Never poke a sleeping bear or the ideology of “tolerant” librarians. IFI’s recent article by John Biver about a controversy brewing in West Chicago over a picture book for young children that positively portrays the “pride” parades that pollute city streets throughout the country every June has unleashed the fury of freedom-lovin’ librarians across the nation.

Here’s what lesbian Gayle E. Pitman, author of This Day in June and professor of gender studies and psychology at Sacramento City College, said when asked what her book is “REALLY about”:

I LOVE this question! This Day in June is really about being who you are, and not apologizing for it. When I wrote this story, I wanted Pride to be featured as realistically as possible. I wanted to see drag queens, guys in leather, rainbows, political signs, the Dykes on Bikes—everything you would see at Pride. I didn’t want any of it to be watered-down or sugarcoated. Lots of people have asked me, “Do you think that’s appropriate for children?” And my answer always is—YES. There’s something very powerful about allowing something to be portrayed authentically, because it teaches children in an indirect way to be as authentic as they can. It’s also important to recognize that children respond to Pride very differently than adults do. When adults see people wearing leather, they make certain associations to that. Children see people wearing leather and think they’re just wearing a costume, or playing dress-up. What I love most about This Day in June is that the illustrations are age-appropriate AND authentic at the same time.

Pitman’s picture book also depicts the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the Catholic-hating drag queens who call themselves “queer nuns.” They include “Sister Anni Coque l’Doo, “Sister Guard N O’Pansies”, and “Sister Hera Sees Candy.”

What precisely is “authenticity” to Pitman and “progressive” librarians? Is “authenticity” acting on all powerful, persistent, unchosen desires? If so, is a society in which everyone is “authentic” a society conducive to moral order and human flourishing? And if a parade that features dykes on bikes, drag queens, and guys in leather is “age-appropriate,” what isn’t? What criteria do “progressives” in libraries and public schools use to determine age-appropriateness?

Pitman is not done yet. She has just released another gem for our little ones: When You Look Out the Window. It’s a picture book about infamous lesbians Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin who became lovers in 1950 and co-founded the country’s first lesbian political organization, the Daughters of Bilitis, in 1955.

John Biver’s article unleashed a torrent of librarian wrath from sea to shining sea. From all across this great land in which our forefathers spilled their blood to secure freedom for homosexuals to destroy marriage, rob children of their birthrights, and march through our streets in leather thongs, librarians are descending on IFI’s Facebook page to leave “non-judgmental” comments and reviews like these:

Meghan Cirrhito (librarian, feminist), Long Island, New York: “Advocates hate. Do not recommend or support this group.”

Deborah M Monn Bifulk (librarian), Saint Paul, MN: “Hate is not a family value. Rejecting the myriad of families that exist outside heterosexual unions is bigotry, plain and simple.”

Dawn Betts-Green (“radical militant lesbrarian”), Tallahassee, FL: “As a Pagan queer person, I don’t want to see all of the viscious [sic], hateful religious books, but guess what, they exist on the shelves of many libraries for hateful people just like you.”

Ingrid Conley-Abrams  (director-at-large of the Leftist American Library Association’s  GLBT Round Table, and a children’s librarian who has called for librarians everywhere to leave bad reviews of IFI on our Facebook page), New York City: “You are entitled to your beliefs. I do, however, find them hateful…. I won’t spend my time catering to your homophobic fantasies….”

Fobazi Ettarh, Philadelphia: “They spread ignorance and bigotry in the name of Jesus. He would be ashamed of these people.”

Leftists get apoplectic when conservatives talk about Jesus, but when Leftists do, it’s a whole different and way better ball of wax. So, since Ettarh did bring up religion, I have some questions, like, how does expressing theologically orthodox views on sexuality and marriage constitute spreading ignorance and bigotry? Why would Jesus be ashamed of those who accept his definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman? Was she referring to the Jesus in whose name and by whose authority the Apostle Paul wrote the following:

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions, for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

In a revealing blog post in which Ettarh discusses the ideology of “intersectionality” in which race, sex, class,” “sexual orientation,” and “gender identity” compete for top spot on the hierarchy of oppression, Ms. Ettarh says this:

A common value taught in library school is the importance of the librarian as an objective and neutral professional. As public servants, librarians must serve all communities equally regardless of moral values and political views. The librarian’s primary role is that of a facilitator in the public’s access to information and knowledge.

However, librarianship is inherently political. Even activities in which librarians are specifically trained to maintain “neutrality,” such as collection development, are intrinsically political…. [M]ost libraries… actively cause harm in the name of neutrality by giving voice to hate speech when neutrality is interpreted as giving equal voice to “both sides.”

Ettarh has admitted that librarians are not and—in her view—should not be neutral. Their work should be informed by their politics. Commitments to neutrality or “giving equal voice” should not be allowed to trump “progressive” politics. And when Ettarh refers to “hate speech,” remember who is permitted to define “hate.” “Progressives” like Ettarh get to define it—or rather redefine it. “Hate” has been redefined to mean “moral assumptions on sexuality and marriage with which Leftists disagree.”

Before “progressives” took control of all major cultural institutions, moral disapproval of volitional behavior was not thought to constitute hatred of persons. And even today, “progressives” don’t apply that principle consistently to their own moral assumptions. They don’t believe their moral disapproval of volitional behavior means they hate those who disagree and who act in accordance with their beliefs.

Leftists now make this fallacious argument:

1.) Conservative moral assumptions about homosexual behavior, the nature of marriage, and the (science-denying) “trans” ideology are “hateful” (meaning Leftists believe they’re wrong).

2.) Hatred may lead to violence.

3.) Therefore, hatred is violence.

4.) And, therefore, expressions of conservative moral assumptions about sexuality and marriage must be censored.

Very tricksy and dangerous rhetorical game.

As I wrote several years ago, libraries use Collection Development Policies (CDP’s) to determine which books they will purchase with their limited budgets. CDP’s hold that librarians should purchase only books that have been positively reviewed by two “professionally recognized” review journals. Well, guess what folks, the “professionally recognized” review journals are dominated by ideological “progressives.” Publishing companies and the field of library science too are dominated by ideological “progressives,” so getting books published that espouse conservative ideas (particularly on the topic of sexuality) is nigh unto impossible.

If librarians really cared about the full and free exchange and availability of ideas and if they really believed that “book-banning” is dangerous to society, they would direct their rage and ridicule at the powerful publishing companies, professionally-recognized review journals, and their own profession, all of which do far more de facto book-banning than does a handful of powerless parents seeking to have a picture book moved.

“Progressives” used to revere the now-deceased Judith Krug, past president of the portentously named Office of Intellectual Freedom (or is it the “Ministry of Truth”?) of the American Library Association. In a 1995 interview, she famously said this:

We have to serve the information needs of all the community and for so long “the community” that we served was the visible community…. And so, if we didn’t see those people, then we didn’t have to include them in our service arena. The truth is, we do have to.…

“We never served the gay community. Now, we didn’t serve the gay community, because there weren’t materials to serve them. You can’t buy materials if they’re not there. But part of our responsibility is to identify what we need and then to begin to ask for it. Another thing we have to be real careful about is that even though the materials that come out initially aren’t wonderful, it’s still incumbent upon us to have that voice represented in the collection…. We can’t sit back and say, “Well, they’re not the high-quality materials I’m used to buying.” They’re probably not, but if they are the only thing available, then I believe we have to get them into the library.”[emphasis added]

I wonder if Leftist librarians will “demand more” conservative “materials” related to sexuality, marriage, and the “trans” ideology in order to serve the increasingly invisible community of conservatives.

Yeah, right.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Tolerant-Totalitarian-Librarians-Really-Hate-IFI.mp3

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Picture this: You’re at the library with your three-and-a-half-year-old daughter whose attention is grabbed by a colorfully illustrated children’s book. She takes it off the shelf and asks you what the book is about.

You are happy to oblige until you see that this colorfully illustrated children’s book is about promoting many aspects of the LGBTQQAP (etc.) agenda.

This is what happened recently to Kurt and Michaela Jaros. Fortunately, Michaela was quick to utilize her mothering skills and answer her daughter’s question without providing a sex ed lesson on the spot.

The book the Jaros’ daughter pulled from the shelves of the West Chicago Public Library is titled This Day in June.  Here is the description from the book’s Amazon.com page:

In a wildly whimsical, validating, and exuberant reflection of the LGBT community, This Day in June welcomes readers to experience a pride celebration and share in a day when we are all united. Also included is a Reading Guide chock-full of facts about LGBT history and culture, as well as a Note to Parents and Caregivers with information on how to talk to children about sexual orientation and gender identity in age-appropriate ways. This Day in June is an excellent tool for teaching respect, acceptance, and understanding of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

Not to Kurt Jaros, who has taken up the issue with the West Chicago Library Board.

Jaros explains that since libraries work together through inter-library loans, if one library has it, it will be available to regional libraries as well. Therefore, one need not live in the West Chicago Library district make a statement at the meeting.

Jaros further noted that libraries often do not receive enough public comment on controversial issues. He has set up a website to rally support for the effort to have the book either removed from the shelves or be placed where children do not have access to it, as many libraries do.

Some argue that having this and similar books removed from library shelves is “censorship” or “book burning.” As with everything else, Leftists can’t quite grasp the fact that taxpayer have a say in how their tax dollars are spent.

Jaros explained that from cover to cover, This Day in June is filled with pro-LGBTQQAP (etc.) propaganda presented through symbols and messages. He prepared a flyer to provide examples from the book. (This disturbing book is written by Gayle E. Pitman and illustrated by Kristyna Litten.)

Library board member David Reynolds also spoke with IFI about the offensive nature of the book and the inappropriateness of allowing children to have unsupervised access to it. Libraries remove books from shelves all the time for various reasons, he said, but the effort to have this book removed is creating the equivalent of a “constitutional crisis.”

Controversial books should not be placed where children can easily step on cultural land minds, Reynolds said. Books like This Day in June should, at a minimum, be moved to a separate parent/teacher collection as is the policy at many libraries.

Just two days ago, Illinois Family Institute’s Laurie Higgins wrote “In a Heartbeat”: Propaganda for Children. Here is her opening paragraph:

Anyone who doubts that “LGBTQQAP” activists and their “allies” are pursuing the hearts and minds of other people’s children should watch this sweet, well-crafted, animated short film about an adorable, red-headed, closeted middle school boy whose secret crush on another boy is exposed when his anthropomorphized heart leaps from his chest and pursues the boy with whom the main character is besotted.

This Day in June too seeks to capture the imaginations of young children:

Filled with saturated colors and vivid illustrations, this picture book uses rhyming couplets to convey the fun and exuberate feelings assocated [sic] with a pride parade for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and families. For example, “Rainbow arches/Joyful marches/Motors roaring/Spirits soaring.” The cartoon artwork is richly detailed and capture the “Banners swaying/Children playing.”

Here is a paragraph from that Laurie Higgins’ article reworked to apply to This Day in June:

The book’s creators are making the implicit argument that the biological sex of humans is irrelevant to the morality of sexual activity. Leftists use the adolescent slogan “love is love” to distract the public from the central issue—which pertains not to love but to sex. The central issue concerns sexual morality and sexual boundaries. The Left seeks to skirt that issue by dangling vivid illustrations and rhyming couplets in front of vulnerable and manipulable children.

None of the “profoundly important questions about sexual morality matter,” Higgins writes, “in a culture where cartoons shape feelings—nothing more than feelings.”

IFI also spoke with a veteran of the public library systems who noted the Leftist slant from the local level on up to the Illinois Library Association (ILA) and the American Library Association (ALA). “Libraries do not need to carry these kinds of books,” she said, but often do because so often they are lobbying for one side of a political argument.

Even the ILA and the ALA seem to be less about promoting libraries than pushing political agendas, she said: “They need to be neutral like librarians are taught in library school and how they are trained in collection development.” Librarians are given a lot of control over the latter, she said, so the more liberal the librarians are, the more liberal the book collections will be.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send an email or fax to the West Chicago Library Board of Trustees, urging them to reject policies that spend tax resources on politically controversial and deviant books targeted at young children.  You may want to point out that this is not an issue of free speech but rather of book selection policy.

More ACTION:  If you are a local resident, please try to attend this meeting, and try to arrive by 6:30 to sign in to make comments, which are limited to three minutes. You may want to type up your comment and read it so as to ensure you don’t exceed the three-minute limit.

Are you ready for the “greatest cultural revolution in history?”

IFI’s Laurie Higgins was recently interviewed by both John Mauck of Mauck & Baker, LLC, and by Mark Elfstand on his “Let’s Talk” show.  Both programs are on WYLL radio (1160 AM), and can be heard throughout most of the state.

Lawyers for Jesus

In the first interview for a recording of “Lawyers for Jesus Radio,” attorney John Mauck discussed governmental policies regarding LGBTQIA ideology. The conversation began with a discussion of Higgins’ article The “Trans” Ideology Damages Children. In it, Higgins writes:

Social conventions reflect and reinforce the good architecture of sexually differentiated human life. Social conventions for men and women were not created out of whole cloth or manufactured from the fertile imaginations of patriarchal oppressors. They emerged from human nature.

The conversation covers topics such as the mental and physical health risks of hormone therapy or surgery to help a person pretend he’s a she, or she’s a he.

Also discussed is HB 1785, that will make it legal to falsify a birth certificate. That bill is currently on Governor Bruce Rauner’s desk. The interview gave time to the topic of the absurdity of “gender fluidity,” the end game of those pushing for gender ideology, and a call to action.  Listen to it here:

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Let’s Talk!

In the most recent interview by Mark Elfstand, he deftly covered a variety of issues in about ten minutes.

He began by asking about the article Higgins penned Christians Must Exit Government Schools where she writes:

Christian parents charged by God to train up their children in the way they should go have no biblical warrant for placing their children all day, all year in schools that refuse to recognize the immutability and profound meaning of sexual differentiation, particularly as it relates to modesty and privacy.

Since few Christian parents or teachers are doing anything to counter the advance of Leftist gender ideology, Higgins said, parents have to get their kids out of schools that “teach them that to be loving, compassionate, and inclusive, they must lie by calling gender-pretending peers by opposite-sex pronouns, and they must be willing to relinquish their privacy.”

Other topics and articles discussed include the reaction to the above article, including an exchange Laurie Higgins had with people at the Chicago Tribune. Also touched on was the morally bankrupt Southern Poverty Law Center including IFI among its list of “hate groups.”

Check it out:

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For years conservatives have asserted that homosexuals are pursuing children, and for years homo-activists have mocked that claim. Due to either their profound ignorance or their commitment to deception as a tactic for advancing their pernicious goal of normalizing homoeroticism, homo-activists misrepresented what conservatives were claiming.

Homo-activists falsely claimed that conservatives were worried that they would try to “turn children gay,” when, in reality, most conservatives were claiming that homo-activists were feverishly working through every cultural institution to eradicate conservative views on the nature and morality of homosexuality. In other words, homo-activists were pursuing the hearts and minds of other people’s children.

The same goes for “trans”-activists who, like homo-activists and their ideological allies, are hell-bent on using public schools to pursue the hearts and minds of other people’s children.

These activists teach other people’s children that homoeroticism and biological-sex rejection (i.e., “transgenderism”) are phenomena to be celebrated.

They teach them that there is no difference between a marriage between a man and a woman and an anti-marriage between two people of the same-sex.

They teach them that expressing the belief that homoerotic activity or cross-dressing and bodily mutilation are wrong is equivalent to bullying and the cause of teen suicide.

They teach them that men can be mommies, and women daddies.

They teach them that to be loving, compassionate, and inclusive, they must lie by calling gender-pretending peers by opposite-sex pronouns, and they must be willing to relinquish their privacy.

They expose them to plays, novels, and essays with obscene language that depict deviant sexuality positively.

They teach them that every person who believes homoeroticism and co-ed locker rooms are wrong is hateful—which includes many children’s parents.

Christian parents charged by God to train up their children in the way they should go have no biblical warrant for placing their children all day, all year in schools that refuse to recognize the immutability and profound meaning of sexual differentiation, particularly as it relates to modesty and privacy.

No Christian should teach in an institution that requires them to facilitate the body- and soul-destroying fiction that humans can be born in the “wrong” body.

No Christian teacher should refer to boys and girls by opposite-sex pronouns. If they do, they teach all students that the “trans” ideology is benign at best, if not good. They teach all children that it is justifiable to participate in the grievous fiction that subjective feelings about one’s sex have greater value and import than does one’s objective, immutable sex.

Hawaii just issued guidelines that direct schools on how “trans”-identifying students should be accommodated. The guidelines include the false claim that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibit “discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression.” They do not. They prohibit discrimination based on sex and sex did not then, nor does it now include “gender identity” or “gender expression.”

Here are some of the other guidelines:

1.) Schools should accept a student’s “gender identity” based on nothing more than his or her claim. No medical or mental health diagnosis or treatment is necessary.

2.) For students who will be pretending to be the opposite sex at school, there should be a meeting with school officials. Parents need not be included or notified about the meeting or the student’s opposite-sex impersonation. This directive applies to elementary, middle, and high schools.

3.) “Trans”-identifying students should be allowed access to opposite-sex restrooms, locker rooms, and hotel rooms on overnight school-sponsored trips.

4.) Schools should not require “trans”-identifying students to use single-occupancy restrooms or locker rooms.

5.) Schools may not share the true sex of “trans”-identifying students with students of the opposite sex whose privacy they are invading. Nor may schools share this information with the parents of students whose privacy is being invaded. So, a girl who pretends to be a boy should be able to use the boys’ restrooms—where boys use urinals—and no parents may be notified.

6.) Schools should make special accommodations for normal students who don’t want to share restrooms and locker rooms with peers of the opposite sex. In other words, normal girls will be forced out of girls’ restrooms and locker rooms so that boys with a mental disorder may use them.

7.) “Trans”-identifying students should be allowed to play on opposite-sex athletic teams.

8.) Students should be permitted to cross-dress at school.

9.) School staff and faculty should use the “preferred” pronouns of “trans”-identifying and “gender nonconforming” students.

Minnesota has just issued similar guidelines but include this startling statement regarding restrooms, locker rooms, and hotel accommodations for overnight trips:

Privacy objections raised by a [normal] student in interacting with a transgender or gender nonconforming student may be addressed by segregating the student raising the objection provided that the action of the school officials does not result in stigmatizing the transgender and gender nonconforming student. [emphasis added]

So, what exactly will happen if “trans”-identifying students feel “stigmatized” when normal students of the opposite sex don’t want to share restrooms or locker rooms with them? Will normal students be forced to share private facilities with persons of the opposite sex?

The purportedly Catholic governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) just signed a bill into law requiring schools to allow co-ed restrooms and locker rooms, and requiring teachers to refer to “trans”-identifying students by opposite-sex pronouns. The government is requiring teachers to speak falsehoods to and in the presence of children. Will theologically orthodox Christians comply? Will they bear false witness by pretending that boys are girls or vice versa? Will they render unto Caesar that which is not Caesar’s?

These things are happening in public schools all around Illinois, and where they aren’t yet, they will be soon.

Unfortunately for the countless children and teens who attend public schools, the 2017/2018 school year is just around the corner, and like dirty old men in trench coats lying in wait to expose children to sordid things, so too await public school administrators and teachers to do likewise. Unlike perverts who lurk in darkness, however, these government employees have no shame. They do their dirty work of exposing children to wickedness openly and call it “love.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie HERE.

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

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

Written by Aaron Bandler

Giving parents the ability to choose which schools their children attend can turn lives around. Just ask Denisha Merriweather, whose life was transformed thanks to the opportunity to attend private school through a voucher program.

Merriweather explains in PragerU’s latest video that she “was often confused and frustrated” during her time in public school, frequently struggling with the course material. When she asked her teachers for help, they were unable or unwilling to give her much guidance. Eventually, she “stopped asking questions.”

“I stopped asking questions and I withdrew into myself,” said Merriweather. “I failed third grade — twice. Fourth and fifth weren’t much better. I lashed out by getting into fights with my classmates. D’s and F’s filled my report card. I was going nowhere. I was just another black kid in the warehouse.”

The trajectory of Merriweather’s life was radically altered when she began living with her godmother, who sent her to a private school thanks to a school voucher program. At the private school, Espirit de Corps Center for Learning, her teachers were able to figure out a way to make the material understandable for her.

“Instead of dreading my classes, I began to look forward to them,” said Merriweather. “Instead of fistfights, I began doing community service work. I even earned the National Police Athletic League’s Girl of the Year award in 2009.”

Merriweather ended up being the first in her family to graduate high school; she would go on to be the first in her family to graduate college with a Master’s degree.

“Without school choice, none of this would have been possible,” Merriweather said. “Why is it so hard to grasp? Why are so many people so resistant to children and parents having a choice of schools? The system, especially for economically disadvantaged kids, is broken.”

Those who are against school choice argue that it diverts money “from students who need it the most”; however, the answer isn’t more money, it’s more competition.

“Prosperous parents can choose where to send their kids to school – public, private, or charter –wherever they have the best chance to succeed,” said Merriweather. “Why shouldn’t all parents have that choice? We have the money to make it happen. We just need the will.”

Watch the full video below:

This article originally posted at DailyWire.com.

The Trump administration’s Department for Civil Rights at the Department of Education has issued a memo to schools stating that civil rights investigations will be launched against individuals at schools who refuse to address transgender students by their preferred gender pronouns.

The memo, signed by Candice Jackson of the Office of Civil Rights reads in part:

“OCR may assert subject matter jurisdiction over and open for investigation gender-based harassment… (i.e., based on sex stereotyping, such as acts of verbal, nonverbal, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostility 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.”

This directive equates a refusal of a student or teacher to refer to another student by their preferred name as “verbal, nonverbal, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostility.” A student can decide that one day they want to be referred to by one name and another day an entirely different name, and if a teacher or another student refused to address them by that name, that teacher or student would be penalized.

Practically speaking, this means that the federal government will pressure teachers and students to refer to transgender students as “ze, em, ver, xyr, perself,” or a whole multitude of other gender pronouns. For teachers, the consequences of not complying could easily look like being forced to resign, and students could possibly be expelled for non-compliance.

Don’t teachers and school districts already have enough problems to deal with? The last thing teachers need to be concerned about is whether they could get fired if they forget each transgender student’s preferred gender pronoun or preferred name. The last thing students need to deal with is a multitude of gender pronouns confusing their proper learning of the English language.

Family Policy Alliance notes:

…[P]erhaps the directive shouldn’t have come as a big surprise.  The person who issued the memo, Candice Jackson, is the acting director of the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education.  Given that she was appointed by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos – who has been attacked mercilessly by the Left – some may assume that Jackson is a pro-family conservative.

Yet Jackson, who has been in a same-sex marriage for more than ten years, is known for her vocal support of the LGBT movement. In January, she tweeted an article about the gay community getting an ally in Trump, adding the comment: “Reasonable LGBT citizens (as opposed to the militant leftwing LGBT movement) have reason to cheer POTUS Trump; he’s shifting the GOP.”

This directive must be rescinded or altered or it will continue to pose a threat  to free speech and religious liberty of faculty and students across the entire nation.

Written by Maria Biery

There are too many examples of college campus craziness to count. There are entire websites—such as Campus Reform and The College Fix—that specialize in reporting the liberal bias, political correctness, and all around daily madness of institutions of higher education. However, for all the attention we give to these episodes at the collegiate level, we miss the root of the problem, and without addressing the cause we can’t hope for a solution.

The truth is, indoctrination of America’s youth begins long before college.

In my own experience, during my years at a public high school, I had a teacher who aired his left-leaning political views on a daily basis, during class hours, when we were supposed to be learning biology. I can remember sitting in the back of the class with my fists clenched asking myself, “What are we learning right now besides what he thinks about politics?” There was no space to debate him. Numerous students told their parents about it, but, at the end of the day, we all knew we couldn’t do anything. He was set to retire in a few years, he had tenure in the school district, and this was an AP class. No one was willing to risk their grade or their chances of getting into college over a forced hour and a half of frustration per day.

But the issues I had in the public school system extended far beyond this one teacher. It was frustrating that the only reason we learned certain things was so that we did well on statewide standardized tests. Every aspect of our education revolved around these tests. There was absolutely no room for critical thinking. Teachers would ask us, for example, what we thought about a Shakespeare play, and if we didn’t have the exact answer that they were looking for, crafted in the exact phrasing that was present on their curriculum guides, we were shot down.

This is problematic as we know that most teachers and educators, at all levels, lean left on the political spectrum, and if they are the ones making and teaching the curriculum we can rest assured that there will be some level of indoctrination and a lack of creative thinking.

This excerpt from a College Fix article on indoctrination in high school states the issue well:

It’s no surprise that a system that is state-funded and state-run advocates for a bigger government.The public school system is a microcosm of the socialist system, one that is bureaucratic, wasteful, and does not serve its original and intended purpose. Education is the cornerstone of Western society, a place where our youth are taught to think broadly and develop their own unique worldview. Instead, we are often taught what to believe instead of how to think.

Don’t just take this claim at face value. There are a myriad of stories from angry parents about their kids being indoctrinated in the public education system. One mom took to social media to display her daughter’s fill-in-the-blank vocabulary quiz that sported questions such as, “It was difficult for me to [blank] my feeling when I learned that Donald J. Trump had been voted in as our 45th President” and “After reading about President Trump’s immigration ban, I did not realize how [blank] the law can be.”

More parents at an upscale school in Chicago pushed back when the administration sought to have an all-school social justice day with events such as “Developing a Positive, Accountable White Activism for Racial Civil Rights.” These stories are everywhere, but how many websites, organizations, or network television shows are as dedicated to shedding light on these issues as they are to revealing the issues present on college campuses? None as far as I know.

It’s not all about what students are being taught though. It’s about what they’re not being taught. In a PragerU video titled “Why Isn’t Communism as Hated as Nazism?” Dennis Prager makes the point that, in the education system, Nazism is widely condemned for its gruesome ideology and the atrocities that have been committed in its name. Rightly so, but the problem is many students either only briefly learn about the ills of communism or never learn about them at all. The public education system almost completely ignores this part of history because, although teachers and administrators may not necessarily identify as communists, many are at least sympathetic to communist ideas. As Prager puts it, “Communism is based on nice sounding theories, and Nazism isn’t. Intellectuals, in general, are seduced by words so much so that they deem actions as less significant than words. For that reason they haven’t focused nearly as much attention on the horrific actions of communists as they have on the horrific actions of the Nazis.”

During my time in public school, I never learned about communism, the Cold War, Stalin, or Mao. I was only introduced to communism through a summer program, and, to be completely honest, at the time it didn’t sound so bad because I had no historical context to judge the ideas of Karl Marx fairly. It was only until I took a class, after switching from public to private high school, on modern Chinese history that I even began to understand the horrors of communism.

This issue stems from the fact that the public school system places little to no weight on history education. At least in Pennsylvania, when I was in school, there was no statewide standardized history exam. There was a math and reading exam almost every year, and every few years there was a writing and science exam. Only 21 of the 50 states have statewide social studies or history exams that are issued more than once throughout a child’s primary or secondary education. The results from those tests are telling, though. A 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress report showed that only 18 percent of U.S. high school students were proficient in American history. The thought of many teachers is, why teach history when students aren’t going to be tested on it? And even if they are tested on it, it hardly matters as much as their scores on reading, writing, and math. Why put as much effort into teaching them about how the government works or about important historical figures? If any subject takes a backseat in the educational experience of an American child it’s usually history.

All of these things—the overt indoctrination, the exclusion of certain events in U.S. history to support an agenda, the overall lack of history education, and the strict adherence to teaching only what will be tested on statewide exams—set students up for failure when they go to college. Not only is there a steep learning curve, as students realize they will be tested in a completely different way than they were accustomed to in high school, but they will also be unaware of and ill-prepared to think about any range of topics at a critical level. Thus the protests and outrage when students confront an idea they’re uncomfortable with.

Luckily for me, when I started attending private school, I was thrust into the educational environment that public schools should be aiming for. I learned how to think critically and voice my opinion, and I learned that we don’t all necessarily have to see the world in the same light, only that we must show respect to one another and what we believe. Most students, however, have to figure those things out in their first year or two of college, and some, unfortunately, never do.

Colleges are slowly changing to mirror what students are used to from high school. In a documentary entitled “What Has Yale Become?”, Rob Montz of YouTube’s We the Internet TV comes to the realization that elite colleges are no longer focused on giving their students knowledge and truth. Rather, places like Yale seek to give college students an “experience”—a constant 4-year party until they graduate and fall into cushy jobs.

During the Yale controversy in 2015, which ensued after Professor Erika Christakis questioned a university-wide email that told students what they could and could not wear on Halloween, protesters marked the professor and her husband as insensitive racists. One notorious video from the altercations depicts a girl screaming at Nicholas Christakis, “It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here! You are not doing that. You’re going against that.” One’s knee-jerk reaction might be to say “No! It is an intellectual space! You’re wrong!” But then again, is that really what colleges and universities seek to provide these days? I’m starting to doubt that. For now, militant student protesters probably represent a minority on campus, and elite university academics still give students the education that they’re paying for on a day to day basis. But as time goes on, and protest culture permeates through campus, I think that we will begin to see the shift that Rob Montz points out. If the university system continues down this dangerous path it will, effectively, be giving in to what students want, not what they need.

My question from the beginning still remains though. If students are being prepped throughout their secondary educational years to become social justice warriors once they get to college, why do the media and nonprofits put so much emphasis on reform at the collegiate level? Don’t they realize that, for most students, it’s too late? Wouldn’t it make more sense to address the problem at its foundation?

To be clear, I have the utmost respect for organizations and media outlets that seek to spread conservative ideas and call out campus ridiculousness when necessary. Without these groups, professors, students, and administrators would never be held accountable for their words or actions. My critique is that these organizations can only ever hope to effect change by addressing the indoctrination that occurs at the secondary education level. If we want to make a difference, and curb the tide of snowflakes and SJWs entering college, we have to deal with the issues present in our education system before they manifest.

Dealing with those problems is a far greater task than meets the eye. It would require a rethinking of our whole public education system. One would have to work within the confines of Supreme Court decisions involving pre-college students. A substitute to statewide testing would have to be considered. Teachers, who may have dedicated good portions of their lives to their careers, may have to be fired (and then there’s the whole other issue of those teachers with tenure). Curricula that may not have changed too much from year to year would have to be completely redone. Who really wants to take on that monster of a project?

So maybe that’s one reason we focus on indoctrination at the collegiate level. The public school system is too broken, and it would take years, maybe decades, to fix. At least these conservative/free speech groups can win some smaller battles for college students by defending their First Amendment rights or exposing a professor who brings his or her liberal bias into the classroom. It’s better than nothing.

There’s also the fact that college students have a lot more freedom and power to fight back against their professors or administrations than younger students do. If a college professor spewed some of the remarks that my biology teacher touted daily, he would’ve ended up on a viral video for the whole country to see. The administration would’ve either fired him or his reputation would’ve been so badly damaged on campus that enrollment in his classes would’ve dropped. There would have been justice.

However, high school students would have been afraid for their grade in the class, of the consequences they would have had to pay if the school district or their parents disciplined them, or for their chances of getting into a good college with a blemish on their record. They would have had to fight on their own, whereas at the collegiate level there are more resources—and more students—to back them up if they go head-to-head with their administration. College students can form alliances with other groups so they have more influence, but at the secondary education level, groups are largely run by teachers and parents who keep the students in check. There are risks involved in challenging professors and the administration in college, but it is far less risky than it is in high school.

On a deeper level though, class differences may play a role here. About two-thirds of Americans do not have a college degree, but almost 90 percent of the population has a high school diploma. Therefore, becoming an “intellectual” by attending university is still somewhat of a rarity in American society. With the rise of Trump, we witnessed America’s resentment towards “elites” and “intellectuals.” Having a college degree or having years of political experience was not a selling point in 2016 because the American people, with the goading of Trump, pinned the country’s problems on these individuals. They were supposed to know better than anyone else how to get the country back on track after the 2008 recession, but many Americans were still feeling the side effects eight years later. So Trump, and many others, cast a dream-like quality over the common American man who didn’t need a fancy degree to make something of himself, and he assured his supporters that he would make that dream a reality yet again. It makes sense, then, that a majority of our population would place the blame for the cultivation of militant youth on colleges and universities—those institutions that created the corrupt and ineffective elites—instead of on the public education system, which most of them grew up in and still support.

A final reason we focus on the issues at the university level is that the conservative movement, and some of its most famous leaders, have made a talking point out of liberal bias and indoctrination in college. From the time William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote God and Man at Yale to the present, conservatives have been the ones to place the blame on colleges instead of on the public secondary schools. Maybe that’s because most conservative intellectuals and pundits began their professional careers critiquing their own experiences in college (Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, Marc Thiessen, Laura Ingraham, Dinesh D’Souza, Ross Douthat, Rich Lowry, and Jay Nordlinger are just a few examples). Or maybe it’s easier for them, and fits their agenda better, to place the blame on bad parenting habits or mass culture. Liberal bias is easier to spot and critique in college, no doubt, but the leaders of the movement that brought this issue to light haven’t seriously dealt with the question of how we got here and how we might go about fixing the problem. Maybe they don’t want to.

Article originally published at TheAmericanConservative.com.

An education leader says you can thank President Obama in part for the growth of Christian home education. Kirk Smith with Illinois Christian Home Educators also says it looks like the Trump Administration will let homeschool parents teach their kids without government interference.

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Another high school graduation has been marred by politically correct fecklessness. This time it wasn’t a controversy over a student’s speech that marred the event but instead an award that tainted what should have been a joyous family affair.

This year Deerfield High School (DHS) on Chicago’s affluent North Shore awarded one of its highest honors, the John F. Kennedy Medal of Honor award to a student who very publicly “identifies” as  “genderqueer and pansexual.” As reported by the Chicago Tribune, “Earning the John F. Kennedy Medal of Honor this year was Sorrel Rosin. Principal Kathryn Anderson said the award is given to a person who demonstrates courage in the pursuit of excellence.”

Former principal Audris Griffith described the JFK Medal of Honor as “an award the high school gives out to students exemplifying personal bravery and responsible action.” What did Rosin do to deserve this award? Apparently, he received this award for identifying as genderqueer, cross-dressing at school, and starting “her [sic] own initiative, called The Gender Neutral Project…. The goal of this project is ultimately to create and distribute stickers that make spaces, such as public bathrooms, safer and inclusive of people of all gender identities.” Rosin explained his motivation for the Gender Neutral Project:

I had a lot of issues this year with being late to class and missing class, because I just had to go to the bathroom, and I think one of the hardest things this year was changing for gym because there’s two locker rooms, neither of which I fit into.

Even though Deerfield High School has two co-ed restrooms, that was not enough for Rosin. In a Change.org petition, he demands more:

*** MY SCHOOL DOES HAVE 2 GENDER NEUTRAL RESTROOMS BUT THEY ARE IN VERY HARD TO ACCESS AREAS AND MOST PEOPLE IN THE SCHOOL DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THEM. THERE IS NO GENDER NEUTRAL LOCKER ROOMS ***

To be clear, these are multi-occupancy co-ed restrooms, available to any boys and girls to use at the same time. These are not single-occupancy restrooms, nor are they single-sex restrooms that only gender-dysphoric students of the opposite sex may use. They are multi-stall, co-ed restrooms. In Rosin’s view, the problem is DHS need more of these restrooms. He wants them more centrally located. And he wants co-ed locker rooms.

But if Rosin is willing to change his clothes around girls who identify as bigender and genderfluid (i.e., sometimes they identify as boys), and around boys who identify as girls, and around boys who identify as genderqueer, genderfluid, bigender, trigender, agender, and gender-nonbinary, why won’t he change in the boys’ locker room? If he’s comfortable changing around all these different manifestations of maleness, why the opposition to changing in the boys’ locker room?

How does he know the gender identity of the boys in the boys’ locker room? Does he know with certainty that none of the boys in the boys’ locker room “identifies” as agender, bigender, trigender, gender fluid, genderqueer, gender-nonbinary, or “trans”? He certainly can’t tell their gender identity by anatomy, hairstyles, or clothing choices (the latter two of which are arbitrary social constructions wholly unrelated to maleness—or so we’re told ad nauseum).

What does this sad event teach about public school leaders who believe the effort to eradicate public recognition of sex differences in restrooms and locker rooms constitutes “courage in the pursuit of excellence” and “responsible action”? It teaches first that they are not equipped to teach and train children. Such leaders are at best ignorant and foolish.

Second, it teaches that parents should not put their children in any context where they will be taught and trained by such fools.

A look at Deerfield High School’s 2015 JFK Medal of Honor recipient offers a glimmer of hope that all is not yet lost. Political correctness and the obsession with using taxpayer-funded schools to advance anarchical Leftist views on sexuality may not have wholly overtaken the hearts and minds of “progressive change agents.” Some may still be able and willing to recognize and honor true excellence and responsible action as they did when they awarded the JFK Medal of Honor to Heath Ogawa:

The son of a Japanese father and American mother, Ogawa…was raised in Japan, went to public school there and was not a very good student before fate catapulted him to the United States.

“On March 11, 2011, my life changed…. With the earthquake, tsunami and possible radiation poisoning my parents made the decision to send me to live with family friends in Highland Park.”

Living in a condominium in Deerfield later on and taking care of himself, Ogawa said some friends were jealous of his independence — but he did not see it that way.

“I was filled with responsibility and loneliness…. There was no dinner waiting for me when I got home, just the breakfast dishes I hadn’t washed. I didn’t learn how important family was until I opened the door to an empty condo.”

Hardly able to speak English and not knowing how to read a word of it, Ogawa told how he embraced his studies, athletics and friendship. Earlier this month he became a state gymnastics champion in the long vault and in March became the thirteenth best diver in Illinois. He will go to Lake Forest College in the fall to dive.

…

“He shows all of that and lifts all of our spirits,” Griffith said. “On snowy days we would see him riding his long skate board because it was the only way he could get to school.”

In his Change.org petition, Rosin shared that he, like so many other children and teens, has been bullied. Bullying is a persistent and tragic reality that grows out of the fallen nature of humans and the immaturity of youth. Teens are able to recognize disordered behavior, but many are unable to control how they respond to it. Adults who ignore the nature of adolescent culture and allow children to cross-dress at school increase the likelihood that these children will be victims of bullying.

Sorrel Rosin deserves compassion, empathy, and prayers because he’s human, confused, and hurting. Neither Rosin nor anyone else deserves an award for efforts to normalize sexual deviance.

A final word about courage: Admirable courage is not merely doing something bold and uncomfortable. It is not overcoming fear in the service of transgressing all boundaries.

Admirable, award-deserving courage demonstrates perseverance, boldness, and discomfort in the service of a worthy goal, and a worthy goal is one that is informed by goodness and truth. Eradicating the public recognition of and respect for sex differences is not a worthy goal, and pursuing it—no matter how difficult the effort—is not worthy of honor. Surely, there was one student in DHS’ 2017 graduating class who demonstrated courage in the service of a goal that all families would view as worthy.

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SAVE THE DATE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2017

Illinois Family Institute’s
Faith, Family and Freedom Banquet

In an interview posted at the Accuracy in Media website, Lt. Colonel Allen West delivers what conservatives have come to expect from him since his arrival on the national political scene back in 2010 when he was elected to Congress from Florida.

We are thrilled to announce that Lt. Colonel Allen West (Ret.) will be giving the keynote address at IFI’s 2017 Family and Freedom Fall Banquet. As an outspoken advocate for the family and freedom, West is becoming known as one of the great conservative spokespersons of our time, and for good reason.

West firmly believes inspiring hope for this generation and those to come is critical to our nation’s future. He is an author and was a conservative leader in Congress. Currently he contributes to Fox News, works with the London Center for Policy Research, writes for various media outlets and is the president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a public policy research organization.

Whether the topic is military readiness (“people sittin’ around at a desk pushin’ pencils don’t protect the nation”), or education (“the money should follow the child”), or the political swamp that is Washington, D.C. (“they chase the news cycle…sooner or later you gotta have an adult in the room that does not chase the news cycle”), Colonel West’s delivery is that of a decorated military veteran impatient with those who are “worried about political gimmicks.”

In the interview, West hit Democrats hard: “[T]he other side says they’re all about pro-choice, but not when it comes to education, not when it comes to tax policy or anything else, only when it comes to killing kids.”

Earlier this year in an op ed titled, “The Grand Delusion of the Progressive Left,” West wrote that one “case of delusion was to try and make the American people believe that Keynesian economic policy, tax and spend, was still viable.”

Obama in his eight years focused more on wealth redistribution, you know, we all do better when we “spread the wealth around.” Furthermore, Obama made the seminal statement which presented a window into the mindset of the progressive left when he stated, “if you own a business, you didn’t build that.” There could be no more disrespectful, delusional, assertion directed towards the hard working American and their indomitable entrepreneurial spirit.

Obama and his disciples of economic disaster failed to grasp the concept that economic growth emanates not from Washington DC, but rather from the policies that unleash American investment, ingenuity, and innovation…along with production and manufacturing.

Days before Donald Trump was inaugurated, West wrote about “The Future of Conservatism in America.” He emphasized the need to get capital investment into economically depressed urban areas. Also needed are policies that will strengthen the traditional two parent home, especially in the black community which has fallen from almost 77%, prior to Johnson’s policies, to now 24%”:

What policies will give parents better educational opportunities, choice, for their children, not relegating them to failing government schools? Interesting, Barack Obama canceled the DC school voucher program, yet dispatched his kids to the prestigious Sidwell Friends School. For progressive socialism, it is about do as we say, not as we do.

What policies will create a safe environment for all Americans reestablishing the rule of law and order in our communities? The travesty that is Chicago must end, and sadly it is a cancer that has metastasized all over our Nation.

Conservatism is the answer, whereby progressive socialism, totally emotional based, has only served to exacerbate these issues and make them worse. And in response to the failures, it becomes a game of seeking blame, not one of self-reflection, you know, it is the fault of Fox News and the Russians.

“I was born and raised in the historic inner city Atlanta neighborhood called the Old Fourth Ward,” West writes, and notes that his parents were registered Democrats, but that they “inculcated in me these foundational conservative values — faith, family, individual responsibility, advancement through education, and service to the Nation.”

“I was not just blessed to have two superb parents,” West writes, “but parents who were American Patriots.”

SAVE THE DATE: Friday, October 27, 2017 at The Stonegate in Hoffman Estates.

Our Private Reception begins at 6:00 PM and costs $150.00 per person; which includes hors d’oeuvres, your picture with Col. West, a signed book and the main banquet.

Dinner begins at 7:00 PM and costs $80.00 per person if purchased before Labor Day.

Reserve your tickets online today or call the IFI office (708) 781-9328 to or click HERE to make your reservations.

Program advertisements & banquet sponsorships available.

A new study has found that government cuts to spending for sex education courses and contraception have contributed to Britain’s lowest teen pregnancy rate in nearly 50 years, the Catholic Herald reported.

Researchers David Paton of the Nottingham University Business School and Liam Wright of the University of Sheffield discovered that pregnancy rates for women under 16 have seen the sharpest decline in local authority areas that drastically cut funding for “preventative” programs.

After observing trends in 149 local authorities between 2009 and 2014, Paton and Wright concluded that central and local government cuts to sex education and contraceptive services coincided with teenage pregnancy rates falling by 42.6 percent between 2008 and 2013 — the lowest they’ve been since 1969. And by 2014, 4,160 girls under 16 became pregnant, marking a 10 percent decrease from the previous year.

Speaking with The Times, Wright said that he and his colleagues were surprised by their initial findings, and decided to test for possible alternative explanations before concluding that decades of sex education and easy access to contraception have led to an increase in teen pregnancies.

After doing so, however, the researchers deduced that these methods — which took off during the Sexual Revolution of the 1970s, gained even more traction with the AIDS epidemic of the 80s, and have continued into the present day — have not only failed to reduce teen pregnancies, but have in fact led to even more unwanted pregnancies, and subsequently more abortions and teenage parenthood.

“There are arguments to suggest that the impact [of the budget cuts] on teenage pregnancy may be not as bad as feared and, indeed, that spending on projects relating to teenage pregnancy [i.e. sex education and contraception] may even be counterproductive,” Wright and Paton wrote in the Journal of Health Economics.

These recent findings are deserving of the descriptor “groundbreaking,” especially when one considers the seemingly universal, half-century-long consensus among researchers and policymakers regarding sexual health. By contrast, programs and policies that promote chastity have been all but dismissed from the public conversation, yielding devastating consequences.

In our secular society, abstinence education carries the same connotations as so-called “gay conversion therapy”: cruel, ineffective, and contrary to “nature.” Programs that encourage youths to not act on certain desires for the sake of preserving their own moral and physical health have earned the labels “bigoted” and “antiquated.”

But what if every human’s true nature is to live virtuously and not to entertain our every passion and appetite? The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle based the bulk of his career on a single ethical question: “What is the good life?” In asking this, he wasn’t trying to discern which acts or material goods bring immediate satisfaction to humans, but rather, which practices and habits are capable of rendering lasting joy, health, and flourishing for society as a whole.

If the social scientists of the 1970s and beyond had applied that basic question to the study of sexual practices, they would have learned exactly what we are learning 50 years hence.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on teen health and sexuality released last year found that teens who abstain from sexual intercourse are much less likely to engage in “risky” or unhealthy behavior (e.g. get into a car with a drunk driver, experience physical abuse from someone they are dating, smoke, binge drink, inject illegal drugs, be depressed or suicidal, try tanning beds, etc.) than their sexually active peers.

Based on this report and others like it, it would seem as though the “best life” is that in which teens are made to confront the destructive consequences of premarital sex and weigh the costs on their own. Instead, however, sex-ed programs that teach “safe sex” have grossly underestimated the moral faculties of youths, lowering their standards and normalizing deviant behavior.

Thankfully, despite the deliberate spread of misinformation regarding abstinence, modern teens have successfully employed their trademark tactic: rebellion. Since 1991, the percentage of teens in the U.S. who are sexually active has decreased by 8 percent. The truth about abstinence is resonating with young people, whether the public acknowledges it or not.

Studies like the one recently released by the Journal of Health Economics are further reminders that educators and public officials who truly care about the sexual health of teens need to seriously consider replacing failed sexual education policies with ones that truly contribute to societal flourishing.

This article was originally posted at FaithWire.com

Pray for our nation’s little ones. If they manage to survive the womb and are lucky enough to have both a mommy and a daddy, they may end up at their local library or bookstore for story time with drag queens. I kid you not. A widely circulated Associate Press (AP) news video exposes the repugnant spectacle.

To the occasional titters of foolish mothers, glittery drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess (henceforth referred to as Mr. Mess) read the picture book Worm Loves Worm, illustrated by homosexual children’s book author and illustrator Mike Curato who dedicates the book to his faux-husband Dan with these words, “To the worm of my dreams.”

In Worm Loves Worm, two earthworms fall in love and claim they can both be the brides and they can both be the grooms, to which Spider responds, “Amazing!” The AP video shows a closeup of the enraptured faces of children too young to think critically but old enough to be indoctrinated with lies by deceitful and feckless adults.

Worm Loves Worm was written by J.J. Austrian who explains in an interview with a mom and her two very young daughters his motivation for writing it:

The idea came about when my son who’s now almost 13 wasn’t quite 5 years old, and we lived in the Hudson Valley and we had the most wonderful neighbors Pam and Lenore who are like aunts to my children. And one night I was tucking Joe in and he looked at me and said, “Pam and Lenore are married like you and Mommy,” and at the time women couldn’t marry women in New York, and I told Joe that. And he looked at me and said, “Why not?” And I didn’t want to say, “Well, some people think it’s wrong,” because that’s such a strong word.

“Wrong” is too strong a word to be used with almost-5-year-olds? At what age does Austrian believe children should be taught right from wrong using the terms right and wrong?

Austrian then expressed some philosophically and scientifically dubious Deep Thoughts:

So, I fumbled the answer. I said, “Some people don’t think that’s natural.” And Joe looked right at me and said, “That’s dumb. They love each other.” I said, “You’re right, Joe, and your mommy and I think that, and Pam and Lenore think that, and we’re gonna change that.” And I got to thinking about that awful answer “It’s not natural,” and I thought about nature, and I thought about worms. And I thought, you see, nature doesn’t care. Nature just cares about love.

If, when thinking about his “awful answer,” Austrian thought “nature doesn’t care,” perhaps he’s been writing children’s books too long. What is this anthropomorphized “Nature” of which he speaks? About what does Nature not care?

And when he thinks about worms, he thinks “Nature just cares about love”? Really? Well then, since some critters show their “love” through infanticide, filial cannibalism, and incest, perhaps Austrian could write a picture book about bears, felines, canids, primates, rodents, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds who kill and devour their own babies or mate with relatives (after all, love is love). And then, in the service of diversity, the Brooklyn Public Library can have a drag queen—or maybe an infantilist, drag queens are so yesterday—read it to toddlers.

Austrian (who claims to be a Christian) missed an opportunity to tell his son that there are different types of love, and some are not marital love. And he missed the opportunity to tell his son that marriage is a very particular type of relationship that is for a man and a woman. It is the type of relationship that produces children and connects mommies and daddies to each other and to the children that God may give to them. He missed an opportunity to tell Joe that children not only want but need and deserve to be raised by their mommies and daddies.

Austrian continued:

I thought about worms because worms…are hermaphrodites, meaning they’re both boys and girls, and I always thought that is just amazing! And like I said, that is very natural. It shows that nature doesn’t care if you’re a boy or you’re a girl. It just cares about you loving each other. And I thought that would be a wonderful way to talk about love being love.

(Where’s an eyeroll emoji when you need one.) Why is it that sexual revolutionaries when looking to lower forms of life as exemplars of moral virtue avert their gaze from the truly icky things critters do to one another with nary a hint of a moral qualm?

Here’s another question about that pesky ole Nature: How does Austrian know that Nature doesn’t care whether humans are boys or girls, does care that they love each other, and evidently makes no distinctions between types of love?

This points to why conservatives retreat from calling sexual revolutionaries “progressive.” There is nothing progressive about looking to lower life forms for moral direction.

The interviewer’s 4-year-old daughter then asks Austrian, “Why was the boy wearing girls’ stuff and why was the girl wearing boys’ stuff?”

Austrian responds by asking his young interlocutor to point to the book cover which shows the two worms and tell him, “Which one’s the boy and which one’s the girl?” Of course, she can’t, and Austrian uses a 4-year-old’s inability to distinguish the sex of hermaphroditic cartoon earthworms in a romantic (and, one assumes, erotic) relationship to make a point about the irrelevance of the sex of humans:

You know what? It doesn’t matter. Could boys wear dresses if they really wanted to? Should girls never wear pants? Should girls only have to wear skirts?…Boys can wear skirts. Girls can wear pants. I’m not a cowboy but sometimes I wear a cowboy hat. Is that okay?

Austrian is unwittingly treading on dangerous PC territory here. In referring to “boys” and “girls,” he affirms the dreaded—and to many trannies, mythical—sexual binary. Worse still, when he said that he wears a cowboy hat despite not being a cowboy, he implies that boys who wear skirts are not actually girls. He inadvertently face-planted onto the concrete truth.

Last November, the New Yorker published a short piece about the lesbian mother behind Drag Queen Story Hour:

On a recent Saturday morning, about two dozen small children and their parents gathered in the Park Slope branch of the Brooklyn Public Library for a new reading series…. The event was hosted by Michelle Tea, a writer from Los Angeles, who started attending library story hours after becoming a mom. She’d brought her partner, Dashiell Lippman, and their two-year-old son, Atticus…. “He is pretty butch—we call him Fratticus,” Tea said. “I’m always pushing a tutu on him, but he’s, like, ‘No.’”

Tea’s solution, called Drag Queen Story Hour, introduces elements of gender bending and camp. “I have long thought that drag queens need to be the performers at children’s parties, rather than magicians or clowns,” she said. “Drag has become more mainstream. Kids might have seen one on a billboard or on TV.”

…

At eleven o’clock, Tea made her way to the front of the room. “Do you all know what a drag queen is?” she asked the children. “Drag queens are amazing. They get to do fun things like dance and sing and travel and play dress-up with their drag-queen friends. And they’re all feminists.” The parents chuckled politely.

The drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess came out, wearing a white sequinned tunic dress and matching heels, bright-pink tights, and a curly auburn wig…. She [sic] put on black owlish reading glasses, sat on a folding chair, and addressed her [sic] audience: “Can everyone say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a drag queen’?”

This is not my first unpleasant virtual encounter with Tea and her lesbian partner Dashiell. I wrote about them last fall in Salvo Magazine:

In a buzzy Buzzfeed video, two gender-nonconforming lesbians, Dashiell and Michelle, discuss their efforts to raise their toddler son Atticus to be free of the constraints of gender. Mom Michelle, who became pregnant via a sperm donor, has concluded that gender “ultimately doesn’t mean anything.” Michelle tries to “queer” her “relationship with” 17-month-old Atticus, which includes attempting to “get him to a wear tutu.” Michelle admits Atticus “hates it.” Atticus calls Dashiell, the “gender-queer” parent, “Baba,” which Michelle explains is a name that “more masculine female people and even some transmen [i.e., women pretending to be men] who are parents are going by.”

Michelle frets that Atticus has a book with pictures of girls and boys identified as girls and boys. While reading it, she replaces the offending nouns, explaining, “I’m like ‘child, child.’” Michelle explains why she bowdlerizes the text: “This is where he’s learning what things are, and…I hate the idea that he’s getting imprinted on him, the idea that people who look like this are boys and people who look like that are girls…. Sometimes the best thing to do is to be constantly challenging, and sometimes it’s…just to ignore gender completely.” Michelle expresses relief that because Atticus is being raised by gender-non-conforming, masculine-looking Dashiell, he will learn about the “reality of what gender is or isn’t.”

And this brings me back to the morally challenged child-man Mr. Mess. During the recent Drag Queen Story Hour, he not only exposed children to deviant ideas but led them in a perverse performance of the Hokey Pokey in which he sang, “The hips on the drag queen go swish, swish, swish…swish, swish swish…swish, swish, swish,” all to the delight of mothers and fathers.

Mom Sarah Ortiz thought the spectacle was “great” because “there was so much energy,” and mom Kesa Huey said, “It’s what I’m looking for in all of our outings is to present different ways of being in the world and make that fun and available to my kid.”

Who needs discernment when you’ve got energy and fun.

Librarian Kat Savage believes Drag Queen Story Hour, which the library hopes to export to other branches, is “fantastic, because it addresses all these issues of genderfluidity and self-acceptance and all of these topics that are, um, real, are very, very real.”

So, does Savage hope to expose toddlers to every very, very real phenomenon in the world? And does she hope to affirm to children every very, very real phenomenon in the world? If not, who will decide which very, very real phenomenon the library will present in glittery, attractive ways to emotionally and intellectually malleable toddlers?

This cancer has already metastasized to Chicago. The ironically named feminist bookstore in Andersonville, Women & Children First, has hosted two Drag Queen Story Times for toddlers: one last December during which “Chicago’s greatest Queens”—including the obscenely named  Muffy Fishbasket—read Christmas stories, and one this past February when they read love stories in honor of Valentine’s Day.

Don’t worry, it’s not too late. You can catch one of their toddler-exploiting events at several Chicago Public Library branches, Navy Pier, or  the Center on Halsted (an “LGBTQ” organization that has received millions of dollars from our bankrupt state).

At the conclusion of the video, AP reporter Ted Schaffrey makes an embarrassing attempt to redeem the irredeemable by painting the tawdry propagandistic event with a patina of pedagogy, pronouncing solemnly, “Engaging young hearts and minds through sights and sounds.”

I would change “engaging” to “manipulating.”

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Many years ago, I witnessed what happens when people who prevent others from speaking are not dealt with promptly.

During a “Firing Line” taping with William F. Buckley at Bard College in New York State on the topic of “Resolved: The ACLU is full of baloney” (the short answer is “yes”), two female activists stood up and started chanting “women of color have no voice.”

The moderator, a well-known liberal (well, okay, it was Michael Kinsley, who did an otherwise fine job), asked them politely to stop so the debate could continue, but the protesters refused.  At this point, he could have motioned to the campus cops to remove them, but instead let them go on ad nauseum.  I leaned over and whispered to then-ACLU President Nadine Strossen, “Nadine, do something. They’re your children.”  I meant her ideological offspring, of course.  And she did try to reason with them, to no avail.

Unlike some recent incidents, the debate finally went on after Mr. Kinsley gave in to the protesters’ tantrum, let them read a list of nonsensical leftwing ultimatums, and Bard’s president agreed to leave the team he was on in the debate.

I’m not sure how much of this made the eventual PBS broadcast, but it showed the folly of giving in to the heckler’s veto.  That’s when, in the name of free speech, someone silences someone else.  Courts have made it clear that the heckler’s veto is not protected speech under the First Amendment, no more than falsely yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.

Since President Trump’s election, the Left has been in full heckler’s veto mode, egged on by the same progressives who cheered the violent Occupy mobs in 2011 and 2012 and the goons disrupting the Trump rallies last year.

[Recently], protesters threated violence against Republican Party participants in the 82^nd Avenue of Roses Parade in Portland, Oregon, and managed to get the event canceled.   An anonymous email promised that “two hundred or more people” would “rush into the parade into the middle and drag and push those people out…. police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely.”

Then, amid threats of violence, conservative author Ann Coulter was forced to cancel her speech at the University of California, Berkeley.  In February, the campus had suffered $100,000 in property damage when black-clad leftist rioters stopped iconoclast Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking.

In March, political scientist Charles Murray was forced to change venues at Middlebury College in Vermont during a mob attack in which a female professor was injured.  Middlebury itself may be failing to teach about constitutional rights, if a letter signed by 450 alumni prior to Murray’s appearance is any indication:  “This is not an issue of freedom of speech.  In this case we find the principle does not apply.”

Well, okay then. Disagree with us and you lose your rights.

In early April, hundreds of activists blocked an auditorium at Claremont McKenna College in California to prevent author Heather MacDonald from speaking.  Ms. MacDonald’s analysis of crime statistics blows away the media narrative about racist cops spun by the Black Lives Matter movement.  No wonder they wanted her silenced.

For the Left, the issues themselves matter less than a show of force.  As author Angelo M. Codevilla has observed, “The point of PC [political correctness] is not and has never been merely about any of the items that it imposes, but about the imposition itself.”

In “State and Revolution” (1918), Vladimir Lenin wrote:

“The replacement of the bourgeois (middle class) by the proletariat state is impossible without a violent revolution … it is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush its resistance.”

Even if none of this involves something you hold dear, the mobs will get around to you if you’re out of step.  A byproduct is the chilling effect it has had on discourse in general.

I recall when liberals and conservatives could agree to disagree during, say, a party, and leave as friends, or at least not as enemies.  But when’s the last time you went to an eclectic gathering and heard genuine views exchanged?  Nobody dares anymore.  The Left’s scorched-earth tactics have poisoned the well.

In Massachusetts, an editorial at The Wellesley News on April 12 openly advocated attacking anyone who fails to bow to leftwing orthodoxy.  Their definition of what will not be allowed includes “racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia or any other type of discriminatory speech.  Shutting down rhetoric that undermines the existence and rights of others is not a violation of free speech; it is hate speech.”

The good little Maoists (who are punctuation-challenged) went on to declare, “if people are given the resources to learn and either continue to speak hate speech or refuse to adapt their beliefs, then hostility may be warranted.” Later, they denied that this meant engaging in violence.

Incidentally, Hillary Clinton’s alma mater charges about $63,300 annually for tuition, room and board.  Apparently, that buys the finest brainwashing against the bourgeoisie that a campus can conjure.

This article was originally posted at Townhall.com

Written by Mark Pulliam

The legal academy is a strange place.

It differs from other intellectual disciplines in that legal scholarship is published mainly in student-edited law reviews, not peer-reviewed journals. Most faculty members at elite law schools have never practiced law, or have done so only briefly and usually without professional distinction. The curricula at many of the nation’s law schools are larded with trendy courses devoted to identity politics and social issues du jour. Elite law schools eschew the teaching of “nuts and bolts” fundamentals, deriding such practical instruction as resembling a “trade school.”

Even the most widely-followed ranking of American law schools (one compiled by U.S. News & World Report) relies mainly on “peer assessment” (that is, ratings by other law schools) so that it is something akin to a popularity contest. Nevermind graduates’ placement rates, bar exam passage, average starting salaries, and other objective metrics that might correlate with the tangible value of the legal education provided.

Legal academia is an inbred ivory tower with little intellectual diversity, inhabited by would-be mandarins, separated from the “real world” by a wide moat brimming with abstract concepts, abstruse theories, and an overweening sense of self-regard. Law professors are the courtiers to the imperial judiciary, and “constitutional theory” is the vehicle for counter-majoritarian social change.

This peculiar confluence yields two distinctive (but somewhat related) phenomena: First, law school faculties are much more liberal than the already leftward-skewed higher education establishment as a whole; and, second, “constitutional theory” is the most popular subject of legal scholarship, even though few students will ever have occasion to apply it upon graduation. Topics like family law, contracts, real estate, personal injury law, and other “mundane” areas of legal education are shunned by most academics.

What explains this turn of events? Simple: Constitutional law has become the primary tool used by the post-modern cadre of elite intellectuals to supplant representative self-government with rule by the legal professoriate. Since the 1960s, we essentially have been governed by the federal courts (and an out of control bureaucracy) instead of by our elected representatives.

Legal scholarship is used by the elites to justify activist judicial decisions that thwart popularly-enacted laws or depart from the original meaning of the Constitution. Much of it is theoretical mumbo-jumbo designed to obfuscate its true aim: putting the elites in charge. The mandarins are convinced that their policy choices should prevail over those of the uninformed masses, because the mandarins believe they are wiser and more enlightened. The republican form of government is regarded as backward and outmoded, especially if it stands in the way of the currently-fashionable policy goals and “settled science” desired and advocated by the professoriate.

Activist judges, enabled and encouraged by the legal academy, frequently override the effects of elections and legislation with which the “chattering classes” disagree, effectively allowing a privileged clique to govern the nation by judicial fiat. For decades, gloomy prognosticators such as the late Robert Bork and University of Texas law professor Lino Graglia (sometimes joined by the departed Justice Antonin Scalia in his witty dissents) have darkly warned that in the guise of “constitutional interpretation” a cultural elite seeks to wrest control of public policymaking from the American public, whose bourgeois values and beliefs they openly disdain. Although Bork and Graglia were sometimes dismissed as modern day Jeremiahs their dire predictions have proven to be uncannily accurate.

In recent decades, academics have constructed many different theoretical justifications for a more expansive judicial role. Graglia has described contemporary legal scholarship as a “cottage industry… in the production of ever more esoteric theories of constitutional interpretation.” Graglia also notes that most constitutional litigation involves just four words, “due process” and “equal protection,” leading him to conclude that “The 14th Amendment has to a large extent become a second constitution, replacing the original.” As Northwestern University law professor John McGinnis has written, “Sometimes there seem be as many theories of the [14th Amendment] as there are theorists.” New theories are spawned every day, straying further and further from the original meaning of the Constitution and even from that particular amendment.

Writing for both academic and lay audiences, Bork was a tireless proponent of the view that judicial decisions purporting to interpret the Constitution must—in order to be legitimate—comport with the original understanding of the Framers. After all, that understanding is the only understanding to which the people have had an opportunity to give their consent. Bork’s unrelenting criticism of “noninterpretive” theories of constitutional law in the 1970s and ’80s paved the way to the modern embrace of “originalism” as the dominant mode of constitutional decision-making by principled conservatives.

As Bork famously observed, “The truth is that the judge who looks outside the Constitution always looks inside himself, and nowhere else.” This was anathema to the legal establishment’s social engineers, who had devised elaborate theories justifying the “discovery” of new rights in the “living Constitution.” Judicial restraint would clip the wings of the narcissistic legal professoriate, and with it the New Class they serve.

Heresy has a price. In 1987, when President Reagan nominated Bork for the U.S. Supreme Court, he was shamefully denied Senate confirmation—but not filibustered—in retaliation for his unfashionable advocacy of judicial restraint. Graglia was dealt a similar fate, when his nomination to the Fifth Circuit was derailed in the face of fierce opposition by the American Bar Association.

In the ensuing 30 years, as the courts have increasingly asserted themselves as the final arbiters of national policy, confirmation battles have—predictably—become even more politicized. The recent Senate battle to confirm President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, requiring elimination of the filibuster, will seem like a chorus of “Kumbaya” when the pivotal seats now held by Justice Anthony Kennedy or Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg become vacant.

The mandarin class in the legal academy cannot resist the urge for power, and as our culture becomes ever more polarized, the legal professoriate grows ever more estranged from the rest of society—Hillary’s “deplorables.” This is not necessarily a partisan phenomenon. On the left and the right, constitutional theorists—sometimes claiming the mantle of originalism—busily concoct elaborate rationales for disregarding the electoral majority’s wishes regarding traditional marriage, immigration, border security, capital punishment, and a host of other issues, in lieu of the theorists’ own policy agenda.

The real irony, however, is that few voices in today’s legal academy advocate judicial restraint, even among so-called “originalists.” Although it still holds sway among conservative political scientists such as Georgetown’s George W. Carey (author of In Defense of the Constitution), the once-influential Bork/Graglia position has seemingly—and inexplicably—fallen out of favor in the law schools. I am old enough to remember when constitutional theory could be divided into two camps: originalism (restraint) and non-originalism (activism). Restraint is no longer “cool”; it leaves power in the hands of the detested proles.

Now, in Baskin-Robbins fashion, there are at least 31 different flavors of originalism, some of which—like the libertarian theory of “judicial engagement”—would grant to courts more discretion to review laws than the most extravagant “living Constitution” theories. Federalist Society co-founder and Northwestern University law professor Steven Calabresi has apparently had a mid-life libertarian epiphany and now—purporting to apply originalist techniques—concludes that the Constitution protects same-sex marriage. Creative “originalism” can also be stretched to reach free-market outcomes Ayn Rand would applaud. George Mason University law school professor Michael Greve has archly referred to libertarian scholars who presume to “read the Constitution as a municipal code for Dagny Taggart’s valley.”

It is no coincidence that some self-styled “originalists,” such as libertarian Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett, dismiss Bork and Graglia as “old school” proponents of a view that “used to be the dominant strain in conservative circles,” in “years past.” Barnett crows that Bork and Graglia used to “rule the roost,” but that “Times have changed.” Is judicial restraint really passé? Barnett contends that “as originalism has assumed an increasingly powerful hold on the legal culture … one must either reject judicial restraint, or attempt to redefine it so it is compatible with originalism.” (Barnett has gone so far as to claim that appeals for judicial restraint are a form of conservative “living constitutionalism,” inverting the very terminology that launched the originalism debate!)

The “originalism” Barnett speaks of is not the originalism espoused by Bork or Attorney General Ed Meese. Barnett has in mind a fashionable new variant of originalism that would empower judges to evaluate the necessity and efficacy of laws to determine if they infringe “unenumerated” (that is, unwritten) rights purportedly lurking in the Constitution. Any sound “originalist” conception of the Constitution must accept that judges should confine themselves to enforcing the express provisions of the Constitution. No matter how exotic the theoretical justification, judicial review does not authorize courts to divine invisible rights or serve as Delphic Oracles pronouncing judgment on the wisdom of laws.

Shifting intellectual fashions do not alter the original meaning of the laws, or the role of judges. Trend-setting law professors may think that government by judiciary is de rigueur, but most Americans properly view it as lawless usurpation.

Mark Pulliam is a lawyer and commentator who fled California and now lives in Austin, Texas. He is a contributing editor at the Library of Law and Liberty.

This article was originally posted at Amgreatness.com

The snowflake metaphor for Millennials who quash speech they don’t like seems particularly inapt. These petulant ruffians are more like jackhammers.

Snowflakes are delicate, silent, complex, singular, ineffably beautiful, and naturally occurring. They fall from the sky through no human intervention.

In contrast, jackhammers are brute, noisy, simplistic, uniform, and ugly creations of man that destroy the seemingly indestructible foundations of the buildings in which we live and the solid paths on which we trod.

Millennials who stomp through the streets, smashing windows and shouting obscenities and witless slogans to protest the expression of ideas they don’t like from Ann Coulter, Heather MacDonald, and Charles Murray are not snowflakes. They’re jackhammers.

They aren’t hurt or offended. They’re outraged at the audacity of anyone who dares to utter ideas with which they disagree. They’re poseurs. They don’t need safe spaces, therapy dogs, coddling or mollycoddling. And they know it.

These fake victims/real jack hammers are the ugly, noisy, brute creations of a Frankensteinian culture. Who is our Victor Frankenstein? Victor is our schools, our heterodox churches, our professional mental health communities, and our storytellers (that is, Hollywood).

Many are aware of the jackhammering of presentations by Coulter, MacDonald, and Murray because those attacks on the First Amendment have been well-covered by FOX News. A lesser known attack was perpetrated against the inestimable scholar Anthony Esolen, who until last week taught at Providence College (aptly called PC), a supposedly Catholic college in Rhode Island. Writing on Public Discourse, Michael Bradley, a graduate student in theology at the University of Notre Dame, offers this description http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/03/18900/ of Dr. Esolen, a prolific writer who contributes to Crisis and Touchstone magazines:

Anthony Esolen is the contemporary incarnation of GK Chesterton. The simple and beautiful prose, the acute diagnostic precision, the commonsense appeal to and on behalf of everyday things, the recipe for renewal—all these things Esolen shares with Chesterton, the preeminent cultural physician of the early twentieth century. Like Chesterton, Esolen bluntly identifies our problems. And like him, Esolen’s solution centers on God and faith, learning and virtue, and a robust sense of human nature.

What, you may be wondering, so incensed the jackhammers at this tiny Catholic-in-Name-Only (CAMO) College that camouflages itself as a Catholic school and lies in wait for unsuspecting Catholic students? Here is an excerpt from the essay Dr. Esolen wrote about intellectual diversity at PC for the Catholic magazine Crisis that got the jackhammers’ motors roaring:

[T]here is no evidence on our Diversity page that we wish to be what God has called us to be, a committedly and forthrightly Catholic school with life-changing truths to bring to the world. It is as if, deep down, we did not really believe it. So let us suppose that a professor should affirm some aspect of the Church’s teaching as regards the neuralgia of our time, sex. Will his right to do so be confirmed by those who say they are committed to diversity? Put it this way. Suppose someone were to ask, “Is it permitted for a secular liberal, at a secular and liberal college, to affirm in the classroom a secular view of sex and the family?” The question would strike everyone as absurd. It would be like asking whether we were permitted to walk on two feet or to look up at the sky. Then why should it not also be absurd to ask, “Is it permitted for a Catholic, at a college that advertises itself as Catholic, to affirm a Catholic view of sex and the family?” And I am not talking merely about professors whose specific job it is to teach moral philosophy or moral theology. I am talking about all professors.

In my now extensive experience, Catholic professors in Catholic colleges have been notably tolerant of the limitations of their secular colleagues. We make allowances all the time. We understand, though, that some of them—not all, but then it only takes a few—would silence us for good, if they had the power. They have made life hell for more than one of my friends. All, now, in the name of an undefined and perhaps undefinable diversity, to which you had damned well better give honor and glory. If you don’t—and you may not even be aware of the lese majeste as you commit it—you’d better have eyes in the back of your head. 

In response, students protested on campus and created a petition signed by students and 40 faculty members in which they pledged to break the silence surrounding the allegedly hateful statements Dr. Esolen made.

I kid you not. Campus Leftists claimed that campus Leftists have been silent about matters related to “diversity” in general and homosexuality in particular.

Worse still the administration refused to meet with Dr. Esolen and a group of other Catholic professors to discuss the issues surrounding diversity (or the lack thereof).

We should by now see the danger in the “hate speech” ideology. Hatred has been redefined to mean absence of  affirmation of all the desires, beliefs, and actions of culturally favored elites. Hatred no longer denotes antipathy toward persons but disagreement with moral claims. To be more accurate, it means disagreement with “progressive” moral claims.

Once hatred was redefined, the Left needed to persuade society that hatred leads to acts of violence via words and then persuade them that acts of violence can be prevented only by banning the hateful words that Leftists claim lead ineluctably to hateful deeds. Voila! The First Amendment is “disappeared.”

Jackhammers believe that if the claim that homoerotic activity is immoral and destructive to individual lives and the public good is spoken, then someone may, in response, say or do ugly things to those who identify as homosexual.

Jackhammers are right. Someone may do something ugly. And whenever jackhammers express the idea that all who hold homoerotic activity as perverse are hateful haters, someone may say or do something ugly to those purported haters. There’s no way to escape or prevent all the dastardly deeds that fallen human beings commit. That’s why we have laws: to prevent and penalize egregiously harmful deeds.

But our Founding Fathers rightly saw that the suppression of speech poses a far greater danger to individuals and the public good than does the abuse that some humans may engage in as a result of hearing ideas.

The mellifluous-sounding babble that has been pouring out of the professional mental health community, our pseudo-educational government  school industry, mainline churches, and Hollywood has taught that self-esteem can grow only when sinful humans are affirmed in their sinful choices and their ids are fed and watered. If we want a metaphor from nature for the juveniles who attack a man of such integrity, wisdom, courage, and intellectual depth as Dr. Esolen, it would not be snowflakes. What we have grown in our cultural hothouses are prickly, unlovely weeds who are taking over the well-tended gardens of civilization.

“Progressives” believe that if we ban the expression of ideas that don’t tickle the ears of “progressives,” we will create utopia. But what about those words that are expressed in print or virtual print? If people shouldn’t be allowed to speak ideas “progressives” find undesirable, why should they be allowed to have them published or posted?  And what about the phenomenon that precedes even speech: thoughts. Just imagine if liberals could find a way to access those.

The good news is that God has worked some ugly things at Providence College together for good for Dr. Esolen, which he describes in a recent heart-melting essay in Crisis Magazine from which this excerpt is taken:

Sometimes a single encounter with what is healthy and ordinary…is enough to shake you out of the bad dreams of disease and confusion. If it isn’t quite yet like meeting Saint Francis on the road, it is like meeting a bluff and jovial fellow who has just come from a conversation with that great little man of God.

I’ve had such an encounter, at Thomas More College, in New Hampshire.

Dr. Esolen’s describes his encounter with devotion to God and love of beauty and truth among both students and faculty at Thomas More College, which led to his decision to leave his tenured position at Providence College for a new position at Thomas More where he will teach and help found a center dedicated to furthering the college’s mission “to wed virtue and scholarship, contemplation with cultural engagement”:

I have countless memories of fine students at Providence College, some of whom are now my close friends; and to my colleagues in Western Civilization—of whom many have retired and some have passed away—I owe a debt I can never repay, for their friendship and support and instruction. But I am too old to want to spend the evening of my career trying to shore up a crumbling wall, when those who are in authority at the college are unwilling to listen to our pleas, or even to meet with us so that we can make the pleas in person….

No, I’d prefer to be in on building something exciting for the Church and for sheer ordinary humanity: The Center for Cultural Renewal, at Thomas More College.

…

A window shuts, and a door opens—or rather the very roof is blown off, and I see again, in their silent and ordinary beauty, the stars.

IFI was deeply blessed and honored to have Dr. Esolen as one of our banquet speakers two years ago.  To be edified by the man jackhammers tried to crush, watch this:

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