Religious Leaders President, Elgin; George Wadleigh, Christian Scientist; and Mark Weinert, pastor, First Christian Church, Elgin.

End-of-Year Challenge

As you may know, IFI has a year-end matching challenge to raise $160,000. That’s right, a great group of IFI supporters are colluding with us to provide an $80,000 matching challenge to help support IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.

Please consider helping us reach this goal!  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2018!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 876
Tinley Park, Illinois 60477

Written by Jane Robbins and Emmett McGroarty

In 2013 Michael Cohen of Achieve, Inc. (an organization integral to developing and marketing the Common Core national standards) testified in New York that Common Core is a long-term education experiment on our children: “The full effects… won’t be seen until an entire cohort of students, from kindergarten through high school graduation, has been effectively exposed to Common Core teaching.” Four years later we may not be seeing the full effects, but heaven help us when we get there.

The most recent red flag comes from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), an international assessment of the reading skills of representative samples of fourth-graders. As reported by the Washington Post, the 2016 PIRLS results show U.S. students tumbling from fifth in the world to thirteenth. Scores fell by seven points from those achieved by fourth-graders in 2011, the last time scores were released.

Hmm. What could have happened in schools between 2011 and 2016 that might have affected the academic performance of eight-year-olds? A Harvard education professor speculated that the 2009 recession and that old reliable — poverty — could have been the culprits. Education Secretary and on-again off-again Common Core supporter Betsy DeVos couldn’t identify a specific factor but suggested we need to “rethink school.”

Maybe. But Latvia — one of Europe’s poorer countries — outperformed the U.S. And the school structure that DeVos says we should rethink was pretty much the same in 2016 as in 2011. So what could it be?

Feminist writers claim American society is fundamentally flawed because of “patriarchy.” Whether by accident or design, this claim coincides with the Marxist goal to destroy the concept of family. This destruction is needed to implement the theft and redistribution of all property.

Christians believe that God created man and woman, and called them to join in marriage, raising children in families. If these activists are successful Christian families won’t be allowed to parent children in the way we believe.

The activists are educating the American public to reject the roles of husband and wife, to redefine the family as merely “something that takes care of you.” Defending against this assault means re-educating both Christians, and the public, regarding the roles of husband and wife. We also need to re-assert the mother-and-father model of family.

Previous attempts to ban families, such as in Russia, failed horribly. But failures never stopped Marxists before. We need to work, so that these activists don’t get the opportunity to try again, this time with America being the victim.

Why does this document mention Marxism so much?

Socialism and communism are both rooted in the philosophy of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels. Its proponents believe in Marxism so strongly that you’d think it is a religion. It is the fire behind the intolerant college scene, Bernie Sanders’ political rise, and the “Antifa” rioting. Marxism also drives the assault on the family.

What is this patriarchy that must be destroyed?

Many voices criticize patriarchy and want to replace it with… something. But all these voices come with many definitions. Their ideas of patriarchy might not match up with yours. Let’s discover what exactly we’re supposed to condemn. Here are a few prominent voices on patriarchy.

Gloria Jean Watkins, who writes under the name Bell Hooks [i], says in Understanding Patriarchy that:

“Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation.” [ii]

She would prefer to call it “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” [iii] but can’t stand the resulting laughter. She calls this laughter “a weapon of patriarchal terrorism” [iv] Again,

“Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.” [v]

She argues that a society that expects men and women to fulfill roles damages them. Quoting Terrence Real:

“Psychological patriarchy is the dynamic between those qualities deemed ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ in which half of our human traits are exalted while the other half is devalued. Both men and women participate in this tortured value system. Psychological patriarchy is a ‘dance of contempt,’ a perverse form of connection that replaces true intimacy with complex, covert layers of dominance and submission, collusion and manipulation. It is the unacknowledged paradigm of relationships that has suffused Western civilization generation after generation, deforming both sexes, and destroying the passionate bond between them.” [vi]

Video blogging on the site EverydayFeminism.com, Marina Watanabe gives her version of patriarchy:

“In the simplest terms, patriarchy is a social system that values masculinity over femininity. This type of social system dictates that men are entitled to be in charge and dominate women. And it implies that the natural state of gender relations is a dynamic of dominance and submission….This system forces people into strict boxes called gender roles, and gender roles hurt everybody. If someone who is assigned a certain gender at birth doesn’t fit into the social norms expected of that gender, they’re often ostracized by society.” [vii]

From the London Feminist Network (founded by Finn Mackay):

“Patriarchy is the term used to describe the society in which we live today, characterized by current and historic unequal power relations between men and women whereby women are systematically disadvantaged and oppressed. This takes place across almost every sphere of life, but is particularly noticeable in women’s under-representation in key state institutions, in decision-making positions and in employment and industry. Male violence against women is also a key feature of patriarchy. Women in minority groups face multiple oppressions in this society, as race, class and sexuality intersect with sexism for example.” [viii]

Is patriarchy really all of that?

Collecting these definitions, patriarchy is:

1.) A political and social system where strong men dominate women and weak men. Because of their domination, and use of terror and violence, they get to take what they want. It causes male violence against women.

2.) Something that requires men and women to act in society-approved gender roles.

3.) A life-threatening condition, debilitating men’s health and sapping the spirit of the nation.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition is:

“Definition of PATRIARCHY

social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line” [ix]

The activist definitions differ from the dictionary listing mostly through claiming that violence is an integral part of patriarchy. The violence claim might just be there to grab your attention, to convince you that their arguments have urgency. However, the claim can’t be proven because there are no non-patriarchal societies. There is no way to compare two places and show that patriarchy increases or reduces various crimes.

In fact, statistics of property crimes, and of violent crimes against women, vary widely between nations, cities, and even between neighborhoods of the same city. The statistics show that many factors influence crime rates. You can’t blame a patriarchal society structure for crime – unless your intent is slander.

In this study we’ll ignore the sensational claims and accept the dictionary definition of patriarchy. Anyway, for activists these extra claims are just talking points. They don’t want to reform it, but would rather remove patriarchy from America.

“Remove patriarchy!” disguises the real goal: abolishing the family

Suppose we humor our “prominent voices” and contemplate removing patriarchy from American society. How might this be done? Both Bell Hooks and Finn Mackay have advice. (Marina Watanabe is silent here.)

In her Understanding Patriarchy, Bell Hooks uses the language of social revolution. She would remove the roles, behaviors, and expectations that society has of men and women. In illustration, she recounts an episode in the life of a son of Terrence Real, a fellow author. One day the boy dressed up in girls’ clothes, like a Barbie doll. He was quickly set straight by his neighborhood playmates. Boys don’t dress up like girls, right? Apparently Mr. Real didn’t like that result, and neither does Ms. Hooks.

“[Terrence] Real at least offers his boys a choice: they can choose to be themselves or they can choose conformity with patriarchal roles.” [x]

Her “visionary feminist thinking” [xi] would invalidate male and female roles. It would also invalidate parenting roles, because in her world whatever the child invents, or is influenced to believe, is already normal and acceptable, to be immediately acted upon. We already see the results of such thinking every day, such as a 5-yr old being transgendered. [xii]

Bell Hooks’ writings have also been applauded as being Marxist.

“This brand is specifically Marxist, as it primarily consists of a critique of the current ‘racist, sexist, capitalist state’–one of Hooks’ favorite and frequently repeated phrases–and gestures toward the development of a new social order based not on artificial (gender, racial, economic, and political) dualism but on the respect for each individual as an individual, not a politically constructed identity.” [xiii]

Finn Mackay prefers the traditional revolutionary route to change.

“Feminism is one of the oldest and most powerful social movements in history; it is a revolutionary movement, and that means change. There is so much wrong with the present system that we can’t just tinker round the edges, we need to start again; our end point cannot be equality in an unequal world. This is also the reason why feminism is not struggling to simply reverse the present power relationship and put women in charge instead of men (though this is a common myth about feminist politics). Feminism is about change, not a changing of the guard.” [xiv]

The Hooks and Mackay quotes are in line with standard-issue Marxism. It abolishes the concept of private property, giving everything to the State. But people who marry, raise children, and plan their lives around their families, won’t go along with this scheme. So the family must also be abolished.

“With the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike, whether they are legitimate or not.” [xv]

“But what will quite certainly disappear from monogamy are all the features stamped upon it through its origin in property relations; these are, in the first place, supremacy of the man, and, secondly, indissolubility. The supremacy of the man in marriage is the simple consequence of his economic supremacy, and with the abolition of the latter will disappear of itself. The indissolubility of marriage is partly a consequence of the economic situation in which monogamy arose, partly tradition from the period when the connection between this economic situation and monogamy was not yet fully understood and was carried to extremes under a religious form. Today it is already broken through at a thousand points. If only the marriage based on love is moral, then also only the marriage in which love continues. But the intense emotion of individual sex-love varies very much in duration from one individual to another, especially among men, and if affection definitely comes to an end or is supplanted by a new passionate love, separation is a benefit for both partners as well as for society – only people will then be spared having to wade through the useless mire of a divorce case.” [xvi]

In summary, remove the roles of the parents. After that the family structure itself is pointless. The concepts of the activists align themselves with classic Marxist thought.

The Bible, gender roles, and the family

Moses, describing the origin of mankind, splits the story into two sections. Genesis 1:26-30 tells the story of the sixth day. God created mankind, both male and female (verse 27). Together they are to “be fruitful and multiply” (verse 28) and rule over all the fish, the birds, the beasts, and over plants of the earth (verse 29). The man and woman together have this task. The second section, Genesis 2:15-25, tells details of creating Adam, then Eve. After instructing Adam that he needed a helper (verse 20) God created Eve, a suitable helper, from a part of Adam.

In Genesis 2:24, marriage is described as the husband and wife becoming one flesh, Adam and Eve style. It isn’t merely a social arrangement, but something much closer. In Matthew 19:6 Jesus repeats this concept to the Pharisees, that “what therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” There is no way around it, God created marriage.

In marriage the husband and wife are equally important but have different roles. The husband is to be the head of the partnership. [xvii] The concept of patriarchy comes from this. This headship is confirmed in the account of the fall (Genesis 3). One of Eve’s consequences was that “yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (verse 16). God also chastised Adam for listening to Eve and eating the forbidden fruit (verse 17), indicating Adam’s existing responsibility over Eve.

After Jesus’ resurrection the marriage pattern, with its roles, is retained. All believers, both male and female, have equal standing in Christ (Galatians 3:28). Yet the husband is to love his wife even as Christ loves the church (Ephesians 5:25, 28). Putting your life on the line to protect your wife and family is quite a charge, not lording it over them. This charge doesn’t belong in the same world as the claim of “dominating your wife.” [xviii]

American society accepts and builds on the Christian concept of family. There are laws to protect individual family members from physical, financial, or property abuse. Men and women are equal before the law. There is nothing like the sharia law convention that “the man’s testimony in court is always believed more than that of a woman.” (Quran 2:282, Sahih Bukhari (a Hadith book) 6:301) That is, civil law doesn’t put up with the claim of

“…the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.” [xix]

Abolishing patriarchy and the family has been tried before (it failed)

These activists, Marxist or not, wish to redefine male and female roles, make marriage insignificant, and thereby abolish patriarchy from society. It turns out that this has been tried before, with abject failure.

In 1917, as soon as the Bolsheviks (Communists) gained the upper hand in Russia, even before concluding a peace with Germany, they began implementing their “end private property” and “end marriage” plans.

“To clear the family out of the accumulated dust of the ages we had to give it a good shakeup, and we did,” declared Madame Smidovich, a leading Communist and active participant in the recent discussion. [xx]

The plan was to remove the responsibilities, and thus the roles, of the husband and wife. Without those roles patriarchy would disappear.

“Will the family continue to exist under communism? Will the family remain in the same form? These questions are troubling many women of the working class and worrying their menfolk as well. Life is changing before our very eyes; old habits and customs are dying out, and the whole life of the proletarian family is developing in a way that is new and unfamiliar and, in the eyes of some, ‘bizarre’. No wonder that working women are beginning to think these questions over. Another fact that invites attention is that divorce has been made easier in Soviet Russia. The decree of the Council of People’s Commissars issued on 18 December 1917 means that divorce is, no longer a luxury that only the rich can afford; henceforth, a working woman will not have to petition for months or even for years to secure the right to live separately from a husband who beats her and makes her life a misery with his drunkenness and uncouth behaviour. Divorce by mutual agreement now takes no more than a week or two to obtain. Women who are unhappy in their married life welcome this easy divorce. But others, particularly those who are used to looking upon their husband as ‘breadwinners’, are frightened. They have not yet understood that a woman must accustom herself to seek and find support in the collective and in society, and not from the individual man.” [xxi]

The government promised to remove from women the tasks of keeping house and of raising children. In place of these things the women were expected to do more factory work, what the bureaucrats really valued. Immediately there was a flood of divorces. Because divorce was easy, sometimes obtainable within an hour, men flitted from girl to girl.

“ ‘Some men have twenty wives, living a week with one, a month with another,’ asserted an indignant woman delegate during the sessions of the Tzik. ‘They have children with all of them, and these children are thrown on the street for lack of support!’ (There are three hundred thousand bezprizorni or shelterless children in Russia to-day, who are literally turned out on the streets. They are one of the greatest social dangers of the present time, because they are developing into professional criminals. More than half of them are drug addicts and sex perverts. It is claimed by many Communists that the break-up of the family is responsible for a large percentage of these children.)” [xxii]

“The peasant villages have perhaps suffered most from this revolution in sex relations. An epidemic of marriages and divorces broke out in the country districts. Peasants with a respectable married life of forty years and more behind them suddenly decided to leave their wives and remarry. Peasant boys looked upon marriage as an exciting game and changed wives with the change of seasons. It was not an unusual occurrence for a boy of twenty to have had three or four wives, or for a girl of the same age to have had three or four abortions.” [xxiii]

It also became dangerous not to participate in “free love” (meaning “sexual relations unbounded by moral rules”). As it is said, “everything not forbidden is compulsory.” [xxiv]

“Some members of the League of Communist Youth, an organization which now numbers between a million and a half and two million young men and women, regard the refusal to enter into temporary sex relations as mere bourgeois prejudice, the deadliest sin in the eyes of a Communist.” [xxv]

The Soviet government found that the number of divorces exceeded the number of new marriages. Between the chaos of the new morality and severe losses of men from the Great War and the Russian Civil War, a demographic disaster was looming. By 1936 the Soviet government had rolled back their laws on families and marriage.

“The idea that the state would assume the functions of the family was abandoned,” Goldman wrote. [xxvi] (Wendy Goldman, history professor at Carnegie Mellon University)

In the great Soviet Motherland they abolished marriage roles, parental roles, and any point to having a family. When the populace embraced their new freedoms things fell apart.

Marxism is still alive in America

Communism failed in the Cold War, but so what? Its proponents want to try it again because it just hasn’t been done “right.” [xxvii] Marxists make new proponents every year because we give to them our children.

Marxism is quite alive in our colleges and universities, especially in the humanities. [xxviii] Since getting a teaching degree means passing many humanities classes, teaching candidates spend a lot of time with these Marxist teachers. This discipleship creates the next generation of Marxist teachers. And since practically all university students spend some time taking humanities classes, all students get a dose of Marxist thought.

The continuing infatuation with Marxism helps explain how “multiple genders” and “gender fluidity” came about. If you get people to believe that gender roles are meaningless they will be willing to accept meaningless definitions of family. For example,

Whatever you define family as, family is just a part of belonging to something that takes care of you and nurtures you… [xxix]

The Marxist hope is to move from “gender roles have no meaning” to “when anything can be a family, nothing is a family.” So you see, the apparently obscure argument about patriarchy has society-shaking implications.

Your Call To Action

God created man, woman, and marriage. The married couple are to “be fruitful and multiply”, raising their children in their family. We also see that the husband and wife have different, complementary, and equally valuable roles. But the complaint about patriarchy is intended to break these roles and rebuild society without families.

You have everything at stake in this argument, for “everything not forbidden is compulsory” will come true. Ask that Colorado cake baker: sooner or later, they’ll come for you, too. [xxx] What can you personally do to defend your interests in your family, in your way of life?

First, ask God for understanding. Study the Bible to understand the roles he gave to husbands and wives in families. Also learn how the Bible is a guide for organizing modern society. Sites like the Illinois Family Institute can help you learn.

Second, don’t sacrifice your children’s faith to God-hating indoctrination. It is foolish to pay dear money to send your children to a college, even your own alma mater, if they will learn things only from a Marxist perspective. As an education consumer, with the power of the purse, you have many good alternatives. Refuse to pay for a college education that will ruin your children.

Third, don’t sacrifice your children’s faith to what is going on in your grade schools and high schools. Their staffs will discourage your intervention, claiming that they are the experts. But garbage content dressed up in professional technique is still garbage. [xxxi]

There are still many ways to bring the public schools to task: elect school board candidates not beholden to the unions; deny taxes or bonds for schools; expose the things they teach; encourage spying when they do things behind the parents’ backs. Use your imagination. You can also ask your sons and daughters what they’re being taught, and use your wisdom to correct their understanding.

Fourth, don’t encourage public officials who advocate, or approve of, multiple-gender teaching and other such evil things. All candidates, even a first-time candidate for dog catcher, should be examined on a range of policy and moral issues. Judge them even on issues not immediately pertinent to their intended office. People rise from low offices to higher ones. The longer officials are in office the harder it is to remove them from politics. Prevent bad government through early disqualification of bad candidates.

Join IFI at our Feb. 10th Worldview Conference

We are excited about our fourth annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned John Stonestreet on Sat., Feb. 10, 2010 in Medinah. Mr. Stonestreet serves as President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He is a sought-after author and speaker on areas of faith and culture, theology, worldview, education and apologetic.  (Click HERE for a flyer.)

Mr. Stonestreet has co-authored four books: A Practical Guide to Culture (2017), Restoring All Things (2015), Same-Sex Marriage (2014), and Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview (2007).

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture:

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

Footnotes:

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_hooks

[ii] Hooks, Bell, Understanding Patriarchy, 2004, http://imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/UnderstandingPatriarchy.pdf

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Real, Terrence, How Can I Get Through To You?, http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/servlet/DCARead?standardNo=0684868776&standardNoType=1&excerpt=true

[vii] Watanabe, Marina, https://everydayfeminism.com/2014/11/what-is-patriarchy/

[viii] What is Patriarchy? http://londonfeministnetwork.org.uk/home/patriarchy
From their home page:

We work closely with other groups in London and elsewhere in the UK, supporting various feminist campaigns in order that we can broaden our movement and work together for women’s rights and against patriarchy in all its forms.

[ix] Merriam-Webster dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patriarchy

[x] Hooks, Bell, Understanding Patriarchy, 2004, referencing an anecdote of Terrence Real

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/kindergarten-celebrates-5-year-old-transgender-transition-kids-traumatized

[xiii] Kindig, Patrick, https://patrickkindigfeministtheory.blogspot.com/2012/02/bell-hooks-and-post-marxism.html

[xiv] Mackay, Finn, The biggest threat to feminism? It’s not just the patriarchy, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/23/threat-feminism-patriarchy-male-supremacy-dating-makeup

[xv] Engels, Frederick, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Ch II.4, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02d.htm

[xvi] Ibid. Note that this section is also a justification of “free love”, flitting from partner to partner at a whim.

[xvii] Deffinbaugh, Bob, The Meaning of Man: His Duty and His Delight, https://bible.org/seriespage/3-meaning-man-his-duty-and-his-delight-genesis-126-31-24-25

[xviii] Clark, Tom and Clark, Mary, Role of Men, https://lifehopeandtruth.com/relationships/family/role-of-men/

[xix] Hooks, Bell, Understanding Patriarchy, 2004

[xx] A Woman Resident in Russia, The Russian Effort to Abolish Marriage, The Atlantic, July 1926, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1926/07/the-russian-effort-to-abolish-marriage/306295/

[xxi] Kollanti, Alexandra, Communism and the family, Women’s role in production: its effects on the family, 1920, https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm

[xxii] A Woman Resident in Russia, The Russian Effort to Abolish Marriage

[xxiii] Ibid.

[xxiv] Williamson, Kevin, The Right Not To Be Implicated, National Review, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374115/right-not-be-implicated-kevin-d-williamson

[xxv] A Woman Resident in Russia, The Russian Effort to Abolish Marriage

[xxvi] Svab, Petr, The Failed Soviet Experiment With ‘Free Love’, https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-failed-communist-experiment-with-free-love_2242535.html

[xxvii] Sanders, Perry and Sitar, Dianna, Socialism Hasn’t Failed; It Hasn’t been tried – Yet!, New Unionist, December 1993, http://www.deleonism.org/text/nu931201.htm

[xxviii] Caplan, Bryan, The Prevalence of Marxism in Academia, http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/03/the_prevalence_1.html

[xxix] Snetiker, Marc, Ellen DeGeneres talks Finding Dory, http://ew.com/article/2016/04/18/finding-dory-ellen-degeneres/

[xxx] Henneberger, Melinda, I’d make a cake for a same-sex wedding, but Colorado baker Jack Phillips shouldn’t have to, The Kansas City Star, December 5, 2017, http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/melinda-henneberger/article188235799.html

[xxxi] Higgins, Laurie, Illinois Association of School Boards’ Disturbing Document, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/education/illinois_association_schools_disturbing_document/

As Congress moves the tax reform legislation into a Conference Committee, the U.S. Senate version of the bill has an amendment that is not in the U.S. House bill.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (r-TX) explains what this language is at his website. The “Cruz Amendment” (Sen. Amendment #1725) “seeks to expand 529 College Savings Plans to include K-12 elementary and secondary school tuition for public, private, and religious schools, including K-12 educational expenses for homeschool students.”

Sen. Cruz delivered these remarks on the Senate floor:

By expanding choice for parents and opportunities for children, we have prioritized the education of the next generation of Americans, allowing families to save and prepare for their children’s future educational expenses. Expanding 529’s ensures that each child receives an education that meets their individual needs, instead of being forced into a one-size-fits-all approach to education, or limited to their zip code.”

Adding homeschoolers and expanding plans in general will help ensure that each child receives an education that meets their individual needs, instead of being forced into a one-size-fits- all approach to education. The expansion of 529 plans to include K-12 expenses will help working class and middle-income families save and prepare for their children’s educational expenses.

This amendment has the support of the Trump Administration — here is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos:

Expanding 529’s to include any educational option is a common-sense reform that reflects the reality that we must begin to view education as an investment in individual students, not systems.

Will Estrada, the director of federal relations for Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), told Illinois Family Institute this:

HSLDA is grateful to Senator Cruz for introducing this amendment which contained HSLDA’s language ensuring that homeschoolers are able to use their own 529 plans for k-12 homeschool expenses. We support this amendment, and are grateful that it was included in the Senate’s tax bill.

Estrada explained that HSLDA “strongly opposes ANY federal funds” be given to homeschoolers. “We have vigorously opposed past attempts to give federal money to homeschool families, and will continue to do so.”

Clarifying further, Estrada said:

The bottom line is that a 529 plan is your own money, not government money. You put it into your own account after taxes. You decide whether and how to use it, or even whether to create a 529 plan for your children. HSLDA is grateful to Senator Cruz and Congress for ensuring that homeschoolers have another tool in their toolbox as they educate their children at home.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative to encourage him/her to keep Sen. Amendment #1725, and allow parents to put money they save for their children’s college costs toward private K-12 education, including expenses to home educate.  Urge him/her to keep the Cruz Amendment and expand educational opportunities for parents and students.

The need for action by Illinois supporters of homeschooling is very important because two Illinois U.S. representatives are on the conference committee. “The senate’s language,” Estrada said, “needs to remain in the final bill that comes out of the conference committee.”

Here is Senator Cruz introducing his amendment on the U.S. Senate floor:

Please don’t delay in communicating with our federal lawmakers in Washington D.C.

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Solecism: a grammatical mistake in speech or writing

On March 9, 2017, the Illinois Association of School Boards issued an update to a 2016 guide titled “Transgender Students in Schools Frequently Asked Questions for Public School Boards and Staff,” which is a publication of the National Association of School Boards (NASB). Since so much of what goes in our government schools is barely visible through the noxious bureaucratic fog that envelops them, conservative parents and teachers should peruse this document to get a clearer picture of where the “trans” cult and its sycophants are shoving us.

Let’s take a quick look at just three of the questions, all dealing with pronoun mandates:

Question: If a school administrator has advised school staff that a transgender student wants to be addressed by that student’s preferred name or pronoun, can a school staff member refuse to do so?

Under most circumstances, a school staff member should abide by the parent’s/student’s wishes as to how to address the transgender student. In accepting employment with a school district, administrators and school staff agree to abide by, uphold, and enforce all of their school board’s policies and procedures, as well as federal and state laws, including a wide variety of non-discrimination, harassment, and bullying policies and procedures. Complying with the school administrator’s directive and abiding by the school district’s anti-discrimination policies and procedures likely will not interfere with an employee’s personally held beliefs. Moreover, consistent with the school board’s mission, an employee’s religious or other sincerely held beliefs should not prevent that employee from treating all students with respect and dignity.

To be clear, according to the NSBA (and IASB) all staff members should use incorrect pronouns or newly invented words when referring to  students who masquerade as the opposite sex, or those who “identify” as both male and female (e.g., “pangender,” “bigender,” or “genderfluid”), or those who claim to be “genderless” (e.g., “agender”). Maybe the NSBA will next direct teachers to ask  daily how their “gender fluid” students wish to be addressed.

How many teachers are made aware in job interviews that their prospective administrations are going to compel them to use incorrect grammar in the service of a controversial ideology? How many teachers are made aware in job interviews that a condition of employment is that they must be willing to bear false witness (i.e., lie)?

There are no laws in Illinois that require teachers to use incorrect pronouns for students who have decided that pronouns have no connection to their sex. There are no federal laws that require such a bizarre practice. And yet, school administrators are issuing pronoun diktats to their staff without notifying the public and despite never having created policy mandating the use of solecisms.

How can the NASB possibly know that mandating lying does not “interfere with,” for example, a theologically orthodox Christian “employee’s personally held beliefs”? And what does a willingness to lie say about staff members? What does a teacher’s willingness to lie about biological sex teach students?

“Progressives” seem to believe they have a unilateral right to control language. They establish Orwellian language rules, changing grammar and redefining terms like “safety,” “hate,” and “tolerance.” And now they’re trying to circumscribe what respect and dignity entail. Don’t be bullied. No one has an obligation to defer to Leftist Newspeak. For many people of faith, treating others with respect and dignity includes respect for the truth and meaning of their physical embodiment as male or female. To deny the truth that they are created in the image of God—male or female—is to disrespect them. To facilitate, affirm, or appear to affirm a lie as true is an act of profound disrespect. 

Question: Can an employee be disciplined for insubordination for failure to comply with an administrator’s directives, or the student’s or parent’s expressed name and pronoun preferences?

A school district could pursue disciplinary action against the offending employee for insubordination for failing to comply with the administrator’s directives and/or the student’s/ parent’s wishes…. Where the employee has refused to comply based on her genuine belief that the directive is contrary to her religious convictions, she may claim that the district has violated her First Amendment rights by disciplining her. Whether that claim would be successful in federal court is unclear…. If the employee not only refuses to comply with the directive, but also allows other students to disregard the student’s name and pronoun preference, which creates a harassing or hostile environment for the transgender student, the school board also could pursue disciplinary action against the offending employee for allowing student-on-student harassment.

Pronouns denote and correspond to objective biological sex. Referring to objectively male students by female pronouns is a lie and disrespects something real and profoundly meaningful about them: their physical embodiment. To the government, a refusal to lie is an act of insubordination for which an employee could be disciplined.

Worse still, it appears that administrators may order teachers to require their students to lie as well. How can any serious Christ-follower be part of such malfeasance and ontological treachery?

Question: How should schools handle objections by non-transgender students or families to sharing locker rooms or restrooms?

Ensure that your schools are places where all students are made to feel welcome, respected, and protected. While remaining sensitive to the rights of all students, a practical way of addressing these concerns is to make spaces available for any student who does not want to share locker rooms or restrooms with other students. Such options can include privacy curtains in locker rooms and separate restrooms. Keep in mind, however, that OCR takes a strong stance on this issue. In at least one recent case, OCR indicated the use of such separate facilities must be voluntary, and contrary policies could result in enforcement action.

To the relief of many conservatives, on February 22, 2017, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to all public schools informing them that the OCR has “decided to withdraw and rescind” the “policy and guidance” issued by the OCR under President Obama, which commanded schools to sexually integrate restrooms, locker rooms, and even hotel accommodations for school-sponsored overnight events. The relief of conservatives may have been premature because on June 6, 2017, the OCR sent out further clarifications that included this:

OCR may assert subject matter jurisdiction over and open for investigation the following allegations…:

failure to assess whether… gender-based harassment (i.e., based on… sex or sex-stereotyping, such as refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred name or pronouns when the school uses preferred names for gender-conforming students…) of a transgender student created a hostile environment.

Schools do not now nor ever have used pronouns in accordance with “gender-conforming” students’ preferences. Schools use pronouns in accordance with the objective, immutable, biological sex of students. All students are, therefore, treated equally. And yet, the OCR may come after Newspeak transgressors.

There are several reasons why the incoherent, deceitful, anti-science “trans” ideology is transforming the country at breakneck speed, two of which  are the ignorance and cowardice of conservatives. Conservatives need to learn about this ideology and resolutely resist the efforts of “trans” cultists to control language and sexually integrate private spaces. Church leaders need to teach about the “trans” ideology. Church leaders need to help their congregations understand the biblical view of maleness and femaleness, and they need to help them understand the fallacious propositions that comprise the “trans” ideology. Conservatives need to expect far more knowledge, wisdom and courage from political and school leaders. And finally, conservatives should think deeply about whether it’s wise and good to have their children trained up by those who don’t understand that the body and soul constitute an inseparable unity.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/TWO_Illinois-Association-of-School-Boards-Disturbing-Document.mp3

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Written by Bruno Behrend

American education has become more and more centralized over the past 100 years. While this consolidation is associated with a great deal of expense, there has been little evidence that it has improved outcomes. Instead, the evidence points to, but does not yet prove, that decentralizing education offers more benefits, first in outcomes, and second in lower cost.

Centralization is the key problem in American education

In 1939, America had 117,108 school districts. By 2006, this number was down to 13,862. While it is difficult to correlate test scores over this period of time, America’s relative decline in comparison with other nations in reading and math since the 1950s is convincing evidence that this rapid consolidation and centralization clearly hasn’t helped outcomes.

Expense

During this same period, education spending has skyrocketed, much more so in the last 30 years than the previous 50. It is interesting that the bulk of district consolidation took place from 1950 to 1968, and rapidly decelerated from 1970 through today. This lack of correlation between the spending increases of the last 30 years and the consolidation that took place before that does not necessarily show that continued consolidation would have lowered cost. Rather it shows that expense and district consolidation bear little connection.

It should be noted that while the numerous small districts that were consolidated during the 50s and 60s might be considered “centralization” from the perspective of the small districts, the fact remains that during that period, education was still considered a local matter. These districts, though fewer in number, still were mostly locally controlled. The more insidious type of centralization is where the state, and then increasingly the federal government, started to dictate curriculum, standards, and desired outcomes. This has accelerated over the last few decades. We are now at the point where we can say “local control” is mostly a myth.

This creeping centralization, whether intended or not, has lead to the rapid acceleration of administrative positions in government schools. It is clear from the data that this run up in employment, primarily in non-classroom expenditures, has been the largest cost driver in the last few decades.

This is borne out through many studies on district consolidation. It doesn’t really matter whether you consolidate, split up, or otherwise rearrange the management of schools. Relative to expense, what matters is payroll, and the payrolls are fat.

Curriculum Quality

If there is any area where we can see the dramatic effects of centralization, it is the curriculum most American children are exposed to. Standards, curricula, and testing have become increasingly centralized. You can say what you want about the local control and your elected school board, but the 50 states now have standards that are increasingly similar, and districts must comply. Combine this with the oatmeal-like similarity of the textbooks and narrow choice of testing regimes across America, and American school districts all operate within a very narrow band, dictated by an affiliation of public, private, and quasi-private organizations that advise the federal government on what should, and shouldn’t be, taught in American schools.

That was how things were before the “Common Core State Standards,” and the adoption of the Common Core in 45 states merely codified a process that had been taking place for decades.

In an effort to avoid making this article an anti-common core screed or a pro-common core wonk-piece, it suffices to say that the centralization culminating in the Common Core hasn’t “destroyed” American education, and getting rid of it won’t “save” American education.

Rather, the tepid benefits and pitfalls of the Common Core illustrate that American public education has reached yet another expensive dead end (or cul-de-sac). The standards might have been a slight improvement over the aggregated standards of all 50 states (at the expense of the better standards in some states). But a standard is only as good as the number of people who can attain them, and tests show that the Common Core has been another expensive experiment that yield little or no clear benefits in that regard.

Jay P. Greene, Head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, testified before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Early Education, Elementary and Secondary Education about the role and implementation of national curriculum standards. He testified that:

“One thing that should be understood with respect to nationalized approaches is that there is no evidence that countries that have nationalized systems get better results. Advocates for nationalization will point to other countries, such as Singapore, with higher achievement that also have a nationalized system as proof that we should do the same. But they fail to acknowledge that many countries that do worse than the United States on international tests also have nationalized systems. Conversely, many of the countries that do better than the United States, such as Canada, Australia, and Belgium, have decentralized systems. The research shows little or no relationship between nationalized approaches and student achievement.”

Instead of debating yet another attempt to fix our overly centralized education system, perhaps it is time to begin the process of decentralizing it. Should we spend less time trying to “fix” things, and more time pulling things apart? Should we create more independent schools, putting more authority in the hands of parents, who might then choose from a wider array of these new, independent education options? Would that work.

Is Decentralization better?

Decentralization probably would work better, but we can’t say definitively unless we try. Following the logic of Mr. Greene above, there are excellent schools in today’s centralized system, as well as awful ones. It follows that there will be awful schools among these new options, as well as excellent ones.

However, unlike today’s system, where the awful schools stay open, and their attendees have few options to leave them, a more decentralized system will cycle through the good and the bad options faster. People will learn very quickly whether their child’s school is working for them or not. If it isn’t, a decentralized system will allow parents more options.

In short, there is no guarantee that a de-centralized education system will improve aggregate outcomes. What is very likely, however, is that parents and students will have more options, and that the action of choosing those options, will create a more dynamic system of testing those options. This alone will be a dramatic improvement over the expensive, slow, and culturally painful process of implement a large scale change in today’s ossified “district-based” system, where nearly every school is merely a franchise of a federally run school system. Furthermore, the probability is high that a decentralized system will be less expensive as well, as smaller, more nimble, schools do not require the administrative overhead of today’s “compliance-based” bureaucracy.

Decentralize, but how?

Of course, once you start talking about decentralizing education, the entire Government Education Complex engages in the process of defending its hard-won turf. Decentralization means dis-empowering the decades-long accretion of bureaucrats, union bosses, and private contractors that live off the yearly cash flow of education spending that reached $634 billion in 2013 (latest year available).

Simple legislative tools, such as charter schools, vouchers or education savings accounts, bring out the hammer and tongs of the entrenched education bureaucracy. They argue that this money diverts money from the local school district or our “already struggling public schools.”

This is beside the point. If a parent is unhappy with a local school, and believes they may have access to a better option, then denying the school district of funds is a pointless argument. Education spending should benefit the student, not the local bureaucracy.

Sadly, charters, vouchers and other mechanisms that might decentralize education will likely never take enough hold to truly do what the necessary dismantlement of today’s centralized system. The political clout of the established system is too great to allow enough funds (or students) to be pulled from their maw.

While there is value in doing what you can to expand your education options legislatively, the fact is that we are on the cusp of developing an entirely new way to decentralize government schools. Just leave them.

What if they gave an expensive, bureaucratized school district, and nobody came? Welcome to the “micro-school.” While very early in the development stages, the fact is that these new, small, schools are starting up across America. Maybe it is time you thought about starting one too.

Building upon the proven success of home schooling, American parents can now choose a wide variety of curricula, on-line resources, and tutors / teachers to educate their children. I lack the space in this article to provide all the details, but it suffices to say that all the pieces are in place for an exodus from the centralized system, and the moment you choose that option, you have essentially succeeded in decentralizing education in the only part of America that is most important to you – your kids and your home.

Yes, you will still be on the hook for all the taxes that the district system eats, but instead of fighting the impossible battle of convincing voters to cut that spending, convince them to open a small school with you instead. As more people leave for better options, the constituency for all that wasteful spending will shrink. It is time to do to government schools what Priceline did to travel agents.

Please click the links below to find out more about micro-schools, and how they might be the “killer app” the finally puts a stake through the heart of America’s mediocre, expensive, and sclerotic Government Education Complex.

• Acton Academy

• AltSchool

• Brightworks

• Full Circle School

• Highlands Micro School

• Khan Lab School

• NOLA Micro Schools

• Parish Academy

Bruno Behrend is a Senior Fellow at the Heartland Institute and a free lance writer on education policy.

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