According to a survey conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, there is a marked increase in millennials “identifying” as bisexual or as other  peculiar sexual “identities.”

These surveys raise a critical question: Do these statistics reflect the eradication of destructive social taboos that prevented bisexuals, “transmen” (i.e., women), “transwomen” (i.e., men), “agender,” “gender fluid,” and “gender expansive” persons from publicly revealing their “authentic” selves, or do these statistics reflect the indoctrination of millennials who have had transgressive ideas poured into them from virtually every cultural institution since their births—including their public schools—and as a result are behaving in self-destructive ways that accord with this poisonous sexual ideology?

IFI believes that unrelenting indoctrination has led us to this place in which our young people are engaging in body and soul-destroying actions that they view as freedom. What makes this all the more shocking and tragic is that our taxes subsidize this destruction through our government schools.

Leftist assumptions about sexuality are disseminated and reinforced through our schools’ social and emotional learning standards; “comprehensive” sex ed; professional development for staff and faculty; theater productions; and curricular and supplementary resources teachers assign in class, including novels, plays, essays, magazine articles, movies, and activities.

One of those activities now reaches into thousands of high schools and increasing numbers of middle schools. It’s called the Day of Silence, and it takes place in most schools this Friday, April 21. The Day of Silence is an indoctrination day that exploits legitimate anti-bullying sentiment to eradicate disapproval of homosexual activity and the “trans”-cult movement or to make it socially impossible to express such disapproval.

The Day of Silence is a political event sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) that urges students (and teachers) to refuse to speak for an entire school day, including during class time, in order to draw attention to the plight of students who “identify” as homosexual or as persons of the opposite sex. In other words, students are encouraged to hijack instructional time and exploit a captive audience (i.e., their peers) to advance their subjective beliefs about sexuality. GLSEN offers a panoply of instructions to students on how to plan and implement Day of Silence in their schools and to teachers on how to turn their classrooms into indoctrination seminars.

A national coalition of conservative pro-family organizations is urging parents to contact their children’s schools and ask an administrator this question: Do you permit students and/or teachers to refuse to speak on the Day of Silence?

If the answer is evasive or “yes,” keep your child or children home from school. Many schools lose money for each student absence and in most cases, money talks more loudly to school administrators than does reason.

The ACLU has publicly stated that students have no legal right to refuse to speak on the Day of Silence if teachers ask them to speak, so conservative teachers should plan activities that require student participation. For years now, in many schools teachers have been accommodating student-refusal to speak by planning lessons that permit silence or permit students to write out responses. It’s time for conservative teachers to actively oppose GLSEN and reclaim the classroom for sound education.

Some conservative parents argue that rather than keeping children out of school on the Day of Silence, Christians should keep their kids in school and encourage them to “dialogue” about homosexuality.

As I wrote two years ago, I believe the real motive for this foolish and anemic proposal is to find some sort of defense for inaction. Some Christians are desperate to rationalize compliance and conformity. I say “inaction” because almost no Christian kids will do this, nor should they be expected to.

This anemic proposal fails to take into account three realities: 1. the nature of adolescents, 2. the nature of public schools, 3. the nature of the Christian role models most Christian teens have had in their lives.

Children and teens are not missionaries. It’s not their job in school to teach ethics or engage in apologetics. I’m not suggesting that children and teens shouldn’t do these things. I’m arguing that these are the years that children and teens should be trained up in the way they should go. Their formal educational contexts should not be places of emotional intimidation, political indoctrination, and affirmation of falsehoods as truth. Are they emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually equipped to do that? How many of their parents are emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually equipped to debate issues related to gender dysphoria and homosexuality? Sound, holistic education and training precede the mission field.

Children and teens are vulnerable to false ideas and the influence of charismatic and cunning teachers.

Children and teens already have more than enough to contend with during this emotionally turbulent time of their lives, including family breakdown and dysfunction, economic pressures at home, academic challenges, athletic pressures, peer conflict, substance abuse, and eating disorders. They do not need to be confronted at school with the single most controversial issue dividing this nation and one which most adults—including our political and church leaders and parents—avoid like the proverbial plague.

Children and teens have as powerful a desire to fit in as their parents. Peer pressure and the prospect of ridicule and ostracism make countercultural witnessing to truth almost impossible for teens who are not yet fully mature. I would argue that the silence of adult Christians on these matters reveals that too few of them have matured much beyond adolescence emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually.

How many adult Christians are willing to speak truth about homosexuality in the public square or even in the private sphere to close family members or friends who may disagree?

How many parents, pastors, and priests show up at school board meetings to oppose the sexual integration of restrooms and locker rooms?

How many Christian lawmakers speak boldly (and articulately) in defense of true marriage; or against co-ed restrooms, locker rooms, and shelters; or against adoption by homosexuals?

How many Christian teachers speak out to colleagues or administrators in opposition to the dissemination of homosexuality-affirming resources or the refusal to balance curricula with resources from conservative scholars?

How many priests and pastors preach on homosexuality or gender confusion or teach on these topics in other contexts?

How many pastors, priests, and elders submit letters to the press on cultural issues related to homosexuality or co-ed locker rooms?

And yet some Christians expect Christian teens and children to do what adult Christians steadfastly refuse to do.

Here’s an idea for those who favor sending their young ones to school on the Day of Silence to dialogue with GLSEN’s disciples: Keep your children home from school this Friday, and then encourage them to dialogue about homosexuality and gender dysphoria on any of the other 185 school days.

For more information on what to do about the Day of Silence, click here.

IFI Forums: Climate Change & the Christian

Join us during the last week of April as we have Dr. Calvin Beisner, the founder & national spokesman for The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation discuss the Christian responsibility to the environment as we learn how to discern truth and myth in the climate change controversy.

April 25th in Rockford
April 26th in Arlington Heights
April 27th in Orland Park
April 28th in Peoria

Click HERE to learn more!

The LGBTQ agenda gets the silent treatment in classrooms in Illinois on April 21st. Also, if House Bill 1785 becomes law, gender-confusion activists are likely to have their demands met in school restrooms and locker rooms.

Download the IFI App!

We now have IFI mobile app that enables us to deliver great content based on the the “Tracks” you choose, including timely alerts, cultural commentaries, upcoming event notifications, links to our podcasts, video reports, and even daily Bible verses to encourage you. This great app is available for Android and iPhones.

Key Features:

• It’s FREE!
• Specific content for serious Christians
• Performs a spiritual assessment
• Sends you daily Scriptures to encourage and equip you
• You determine when and how much content you get

A concerned parent sent me this. It’s the school newspaper for Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School in Falls Church, Virginia. Among the other hard hitting pieces of journalism targeted at children, ages 11-13, is an article on “transgender rights.”

The article explains how Obama “improved the lives of transgender people by fighting the discrimination against them,” but all of that is now in jeopardy because of President Trump. The next article delves into the intricacies and wonders of various forms of gender identity, including “transgenderism,” “non-binary,” “bigender,” “agender,” “demigender,” “genderfluid,” and “genderflux.” I’m obviously more innocent and naive than the typical middle schooler these days, so I’d never even heard of some of these. For anyone else who may be curious, here’s how the last three types of genders are explained to an audience of pre-pubscent kids:

Demigender: Demigender refers to people who partially identify as one gender. Demigender people may also identify as partially a different gender. Examples include demigirl, or someone who partially identifies as a girl; demiboy, or someone who partially identifies as a boy; demiagender, meaning someone who identifies as partially agender; and more broadly, deminonbinary, or someone who just partially identifies as nonbinary. 

Genderfluid and Genderflux: Genderfluid refers to someone whose gender changes between any of the above categories. For example, someone may feel female one day, male another day, and agender the next day. Similarly, genderflux refers to someone whose gender changes in intensity. This typically means that someone’s gender will fluctuate between agender and a different gender, which could be binary or nonbinary. For example, someone might sometimes feel completely female, sometimes demigender, and sometimes agender.

Did you get all that?

Someone can partially not have a gender, while the other part of them has three genders, and the third part is a futon. These are the notions being implanted in our kids’ heads in their public schools. The average 7th grader in America may not be able do basic arithmetic without a calculator or name the Allied Powers during WW2 or understand the difference between “there” and “their,” but you can bet he’ll be able to identify 112 different genders and explain them in terms explicit enough to make a grown man blush.

If we have not yet reached a point where a mass exodus from the public schools is warranted, when will that point arrive? Are we waiting until they start bringing in nude hermaphrodites to teach sex ed? I suppose even that wouldn’t be enough incentive for some of us. “I can’t shield my kid from what’s going on out there!” “Be in the world, not of the world!” “Naked she-males are a part of life! I can’t keep him in a bubble forever! He’s 9 years old, for God’s sake!”

Look, I know that public school may really be the only option for some people. There are single parents of little economic means who find themselves backed into a corner where government education appears to be the only choice. And if a parent can’t or won’t homeschool, a private Christian education can be prohibitively expensive. Not only that, but some Christians schools are as bad as, or worse than, the average public school. Abandoning the public school system is not an easy thing, and it presents many hurdles that, right now, may be impossible for some people to get over. The collapse of the family unit, not to mention our recent economic woes, have contributed to creating a dependence on public education. Not everyone can break free all at once, I realize.

But we should certainly all agree, at this point, that public school is not an option for those of us who have another feasible option. We should agree that public school is a matter of last resort and necessity. We should agree that public education is inherently hostile to true Christian values, and for that reason it is not anywhere close to the ideal environment for our kids. We should agree on these points. But we still don’t, incredibly.

I had this discussion on Twitter recently, and it prompted several emails from Christian parents who appear to believe that kids should still be sent to public school, even if there are other valid options available. They suggested that, somehow, the sort of madness outlined above could present faith-affirming opportunities for our children, and we would actually be depriving them of something if we did not give them access to those opportunities. They claimed that public school is a “mission field” where our kids can be “salt and light” to their friends. They said that it’s not fair to our kids or our communities if we “shelter” them. They suggested that somehow it’s our children’s duty to minister to the pagan hordes. They said that “the system” needs our kids.

A few responses to this rather confused point of view:

First of all, “the system needs our kids” is just a weird and creepy statement. It reminds me of something someone would say on Black Mirror or the Twilight Zone. Here’s the truth about “the system”: It’s not my job to give it what it needs. Even less is it my kid’s job. There’s nothing in the Bible that says we must dedicate ourselves to maintaining a government-run education system at any cost. My first responsibility is to my family, not to the community or the school system or my kid’s classmates. I will never put the interests of “the system” above that of my own children. Whether “the system” lives or dies is not my concern. My family is my concern. I have an obligation to them, not to the local superintendent.

Second, anyway, if I did put my kids in “the system” for the sake of “the system,” I’m not the one making the sacrifice. I’m forcing my kids to make it. At least face what you’re doing. When it comes down to it, the burden of public schooling is something your child will have to shoulder, not you.

Third, yes, my kids will eventually be exposed to all kinds of strange and terrible things. As much as I’d like to keep them shielded from the evils of the world forever, I know that I can do no such thing. The question is not whether our kids will be exposed to this or that depravity, but when and how and in what context? Are you prepared to trust the school’s judgment on when Junior is ready to learn about concepts like “transgenderism”? Do you trust their judgment on how he learns about it, and what he’s told about it? If you do, I suppose you aren’t even reading this post right now because you’ve been in a vegetative state for the past 30 years.

Fourth, when a kid is sent to public school, he’s expected to navigate and survive and thrive in a hostile, confusing, amoral environment, basically untethered from his parents, 6–8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 9 months a year, for 12 years. Is a child ready for that challenge by the time he’s 5 years old? Is he ready at 8? At 10? No. Our job as parents is to “train them up in the way they should go,” equip them with the armor of God, fortify them in the truth, and then release them into the world. That process has not been completed in conjunction with them first learning how to tie their shoes. I mean, for goodness’ sake, most adults can’t even manage to withstand the hostilities and pressures of our fallen world for that amount of time. And we expect little kids to do it? That’s not fair to them. It’s too much to ask. Way too much. They aren’t equipped, they aren’t ready, they aren’t strong enough, and they will get eaten alive.

Let’s take just this one example of the gender insanity. Our kids, in public school, will be in a world where concepts like “transgenderism” and “demigenderism” are normal, healthy, cool, and rational. They’ll be in a world where even recognizing basic biological realities is considered bigoted and oppressive. They will be in this environment literally from their first day in kindergarten. Can a child spend his entire young life in such an atmosphere and emerge on the other end with his head still on straight? It’s possible, I suppose, but you’ve never had to do that. I didn’t have to do that. I went to public school, but it wasn’t as bad as it is now. So I would be asking my kids to live up to a spiritual and mental and moral challenge that I myself have never endured, and I’ll be asking them to do it every day for 12 years, starting sometime around their 5th birthday.

Not fair. Just not fair.

Fifth, related to the last point, your child is not ready to be a missionary. He cannot be a “witness” to others until he himself has been properly formed in the faith. It’s no surprise that most of the young “missionaries” we commission and send forth to minister to the lost souls in public schools quickly become one of the lost souls. We don’t need to sit around theorizing about whether the missionary approach to education is wise or effective. We already know that it isn’t. The vast majority of the parents who think their kids are being “salt and light” to their peers in school are simply oblivious to the fact that their little Bible warriors have long since defected and joined the heathens. You can hardly blame the kids for this. They’re just kids, after all. They aren’t warriors. Warriors are trained and disciplined. Children are neither of those things. I imagine this is why St. Paul didn’t travel to Athens and Corinth recruiting toddlers to help him carry the Gospel into pagan lands.

Education is supposed to prepare a child to carry the torch of truth.  That is, he’s supposed to be ready to carry it once his education has been completed. This should not be a “throw them into the deep end to see if they can swim” strategy. They can’t swim. You and I can barely swim, morally and spiritually speaking, and we’re adults. Do you expect your child to be more spiritually mature and morally courageous than you?

Now, I do fully believe, ultimately, that our job is to be lights in the darkness. I make that very argument in the last chapter of my book:

All I know is that God put us here to be lights in the darkness, and however dark it gets, our mission does not change. Dostoevsky wrote that stars grow brighter as the night grows darker. So the good news is that we have the opportunity to be the brightest stars for Christ that the world has ever seen, because we may well live through its darkest night. 

But a flame must first be lit, stoked, and protected before it is the bright, raging fire that we all must be if we expect to survive in this culture. Our children’s education is supposed to facilitate that process, not interfere with it. Our children should be fires for Christ because of their education, not in spite of it. We can’t compartmentalize the “spiritual” part of their upbringing, reserve it for evenings and weekends, and allow the lion’s share of their educational experience to be dominated by humanism, hedonism, and godlessness. Education is not supposed to work that way. And it doesn’t really work at all that way, as we’ve seen. Or, if it does work, it is only in cases where the child possesses an almost superhuman level of maturity, intelligence, and moral courage. And maybe some children really are almost superhuman in that way. But most of them aren’t, yours probably aren’t, and you probably aren’t. That’s just the reality of the situation, and we have to deal with it. I find it ironic that so many parents who expect their children to “face the realities of the world” have not faced it themselves.

Buy my new book here.

This article was originally posted at TheBlaze.com

The founder and president of Family Talk says he is “shocked” by the declining values held by the generation of young American adult voters (18 to 34-year-olds) – Millennials who have been promoting the immoral agenda they have learned over years and decades past … one that works to erode the Christian faith of today’s youth, according to a WND report.

When recently speaking with Exodus Mandate Director E. Ray Moore, Dobson discussed the topic of homeschooling, which was just a trace movement in the tens of thousands back in the 1970s when he founded Focus on the Family. But now, the homeschool movement has grown to more than 2 million children – with some estimates, such as one given by the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) indicating that the number could be as high as 4 million.

Answering God’s calling

The evangelical Christian leader told Moore – whose organization’s mission is to motivate Christian parents to homeschool their children or enroll them in church-run Christian schools – that he realized the biblical call for parents to teach from home after he began his Christian ministry as a teacher and psychologist a few decades ago.

“When he was introduced to the idea – that the biblical mandate for parents to ‘train up a child in the way he should go’ was no more or less than a call for Christian parents to instruct their own children – or have them in church schools that would teach morality – it immediately struck a chord,” WND’s Bob Unruh reported.

Dobson stressed that this bit of wisdom for parents from Proverbs 22:6 lit a new flame in him for homeschooling.

“It was like putting a match to gasoline [for me],” the conservative activist told Moore in a recent series of Family Talk broadcasts. “I got it. I saw it.”

In their conversation, Moore indicated that Dobson was partially responsible for the uptick in homeschooling that began in the 1980s.

Millennial mayhem

Since then, Dobson says schools have gotten much worse in indoctrinating children in a godless, anti-Christian agenda disguised in progressive curricula found in public education.

Those children who have been subjected to Leftist propaganda in schools in decades past are today’s Millennials – the group of voters that Moore says would have put 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the White House … if it were not for older generations tipping the ballot scales for her Republican rival, Donald Trump.

Moore pointed to research conducted by Dan Smith of the Nehemiah Institute to make his case, which indicated that Clinton would have received 504 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 23 if only Millennials voted last November – meaning the president would have won just five states.

Dobson found it hard to believe the extreme Leftist bent of today’s Millennials, as demonstrated in the 2016 election.

“That shocked me,” the influential Christian shared, taking into consideration Clinton’s numerous scandals and extremist platform on abortion and LGBT.

He then alerted Christians that Leftists are winning over the next young generation of Americans.

“They [have] been propagandized and given a philosophy that – in many cases – is contrary to Scripture and what we believe,” Dobson told Moore.

It is argued that Christians are losing their foothold in society because they have given their youth over to Leftists in the education system who aggressively undermine the teachings of the Bible in the name of “tolerance,” “science,” and so-called “multiculturalism.”

“[I]t’s because, largely, of the anti-Christian influences of public schools, attended by many impressionable and unprepared Christian children for six hours a day, 180 days a year for 12 or 13 formative years,” Unruh noted. “They’re exposed to LGBT teachings, evolution, a revisionist form of American history, Islam and worse.”

Dobson recently blasted Disney and its latest cinematic rendition of Beauty and the Beast for promoting the same LGBT agenda taught in the public schools.

“I know that this isn’t the culturally acceptable thing to say – I know I will be labeled a ‘bigot’ by the true bigots of the mainstream media for believing in the Bible’s definition of marriage – but we are way past cowering under the pressure of LGBTQ advocates,” Dobson proclaimed in a “Culture Watch” warning he issued on his site last month. “As a father, a counselor and a Christian, I will stand by what I believe – for the sake of our families and our children.”

Teaching God’s way

Insisting that Christians cannot discount what the Bible says about instruction, Moore maintains that parents must assume their roles as being primarily responsible for the education of their children.

“There’s a scriptural pattern,” the retired military chaplain, who served as Lt. Col. “The Bible’s clear the Scripture assigns the education of children to the family with assistance from the church – not the government.”

Despite the common contention that many parents make – that they are sending their young children into public schools to be God’s light – Moore has reservations about prematurely sending youngsters into the frontlines to engage in spiritual warfare on public school campuses – where they are extremely outnumbered by the enemy, which has recruited countless godless teachers, administrators and students.

“[V]ery young children are not equipped,” insisted Moore, who also serves as the president of Frontline Ministries.

He went on to urge Christians to take advantage of the break Christians got through the November election – one that has caused the Democrats’ Leftist agenda to lose some momentum.

“If we don’t change the way we do education, we’ll lose the country,” Moore impressed. “I’m 73, and those coming behind us do not agree with their own parents.”

Looking at the progressive tide that swept American education during the Obama administration, Moore says that the battle is still on for the hearts and souls of America’s youth inside the schoolhouse gate.

“We believe you can make a case with data that the main reason the culture and the next generation are turning away from traditional values – from the Gospel, from Christianity – is primarily because of the indoctrination of the public-school system,” Moore expressed.

Christians buying in to a lie …

Moore is concerned that many evangelical parents have gullibly jumped on board with public schools and share the belief that the system is working to educate and develop America’s children for the better good of the nation.

“[State-controlled children’s ‘education’ … is there anything more warmly regarded by the typical American?” he sarcastically pondered in a piece he published on Exodus Mandate last month. “Right outta the Communist Manifesto, yet adored and defended by most professing conservatives in America. Built plainly upon the satanic approach to the pursuit of knowledge, yet adored and defended by most professing Christians in America.”

Moore contended that Christians should be looking in the mirror when pointing the finger of blame for their children following a wayward path in their spiritual walk.

“I know … I know … it’s Common Core! … Nuh-uh. It’s not the Democrats, the liberals, or even Common Core… It’s the Christians,” he insisted. “We are, as always, the greatest enablers of the enemy. We are the most compliant tools in Satan’s quest to mold the minds and worldviews of our own children.”

He explained that Christians are often found defending the schools more than their own faith.

“America seems to be happily plunging itself and its children into the tyranny of Statism – primarily because professing Christians have proudly led the way,” Moore continued. “Rather than lead the culture in repentance and tearing down the enemy stronghold that is the satanic, State-controlled children’s ‘education’ system, it is professing Christians who are among the most vocal and ardent defenders of this child-eating, culture-corrupting abomination.”

The Christian expert on education points out that believers have grown too comfortable with the school system introducing anti-Christian teachings to their children day in and day out in the classroom – doing little to nothing to counteract the attack on their children’s faith by teachers and their curriculum.

“While there’s little left to wonder as to why unbelievers would buy into and strive to prop up the satanic lies at the foundation of the system feeding on the minds and souls of our young, what of the professing Church?” he pondered. “What of professing Christians? Why are we so into the satanic spin on the pursuit of knowledge?”

Moore maintains that Christians have rolled out the red carpet for public schools to undermine their children’s faith without realizing the detrimental spiritual effect such an influence has on students.

“The answers to that question are rooted in understanding that the professing Christian subculture in America has been radically reshaped through many decades of multigenerational rebellion against God – often in the name of patriotism, love, and even Christianity itself,” he added.” This open rebellion has been going on for so long that it is now invisible to the vast majority of professing Christians in America. It is the new normal of American culture because it first became the new normal of the professing Christian American subculture.”

Moore exhorted Christians to acknowledge the enemy and engage in the battle on behalf of their children before the war for their souls is lost. He encourages parents to take the education of their children into their own hands … and under God’s influence.

“We can’t even begin to slay this dragon if we won’t face it head-on,” Moore stressed. “We can’t find the answers if we won’t ask the questions. And we can’t credibly claim to be true disciples of Christ if we will not seriously strive to learn and obey all that He has commanded … including His many detailed pronouncements on the subject of children’s education – it’s all on us.”

He ended by calling Christians to take action and not sit idly by as the enemy works through the Leftist propaganda in the schools to claim their children.

“The minds and souls of our children, grandchildren and generations to come thereafter are hanging in the balance,” Moore concluded. “Now what are we going to do about it?”

This article was originally posted at OneNewsNow.com

One of the central tactics used by liberals to impose coercively an incoherent and science-denying “trans” ideology on, well, everyone, is to hurl epithets at dissenters. And if that means adults hurling epithets in the direction of children, so be it. Leftists can’t have children running around our streets even thinking the emperor has no clothes. And they certainly can’t have girls refusing to share restrooms with the emperor.

Two comments left on Illinois Family Action’s Facebook page in response to my article titled “The Enemies of Truth Wage War in Districts 211 and 15” illustrate the terrible way liberals seek to manipulate those who believe that congenital physical embodiment as male or female matters.

Simone McLellan Kentish accuses those who support sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms of intolerance, ignorance, unjust discrimination, and bigotry:

The TRUTH is that a gender dysphoric child is going through so many challenges of his own dealing with discrimination and ignorance that the farthest thing from his mind would be to ogle another student of the same sex he identifies with.

The TRUTH is that the locker room issue is a convenient excuse intolerant people are using to justify their own bigotry.

My own child will soon be graduating from a D15 school and moving on to a d211 school. I am thankful she’s being brought up in an environment where tolerance and understanding prevail.

Jill Mayes goes even further in her defense of intellectual and moral incoherence:

“Enemies of Truth”?!? Ugh! This religious hatred breaks my heart. Do you even know any transgender people? Life is hard enough without people causing trouble for one another especially children … especially in the name of God. Honestly, this is the most unChrist like behavior I can imagine. Please stop.

Seriously? The most un-Christlike behavior Mayes can imagine is opposition to co-ed locker rooms? Has she heard of ISIS?

There is no doubt that gender-dysphoric children experience challenges, but the proper response to their disordered and futile attempt to reject their immutable biological sex should not be to allow them to invade the private spaces of opposite-sex children.

The objections to co-ed restrooms and locker rooms articulated in the “Enemies of Truth” article have nothing to do with “ogling.” The central objection to the sexual integration of private spaces pertains to the intrinsic meaning of biological sex, particularly with regard to modesty and privacy.

Whether Kentish and Mayes acknowledge it, allowing an objectively male student in girls’ private spaces (or vice versa) necessarily means that objective, immutable biological sex has no intrinsic meaning relative to modesty and privacy.

If, however, biological sex has meaning, then biological males who wish they were girls have no more right in girls’ locker rooms than do biological males who are content with their sex. Either objective, immutable biological sex matters or it doesn’t. If it matters, then boys and girls should not be sharing private spaces. If it doesn’t matter, then there is no reason to have any sex-segregated restrooms, locker rooms, showers, shelters or semi-private hospital rooms anywhere.

And if biological sex doesn’t matter in private spaces, then why is District 211 requiring the boy who is pretending to be a girl to use a private changing area? Doesn’t that requirement suggest that biological sex does, in reality, mean something?

When I worked at Deerfield High School where my children attended and were swimmers, I could walk into the locker room where the girl swimmers were changing and showering to talk to my daughter. I could not walk into the boys’ locker room to talk to my son. If during my children’s high school years, I were to have “transitioned” to a male, should I have been prohibited from entering the girls’ locker room and been permitted to enter the boys’?

Despite Kentish’s claim, it is not bigotry that leads girls to desire separation from boys when changing clothes. And it is not bigotry that leads girls not to want to do their business in a stall next to an unrelated boy doing his business. It is natural and good for girls and boys to want to undress and do their business in sex-segregated spaces.

Since Mayes objects to my claim that proponents of co-ed restrooms are enemies of truth, perhaps I should clarify what I meant and to whom the comment was directed.

• Anyone who claims that people can change their sex is an enemy of truth.

• Anyone who claims that private spaces should correspond to subjective feelings about biological sex rather than to objective sex is an enemy of truth.

• Anyone who claims that compassion, inclusivity, love, or Christ demands the sexual integration of restrooms and locker rooms is an enemy of truth. The Bible teaches that God created us male and female. God prohibits cross-dressing. And God prohibits bearing false witness. The love that Jesus embodied and taught does not affirm all human desires, beliefs, and actions. Quite the contrary. Jesus himself said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

• Anyone who believes that the government (i.e., public school administrations) has a right to require employees to lie by referring to gender-dysphoric students by opposite-sex pronouns is an enemy of truth.

• Anyone who believes that it is a good thing to give minors puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, or double-mastectomies is an enemy of truth.

The blame for locker room controversies in public schools rests not with parents who believe that biological sex matters but with parents of gender-dysphoric children who are trying to impose their arguable assumptions about “gender identity” on everyone and on their liberal allies who seek to humiliate and stigmatize dissenters. And here’s where children come in.

Policies that permit co-ed restrooms and locker rooms implicitly teach what Kentish and Mayes explicitly say: They teach all children that their desire not to share private spaces with opposite-sex persons is intolerant, ignorant, unjustly discriminatory, bigoted, hateful, and un-Christlike. When Kentish, Mayes and countless other “progressives” vilify opponents of co-ed restrooms and locker rooms, they are necessarily vilifying and shaming conservative kids. And that is shameful bullying.

IFI Text Alerts!

For up-to-the minute news, action alerts, coming events and more you can now sign up for IFI Text Alerts!

Stay in the loop with IFI by texting “IFI” to 555888 to be enrolled right away.

Click HERE to donate to IFI

Close on the heels of the “progressive” boondoggle at New Trier High School, another affluent high school on Chicago’s North Shore has its own boondoggle in the offing. Though smaller in scope (thus far) and far less public than all-school dogma day at New Trier, the contempt for diverse views, the brazenness of the attempt at censorship, and the presumptuousness of the staff members involved are no less remarkable.

Three staff members at Lake Forest High School in Lake Forest, Illinois sent an email to the entire staff with this message:

Hi everyone.

We wanted to let you know the specific topic of our individual [Professional Development] session (“Moving Beyond Safe: Affirming Our Students’ Diverse Identities”) this week.  

Studies—as well as well as the words of our actual students—tell us that students need teachers to intervene when they witness anti-LQBTQ language or behavior and to step in when heteronormativity is being promoted.

So this week we will focus on different methods and techniques for interrupting and stepping up.​

We hope you’ll consider joining….

-John, Dan, and Deborahanne

For those unfamiliar with all the rhetorical inventions of sexual subversives, “heteronormativity” is their term to denote the belief that the human species is binary (i.e., there are two sexes) and that heterosexual activity is the normal, natural, and preferable form of human sexual activity. Further, in the world of “progressivism,” “heteronormativity” is bad.

So, what John Wanninger, Dan, and Deborahanne Reimer seek to do is have the entire staff, faculty, and administration “step in” and “interrupt” students who express the view that the human species is composed of two sexes and that homoerotic activity is not normal, natural, good, or moral. In other words, these three government employees—affirmers of diversity and agents of change—seek to use this government school to censor speech. They seek not merely to censor epithets and obscenity but to censor the expression of ideas with which they disagree.

This trio of tricksy little devils (John, Dan, and Deborahanne) urge staff to “step in” and “interrupt” under the guise of promoting “safety”—well “safety” as redefined by those with micron-thin skins easily punctured by micro-aggressions.

In their ideologically insular (i.e., non-diverse) world, the only way to “feel safe” is to prohibit the expression of any speech that makes them “feel bad.”

But if “safety” can be achieved only through banning expressions of moral propositions, are all expressions of moral propositions going to be banned at LFHS? Or are just moral propositions that John, Dan, and Deborahanne dislike going to be banned? What if someone feels “unsafe” by John, Dan, and Deborahanne’s criticism of “heteronormativity”? Can that person step in and interrupt them?

Who will be the arbiter of what constitutes banned promotions of “heteronormativity”? If a student expresses opposition to sexually integrated locker rooms and restrooms, will John step in and interrupt her? If a student expresses the view that marriage has a nature central to which is sexual differentiation, will he step on step in and interrupt her? What if a student were overheard saying that he thinks homoerotic activity undermines human flourishing (gasp)? After John, Dan, and Deborahanne recover from the vapors, will they frantically step in and interrupt?

But are students who identify as homosexual in reality “unsafe” if they hear the expression of a moral proposition with which they disagree, or are they uncomfortable?

If the Lake Forest community believes the civil expression of moral (or ontological) propositions with which someone may disagree actually makes dissenters “unsafe,” then they must ban the expressions of all moral and ontological propositions. In a public school setting, it is not only unjustifiable but dangerous to ban only some.

Let’s not forget that neither love for persons, nor acceptance of persons, nor commitments to safety and inclusivity require affirmation of everything humans feel, believe, or do.

The first signatory on the email is John Wanninger, an English and theatre teacher who is also the sponsor of the extracurricular “LGBTQ” club Alliance, which promotes the affirmation and celebration of homosexuality and gender confusion and condemns “heteronormativity.”

In an interview last September with the student newspaper, Wanninger, who was “inspired” seven years ago to “reboot” the defunct homosexual club, describes his many efforts to use his taxpayer-funded job to promote his assumptions about homosexuality:

What are some LGBT/Ally events?

“[National Ally Week] is sponsored by a group named GLSEN [Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network]. They have all kinds of stuff on their website about activities and they have a social media presence. This week they are doing a “#myallies” thread where LGBT students are explaining why their allies are important to them. October is actually LGBT History Month to celebrate known and lesser known influential people who you may or may not know were LGBTQ identified throughout history and some of their contributions. In April is the Day of Silence, which is sponsored by GLSEN. That always happens in the middle of April. That has grown a lot for us as well….

Tell me about the conference in D.C. What is one takeaway that you found to be impactful on your own role at LFHS?

“The conference was amazing. It was called the GSA [Gay-Straight Alliance] Advisors, and it was sponsored by GLSEN along with the NEA, the National Education Association, which is the National Teachers Union. I was one of 38 people who got to go. It was a lot of really powerful sharing….I also just bonded a lot with people who are trying to do what I am trying to do, which is make school safer for everyone.”

Do you have any final inspirational or insightful thoughts you want to say?

“…my work with Alliance and other aspects of the LGBT community of our school is just an offshoot of why I am in this profession.”

It seems his professional goals are inextricably linked to the sexuality ideology of the Left.

Here’s something about which too few community members think: Not all staff members are “progressive.” In every school, some—sometimes many—staff members are conservative. They are annoyed, frustrated, and dispirited by the relentless and bold attacks on their values, beliefs, and truth by Leftist colleagues but fear professional and personal retribution if they were to voice their opposition. They long for community stakeholders to take a stand against the usurpation of their schools by Leftists in the furtherance of Leftist dogma.

Here’s another little known fact about public schools: Even many teachers who hold “progressive” political positions object to the divisiveness that is fomented in schools by Leftists who promote their views on  controversial cultural issues through curricula and professional development. These teachers actually  honor diversity and understand that there are good people—including some of their students—who oppose bullying, support inclusivity, and believe “heteronormativity” serves society well.

Before anyone from the government steps in and interrupts me, I’m going to express my view that  Lake Forest community members should step in and interrupt John, Dan, and Deborahanne before their approach to controversial issues takes root and like a weed overtakes the pedagogical commitments of Lake Forest High School. While they’re at it, they should take a close look—a very close look—at the professional development offerings provided at taxpayer expense on late arrival days, Institute Days, and in summer workshops.

Oh, and they should ask the administration why no parents were told that John, Dan, and Deborahanne are urging all staff to censor student speech.

Read more:

Warning to Parents: The Day of Silence is Almost Here

New Trier High School Needs Accounting, Diversity, and Logic Lessons

IFI Forums: Climate Change & the Christian

Join us during the last week of April as we have Dr. Calvin Beisner, the founder & national spokesman for The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation discuss the Christian responsibility to the environment as we learn how to discern truth and myth in the climate change controversy.

April 25th in Rockford
April 26th in Arlington Heights
April 27th in Orland Park
April 28th in Peoria

Click HERE to learn more!

Is it higher education or higher indoctrination? Many college kids today spend four or more years being indoctrinated as much as they are educated. In this short video, watch a group of University of Wisconsin-Madison students learn more about liberty in four minutes than they probably do in four years at very liberal UW-M.

Here is the Alliance Defense Fund’s YouTube introduction to the video:

Everyone agreed that a creative professional should have the foundational freedom to decline work that conflicts with their conscience or beliefs. But, when faced with a situation that goes against current cultural expectations, like a Christian photographer declining to promote a same-sex wedding, the gears start grinding. If a law that forces someone to promote something against their beliefs is so laughable, so unimaginable…then why is it so difficult to extend the same freedom to a Christian creative professional?

IFI Text Alerts!

For up-to-the minute news, action alerts, coming events and more you can now sign up for IFI Text Alerts!

Stay in the loop with IFI by texting “IFI” to 555888 to be enrolled right away.

In just six weeks, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) will again attempt to ram their sexuality ideology down the throats and into the hearts and minds of other people’s children via the hijacking of government schools for the political protest called the Day of Silence.

On Friday, April 21, 2017 at thousands of middle and high schools around the country, GLSEN will ask students to refuse to speak all day in support of the promotion of Leftist assumptions about homosexuality and gender dysphoria.

GLSEN laughably calls this a “student-led” event while providing 15 resources that direct students into pro-homosexual school activism.

And those resources don’t include the for-profit merchandise GLSEN sells to adorn students on the Day of Silence, Ally Week, and other days. This merchandise includes t-shirts, pins, temporary tattoos, keychains, wristbands, lanyards, socks, sweatshirts, hoodies, and a $500 denim trucker jacket made by “Levi Brand.”

Although technically it is students—often students who belong to the “gay” clubs in schools—who sponsor the Day of Silence, all their activities are directed by the biased, Leftist organization GLSEN. Here are some of GLSEN’s “Jump-Start” documents to help students start “gay” clubs (also known as Gay and Straight Alliances) in their schools:

• “Building and Activating your [Gay Straight Alliance] or Student Club”
• “Strategies for Training Teachers”
• “Understanding Direct Action Organizing”
• “Power, Privilege and Oppression”
• “Your Student Club Trans-Inclusive”

In addition, GLSEN incentivizes participation in the Day of Silence by offering free materials to all participants and extra “free swag” to the “first 3,000 registrants.”

In addition to the Day of Silence, there are numerous trends in public elementary, middle, and high schools regarding the controversial topics of homosexuality and gender dysphoria that make a vigorous public response necessary:

• Increasing numbers of schools are allowing gender-dysphoric students to share restrooms and locker rooms with students of the opposite sex, including even elementary schools, and often with no parental notification.

• Teachers—who are government employees—are being forced by the government to lie by being compelled to refer to gender-dysphoric students by pronouns that designate the opposite sex.

• Girls students are being permitted to run for prom king, and boy students are being permitted to be prom queens.

• Elementary schools are marching in “gay” pride parades.

• California schools are legally required to teach positively about homosexuality and gender dysphoria in all social studies classes in grades 6-12, and all resources that espouse dissenting views are by law censored.

• Schools—including elementary schools—promote Leftist views of homosexuality and gender dysphoria in sex ed curricula, in presentations about “family diversity,” in bullying prevention programs, and via “social and emotional” learning standards.

• Elementary schools make picture books that depict homosexuality positively available to children in their libraries.

• Schools host dances for homosexual students.

• School theater departments mount productions of The Laramie Project; Zanna, Don’t!; and Rent. And English teachers teach Angels in America, The Laramie Project, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

• Film teachers show Brokeback Mountain.

• Schools promote the normalization of homosexuality and gender confusion through Spirit Day, Ally Week, National Coming Out Day, “LGBT” History Month, and the queen of all homosexuality-affirming days: the Day of Silence.

What can parents and teachers do?

While “progressives” in and outside of schools are using countless resources and activities to promote the normalization of homosexuality and gender dysphoria, there is only one organized annual event that allows conservatives to express their opposition to the hijacking of government schools for the pernicious purposes of homosexual activism: the Day of Silence Walkout, which offers several ways the Day of Silence can be opposed:   

1.)  The Day of Silence Walkout is sponsored by a coalition of pro-family organizations that is again urging parents to keep their children home on the Day of Silence if their school administrations permit students and/or teachers to refuse to speak during class time on the Day of Silence. The Day of Silence Walkout Coalition does not object to student silence during passing periods or free periods, but neither teachers nor students should be permitted to refuse to speak during instructional time.

2.)  Parents should insist that their school administrations notify all parents that the Day of Silence political action is taking place on April 21 and insist that their administrations inform all parents about what students will be permitted to do or be prohibited from doing on the Day of Silence.

3.)  Conservative teachers should plan activities that require student participation. The ACLU—which supports the Day of Silence—has issued this statement: “[Students] do NOT have a right to remain silent during class time if a teacher asks you to speak.”

For years, teachers have been either modifying their lesson plans to accommodate student silence, creating lesson plans to reinforce the ideology of GLSEN’s Day of Silence, or participating in the Day of Silence themselves. It’s time for conservative teachers to do something constructive and courageous in the service of removing political hijinks from instructional time.

Every year a new crop of students enters middle and high schools whose parents naively believe that public schools value diversity, honor all voices, foster critical thinking, and are committed to creating a “safe” place for all views to be expressed. Those parents and many others whose children are returning students have no idea the extent of the pro-homosexuality propaganda that pervades their schools. And many have never heard of the Day of Silence.

The Day of Silence Walkout alerts parents to the exploitation of their public schools in the service of transforming the moral and political beliefs of their children.

The Day of Silence is not centrally a day committed to the eradication of bullying—a goal all decent people support. Rather, the Day of Silence organizers, promoters, and participants seek to exploit legitimate anti-bullying sentiment to normalize homosexuality and the “trans” cult. Despite what GLSEN says, it is possible to oppose bullying and oppose GLSEN’s Day of Silence.

The Day of Silence Walkout offers an easy, safe way for parents to express to school administrations, school boards, and their children’s teachers that they oppose the promotion of non-factual Leftist beliefs about disordered sexuality in taxpayer-funded public schools.

Student absences cost many schools money, and often that matters much more to school administrations and school boards than the beliefs and feelings of parents.

For more information on the Day of Silence Walkout and a list of the coalition partners, please visit the Day of Silence Walkout website.

Read more recent articles from Laurie:

Former “Transgenders” Talk About De-“Transitioning”

Beauty and the Beast: A “Gay” Tale for the Kiddies

New Trier High School Needs Accounting, Diversity, and Logic Lessons

The Radical “Trans”-Formation of America

IFI Forums: Climate Change & the Christian

Join us during the last week of April as we have Dr. Calvin Beisner, the founder & national spokesman for The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation discuss the Christian responsibility to the environment as we learn how to discern truth and myth in the climate change controversy.

April 25th in Rockford
April 26th in Arlington Heights
April 27th in Orland Park
April 28th in Peoria

Click HERE to learn more!

The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia sued the Gloucester County School Board in Virginia over its policy that protects students’ privacy and safety by reserving restrooms and locker rooms for members of the same biological sex, while providing an alternative private facility for students uncomfortable using a facility that corresponds with their sex. The ACLU asserted inaccurately that the school board violated Title IX, a federal law, and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause when the district declined to allow a female student to use the boys’ restrooms. Title IX specifically authorizes schools to have single-sex restrooms and locker rooms.

Kerri Kupec, Legal Counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, recently filed a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the student privacy policy of the Gloucester County Public Schools.

Attorney Kupec reacted to a similar brief filed in this case (Gloucester County School Board v. G.G.) by 53 companies who explain that they are in favor of allowing students of the opposite sex into each other’s locker rooms, shower facilities, and restrooms in public schools:

Big business shouldn’t be advocating for boys to share the girls’ locker rooms and showers—and vice versa—in our public schools, and yet that’s precisely what these 53 companies are doing. What they should be supporting is the bodily privacy and dignity of all students, instead of simply disregarding the rights and reasonable concerns of many students and parents.

These companies say in their brief that they ‘recognize that employees cannot work as effectively when they are worried about how their children are being treated at school,’ but the companies are completely unconcerned about the dad who knows his daughter has to change for gym with a boy in her locker room. Worse, the companies would characterize that dad as having a ‘lack of any reasoned justification’ for his concerns, as the brief puts it, or as having a lower ‘level of enlightenment,’ as some activists have revealingly stated.

The first duty of school districts is to protect the bodily privacy rights of all of the students who attend their schools and to respect the rights of parents who understandably don’t want their children exposed in intimate changing areas.”

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith.

Your college-bound son or daughter has a new obstacle to overcome in learning to be both an educated and wise young adult. Teaching White Privilege is now all the rage. Many universities have mandatory classes on it. Some even extend the indoctrination into the dormitories. Only youth with strong character will survive the experience without being warped.

Before exposing our youth to these arguments we are wise to scout ahead, to see what sort of trouble lies ahead. What is White Privilege, and what does it have to say about racism? Does God teach us anything about this? And what should our response be, both as Christians and as Americans?

Defining White Privilege

The concept of White Privilege can be traced to a couple of Marxist authors.

In 1935 Professor W.E.B. DuBois wrote the book Black Reconstruction in America. In it he used Marxist theory to explain some outcomes of the American Civil War.

Beginning in 1965 the labor activist Theodore William Allen sought ways to radicalize the American workforce. After studying the DuBois book he decided that American society had a built-in racial favoritism he called “white skin privilege.” He said that workers in America didn’t hear the Marxist call to action because of society’s built-in white supremacism. In one essay Allen claimed that:

“White Americans who want government of the people, by the people, must begin by first repudiating their white skin privileges and the white ‘gentleman’s agreement’ against the Negro.”

Allen’s ideas were expanded by academic researchers and social activists into “White Privilege,” an assertion that there are real but invisible advantages that only white people have. For example, Professor Peggy McIntosh supposedly carries an “invisible backpack” of advantages like these:

“I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.”

“If a traffic cop pulls me over, or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.”

If the goal is overthrowing our current society then the White Privilege concept is very useful. You can accuse your opponents of having it and deny their objections because they are simply blind to the problem.

Racism and godly government

In a previous article I noted what God requires of a society and its government. In summary, its rulers must deter crime, provide even-handed justice, and defend the powerless. The people are to be honest, peaceable, living up to their promises, and caring for the poor and orphaned. Regarding issues of discrimination these instructions include:

• Provide even-handed and truthful justice (Amos 5:12).
• Give judgments that don’t favor either the rich or the poor (Leviticus 19:5).
• Be even-handed in our treatment the aliens in our midst (Deuteronomy 10:17-19).

For Christians there is to be no favoritism of men or women, or of race, in Christ Jesus (Acts 10:34-36, Galatians 3:28, I Timothy 5:21, James 2:1). A Christian society is to be no respecter of persons or of race – a colorblind society.

Is America (still) racist?

The American experience hasn’t always been just regarding race. How about today?

Are our laws racist?

At times parts of America had laws where the intent was racial discrimination. Examples of these include racial segregation laws, voting poll taxes, and voting literacy tests. But after much time and effort, racial discrimination has been abolished from American laws. There are a great many watchers to ensure that the laws remain that way. Yet laws are not the society itself. They merely guide and regulate it.

Are there racist Americans?

You’re certain to find racist Americans because all people have sinned and fall short of God’s perfection (Romans 3:23). We should rather be gratified at how little racism there is. That is largely the result of more than a century of Christian preaching and public exhortations to not judge someone merely by the color of their skin.

Still, you don’t have to look hard to find overt racists:

• White people in the Ku Klux Klan.
• Black people in the New Black Panthers or Nation of Islam.
• Hispanic people in MEChA.

These groups are racist because they don’t seek colorblind solutions. They pursue race-based policies and outcomes, for one race and against another. Curiously, each of these groups seek to reinstate some form of resegregation. The point of discussing racist organizations is that nobody is immune from becoming racist merely because of their own race. Racism can come from people of any race.

We know that there are some Americans who judge people according to their race, and that there are other Americans who judge people according to their character and acts. How do we decide if this combination results in a racist society?

Is American society racist?

American society encompasses the social interactions of its people, the good and the bad, the racist and the racially colorblind. Is the result a racist society? Reflecting on what the Bible says about racism (Galatians 3:28, et.al.) the answer must be NO.

First, actual racist activity isn’t that common. Not surveys or research studies, actual incidents of people being discriminated against. It’s surprising news when an incident occurs. News organizations love these reports. If there were a lot of them the newspapers and television shows would be continually reporting about the community’s racism, editorializing about what a shame it is. But you don’t see this wall-to-wall news coverage because the racist activity isn’t that prevalent.

Second, racist offenders are pressured to fix things. Their racist activities cease. A society that can fix its racial wrongs is healthy, not irredeemably racist. It has a conscience that causes social change. In a racist society nothing would change.

Third, a social interaction can be surprisingly complex. One person sees racism, while another recognizes a combination of normal social attributes. It can be difficult to determine if there are racist elements involved. Try these examples:

A girl avoids the coffee shop nearest work. Is it because she doesn’t like the race or religion of its workers? Or is it because she remembers an encounter with a certain rude barista?

A town with mostly white people is shunning a certain black family. Is it because of white racism? Or because that family’s children are “out of control?”

The local newspaper never shows pictures people of my race. Is it because of racist policies? Or because the people of your race are few and don’t get into newsworthy troubles?

A family has their apartment rental application rejected. Is that racial steering, with the remedy of the Fair Housing Act? Or was that family too poor to afford the rent?

A white scholar drives into a black neighborhood to meet someone. She is pulled over by police and questioned. Is her experience an example of “police routinely pull over cars in a black neighborhood?” Or is it, as the police said, that her driving pattern fits the profile of someone looking for a drug dealer?

When evaluating a social situation all of the details matter. But perhaps thorough research won’t generate the sensational headlines that were desired.

Is White Privilege “fake news?”

The White Privilege concept claims that white people have certain invisible advantages. These advantages might merely be the result of acquiring income, education, or a residence in “nice” neighborhood.

A Department of Education study states that “Black students are suspended and expelled at a rate three times greater than white students.” But was the study covering disparities in just one school? Or were some data gathered from schools in peaceful communities and other data from schools serving as substitute gang battlegrounds?

Again, all of the details matter.

An important part of the White Privilege concept is that you can’t lose it, avoid it, or fix it. You’re guilty of racism just by living. This is important for activists, for guilty people are easily manipulated, and you’ll keep doing whatever the accusers ask for.

Finally, the White Privilege concept creates its own definition of racism. The common definition of racism judges a person on their thoughts, words and deeds. The White Privilege version says that you’re guilty because the accuser doesn’t like how society is currently structured. These advocates are moving the goalposts to encourage a political and social reengineering of America.

So what do we know about White Privilege?

• It was invented to push people into accepting a socialist or Marxist society.
• You are accused of being racist, but not for anything you did.
• There is no way for you to fix this so-called racism.
• Your only hope is to join your accusers and reshape society to their plans.

That sounds like “fake news” to me. It is guilt inducing without cause. Throw it out.

Subscribe to the IFI YouTube channel
and never miss a video report or special program!

One of the Illinois General Assembly’s top budget minds is offering some common sense ideas on how the state can return to fiscal sanity and once again become a go-to state for business.

IFI is partnering with pro-life advocates to put up pro-life billboards throughout the Chicago metro area with the simple and bold statement “Abortion Takes Human Life,“ but we need your financial partnership to make this a success.  Can you help with a tax-deductible donation to this campaign?

UPDATE: A Freedom of Information Request has revealed that the cost for speakers for New Trier’s All-School Seminar Day are almost $28,000, with $15,000 alone going to Colson Whitehead.

Much virtual ink has been spilled, money wasted, and fallacious arguments spewed by supporters of the bias inarguably present in the sessions offered on New Trier’s All-School Seminar Day titled “Understanding Today’s Struggle for Racial Civil Rights,” which takes place tomorrow Feb. 28.

A closer look at the money spent and diversity ideology promoted—often through fallacious logic—may lead parents to do two things: 1. Keep their children home on “progressive” dogma day. 2. Pursue changes in future seminars with the doggedness and passion (if not the fallacious reasoning) of “progressives.”

Pacific Educational Group lines its pockets with taxpayer money to subsidize Leftist definition of “diversity

On Feb. 19, the North Cook News reported that New Trier has paid almost $90,000 to notorious snake oil salesman Glenn Singleton and his Pacific Educational Group. Here’s a little anecdote about another affluent school district on Chicago’s North Shore that was similarly beguiled by the oily diversity scammer Singleton: District 113 which encompasses Deerfield and Highland Park high schools and which is where I first encountered the ethically-challenged Glenn Singleton. This is my former place of employment and the school from which all four of my children graduated.

Between spring 2007 and spring 2008, District 113, using both federal and district money, spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $83,000 to hire the San Francisco-based Glenn Singleton and representatives from his Pacific Educational Group to come  seven times to teach District 113 employees about their “whiteness.” This figure included Singleton’s fees, travel expenses, per diem, and costs of hiring substitute teachers for all the teachers who were absent from class to attend the all-day indoctrination seminars. The $83,000 included $10,000 for substitute teachers and $20,000 to feed everyone at the Highland Park Country Club where the meetings took place.

I asked then-superintendent George Fornero why we were hiring Singleton and was told it was due to Highland Park High School’s failure to make “adequate yearly progress” under the No Child Left Behind Act. The district had received federal money to help the Hispanic students perform better on standardized tests, and Fornero used it to hire Singleton. Both Singleton and his facilitators explicitly stated that neither he nor his book on which his consultations were based (Courageous Conversations) provide any solutions.

Every time Singleton or his representative came, every administrator, every department chair, two teachers from every department, and area (e.g., multi-media, custodial pool, technology, secretarial pool) from both high schools attended all-day meetings during which they discussed their “whiteness.” This meant that all the participating employees missed seven days of work or classes.

I asked the school board and administration how even in theory does having secretaries, custodians, and teachers miss school to talk about their “whiteness” at the Highland Park Country Club help minority students improve their test scores.

They offered no answer.

At the all-staff, all-faculty meeting to introduce District 113 to his “social justice” theories, Singleton made some surprising statements. He explained that many experts believe the causes for the underperformance of minority students are poverty, language issues, mobility, and lack of family support. He then made the startling claim that none of those factors is the cause. The causes, he claimed, are “institutional racism” and “whiteness.”

He went on to classify audience members into three categories according to their potential responses to his theories: The first group were those who would agree with him immediately. The second group were those who would be on the fence and need to be convinced. And the third group were “those who are gifted at subverting reform.” In other words, those who dare to suggest that limited English skills likely affect test scores are “gifted at subverting reform.” Singleton cunningly attempted to prevent dissent by pre-labeling pejoratively those who disagree with his theories.

Toward the end of the year, Singleton visited classrooms to evaluate the continued need for his services. He also visited the writing center where I had worked for eight years. After school, he met with the administration which included all department chairs to “debrief.” The next day, one department chair told me and two others confirmed that Singleton had called for me to be fired citing as justification the following quotes I had on my wall:

“Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.” (The Supreme Court of the United States, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)

Despite incessant repetition of the word ‘diversity’ in academe, the tragic fact is that the academic world is one of the most intolerant places in America when it comes to diversity of ideas” (Thomas Sowell, African American, Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution).

“One is an individual, not an instance of blood or appearance. The assault on individual identity was essential to the horror and inhumanity of Jim Crow laws, of apartheid, and of the Nuremberg Race Laws. It is no less inhuman when undertaken by ‘diversity educators’” (Alan Kors, Professor of Intellectual History at University of Pennsylvania).

“‘[D]iversity’ — nowadays, the first refuge of intellectually disreputable impulses – [is] the . . . belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary, the idea of categorical representation” (George Will, syndicated columnist).

“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling” (Thomas Sowell).

Singleton also boasted in the meeting that he had gotten employees in other school districts fired. Two weeks later, I was demoted.

After spending thousands of dollars on Singleton’s doctrinaire and racist theories, Fornero, perhaps unintentionally, acknowledged precisely what District 113 got for their time and money in a 2009 letter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan:

Dear Honorable Duncan,

. . .

As was the case in the spring of 2008, our non-English speaking students were once again asked to demonstrate their academic abilities by taking the ACT and the WorkKey assessments in English. And once again, despite taking the test seriously and despite working for hours longer than other students to complete it, when these students receive their results next fall, they will all fail [emphasis added].

One would think that an admission like that would be the nail in the coffin of divisive, intellectually vacuous, ideologically-driven expenditures. But the public should never underestimate the fervor of true proselytes driven by political motives. They will continue to abuse their access to public money until community members publicly and vigorously oppose them.

Fallacious arguments of seminar defenders

Getting to the gist of the concerns of critics of Tuesday’s seminar is made challenging by the pervasive use  of fallacious arguments by “progressives” to obscure the critics’ arguments. Here’s a quick look at some of the fallacies New Trier “progressives” use:

1.)  Traitorous critic fallacy (an ad hominem fallacy):  Criticizing or dismissing an opponent’s argument by attributing it to some unfavored group rather than responding to the substance of the argument.

The use of this fallacy was on full and unabashed display by New Trier father Paul Traynor when he appeared recently on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight  ( a must watch segment for a lesson in fallacious reasoning) and dismissed the arguments of New Trier parents by suggesting these parents are somehow connected to Breitbart and IFI.  Traynor twice claimed IFI is a “hate group registered with the Southern Poverty Law Center” clearly suggesting that IFI is, in reality, a hate group. In addition, Traynor complained that “IFI—this hate group—has gone after me personally.”  What did IFI do to warrant his fear? I critiqued his public comments that he voluntarily provided to the Chicago Tribune. Instead of responding to the substance of the seminar critics’ arguments, Traynor attacked two organizations that have written about the controversy.

2.)  Abusive fallacy (ad hominem): Verbally abusing one’s opponents rather than responding to their arguments.

For example, seminar supporters have repeatedly called seminar critics “racists.” In addition, on Chicago Tonight, Traynor criticized the suggestion that Colonel Allen West or Sheriff David Clarke could be  invited to represent conservative ideas and criticized Dennis Prager as a member of the “alt right.” (Apparently, Traynor views invited “queer Latinx” speaker Monica Trinidad as a moderate—Trinidad who once “tweeted a picture of mounted police officers with the comment ‘Get them animals off those horses.’”)

3.)  Straw man fallacy:  Refuting an argument never made by one’s opponents.

So, when seminar supporters say things like “Racism exists,” “New Trier kids are sheltered,” “Colson Whitehead and Andrew Aydin [two of the invited speakers—both liberal Democrats] have won national book awards,” “Students may express dissenting views,” “New Trier is a great school,” “The seminar was carefully constructed,” or “Parents were included,” they are not responding to the central argument made by critics who justifiably see the seminar sessions as biased. All of these claims made by seminar supporters are true (well, most of them) but irrelevant to the arguments of seminar critics.

4.)  Appeal to popularity (argumentum ad populum, appeal to common belief, bandwagon fallacy): Expressing the idea that because a belief is popular or widely held it must be true.

Both seminar supporters and superintendent Linda Yonke employed this fallacy saying that most community members support the seminar as currently constituted. Whether or not such a claim is true is irrelevant.

Maybe, just maybe New Trier community members can wade through the flurry of fallacies to get seminar supporters to answer the only relevant question: Do you believe the sessions are relatively balanced between conservative and “progressive” views on race-related topics. If so, can you point to the resources used and speakers invited that represent conservative perspectives.

Please support the work & ministry
of Illinois Family Institute!

The controversy over a mandatory all-school, all-day Leftist seminar on “racial civil rights” at New Trier High School on Chicago’s North Shore continues to intensify. It has now become a national story with Peter Berkowitz, senior fellow with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, publishing an editorial in the Wall Street Journal in which he accurately describes the event:

What passes for education at many American public schools is too often closer to indoctrination. Consider the seminar day that New Trier High School, in Winnetka, Ill., on Chicago’s affluent North Shore, is planning for Feb. 28.

The title for the all-school seminar is “Understanding Today’s Struggle for Racial Civil Rights.” That very term, “racial civil rights,” is misleading, since civil rights protect Americans’ freedoms regardless of their race. Judging from the roster of scheduled events, the seminar might be more accurately titled “Inculcating a Progressive View of Social Justice.”

The Chicago Tribune published three letters from supporters of this ideologically-imbalanced event that reveal the steadfast refusal of “progressives” to respond to the substance of the arguments of the seminar’s critics.

First there is Lake Forest College professor emeritus of American history, Michael Ebner, who questions the appropriateness of any parental criticism of the leftist seminar day:

I have a pertinent question for the dissenters to contemplate: Once your daughters and sons receive their highly valued baccalaureate degrees from New Trier High School, will you closely monitor the content of the curricular offerings and extracurricular activities at the esteemed colleges and universities in which they choose to enroll? I taught American history at colleges and universities in New York City and Illinois for 40 years. Never did I encounter criticism from parents—or administrators—about the design of the courses I offered or the content of their subject matter.

It seems a leap to suggest that because parental attention to and involvement in college curricula is little (or non-existent), parental attention to and involvement in high school curricula should be little (or nonexistent) as well. Does Ebner believe that since parental attention to and involvement in high school curricula should be non-existent, then so too should it be with regard to middle schools, and so on down the academic line? Ultimately we arrive at the goal of statists: absolute autonomy and no accountability.

The involvement of New Trier parents in curricular matters seems quite small and has emerged only because of the serious violation of sound pedagogical principles and betrayal of parental trust in administrators to uphold those principles.

Chicago attorney Joseph Morris, who was the assistant attorney general of the United States  under President Reagan, challenges Professor Ebner’s apparent view that parents who subsidize at great expense the post-secondary education of their children should pay no attention to what professors are teaching:

Mr. Ebner’s stunning admission—that for 40 years no one paid any attention to what he was doing in his classrooms–explains how and why American higher education has gone to hell in a handbasket in the last 40 years, setting the stage for infectious political correctness and related boobery to pass from the colleges to the high schools.

The second letter was from Deerfield resident Mary Kay Koerner who is a New Trier graduate, retired Lake Forest High School teacher, and wife of a retired New Trier High School teacher. Ms. Koerner, who is a “progressive,” expresses her concern about the influence of a “small but vocal group of parents”:

I am concerned that a small but vocal group of parents in the community is trying to influence the presentation of a seminar on “Understanding Today’s Struggle For Racial Civil Rights.” Now, more than ever, our young people need to be reading and hearing authors like Colson Whitehead and Andrew Aydin. They are both National Book Award winners who will be speaking at the seminar.

How wonderful for our children to grow up here and be educated in such great schools. We want to count on them to be the leaders of tomorrow who will remember what they learned at school and lift up their fellow citizens. I have faith that this seminar will inspire this new generation to inquire, commit and serve. We entrust the expert educators at New Trier to have these goals in mind. New Trier has always been a beacon in the educational community. Let’s let these professionals do their job. Great dinner table discussions should ensue.

Mr. Morris offers some perhaps relevant information on the speakers Ms. Koerner views as essential to the formation of tomorrow’s leaders:

At the ceremony held in New York City last fall just days after the national election, as the prestigious national book award was presented to Mr. Whitehead, the honoree said, “We’re happy in here; outside is the blasted hellhole wasteland of Trumpland. Be kind to everybody, make art and fight the power.” Will he convey a similarly objective, politically-neutral, uplifting, and dignified message to the students of New Trier High School?

Andrew Aydin’s day job is as the “Digital Director and Policy Advisor” to Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia) in the latter’s office on Capitol Hill; before that he was employed on the Lewis campaign staff in Georgia. I suspect that the number of paid Republican political operatives who will be paid by New Trier High School to grace the Seminar Day can be counted on zero fingers, and I suspect, further, that the disparity is no accident.

Odd that Ms. Koerner doesn’t swell with gleeful anticipation of the visits by others among the Seminar Day’s speakers, such as Monica Trinidad (who organizes boycotts of ballet companies featuring Jewish artists because she doesn’t want to “dance with Israeli apartheid”); and the “poet” whose nom de plume is “John the Author” and whose oeuvre includes “poetry” such as the following stirring anthem to racial tolerance and what education can accomplish, an exhortation that no doubt embodies what Ms. Koerner imagines to be the school’s lofty goals to “inspire, commit, and serve”: “Not graduate from back, Give back, nigga, Tell them get back, nigga”.

Once again, a “progressive,” that is Ms. Koerner, ignores the arguments of critics of All-School Seminar Day. These critics have not argued that students ought not read or hear the words of Whitehead or Aydin. Rather, the critics are arguing that our young people need to be reading and hearing the words of those  whose perspective on race-related issues is different from Whitehead’s or Aydin’s.

The critics believe that the words of writers and speakers like Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Carol Swain, Star Parker, Michelle Malkin, and Jason Riley—all members of minority groups—also have the potential to inspire this new generation to inquire, commit, and serve. Supporters of intellectual diversity believe that great dinner table discussions are informed, enriched, and deepened by exposure to the work of diverse writers and speakers.

The final letter comes from Nick Sloane of Glendale Heights:

Officials at New Trier Township High School are requiring students to attend a day on learning about the struggle for equal rights by African-Americans. Although they plan to stick with the original program, many parents have complained because it has a “liberal” bias. It’s too bad the views of these parents cannot be included, as I’d sure like to know what that other take looks like. This is especially so if the high school is focusing on the fight for equal rights in the 1950s and 1960s. I’d be really interested to hear what a conservative has to say about it. In my view, attendance by these parents should be mandatory, as it seems to me they also need to be educated.

Mr. Sloane evinces the arrogance of leftists who believe that those who disagree with their assumptions should be required to be re-educated.

Mr. Morris is baffled that Mr. Sloane doesn’t know the era on which the all-day event focuses:

[I]t is puzzling that [Mr. Sloane] wonders “if the high school is focusing on the fight for equal rights in the 1950s and 1960s” when the title of the Seminar Day program is “Understanding Today’s Struggle for Racial Civil Rights” [emphasis added]. The word “Today’s” is a dead giveaway that the aim of the program is not a retrospective on the history of half a century and more ago. Another dead giveaway of the aim of the program is the insertion of the word “Racial” which, of course, undermines the fundamental American proposition that “rights,” civil and otherwise, belong to individuals and not to races.

Here are the three primary defenses of All-School Seminar Day offered by its ardent supporters within the New Trier community:

• Most community members support it.
• Students are permitted to dissent.
• Racism exists, so it must be addressed in public school.

First, it shouldn’t matter how many or few oppose it. Minority voices should be honored.

Second, no one is arguing that the seminar prohibits discussion, debate, or dissent. Opponents are arguing that a good debate (and sound pedagogy) requires that students be exposed to the best arguments from the best thinkers on all sides of arguable issues. Conservative students should have their views reinforced and challenged by session speakers and materials, and “progressive” students should have their views reinforced and challenged by session speakers and materials. Those students without settled opinions deserve to hear speakers and read materials from all perspectives in order to have a better-informed grounding from which to form opinions.

Third, no one is arguing that racism doesn’t exist. What seminar critics are arguing is that the seminar approaches the manifold issues surrounding race from a leftist perspective. Surely the seminar organizers and supporters know that blacks like Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Jason Riley, Carol Swain, Condoleezza Rice, Star Parker, Allen West, and Ben Carson think differently about racial issues than do “John the Author,” “queer latinx” Monica Trinidad, and Andrew Aydin.

My father, World War II veteran Jack Blackburn, who grew up in Glencoe and attended New Trier, shared his views on the New Trier event:

From reading the seminar schedule, it seems that Big Brother has finally arrived. Such a patently one-sided indoctrination program is clearly a violation of education principles and parental rights. As for community member Paul Traynor’s comment that opposition to the seminar is small, I would say, that’s what Hillary and the cabal of progressives thought.

I hearken back to William Buckley’s statement that “In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think but is positive he arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. He’s usually outraged by the suggestion he is a flesh and blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinator.” And to think we pay taxes to finance another liberal assault on conservative values.

What’s most notable in the public comments from New Trier administrators and community supporters of the seminar is that none addresses the concerns of community members who oppose the ideological bias inherent in the seminar. In other words, not one seminar defender claims that the seminar sessions are unbiased or ideologically balanced. Worse still, the administration has thus far steadfastly refused all requests for additional speakers or an additional seminar to provide balance to what is currently an indefensibly imbalanced all-day event. That should trouble anyone concerned with sound pedagogy.

Take ACTION: If you live in any of the communities served by New Trier High School, please attend the school board meeting tomorrow night, Feb. 20, 2017 at 7:30 p.m. (doors open at 6:00). If you know anyone who lives in these communities, please share this information with them. Come alongside those courageous parents who are fighting for sound education:

Cornog Auditorium
New Trier High School—Northfield Campus
7 Happ Road
Northfield, IL 60093

On Monday, I wrote about World Hijab Day during which non-Muslim teachers in public schools adopted the religious practice of hijab, wearing the head covering that some Muslim women wear voluntarily and some are coerced into wearing. Hijab is a controversial practice even among Muslims, many of whom see it as a symbol of a form of political Islam called Islamism that oppresses women.

World Hijab Day and other public school events expose the hypocrisy of “progressives” when it comes to their responses to Islam as compared to their responses to theologically orthodox Christianity.

Hypocrisy #1: Modesty and chastity

While “progressives” heap scorn and ridicule on school districts that enforce dress codes that prohibit skimpy skirts and décolletage-baring tops, “progressive” teachers don hijabs in solidarity with Muslim women whose religion requires them to protect their modesty by covering their hair and sometimes their entire bodies from the top of their heads to the tips of their toes.

While “progressives” mock conservative Christians for their commitments to chastity until marriage, they demonstrate their solidarity with Muslims who believe that “a woman’s honor lies in her ‘chastity.’”  Muslim women Asra Q. Nomani and Hala Arafa inadvertently expose the hypocrisy of “progressive” American women when they describe the beliefs foundational to hijab:

[T]he “hijab “is a symbol of an interpretation of Islam we reject that believes that women are a sexual distraction to men, who are weak, and thus must not be tempted by the sight of our hair…. This ideology promotes a social attitude that absolves men of sexually harassing women and puts the onus on the victim to protect herself by covering up.

“Progressive” American women who believe women have no responsibility for the sexually abusive actions of men don hijabs to demonstrate solidarity with a religious practice that holds women responsible for men’s abusive actions. “Progressive” American women who march in the streets wearing clitoris costumes and “p*ssy” hats, reveling in the words of Madonna who offered to perform a sexual act on any man who voted for Hillary show solidarity with a religion that covers women from head to toe to prevent men from being tempted.

Hypocrisy #2: Religious persecution

Nazma Khan, who created World Hijab Day in response to being called names for wearing a hijab, asserts that it’s an effort to end discrimination and foster religious tolerance—both noble goals.

That said, is it the role of public school teachers to teach students about solidarity with any religious tradition or political goal, let alone a controversial and divisive one?

In his book Save the World on Your Own Time, Professor Stanley Fish disputes the notion that teachers should “advocate personal, political, moral, or any other kind of views except academic views.” Fish contends that teachers are not hired to do things like “produce active citizens, inculcate the virtue of tolerance, redress injustices, and bring about social change.” In Fish’s view, these are tasks properly left to “preachers, therapists, social workers, political activists, professional gurus, [and] inspirational speakers.” I would add parents to that list.

But if fostering solidarity with persecuted groups is part of the teaching responsibilities of public school faculty, why are they not fostering solidarity with the most persecuted religious group in the world: Christians.

The one religious group in America that “progressives” deem worthy of mockery—including even savage mockery—are theologically orthodox Christians. So, why do “progressives” detest theologically orthodox Christians so intensely?

They hate them primarily for three reasons:

1. Christians believe that absolute, objective, transcendent truth exists.

2. They believe that homoerotic activity is immoral.

3. They believe that marriage has a nature central to which is sexual differentiation.

Guess what? So do the majority of Muslims—including even moderate Muslims.

World Hijab Day reveals the hypocrisy of Leftists who hold theologically orthodox Christians in disdain because of their historical Christian beliefs regarding sexuality while participating in an event to show solidarity with the Muslims who hold similar positions.

In a 2013 Huffington Post piece on the persecution of Christians worldwide and especially in the Middle East, liberal Dr. Kelly James Clark, who heads up an interfaith organization decries the silence of the Western media and the U.S. Government:

In early November, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that Christianity is “the most persecuted religion in the world.” Although met with predictable criticism, Rupert Short’s recent research report for Civitas UK confirms Merkel’s claim—we may not want to hear it, but Christianity is in peril, like no other religion….Short shows that “Christians are targeted more than any other body of believers.” Short is the author of the recently published Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack. He is concerned that “200 million Christians (10 percent of the global total) are socially disadvantaged, harassed or actively oppressed for their beliefs.”

…

Why has the tragedy of Christians in the Muslim world been ignored? Short blames this on the media’s fear that criticizing Muslims is tantamount to racism. I attribute it as well to secular media’s lack of interest in and sometimes even scorn for religious belief.

Western media must overcome its fear of criticizing Muslims and its disinterest in religious belief. Religious liberties are the most fundamental human liberties….In countries where religious liberty is conspicuously absent, one is likely to find a host of other liberties threatened as well.

Last February, New York State assemblyman Democrat David Weprin proclaimed his unwavering commitment to religious liberty in his endorsement of World Hijab Day:

With hate crimes against Muslim-Americans tripling in 2016, it is important we take this moment to stand together with our fellow Americans on World Hijab Day. Rooted in the American principles of religious freedom and liberty, the World Hijab Day movement seeks to end the discrimination and judgment that comes with wearing a hijab.’

…All Americans of all faiths should be allowed to freely exercise…their religious choice without the fear of violence and bigotry. 

It’s refreshing to hear a Democrat passionately endorse religious liberty. Perhaps Weprin will support the right of Christians in wedding-related businesses to decline to use their gifts and labor to serve a type of event that offends the God they serve. These business owners are encountering far worse bigoted persecution than being called names—though they experience that as well. They are losing their livelihoods.

From their religion of secularism—that is, faith in and worship of secularist assumptions about human nature and man’s relationship to the world—“progressives” arrogate to themselves the right to exercise their religion freely, including in the conduct of their businesses. But “progressives” deny that right to those whose religion includes belief in God. So, while clothing designers can refuse to serve a person based on the designers’ opposition to the beliefs of the person’s spouse, bakers are not permitted to refuse to bake an anti-wedding cake based on their opposition to same-sex anti-weddings. And remember, unlike “progressive” clothing designers who refuse to serve a person, these Christian bakers are happy to serve homosexuals—just not bake anti-wedding cakes.

Hypocrisy #3: Prayer in public schools

Leftist hypocrisy is revealed not only through World Hijab Day but also through the accommodation of  Muslim religious practices in public schools. For example, in addition to some Glenbrook South High School teachers wearing a Hijab all day on Feb. 1, the school provides a prayer space for Muslims as does Glen Crest Middle School in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. In a diverse and welcoming society, such accommodations seem reasonable.

But if those accommodations are reasonable, why was there such vociferous “progressive” opposition to the law passed here in Illinois mandating a moment of silence in public schools that specifically states that it “shall not be conducted as a religious exercise but shall be an opportunity for silent prayer or for silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day”?

When I worked at Deerfield High School, this moment of silence was a blindingly quick 7 seconds. A student inclined to pray couldn’t make it much further than “Our Father who art in Heaven” before they were hustled on to more pressing homeroom issues like, well, often nothing.

And yet many “progressives” oppose even that, evidently fearing that allowing 7 seconds of silence during which students may pray constitutes the establishment of a state religion. And yet, non-Muslim teachers wearing hijab all day is a religiously neutral act and providing Muslim students with prayer rooms is constitutionally hunky dory. Curiouser and curiouser.

In a radio interview in Dec. 2016, Professor Massimo Introvigne, Director of the Centre for Studies on New Religion, stated that “[religious] intolerance is the antechamber of discrimination which then in turn is the antechamber of…persecution.” He further shared that “between 500 and 600 million Christians…cannot practice their own faith in complete freedom.”

The United States is rapidly moving from intolerance of Christianity to discrimination. While “progressives” twist themselves into a Gordion knot to show deference to, compassion for, and solidarity with Muslims, they regularly and openly demonstrate disdain for Christians. The vitriol directed at conservative Christians in the culture results in Christian children feeling embarrassed to share their beliefs. Would public school teachers show their solidarity with theologically orthodox Christians by wearing crosses visibly for an entire day, or would that be a bridge of tolerance too far?

IFI depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

-and, please-

February 1, 2013 marked the first annual World Hijab Day, which was started by Nazma Khan, who emigrated from Bangladesh to the U.S. when she was 11 years old.

“Social activist” Khan tells her story of being called “Batman” and “ninja” in middle school for wearing a hijab (i.e., what is commonly mistranslated as a Muslim “headscarf”). She entered college after 9/11 where she was called “Osama bin Laden” and “terrorist.” From those experiences, Khan concluded that “the only way to end discrimination is if we ask our fellow sisters to experience hijab themselves.”

On World Hijab Day, non-Muslim women and non-hijabi Muslims (i.e., Muslim women who don’t wear hijabs) are urged to wear a hijab for a day “in recognition of millions of Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab and live a life of modesty.”

So, in solidarity with Muslims, misguided non-Muslim teachers and students in public schools around the country adopted the religious practice of hijab all day on Feb. 1, including schools right here in Illinois.

Peg Mannion, community relations coordinator for Glenbard South High School in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, described World Hijab Day as a “a student-led” effort that some teachers participated in and which aligns with Glenbard’s commitment to be a “culturally inclusive learning environment.”

In contrast, World Hijab Day at Richards High School in Oak Lawn, Illinois was a teacher-initiated event:

As the news of President Donald Trump’s travel ban on seven Muslim nations was breaking Jan. 28, health teacher Allison Williams was learning through Facebook that Feb. 1 had been designated World Hijab Day.

The juxtaposition of the two events gave her an idea. What if teachers in the school that has District 218’s highest population of Muslim students wore hijabs for the day? On Monday morning, she emailed school officials, only to learn that French teacher Kelly Karstrand had already done the same thing.

According to the Chicago Tribune, more than 20 teachers, most of whom were not Muslim, wore hijabs on World Hijab Day.

While Richards High School history teacher Joyce Cruse claims that the “movement is not about politics,” both she and history teacher Rahaf Othman mentioned Trump’s immigration “ban” in connection to their decision to wear a hijab.

Here are two allegedly “non-political” statements, the first from Williams, the second from Cruse:

“The election of this president has made a lot of our students feel not only that their president is against them but that maybe a lot of others are too—more people than they originally thought.”

“The day after the election one of my students said his father sat the whole family down at the breakfast table and told them, ‘I want all of you to be careful about how you behave and what you say because this man hates us.'”

Despite claims of Khan and fans of World Hijab Day, it is unavoidably political as revealed in a controversial Washington Post essay written by two Muslim women prior to World Hijab Day 2015 and titled “As Muslim women, we actually ask you not to wear the hijab in the name of interfaith solidarity.” Here is an extended excerpt from the commentary by journalists Asra Q. Nomani and Hala Arafa who suggest that World Hijab Day is both political and offensive to many Muslims:

Last week three female religious leaders—a Jewish rabbi, an Episcopal vicar and a Unitarian reverend—and a male imam, or Muslim prayer leader, walked into the sacred space in front of the ornately-tiled minbar, or pulpit, at the Khadeeja Islamic Center in West Valley City, Utah. The women were smiling widely, their hair covered with swaths of bright scarves, to support “Wear a Hijab” day.

The Salt Lake Tribune published a photo of fresh-faced teenage girls, who were not Muslim, in the audience at the mosque, their hair covered with long scarves….

For us, as mainstream Muslim women, born in Egypt and India, the spectacle at the mosque was a painful reminder of the well-financed effort by conservative Muslims to dominate modern Muslim societies. This modern-day movement spreads an ideology of political Islam, called “Islamism”….

We reject this interpretation that the “hijab” is merely a symbol of modesty and dignity adopted by faithful female followers of Islam.

This modern-day movement, codified by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Taliban Afghanistan and the Islamic State, has erroneously made the Arabic word hijab synonymous with “headscarf.” This conflation of hijab with the secular word headscarf is misleading. “Hijab” literally means “curtain” in Arabic. It also means “hiding,” ”obstructing” and “isolating” someone or something. It is never used in the Koran to mean headscarf.

…

Born in the 1960s into conservative but open-minded families (Hala in Egypt and Asra in India), we grew up without an edict that we had to cover our hair. But, starting in the 1980s, following the 1979 Iranian revolution of the minority Shiite sect and the rise of well-funded Saudi clerics from the majority Sunni sect, we have been bullied in an attempt to get us to cover our hair from men and boys.

…

To us, the “hijab”is a symbol of an interpretation of Islam we reject…

…

We have seen what the resurgence of political Islam has done to our regions of origin and to our adoptive country.

As Americans, we believe in freedom of religion. But we need to clarify to those in universities, the media and discussion forums that in exploring the “hijab,” they are not exploring Islam, but rather the ideology of political Islam….

In the name of “interfaith,” these well-intentioned Americans are getting duped by the agenda of Muslims who argue that a woman’s honor lies in her “chastity” and unwittingly pushing a platform to put a hijab on every woman.

Please do this instead: Do not wear a headscarf in “solidarity” with the ideology that most silences us….Stand with us instead with moral courage against the ideology of Islamism that demands we cover our hair.

Due to the dust-up that ensued following the publication of their essay Nomani and Arafa wrote a short follow-up essay for the New York Times that offers a view of hijabi oppression that few Americans see:

Saturday night at the Dar Al Noor mosque in Manassas, Va., near Civil War battlefields, a girl of about 7 sat cross-legged in a dimly lit back corner of the prayer hall in the cramped “sisters’ section.” A tinted waist-high glass barrier separated the girl from the spacious “brothers’ section,” where about 50 men listened intently to a Saudi preacher who ignored the “sisters.”

The girl’s hair was entirely covered by a scarf, per the mosque’s guidelines for “proper Islamic attire….” As mainstream Muslim women, we see the girl’s headscarf not as a signal of “choice,” but as a symbol of a dangerous purity culture…that has divided Muslim communities in our own civil war, or fitna, since the Saudi and Iranian regimes promulgated puritanical interpretations of Sunni and Shia Islam….

…

This purity culture covers, segregates, subordinates, silences, jails and kills women and girls around the world. Recently, in Bareilly, India, a father killed his daughter, 4, smashing her head against the floor when her scarf slipped from her head during dinner. In Ontario, a few years ago, a man strangled his 16-year-old sister when she defied their father, including by refusing to cover her hair. In November, a former University of Missouri instructor dragged a female relative, 14, out of school “by the hair” when he discovered she hadn’t covered her hair. Today, in Iran, friends of the journalist Masih Alinejad dodge batons as they shoot photos of themselves, hair bare, in a campaign Alinejad started, #MyStealthyFreedom, to protest Iran’s mandatory headscarf law.

Last month, after writing an essay arguing the headscarf isn’t Islamically mandated, we received verbal abuse from American Muslim leaders and academics, calling us “despicable,” “clinically delusional,” “Satan” and “dajjal,” the Muslim equivalent of anti-Christ.

But we believe women have a right to wear–or not wear–the headscarf. To that end, we heard from Muslims from Malaysia to Minnesota who told us again and again: “Thank you.”

No matter what our non-Muslim public school teachers think about hijab, no matter what their intentions are, it should be clear that their acts of wearing a hijab to demonstrate solidarity with hijabi Muslim women is a divisive, political act.

While American taxpayers ponder the wisdom of non-Muslim, public school teachers adopting a Muslim religious practice—controversial even among Muslims—for an entire day every school year, I’ll leave you with this troubling endorsement of World Hijab Day:

[U]ntil I heard about world hijab day, I didn’t know much. After reading what Islam is about and why women wear hijab, I decided to convert….I would’ve never learned about Islam if it weren’t for world hijab day. http://worldhijabday.com/2836-2/