There is never a shortage of stories about attacks on free speech on the American college campus.  Here is one which hits close to home at the College of DuPage (COD), a community college in the western suburbs of Chicago.

On an October school day outside one of the school’s entrances, COD student Joe Enders and another student were handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution and talking to fellow students about starting a Turning Point USA student group. Turning Point USA is a non-partisan student organization dedicated to promoting the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government. The students were soon confronted by a police officer who told them they could not solicit without a permit from the school. The students were not selling anything and asked how that could be considered soliciting to which the officer responded that they were “soliciting opinions.” The officer told the students to go see the COD’s Student Life Services and threatened to arrest them if they refused to leave.

The Alliance Defending Freedom reached out to the school board of COD and outlined the threats to First Amendment rights that were in the campus code. To their great credit, the COD board expressed their willingness to revise their policies and officially did so in March. The revised policies respect the constitutional freedoms of students by allowing them to pass out literature in outdoor areas of campus without prior permission, as the old policies required.

On March 17, Mauck & Baker attorney Noel Sterett spoke at the COD Turning Point USA group of about 20 students on the recent attacks on free speech in the campus setting.

Though the College of DuPage has made great progress, the campus landscape in Illinois is far from free. In fact, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has rated the speech policies of the following Illinois campuses their worst rating on the free speech scale: Chicago State, Governors State, Northeastern Illinois, Northern Illinois, Southern Illinois (both at Carbondale and Edwardsville), University of Illinois of Chicago and Springfield, and Western Illinois.

In the summer of 2014, Mauck & Baker filed suit against Waubonsee Community College after the college denied the request of two men to return to campus to hand out their flyers from behind a table—as they had done in years past. The College’s denial letter even candidly conceded that the denial was both absolute and based on the viewpoint our clients sought to share. In his opinion in favor of the plaintiff, the U.S. District Judge declared this act to be “purposeful suppression of speech.”

Mauck & Baker will continue to fight for free speech on and off campus. For as Benjamin Franklin said, “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

Originally published at MauckBaker.com.

The totalitarian attitude on campus hit me in a very personal way on March 30 as I was sitting on an airplane at Reagan National Airport on my way to Albany, New York. I was informed that a campus debate I was scheduled to participate in later that day had been cancelled. I was told to get off the plane and go home.

I believe this is the first time on a college or university campus that a left-right debate has been cancelled because of objections to one side of the debate.

It appears the totalitarian left is so determined to crush the conservative point of view that it had to be suppressed even when a leftist was on the same panel.

My debate opponent, Jeff Cohen, the founder of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), was taken aback. It was as if the far-left censors on the campus of the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz didn’t think he could hold up his end of the debate.

The topic was media coverage of the presidential campaign. Jeff and I have participated in such debates many times in the past, always getting a good reception and generating many questions. The contracts had been signed. New Paltz cancelled the morning of the debate.

The student paper said the event was cancelled after a sociology professor who helps teach women’s studies had caused a controversy over my appearance. She apparently had Googled my name, turning up a denunciation of my views from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).  The SPLC reportedly said I had made “controversial statements in the past about Muslims, climate change and homosexuals,” and that I was “an unrepentant propagandist for extremist right-wing causes.”

I was not allowed to respond to the charges before the decision was made to prevent me from appearing.

Digging into the fiasco, the student paper said, “In a discussion that originated on the faculty email system and subsequently obtained by The New Paltz Oracle, Anne R. Roschelle, Ph.D., a sociology professor, voiced her objections to Kincaid’s involvement in the debate. However, Roschelle made clear to note that she did not seek to bar Kincaid from speaking.”

That was quite interesting. She had “voiced her objections” to my involvement in the debate but did not “seek to bar Kincaid from speaking.” Whatever the meaning of this double-talk, it appears that a faculty member had decided what students should be exposed to on campus.

She was quoted as saying that she was “not advocating he be uninvited or that people disrupt his talk.” But Roschelle said, “What I am suggesting is that for people who do go to his talk to ask critical questions and make your alternative voices heard. We are an open-minded campus.”

Yes, and that’s the purpose of a debate. A debate by definition is where different voices are heard.

It couldn’t be that she was concerned that different voices were not going to be heard. That was the whole purpose of the event. Her concern was that MY voice was going to be heard.

Of course, this isn’t the first time a conservative has been kept off campus. In this case, however, the event was a debate involving a left-wing media critic who happens to be a professor at Ithaca College. In other words, both sides were going to be represented. Still, the mere fact that I was going to be part of the debate was enough to get the event cancelled. I think this is unprecedented. It demonstrates the kind of atmosphere that exists at New Paltz.

This is the kind of “educational atmosphere” that U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the socialist running for president, wants to subsidize with more taxpayer dollars.

This incident and others have convinced me that the old brick-and-mortar universities have run their course and need to be defunded. It’s time to replace them with true centers of learning that offer real academic freedom, and courses that teach marketable skills at a reduced cost. The kind of “political revolution” we need in this country is not of the Bernie Sanders variety. Rather, it’s a way forward that offers real learning through alternative educational institutions that provide online opportunities and career-advancement to students where they live and work.

The taxpayers who pay the bill for these Marxist re-education camps we call colleges and universities have to revolt against the socialism that rules higher education in America. Sanders wants to perpetuate that mind-set because he knows that, under the guidance of faculty from sociology, women’s and queer studies, students are being mind-controlled and groomed for jobs that don’t exist. Hence, they become more cannon-fodder for the revolution.

Perhaps the taxpayers who help fund New Paltz might want to know how such things happen in an atmosphere that is supposed to assure freedom of speech on campus. I certainly want to know.

Indeed, I am attempting to get to the bottom of the reasons for the cancellation of the event through a Freedom of Information request using a state law meant to assure transparency in state government and state-funded institutions. Let’s see if the university administration will follow the law and give me the names.

I want to determine who on the campus was part of the process to deny students the right to hear a left-right debate on coverage of the campaign.

New Paltz declares on its website: “Creativity permeates campus life at New Paltz. The learning atmosphere has an air of imaginative inquiry that bridges all academic endeavors. The faculty encourages students to question, experiment, and discover in ways that lead to innovative thinking.”

But not in this case.

The website also declares that a New Paltz education is “one that retains lifelong relevance through what is required to achieve it: broad and specific knowledge, exposure to differing perspectives, open-minded inquiry, and a spirit of inventiveness.”

But not in this case.

Parents who consider New Paltz for their students are being given a big dose of false advertising.

I informed University President Donald P. Christian in a letter:

“I was very disappointed for the lost opportunity to share my ideas with young college students. I had thought that a college campus was the perfect place for an exchange of ideas. I have had two of my sons go through college, and my youngest, who is turning 17, is on a tour of college campuses.

• “What should I tell him about New Paltz being open to different ideas and freedom of speech and expression?
• “Why should any student or parent consider New Paltz as an option for those who engage in free thinking, rational thought, and open debate and discussion?
• “Why has this happened at New Paltz, alone among many different colleges and universities?”

Later that day, after receiving my letter, the administration reversed itself, saying they wanted to reschedule and bring the debate to campus after all. Unfortunately, my schedule wouldn’t permit such an event until the fall. I look forward to going back, with adequate security and police protection.

By then, I should have the answers to why, in an unprecedented development, a debate was cancelled on a university campus.

What we know so far is that “diversity” on campus doesn’t apply to diversity in thought and opinion. These institutions of “higher education” are bankrupt financially and morally.

This article was originally posted at Accuracy in Media.

The upcoming National Day of Silence (DOS) On Friday, April 15, organized and promoted by the extreme leftist Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), urges students to refuse to speak for an entire school day including during class. The stated purpose of DOS is to encourage sympathy and support for students involved in homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors whose voices have been allegedly silenced by the disapproval of society. The unstated purpose is to undermine the true belief that homosexuality and cross-dressing (as well as quackish chemical and surgical interventions) are immoral. Parents should no longer passively countenance the political usurpation of public school classrooms through student silence.

Some school administrators assert that DOS merely seeks to promote “acceptance.” They fail to clarify, however, precisely what they want students to accept. While it is legitimate to teach students that there exist diverse opinions on the issues of homosexuality and gender dysphoria, it is not legitimate for an arm of the government to imply that one set of opinions is preferable to another. While it is appropriate to teach acceptance of people, meaning that we should treat all with civility, it is not appropriate to suggest that students should accept one set of beliefs about homosexuality and gender dysphoria and reject the other. One can accept persons while rejecting their beliefs, desires, and life choices. These important distinctions are never made in public school discussions of “acceptance.”

Another oft-repeated mantra is that the goal of DOS is to keep “LGBTQ” students safe—a goal all decent people share. The rhetoric of “safety,” however, substitutes speciously for the more accurate term of “comfort.” To suggest that in order for those who self-identify as homosexual (or “transgender”) to be “safe,” no one may disapprove of homosexual conduct is both absurd and dangerous. If this understanding of “safety” were to be applied consistently, all statements of disapproval of any behavior would be prohibited.

If conservative parents, teachers, and administrators do not actively oppose the disruption of instructional time by DOS, it will metastasize from our high schools into our middle schools and then into elementary schools. Increasing numbers of students will participate, and increasing numbers of teachers who view themselves as “agents of change” will participate, emboldened by the ignorance and cowardice of colleagues, administrators, school board members, and parents.

Don’t believe me? Well, take a gander at how one middle school in New York—coming up on its fifth year of participation—has been celebrating DOS: Click HERE.

Worse still, some schools devote an entire week to promoting the normalization of homosexuality, culminating on Friday’s Day of Silence. While schools can no longer acknowledge Christmas, they may spend valuable class time celebrating life-destroying homosexuality, all the while misrepresenting it to gullible parents as an bullying-prevention effort.

Unfortunately, not even our private religious schools are exempt from the intrusive efforts of GLSEN. Last year five Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist nuns at Marin Catholic High School near San Francisco walked out of their classes to protest the intrusion of GLSEN through the Day of Silence.

The nuns were uncomfortable that GLSEN materials, which espouse positions that conflict with Catholic teaching, were being distributed to students on school grounds. Those who naively believe DOS is solely about bullying with no connection to conservative moral beliefs should peruse GLSEN resources, one of which identified “a house of worship that teaches homosexuality is a sin” as an example of oppression. In GLSEN’s perverse moral universe, churches are places of oppression, and oppressors are bullies. Eliminating bullying requires eradicating biblical beliefs about homosexuality.

The nuns were also troubled when they learned that “students were feeling pressured to accept and wear stickers” produced and distributed by GLSEN.

Those who oppose the Day of Silence will be maligned with the charge that opposition to the Day of Silence is proof of support for bullying. Of course, the truth is that it’s entirely possible to oppose both bullying and GLSEN’s Day of Silence.

Some dismiss the Day of Silence by claiming that there is only a small group of students who participate in it in their school, or that it’s only a few teachers. But does that matter? Would parents tolerate school administrations permitting a group of students to refuse to speak in class in support of consensual adult incest, promiscuity, polyamory, sadomasochism, or racism as long as the protesters were few in number?

For school administrations to permit student silence in class for DOS necessarily means they have come to prior conclusions about the nature and morality of homoerotic activity and relationships. How do I know this? Well, imagine there were a small group of students who identified as promiscuous or polyamorous and were bullied for their promiscuity or polyamory. Would any school administration permit a DOS during which promiscuity and polyamory were treated exactly as homosexuality and “transgenderism” are treated? Surely, neither school administrators nor teachers want promiscuous or polyamorous students bullied. Surely they want to create a “safe” space for them. So, what’s the difference?

The difference is school administrations know that the DOS doesn’t merely work to curb bullying. They know it has the effect (intended effect) of undermining disapproval of homosexuality and cross-dressing, but that’s okay because they have concluded that homoerotic feelings are 100 percent heritable, immutable in all cases, and that acting on them is intrinsically moral. School administrators have come to different moral conclusions, however, with regard to promiscuity or polyamory, and they realize that a DOS for promiscuity and polyamory would not merely end bullying but undermine moral disapproval of both—which they wouldn’t want to do. They would seek other means to curb bullying of promiscuous and polyamorous students.

Please muster the little courage it takes to email your middle and high school administrators and your children’s teachers to ask the questions below, and if the answers are unsatisfactory, keep your children home on the Day of Silence, Friday, April, 15, 2016:

Questions to ask administrators

• Do you permit students to refuse to speak during instructional time on the DOS?
• Do you permit teachers to refuse to speak during instructional time on the DOS?
• Prior to the DOS, do you notify all parents about it, including sharing complete information about GLSEN’s role in organizing and providing materials for it and informing parents about what will be permitted in the classroom?

Questions to ask teachers

• Do you create classroom assignments or activities that accommodate student-refusal to speak on the DOS?
• Do you teach lessons on oppression, censorship, or bullying in class on the DOS?
• Will you be using any information from GLSEN to shape or inform your activities on the DOS?
• If you accommodate student-refusal to speak and/or shape activities around ideas promoted by GLSEN for the DOS, will you be notifying parents ahead of time?

Cultural change rarely happens through dramatic single events. Rather, it happens through the slow accretion of little events that we dismiss as trivial. Gradual, incremental changes ignored eventually result in titanic cultural shifts. Those parents, teachers, and administrators who have known about the Day of Silence and have said and done nothing should feel ashamed of their acquiescence and cowardice. It is long past time that conservatives cease rationalizing their own passivity. The temporal and eternal lives of children are at risk.

Concerned about Common Core Standards?

Join us on April 8th in Orland Park for yet another IFI Forum, this time exploring The Case Against Common Core with Dr. Duke Pesta.  Click HERE for more information.

Click HERE for a flyer of the event.

Education in America was originally the province of parents and churches. “Homeschooling” was the norm from colonial times through the mid-1800’s, and a classic education was the model.

Classical education consisted of the three stages of learning:

• The Grammar Stage — In this stage young children, whose minds are receptive to mass amounts of basic information, learn by memorization. Students learn the numbers, the alphabet, then words — the building blocks for the next stages of learning.
• The Dialectic Stage — In this stage the young students learn to compare and compartmentalize the building blocks. Sentence structure and grammar come into play.
• The Rhetoric Stage — In this third stage, students communicate “the truth of the subjects learned in the dialectic stage through writing, speech, or conversation…The third stage in learning a subject is to use what you’ve learned to solve a problem, write an original paper or speech, or lead a discussion.”

As noted at Classical Conversations: “This is the classical model of education that was used by the great thinkers and leaders of the past, including Aristotle, Plato, C.S. Lewis, and Thomas Jefferson.”

What is stunning is to consider that America’s founders and early settlers often had superior knowledge of the world, languages, and sciences without computers or a Department of Education!

Until approximately 1940, the schools in America adhered to the classic education model, preparing students for college with “classical curriculum [which] included Latin, possibly Greek, often French or German, English, history, mathematics, and some science.”

People may scoff at someone such as my grandmother who only had an eighth grade education. Yet Grandma had had Latin, Algebra, extensive English grammar, and even some Calculus in those eight years. She had a work ethic and, with the help of her husband, my Grandpa Ole, bought and managed businesses and real estate and achieved, to a modest degree, “the American Dream.”

Following 1940, and after World War II, there was a demand for more workers in trades, and fewer students had the money or ability to go on to college. So American education took a turn away from solely classical education, to also providing vocational education, allowing young people to learn a trade, enter apprenticeship programs, and join the ranks of tradesmen and factory production.

But somewhere along the way, the Progressive (think socialist) principles of John Dewey, germinating since the 1920’s, began to take hold. Dewey, like President Wilson, and like modern day Progressives, believed that, rather than giving students facts and the eventual ability to reason and argue, that people should be led by experts. That young people should be molded in such a way that they would acquiesce to suggestions and mandates by the enlightened elitists.

Faith and the Bible had been a foundation of education in America. Noah Webster wrote often on the subject and claimed:

The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws…All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.

Unfortunately, the Left has continued a quiet, but relentless war on that foundation, often aided by SCOTUS opinions and rulings. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Abington Township School District v. Schempp — decided on June 17, 1963 — “prohibiting school officials from organizing or leading prayers and devotional Bible reading in public schools.”

Though Schempp did not outlaw prayer and Bible reading in schools, but prohibited teachers from leading Bible study or prayer, the 60’s radicals (the latest permutation of Dewey and Wilson’s Progressives) took advantage and schools took a left turn. Gone was the classical education and in its place came a host of programs — sex ed, new math, whole language learning, and revisionist history.

What was the subtle, though potent, effect of all this “new curriculum?” Students were weaned from a reliance on parents and faith standards, from facts and reasoning, and pointed toward reliance on the “enlightened experts.” A new generation of students were raised up to question authority (at least their parents’ and grandparents’ authority) and blindly follow their teachers and profs.

Also, during this time the Federal government began to be more involved in education:

By 1965, the federal government, through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), expanded its involvement beyond areas with explicit defense connections. Importantly, the government did not mention increased federal control over education; rather, funding was the primary justification for this expansion

In 1979, the Department of Education was created, largely at the behest at the National Education Association (NEA). The NEA was, at this point, a new teacher’s union (albeit a very large teacher’s union). When Jimmy Carter was elected President, power over education became further concentrated in Washington.

Jump ahead to 2009, with Obama promising to fundamentally transform America. And one area of transformation was education. The Obama administration proposed criteria to evaluate every state’s education system, and the only way to standardize the education was through Common Core.

What in the world is “Common Core?”

That’s hard to pin down because it can be a different set of standards in different states. Some of the standards are terrible, some not so much.

But the REAL, issue with Common Core? Federalization of education. As written at Heritage:

Why is Common Core problematic? As evidence from both inside and outside the United States makes clear, centralization and control do not work; rather, freedom is the force that sparks educational improvement. Freedom unleashes competition, which, in turn, drives innovation and leads to specialization. The idea that there should be one monolithic set of standards and that everybody should move at the same rate makes no sense, as anyone who has met more than one child can readily attest.

Moreover, real accountability, immediate accountability, comes from freedom, choice, the ability to leave a provider that is not giving you what you want and take your business elsewhere. That is why there are a lot of recommendations for what to do when states get rid of Common Core.

Ultimately, the solution to America’s education problems is not more centralization. Instead, the answer is to create school choice for everyone.

Common Core appeals to Dewey disciples, to Progressives, because finally the masses of unenlightened Americans can be molded and coerced into a proper worldview and leave antiquated ideas and values behind.

But Common Core is nothing more than a Trojan Horse, enslaving towns and local communities to the mandates of Washington, and thereby the Progressive-driven NEA.

This country was birthed by people seeking freedom to live and worship, freedom to raise their offspring with a certain knowledge of God and the world He created. Common Core in the hands of über Progressives would seek to supplant the wisdom and role of parents with the mantra of secular and socialist ideals.

Common sense and real wisdom should warn us away from the centralized control of Common Core, and back to the time-tested truths of our forebears.

Dr. Duke Pesta on Common Core: DVD

IFI video recorded an event we had earlier this year with Dr. Duke Pesta, a nationally renown expert on the dangers of Common Core.  This DVD is available with any donation of $20 or more.

If you are a taxpayer, have young children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, are an educator, are a therapist, are a religious leader, are an elected official of any party, or care about very young children getting an excellent education in grades K-12, it would be worth your time to learn more about the federal takeover of education.  Watch it yourself or with a group!

Concerned about Common Core Standards?

Join us on April 8th in Orland Park for yet another IFI Forum, this time exploring The Case Against Common Core with Dr. Duke Pesta.  Click HERE for more information.

Click HERE for a flyer of the event.

The annual, well-organized, and nearly ubiquitous pro-homosexual/pro-gender-confusion political event called the Day of Silence (DOS) invades our public schools on Friday, April 12, 2019. The Day of Silence is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) whose sole reason for existence is to use public schools to transform the beliefs of other people’s children about homosexuality and gender-confusion. The name is intended to convey the absurd notion that homosexual students are silenced by the hatred, bigotry, and ignorance of those who believe homoerotic activity, cross-dressing, and bodily mutilation are neither moral nor healthy.

While there are numerous pro-homosexual/pro-gender-confusion political events in our public schools, which are aided and abetted by liberal teachers who use curricula to reinforce their beliefs and social goals, there is only one organized event that seeks to oppose the DOS: the Day of Silence Walkout.

The Day of Silence Walkout is sponsored by a coalition of pro-family/pro-education groups from across the country who urge parents to ask their school administrators and children’s teachers these questions:

For administrators

• Do you permit students to refuse to speak during instructional time on the DOS?
• Do you permit teachers to refuse to speak during instructional time on the DOS?
• Prior to the DOS, do you notify all parents about it, including sharing complete information about GLSEN’s role in organizing and providing materials for it and informing parents about what will be permitted in the classroom?

For teachers

• Do you create classroom assignments or activities that accommodate student-refusal to speak on the DOS?
• Do you teach lessons on oppression, censorship, or bullying in class on the DOS?
• Will you be using any information from GLSEN to shape or inform your activities on the DOS?
• If you accommodate student-refusal to speak and/or shape activities around ideas promoted by GLSEN for the DOS, will you be notifying parents ahead of time?

If administrators and teachers will be accommodating or participating in the DOS in any way, we urge parents to keep their children home. Every student absence costs districts much-needed money. If every year, administrative and faculty accommodation of political activity in the classroom costs districts money, perhaps they will cease accommodating it.

The goal of the DOS Walkout is not to exacerbate social and political turmoil within public schools or to advance a counter position. If parents keep their children home, social turmoil may, however, result because liberal teachers and homosexual activists respond poorly to opposition.

The goal of the Walkout is to tell public school administrations, teachers, and school boards that schools have no business allowing classrooms with captive audiences to be politicized. The Walkout conveys that message in the only language schools administrations and school boards that are terrified of homosexual activists understand: loss of funds.

Schools have every right to prohibit students from refusing to speak during class. Schools have every right to prohibit teachers from refusing to speak in class. Schools have an ethical obligation to inform parents about the Day of Silence and to tell both parents and students that students may remain silent during passing periods and free periods but that they may not refuse to speak during class. And teachers have the right to create classroom activities that require verbal participation. This is one way conservative teachers can work against the relentless efforts of liberal teachers and students to use public schools to promote their subversive beliefs.

Here is some little known information about the Day of Silence:

• The Day of Silence began 20 years ago at the University of Virginia, has spread like a cancer into countless public high schools, and is now making its way into middle schools.
• GLSEN proudly announced in 2013 that “Hundreds of thousands of students from more than 70 countries” participated in the National Day of Silence.
• GLSEN offers videos and resources directed specifically at teachers—that is to say, government employees—that tell them how to help DOS participants in their political activities during instructional time.
• GLSEN instructs teachers on what to do both prior to and on the Day of Silence:
  • Visit the Day of Silence website prior to the Day of Silence and share the resources available there “on social media, in your classroom, and with your colleagues.”
  • “Focus on supporting your students who are participating in Day of Silence and on educating all of your students.”
  • “Dedicate class time to exploring concepts of censorship, oppression, and social justice.”
  • “Provide opportunities for students to journal on times when they felt silenced.”
  • “…plan your typical classroom activities, but use the silence. Switch out discussions and group work for reading, writing, and even drawing.”
  • “Most importantly on the Day of Silence, your students need you to be an ally and an advocate.”
  • “Visit glsen.org for LGBT-inclusive classroom activities and lesson plans, model policies and practices, research, and to connect with a local GLSEN chapter near you.”

The homosexual clubs in public schools that serve as the water carriers for GLSEN put up posters, host bake sales, and distribute cards, buttons, and stickers. Such activities are permitted by the Equal Access Act, a federal law that requires all extracurricular clubs to be treated the same. There is no law, however, requiring schools to permit students to refuse to speak in class. In fact, the DOS website posts this statement from the ACLU:

You DO NOT have a right to remain silent during class time if a teacher asks you to speak. [emphasis added]

Political activity in the service of highly controversial issues should not be permitted to disrupt instructional time. The Day of Silence is not centrally about ending bullying. The Day of Silence cynically exploits legitimate anti-bullying sentiment as a means to achieve GLSEN’s ultimate goal: the eradication of conservative beliefs on the nature and morality of homoerotic activity and “transgenderism.”

Day of Silence WALKOUT Endorsements:

Abiding Truth Ministries

Activist Mommy – Elizabeth Johnston

American Family Association

AFA Michigan

AFA Pennsylvania

Americans for Truth

Barbed Wire

Called2Action

Capitol Resource Institute

Carolina Crossroads News

Child Protection League (Minnesota)

Christian Rights Ministries

Citizens for Community Values

Coalition of African-American Pastors (CAAP)

Coalition of Conscience

Community Issues Council

CWA of California

CWA of Florida

CWA of Hawaii

CWA of Illinois

CWA of Iowa

CWA of Kansas

CWA of Missouri

CWA of North Carolina

CWA of Ohio

CWA of South Dakota

CWA of Texas South

CWA of Virginia

CWA of Washington

Don Feder, Don Feder Associates

Faith2Action

Faith, Family & Freedom Alliance

Faith & Freedom Family Ministries

Good News Communications, Inc.

Illinois Family Institute

Informing Christians

Liberty Counsel

MassResistance

Matt Abbott, Catholic Columnist for Renew America

Mission: America

Montana Family Foundation

Ohio Value Voters

One By One

Operation Save America – Pastor Christopher Clegg

Sandy Rios, Director of Governmental Affairs for American Family Association

SaveCalifornia.com

Virginia Christian Alliance

Written by David McGrath

A 10-year-old girl lies in bed with a fever of 104 and a flaming rash on her head and neck. But instead of driving her to the emergency room or even calling a physician, her parents pray at her bedside for a cure.

Most states still consider such “treatment” by the parents as a religious right protected by the First Amendment, even though it is perceived by most physicians and lawyers, as well as the American Medical Association, as parental neglect or even abuse.

When I was a high school English teacher in Chicago, I viewed home schooling the same way, as a kind of educational abuse, or, at best, neglect.

That is because keeping a child out of school deprives him of his essential right to a quality education, including access to tax-funded resources, highly trained teachers and specialists in each discipline, as well as intramural and extracurricular enrichment activities

There is little oversight of home-schooled students in half of all states, including Illinois, where they never even have to take a standardized test.

I felt that the most important benefits missed by stay-at-home kids are socialization from peer group interaction, and the critical thinking and communication skills learned from small- and large-group dynamics in the classroom.

I recall arguing these points with a parent of a home-schooled child, who countered that her son was safer and more closely monitored, had access to social activities with cousins and peers on a weekly basis, and availed himself of books and materials pooled by a club composed of local parents who home-schooled their kids.

“Do you know what a quadratic equation is?” I asked her, referring to a key algebraic principle introduced in regular schools as early as seventh grade.

No, she admitted. But she offered that someone in her club probably knows.

That, I felt, was my gotcha moment, because it exposed the main problem of a parent playing teacher at the kitchen table.

All that changed when I started teaching at the college level, on an evening when I came home from work, slipped off my shoes, collapsed into the recliner and announced to my wife that the best student in my college composition class had been home-schooled.

An 18-year-old only child, who had been educated by her parents for all 12 grades, chose a seat in the front row on the first day of class.

The following 16 weeks, she maintained eye contact throughout lectures and discussions, listened intently to me and her classmates, raised her hand to offer an observation, an answer or to ask a question when no one else would, followed instructions to the letter, communicated verbally and in writing more clearly than everyone else and received the highest grade on every assignment.

She was the first student to arrive, had perfect attendance the entire semester and was a catalyst for every lesson I ventured.

Other teachers know the experience, of feeling the entire weight of the class’ resistance to an activity or a concept, and often trying to stand and lift that weight and steer it in a positive direction. It can wear down a teacher’s sensibilities. But my home-schooler’s ebullience and sincerity erased the group’s negativity.

When I tried to will the class to be excited about author Raymond Carver, for whose story we were doing a critical analysis, she inferred my intent and mirrored it for the class first with body language and then a verbal barrage.

She was an ideal learner for, I assumed, the following reasons:

First, she had escaped the collateral damage from 12 years of conventional schooling. I’m thinking of my own lost years in elementary school, as a bored-out-of-my-gourd pupil in a classroom of 48 or more students doing busywork most of the day.

So the schoolroom was still a novelty for her.

Secondly, she applied her experience of one-on-one learning to the classroom format, as though she were the only one sitting in front of me. This led to plentiful and uninhibited conversation, and other students followed suit.

Third, having been the only person to be called on for 12 years, she did not use the group’s mass as camouflage, or a barrier, but accepted every question, suggestion, lesson and instruction as her own responsibility.

Fourth, in home school she had daily conversations with one parent or the other about a myriad of subjects, whereas her texting, video-gaming, ear-bud-wearing classmates too often skated, side-stepped or escaped adult interaction much of their short lives.

If every student in my classroom were a radio, my home-schooled student was the one whose switch was turned on.

In the past 15 years, I’ve known of over a dozen home-schooled students in my college freshman and sophomore classes. All were competent in social interaction, and all had already developed their own methods of inquiry for independent learning.

While my experiences are anecdotal, clinical studies have arrived at similar conclusions, such as the one conducted by Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute. His study of 11,000 home-schooled students found they scored higher, on average, than public school students on national standardized tests by a whopping 37 percentile points.

An estimated 1.8 million students are home-schooled in the United States, often for religious reasons, or for insulation from schoolyard problems such as bullying. But the best reason may be that they get a better education.

David McGrath, emeritus English professor at the College of DuPage, lives and teaches in Florida. He is author of “The Territory.

This article was originally posted on the ChicagoTribune.com website.

While education officials around the state go through hoops to make school restrooms and locker rooms multi-gender; concerned parents say the drive against, privacy and safety must be blocked.

That’s why parents are supporting a new bill in the legislature that tips in favor of common sense.

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With distinctions between male and female students increasingly under attack by the Left, a suburban Chicago lawmaker is fighting back with legislation that would prohibit students in public schools from using restrooms and locker rooms designated for the opposite sex…

Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem
We are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington.

Click HERE to register today.  Seating is limited!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.

A couple of months ago, Deerfield High School (DHS) in Deerfield, Illinois quietly changed a multi-stall girls restroom to a co-ed restroom. Worse still the administration has not notified either parents or students. Rumors are circulating that the administration chose secrecy over transparency in order to avoid controversy.

This is not a single-occupancy restroom, nor is it a girls restroom restricted to actual girls and boys who wish they were girls. Rather, it is a co-ed restroom euphemistically called an “All Gender Restroom,” presumably to divert attention from the reality of what the administration has created. They have created a co-ed restroom that girls and boys may use together.

Of course, schools that allow only gender-dysphoric students to use multi-stall opposite-sex restrooms, have in reality created co-ed restrooms too. In reality, it makes no difference if the boy in the girls restroom dislikes his body and cross-dresses or likes his body and dresses normally. In both cases schools are creating de facto co-ed restrooms.

But DHS has gone a step further than most schools have yet dared to go in the steady march to obliterate respect for and recognition of the nature, meaning, and importance of objective, immutable sexual differentiation. DHS has skipped over the interim step of allowing only gender-dysphoric students to share restrooms with opposite-sex peers. No intermediate step for the “progressive” science-denying administration at DHS. All boys and girls may avail themselves of this co-ed restroom.

It should be noted that during the day this restroom is in a remote part of the high school and therefore a more convenient place for a sexual assault. This restroom, however, is located near the pool and gyms, so during public events like swim meets, basketball games, and pep rallies, it is easily available to any and all community members. A high school girl or a younger sister of a high school girl may be in a stall when a strange adult male enters.

A faculty member posed this question to an administrator about the brave new bathroom world in which restrooms and locker rooms are invaded by opposite-sex students: What would happen if a girl student said she didn’t want to share a restroom with a boy. The administrator said the school would make separate accommodations for the girl.

Our hapless neighbors in Alberta, Canada are willing to make similar accommodations for the properly ordered desires of girls who don’t want to shower and use restrooms with those whose sex they don’t share. In the “Guidelines for Best Practices: Creating Learning Environments That Respect Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities and Gender Expressions,” the Alberta government wrote that “A student who objects to sharing a washroom or change-room with a student who is trans or gender-diverse is offered an alternative facility.”

I told my millennial children (who happen to be DHS alumni) about these bizarre statements. Their first response was incredulity, and then they worked out the absurd implications of such fecklessness. First, one girl will object to using a locker room with a boy and will receive a special accommodation. Next, so many girls will express opposition to using locker rooms with actual boys that schools will have to create restrooms exclusively for actual girls, at which point gender-dysphoric boys will complain that they deeply desire to change and shower with girls, insisting on their “right” to use the new girls-only restroom. And then Leftists will step in to stop all this nonsense, claiming that students have no right to privacy based on objective, immutable biological sex.

Alternatively, parents and their representatives on school boards could insist steadfastly and passionately that restroom and locker room policies and practices recognize and respect immutable sex differences.

Right now Leftists are demanding that schools create de facto co-ed restrooms but will grudgingly permit schools to limit the commingling of sexes to gender-dysphoric students and will grudgingly allow schools to require gender-dysphoric students to use private stalls for excretory functions and changing clothes. But those are merely transitional accommodations.

The next step in their truly wicked effort to “eliminate the binary” will be to demand that gender-dysphoric students be allowed unrestricted access to restrooms, locker rooms, and showers, which is to say, no more requirements that gender-dysphoric students use private stalls for excretory functions, changing, and showering.

Then comes the coup de grace. Leftists will demand that all facilities be open to any sex, including those who are not gender-dysphoric. Once society has allowed objectively male persons unrestricted access to women’s private facilities, there will remain no rational justification for prohibiting non-gender-dysphoric males from using opposite-sex facilities.

Kind readers, if you think this is an absurd line of thinking, you have not been paying attention to how “LGBTQQIAP” activists have been using incrementalism successfully for the past 45 years. These are their pernicious goals, and they count on the ignorance and cowardice of Christians—including church leaders, many of whom refuse to lead. While conservatives cower, stubbornly ignoring warnings, “LBBTQQIAP” activists and their accomplices scurry onward, ten steps ahead and bold as brass.

Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem
We are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington.

Click HERE to register today.  Seating is limited!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.

The Leftist effort to sever objective immutable sex differences from both meaning and cultural recognition and to promote the fiction that one’s sex can change marches on. Within hours of the filing of the Pupil Physical Privacy Act (HB 4474) in Springfield, which would prohibit students in public schools from using restrooms and locker rooms designated for the opposite sex, Equality Illinois, an organization dedicated to the normalization of sexual perversion and confusion, flew into a paroxysm of deceit:.

HB4474…would stigmatize transgender and gender non-conforming youth by requiring them to use separate restrooms and locker rooms.

This bill is an attack on the well-being and dignity of transgender and gender non-conforming students. It says to them that they are not respected and valued in the very spaces where they should be safe and affirmed.

The only fair option is to ensure transgender students have access to the facilities that correspond to their gender identity.

Despite the demagogic rhetoric of Equality Illinois, policies and practices that acknowledge and respect objective, immutable, and important sex differences do not “stigmatize” or “attack the well-being” or “dignity” of gender-dysphoric students. Respect and valuation of humans does not require affirmation of all their feelings, beliefs, desires, or actions. In fact, sometimes respect and valuation of humans includes not affirming some of their feelings, beliefs, desires, or actions. Many would argue that allowing a boy or girl to deny the meaning and import of their sex through cross-dressing, rendering themselves sterile through the use of cross-sex hormones, and mutilating their healthy bodies is profoundly disrespectful—an egregious denial of their dignity.

The Left believes—sort of—that all reality is determined by the subjective feelings and desires of each individual. So a person’s maleness or femaleness is determined by their feelings not by their, well, maleness or femaleness.

But, it’s a horse of a different color, when other people “feel” that maleness and femaleness is inextricably linked to objective, immutable sex, or when they believe that it’s wrong to pretend people are the sex they are not, or that treating others with dignity requires affirming their wholeness. In such cases Leftists, who with alacrity and regularity violate the law of non-contradiction, claim their subjective feelings (and assumptions) should be considered immutable, absolute, objective truth—you know, unlike each person’s sex.

Certainly boys whom parents and schools foolishly permit to cross-dress at school are at risk for bullying in (and out) of restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their actual sex, which is why the Pupil Privacy Act specifically allows schools to accommodate the disordered desires and behavior of gender-dysphoric students. The bill allows schools to provide single-occupancy facilities to gender-dysphoric students.

What government schools must never be permitted to do is affirm or espouse to students that compassion or respect for gender-dysphoric students requires society to pretend that their desire to be the opposite sex is more important than their actual sex. Government schools must never be permitted to allow students who don’t like their bodies to use opposite-sex restrooms or locker rooms. And government schools must never mandate that faculty, staff, or students lie by using opposite-sex pronouns. When administrators, teachers, and school board members no longer recognize something as fundamental as the immutable reality and meaning of sex differences, schools have lost the ethical right to teach. And people of faith must stop excusing, tolerating, and accommodating such ignorance and immorality.

To my knowledge, Equality Illinois has not explained why restrooms and locker rooms should correspond to students’ feelings about their sex rather than their actual sex. Equality Illinois has not explained why students who are gender dysphoric should not be compelled to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share while non-gender-dysphoric students (i.e., normal students) should be compelled to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose sex they don’t share.

Conservatives need to be intellectually equipped to respond to the lies used to promote the utterly irrational and destructive effort of Leftists to redefine reality. Conservatives need to commit unwaveringly to speaking and acting in ways that comport with truth, including in even seemingly small things, because it is through acquiescence in seemingly small things that incrementalism changes culture. And they need to prepare to endure the persecution that is upon us.

Teachers in public schools: Tell your administrations that pronouns denote and correspond to objective biological sex, that you cannot lie, and that, therefore, you cannot refer to students by opposite-sex pronouns. Tell them too that you will not use newly coined pronouns (e.g., “zie,” “zim,” “zir”), because they embody false beliefs about sex.

Parents: Tell the teachers of your elementary and middle school-age children that under no circumstances are your children to be exposed to resources or activities that address gender dysphoria. Tell the teachers of your high school students that your children are not to be exposed to any resources or activities that address gender-dysphoria unless equal time is spent with resources that espouse dissenting views on the nature of gender dysphoria and the proper way to address it.

Parents: Teach your middle and high school students about gender dysphoria. Teach them about the immutability and goodness of objective, immutable sex differences. Teach them never to use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric persons.

People of faith: Ask your church, synagogue, or mosque leaders to teach on this issue.

Those who out of cowardice are predisposed to accommodation, know this, the Left does not seek merely the “right” of a few gender-dysphoric teens to use private stalls in restrooms and locker rooms. No siree, Leftists seek the “right” of any gender-dysphoric person of any age to have unrestricted access to any opposite-sex restroom, locker room, shower, or dressing room in any context. Leftists will not be satisfied until they have forced all society to treat gender-dysphoric persons as if they are in reality the sex they wish they were.

Leftists will oppose this common-sense bill to protect the privacy, dignity, and safety of students with the vigor, tenacity, demagoguery, and deceit with which they promote efforts to normalize deviance. Conservatives should support it with the same vigor and tenacity but without the demagoguery and deceit. Fortunately, we’ve got reality on our side.

Citizens of Illinois:  Take ACTION:  If your state representative is not yet a co-sponsor of HB 4474, click HERE to urge him or her to sign on.

Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem

We are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington.

Click HERE to register today.  Seating is limited!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.

State Representative Tom Morrison (R-Palatine) introduced the bi-partisan Pupil Physical Privacy Act (HB 4474), which if passed would require the following:

[A] school board to designate each pupil restroom, changing room, or overnight facility accessible by multiple pupils simultaneously, whether located in a public school building or located in a facility utilized by the school for a school-sponsored activity, for the exclusive use of pupils of only one sex. Defines “sex” as the physical condition of being male or female, as determined by an individual’s chromosomes and identified at birth by that individual’s anatomy. 

Signing on as co-sponsors are John D. Anthony (R-Morris), Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield), John M. Cabello (R-Loves Park), C.D. Davidsmeyer (R-Jacksonville), Mary E. Flowers (D-Chicago), Jeanne M. Ives (R-Wheaton), Dwight Kay (R-Glen Carbon), Sherry L. Jesiel (R-Gurnee), Bill Mitchell (R-Decatur), Reginald Phillips (R-Charleston), David Reis (R-Olney), Barbara Wheeler (R-Crystal Lake), and Keith Wheeler (R-North Aurora). Who knew Illinois had this many wise and courageous leaders willing to endure the deceitful epithets hurled at anyone who dares to dissent from the foolish views espoused by “progressives”?

If we lived in a rational society committed to sexual sanity, such a bill would be wholly unnecessary, and anyone who sponsored such a bill would be thought of as daft. But we don’t, and therefore the bill is necessary. These lawmakers deserve many thanks for their courage and wisdom.

Of course, there already exists a federal law that specifically states that schools have the right to maintain sex-separated restrooms and locker rooms, but “progressives” never let little things like laws (or common sense, rationality, or decency) get in the way of advocacy for their sexual delusions:

[T]itle IX of the Education Amendments of 1972…is designed to eliminate (with certain exceptions) discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program….A recipient [of federal funds] may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex, but such facilities provided for students of one sex shall be comparable to such facilities provided for students of the other sex.

District 211, the largest high school district in Illinois now facilitates confusion and undermines modesty by allowing gender-dysphoric students—that is, students who wish they were the opposite sex—to use opposite sex restrooms and locker rooms. Those students who rightly don’t want to use restrooms and locker rooms with students of the opposite sex risk being called hateful and ignorant if they express their feelings. And they most assuredly can’t expect policy to reflect their feelings and beliefs.

District administrators absurdly describe this policy as “upholding dignity,” when in reality, allowing students to use opposite-sex locker restrooms denies the dignity of gender-dysphoric students as well as those students whose privacy they’re invading. What the district is really doing is upholding the disordered feelings and perverse ideology of Leftists.

Out of compassion for students who suffer from gender dysphoria, HB 4474 provides for a rational accommodation of their desire not to use restrooms corresponding to their sex, while still respecting essential and immutable sex differences:

[HB 4474] Authorizes a school board to provide reasonable accommodations to a pupil to use a single-occupancy restroom or changing room or the regulated use of a faculty restroom or changing room if the pupil is an adult or an emancipated minor, or the parent or guardian of a minor pupil submits to school officials, in writing, a request to receive such accommodations and the pupil is a member of the male sex but does not identify as a member of the male sex or the pupil is a member of the female sex but does not identify as a member of the female sex

Parents and students who know truth

There are a remnant of wise and courageous parents and students whose minds remain unclouded by the toxic ideological stew that poisons our anti-culture. They know that physical embodiment is not only immutable but also good and that the natural modesty that derives from physical embodiment should be both respected and cultivated.

They know that students should be neither ordered, nor asked, nor permitted to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose sex they don’t share.

They know that restroom stalls within restrooms and private changing cubicles within locker rooms do not provide sufficient privacy to separate properly boys from girls or women from men.

They know that objective biological sex is more meaningful and important than feelings about one’s objective biological sex.

To these parents and students, it makes no difference if the boy who seeks to use the girls’ restrooms and locker room likes his penis or loathes it. A boy does not belong in a girls’ restroom (and vice versa).

Gender Identity Disorder and Amputee Identity Disorder

What no school administrator or gender-dysphoric person has proved is that the mismatch between the sex of gender-dysphoric persons and their desires about their sex is a disorder of their healthy, properly functioning bodies rather than their minds. And how precisely is their discomfort with their bodies different from the discomfort of those with Amputee Identity Disorder (also known as Body Integrity Identity Disorder [BIID])?

Those with BIID identify with amputees. They believe they should have been born with missing limbs, and they have a persistent desire to have a limb or limbs amputated in order to achieve consonance between their feelings and their bodies. Because the medical establishment will not amputate healthy limbs, sometimes those with BIID will deliberately harm healthy limbs in order to force an amputation. Society and the medical establishment view this as a disorder of the mind—not the body. What rational sense does it make to view as barbaric the amputation of a healthy arm but therapeutic to amputate a healthy penis? Will schools allow those with BIID access to accommodations designed and intended for those without legs—an accommodation, by the way, that does not deny the privacy, feelings, or beliefs of others?

Remember, the Left says there are no behaviors, thoughts, or feelings that are intrinsically male or female. They believe all human phenomena are arbitrarily deemed male or female. Preferences in toys, activities, and colors are neither inherently or objectively male nor female. Ways of thinking and feeling are neither male nor female. So, all that exists immutably and objectively as male or female is biological sex. Gender-dysphoric persons cannot in reality have a male or female “identity” because there exists no such thing. Gender-dysphoric persons can’t have a male or female identity because male and female “identities” are merely arbitrary, phantasmic social constructions. The only true thing that can be said about gender-dysphoric persons with regard to maleness and femaleness is that they desire to change the one thing they cannot: their sex. Restrooms and locker rooms correspond to sex.

 “Transgender” restroom/locker room policies inculcate

Defenders of feckless, unethical, and irrational “transgender” restroom and locker room practices and policies dismiss the concerns of their opponents by claiming that most students don’t fully undress in locker rooms, or that normal students don’t mind undressing in front of gender-dysphoric students, or that there aren’t many gender-dysphoric students asking to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms. But none of those arguments are sound or persuasive. Policies that maintain sex-separated areas for students to engage in personal activities pertaining to physical embodiment not only protect the privacy, safety, and modesty of students but also teach important ideas about the immutability, meaning, and goodness of objective sex.

Conversely, policies and practices that allow boys (who will always be boys) and girls (who will always be girls) to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms teach controversial, subversive Leftist assumptions about objective biological sex, cross-dressing, modesty, compassion, and bigotry.

“Transgender” activists= 21^st Century alchemists

Like medieval alchemists, Leftists demand that all of society believe or pretend to believe that men can be transformed into women. Even some conservatives will argue foolishly that it would be acceptable for students to use opposite-sex facilities if they’ve had their penises or breasts amputated. It shouldn’t need to be said, but here goes: Men do not become women if their penises are amputated, and women do not become men if their breasts are amputated. Taking cross-sex hormones doesn’t change people into the opposite sex either. While elective amputations of healthy arms or legs actually do transform those with BIID into amputees, all that surgery and cross-sex hormones accomplish for gender-dysphoric persons is create elaborate and deceptive anatomical costumes—oh, and render them sterile.

What is coming

For now, school districts are willing to accommodate the Neanderthaloid beliefs of parents and students who know truth—I repeat, for now. The ultimate goal of “LGBTQQAP” activists and their allies, however, is to compel society to accept their subjective belief that objective biological sex is ultimately irrelevant—a meaningless, arbitrary anatomical trifle, like a birthmark or wart. To them, objective sex is meaningful only if one chooses to affirm it as meaningful. The subjective self determines the meaning and value of all phenomena. Therefore, in this brave new world, all restrooms, dressing rooms, and locker rooms will be co-ed/sex-neutral. There will remain no place in schools or public places for separation by sex.

This effort to subvert the cultural understanding of maleness and femaleness through government schools, rhetoric, law, and courts is as revolutionary and destructive as any issue in contemporary America. Americans should be at school board meetings in droves and preparing themselves for civil disobedience.

Take ACTION:

1.)  Many elementary, middle, and high schools are quietly implementing these practices with no parental notification or input. Parents: Contact your administrations and ask if they are permitting or would permit gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and/or locker rooms. Further, tell your administration that under no circumstance will your child be permitted to use a restroom or locker room that students of the opposite sex are permitted to use.

2.)  If your state representative is a co-sponsor of HB 4474, contact him or her to offer your thanks.

3.)  If your state representative is not yet a co-sponsor of HB 4474, click HERE to urge him or her to sign on.

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would” (Alice in Wonderland).

Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem
We are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington.

Click HERE to register today!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.

Written by Teri Paulson

Well, it’s official: Our girls are now getting undressed in the presence of a boy (with complete male genitalia) in the girls’ locker room at William Fremd High School in Palatine, Illinois. The overwhelming majority of over four hundred community members who showed up for two nights in December to beg the school board to tell “transgender” activists NO were powerless against whatever it was that compelled D211 Superintendent Daniel Cates and  five out of seven members of our school board to enact “transgender” morality into policy. Here’s what I know: The school board’s decision had nothing to do with truth, righteousness, reason, or logic. Male genitalia and XY chromosomes are simply irrelevant details to these facilitators of our brave new world.

The problem was not a lack of good arguments. Between the two meetings, there were at least four hours of public comment. The overwhelming majority of the community respectfully and passionately articulated compelling arguments demonstrating reason, logic, and good old common sense. It has become abundantly clear that the five out of seven members of the school board who voted for this disgraceful decision would have betrayed the community regardless of the arguments. Theirs was a spiritual decision rooted in the rejection of God himself. They are enacting rules that disregard the Ruler. Because this is a spiritual problem, it needs to be addressed spiritually.

Where have all the shepherds gone?

According to the yellow pages and depending on how you define a church, there are thirty churches in Palatine alone, not to mention Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates. On both nights when we were debating whether or not it is a good idea to force teenage girls to undress in the presence of a boy, our spiritual leaders (with a couple of notable exceptions) were missing in action. If this is not a spiritual battle I don’t know what is. If our pastors and elders, whose supposed mission in life is to help us understand God and encourage us to obey him, didn’t show up as witnesses for his will at these meetings, what would they show up for?

Jesus spoke these words when he was here on earth. Draw your own conclusions as to their possible application:

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. (John 10:11-13)

Where have all the shepherds gone?

Written by John Horvat II

In classrooms across the country, high school students are taught the scientific method. It consists of constructing a doubtful hypothesis and designing a series of experiments to test the hypothesis with the observable facts. After a number of tests prove positive. The student can then take the facts and reach a conclusion. When a conclusion is constantly verified, it is enshrined in what might be called “established” science.

There is a second kind of science that uses methods very different from those of “established” science. In fact, this science, if indeed it might be called such, uses the exact opposite method. It consists of constructing a conclusion and then testing that conclusion with a hypothesis that is repeated over and over again using doubtful data to back it up.

The “logic” of this particular scientific method is that the truth of the conclusion is determined by the number of times the hypothesis is affirmed. With enough repetition, even the data starts to take on the appearance of the truth. The secret is to get as many people and media as possible to parrot the great discovery. At a certain point, the conclusion can be enshrined in a special pantheon that might be called “settled” science, and woe betide any “denier” who dare question it.

Like its cousin “settled” law, “settled” science can be useful even outside its field. It can be employed to silence opposition, impose laws and promote political agendas. It respects no rank or positions. August researchers and famous professors can be toppled from their positions if they express the slightest doubts about a “settled” position. Even the strongest evidence is ignored with disdain and disbelief. Meanwhile the hypothesis mantra is just repeated over and over again.

“Settled” science cases abound in today’s politically-correct times. The most obvious one is the dogma of “global warming.” Many old-school scientists have suffered persecution for calling into question the faulty computer models and fudged data associated with this doctrine. They have even shown that the globe is not warming. Flexible “settled” scientists immediately tweaked the hypothesis to speak of “climate change,” and thus cover both sides.

But facts have never been an obstacle to “settled science” promoters who simply dismiss facts and those who bring them up. Climate Statistics Prof. Caleb Rossiter, for example, found his fellowship ‘terminated’ after his Wall Street Journal op-ed declaring “the left wants to stop industrialization — even if the hypothesis of catastrophic, man-made global warming is false.” In another case, a well-loved and respected doctor who specializes in studies about sexual-risk behaviors has just been expelled from an important medical center in Massachusetts after he raised legitimate evidence-based concerns over the center’s decision to endorse the homosexual lifestyle.

A highly qualified scientist in California found scientific evidence that questioned a dogma of evolutionary thought and was fired after publishing his finding in a peer-reviewed journal. These and so many other cases fill the news and intimidate those who seek the truth.

However, there are those rare times when “settled” science runs into trouble and it becomes too obvious that the conclusions are wrong and indefensible. That is the beauty of “settled” science; it can be easily reversed by merely ceasing to repeat the hypothesis. The loud choruses that yesterday blasted forth the “settled” message, today become eerily silent. It is as if the embarrassing conclusion never existed.

An example of this is the “settled” science of peak oil. For decades, “settled” scientists have repeated the hypothesis that oil production will soon reach its peak and humanity will sink into the darkness of an age without fossil fuels.

The only problem is no one told the oil industry. Over the last decade, oil producers have found so much oil that most people agree there are supplies for decades and decades. The evidence can be seen at every gas pump: there is too much oil around, not too little. And so not much is heard from the peak oilers these days. But that is another beauty of “settled” science; the mantra chanters of one conclusion can easily transition to another mantra without any loss of reputation.

The phenomenon of “settled” science is a sad reflection of the frenetic intemperance of these times. The desire to be free from any moral restraint has reached such a point that even the most exacting and absolute sciences must be sacrificed to the tyranny of human passions. Even reality itself must be altered to conform to the agendas of the liberal establishment. Indeed, “settled” science is not science at all but propaganda that is highly unsettling.

This article was originally posted at AmericanThinker.com

John Horvat II is a scholar, researcher, educator, international speaker, and author of the book Return to Order, as well as the author of hundreds of published articles. He lives in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania where he is the vice president of the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property.

Renowned Evangelical flagship Wheaton College has been embroiled in a controversy generated by the Facebook statement from associate professor of political science Larycia Hawkins that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. She made this statement when she announced that during the entire Advent season, she would wear a hijab, the traditional head-covering required of Muslim women when in public. Hawkins viewed this as an act of “embodied politics, embodied solidarity” as opposed to what she deems “theoretical solidarity.” Wandering around America wearing a hijab was Hawkins’ rather peculiar application of James 2:26: “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.”

Hawkins also strangely believes that her claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God is not a theological statement. Perhaps she didn’t intend it to be a theological statement, but it quite definitively is.

In a justifiable attempt to discern how closely Hawkins hews to the Statement of Faith that all Wheaton faculty sign, she was asked to clarify her theological beliefs and subsequently to clarify her murky “nuanced” clarification (Her clarifying theological statement has a curious explanation of the Eucharist), at which point Hawkins took umbrage, arguing that her annual signature on the Statement of Faith is sufficient. She has been suspended, and Wheaton is under attack from within and without the Wheaton College community.

Poisonous allegations have emerged from those who detest the biblical orthodoxy of Wheaton and the cultural beliefs that emerge from it that Wheaton administrators and/or trustees are treating Hawkins unfairly because of hidden or not-so-hidden racism. Less poisonous but problematic nonetheless are complaints that the culture of Wheaton restricts academic freedom and limits diversity.

Hawkins’ suspension and the debate about whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God reveal a troubling fissure created by a handful of Wheaton faculty members who tilt leftward on both theological and so-called “social issues.” This divide needs to be more comprehensively and clearly exposed to all Wheaton College stakeholders, including alumni donors.

With dancing-on-pinheads complexity, Wheaton urban studies associate professor Noah Toly, Princeton systematics professor Bruce Lindley McCormick, and Yale theologian Miroslav Volf have all assured the nation that there are strong (though abstruse) arguments to defend Hawkins’ theological view of the sameness of the god of Islam and the God of the Bible. But then there are others, like president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Dr. Al Mohler, Moody Bible Church pastor Dr. Erwin Lutzer, theologian Peter Leithart, and Christian apologist for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries Nabeel Qureshi, all of whom, though acknowledging the complexity of the theological issue, argue that the god of Islam and the God of the Bible are not the same.

What is most interesting about the debate is that those Wheaton professors most ardently supportive of Hawkins’ liberal-ish theological views are also those professors most ardently liberal on social issues. Coincidence?

Two of the most prominent defenders of Hawkins are also likely sitting port-side on the flagship Wheaton: Michael Mangis and Brian Howell.

Professor Michael Mangis

Dr. Michael Mangis is a psychology professor who on Monday, the first day of the new semester, shivered around campus and to his classes wearing his academic regalia (i.e., cap, gown, hood) to signify solidarity with Hawkins and to show his commitment to “learning,” which he asserts Wheaton has lost as evidenced by their effort to ensure that Wheaton faculty affirm theological orthodoxy:

The academic robe has long been a symbol of learning. And learning requires humility and a willingness to be changed….[The] college as an institution is refusing to learn. I’m going to wear this robe as a reminder and a call to us to return to learning.

I wonder if Mangis is open to learning and willing to change.

Christian parents of Wheaton students, Wheaton donors, trustees, and administrators should be deeply troubled by the comment that Mangis left under Hawkins’ initial Facebook post: “If you get any grief at work give me a heads-up because I’ll be leading my spring psychology of religion class in Muslim prayers.” Even liberal supporter Mangis could see the problematic nature of Hawkins’ theological claim even before the imbroglio began.

A young pastor and friend who attended Wheaton for both undergraduate and graduate school asked the question that parents, trustees, and administrators should be asking: “In what universe should Christian instruction include Muslim prayers?”

In an interview about the controversy, Mangis shared that he’s volunteered to teach about “white privilege” at a student-organized “teach-in.” No need for Wheaton students to travel to the annual White Privilege Conference when they’ve got ever-learning, ever-changing psychology professor Mangis right there at Wheaton.

In a biased Chicago Tribune “news” story yesterday, Mangis whined about lack of diversity at Wheaton:

We have been entrenched in a white male evangelical groupthink for so long….We need to get out of that. It has come by bringing fresh voices and new perspectives. But when you have those fresh voices, you can’t say you don’t sound enough like a white male evangelical. [Hawkins] was not sounding enough like the old school way of doing things.

Yeah, you wouldn’t want any old-school, white, male perspectives on the nature of God to interfere with political science professor Hawkins’ fresh perspective on it.

But wait. I’m confused. Those arguing that, yes, indeedy, Christians and Muslims worship the same God explained that such a perspective is old, very, very old, and espoused by a boatload of men, many of whom had the distinct misfortune of being white.

It is true that the ideological diversity of faculty members is limited by Wheaton’s intellectual and moral commitments, just as the ideological diversity of faculty members at colleges that formally espouse liberal intellectual and moral commitments regarding homosexuality and gender dysphoria is limited. What liberals really desire is the eradication of institutional places for orthodox theological views and conservative moral views to be taught. If one exists, they seek to regulate it out of existence or infiltrate it and change it from within.

Professor Brian Howell

Mangis wasn’t alone on Monday. With his solidarity snazzily embodied, anthropology professor Dr. Brian Howell also sashayed about campus in his academic regalia. Howell first came to my attention following the resignation last July of Julie Rodgers, Wheaton College’s most recent and notable bad hire. (Interesting side note, Rodgers was standing behind Hawkins at her recent press conference.)

Rodgers is well-known for her self-identification as a “celibate gay Christian.” She was hired in the Fall of 2014 as a ministry associate for spiritual care in the Chaplain’s Office to counsel students experiencing same-sex attraction. When she was hired many people who love Wheaton College were deeply troubled because of Rodger’s perspective on and seeming flippancy about homoerotic attractions as revealed in statements like this:

When I feel all Lesbiany, I experience it as a desire to build a home with a woman that will create an energizing love that spills over into the kind of hospitality that actually provides guests with clean sheets and something other than protein bars…. This causes me to see the world through a different lens than my straight peers, to exist in the world in a slightly different way. As God has redeemed and transformed me, he’s tapped into those gay parts of me that now overflow into compassion for marginalized people and empathy for social outcasts

A year later, in July, 2015, Rodgers wrote that she had evolved and no longer opposes homoerotic relationships:  “I’ve quietly supported same-sex relationships for a while now. When friends have chosen to lay their lives down for their partners, I’ve celebrated their commitment to one another.” Rodgers then rightly resigned.

After her resignation, president of the Manhattan Declaration and Wheaton College alumnus Eric Teetsel wrote on his Facebook page that Wheaton College owed Wheaton students, their parents, and alumni an apology for hiring her. Howell arrogantly and hostilely replied both to Teetsel and to other commenters:

Eric, you are being a jerk here. Wheaton does not need to “apologize” for Julie. She did not “affirm” or counsel students into same-sex relationships. She SAYS, if you will READ it, that she assumes some, in their desire to follow Jesus, will find themselves in same-sex relationships. I knew this would happen. People who make a living stoking the fires of the culture war would throw this down. “See, told you so! Gay people! It’s how they are!” I just wish you could be better than that.…

Sometimes bad behavior needs to be called out, and this sort of culture warring is un-Christian and reprehensible. I’m not impugning [Eric’s] salvation. Yes, he is a Christian. I just don’t think he’s acting like it right now….[Eric’s] post is just a smug little victory dance and is, well, jerky.

…

For the record, Eric was a student of mine (for one class) when he was at Wheaton, so, yes, I may take a condescending tone, but I will always see him as a younger brother and former student. That’s just how it goes.

As a parent of two Wheaton grads (who married Wheaton grads), I wholeheartedly agree that the Wheaton administration owed students and their parents an apology for such a terrible hire. The problematic nature of Rodgers’ ideas about homosexuality was clear before Wheaton hired her.

Leftist arrogance is on display when Howell claims that “this sort of culture warring is un-Christian,” while apparently believing his sort of culture-warring is Christian. Howell’s implicit accusation that Teetsel is stoking the fires of the culture war is absurd. It’s pyro-“progressives” who started the fires and unashamedly fuel them. Every politically engaged conservative I know sincerely desires for the cultural conflagration to be extinguished posthaste but not at the cost of sacrificing marriage, truth, and the eternal lives of those trapped within false religions or destructive ideologies.

“Progressives,” on the other hand, seem to want the fires to die down only after they’ve engulfed the entire culture. They would like theologically orthodox men and women to pipe down while children, teens, and adults become entangled in deception and confusion. Far too many theologically orthodox Christians have been silent in response to the pernicious ideas torching the earth.

I spent some time on Howell’s Facebook page to see if I could figure out which “sort of culture-warring” is  Christian:

• He’s glad about InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s controversial invitation to a representative from the far Left, homosexuality-affirming Black Lives Matter organization to speak at a recent conference.
• He wants America to stop talking about building a fence on the border with Mexico.
• He wants Nevada to go solar.
• He wants more persons of color in academia (I haven’t seen any posts yet about the dearth of conservatives—both colorless and colorful—in secular academia).
• He supports Bernie Sanders’ position on student debt.
• He opposes palm oil plantations that harm rainforests.
• He supports more government regulation of guns.

Since Howell posts a lot about injustice, I was eager to read his posts about the most egregious ongoing injustice in America—the genocide of the unborn—which became a huge national debate following the release of undercover videos that exposed the reality of abortionists’ view of humans in utero. I managed to find one post by Howell on this unspeakable American horror. He posted a piece from liberal Jesuit magazine America that he described as “a very careful and balanced perspective.” The article is an extended criticism of the Center for Medical Progress for what the writer believes is unfair, selective editing. The following day after intense criticism, the writer added a clarification that he opposes abortion. Howell posted his recommendation of the article prior to the clarification.

So, other than opposing unfair, selective editing of the undercover videos, Howell is silent on the legalized slaughter of the unborn.

Perhaps I overlooked them, but I also couldn’t find any posts about the gross injustice represented by the Obergefell travesty that imposed same-sex faux-marriage on the entire country—a decision with grave implications for children’s rights and the First Amendment.

I did notice a couple of Howell’s Facebook “likes” that are difficult to reconcile with theological orthodoxy. He “likes” Wild Gender, “an online art space born out of gratitude for the gift of full expression. Who would we be without those who walked so wildly before? As such, WG strives to provide a space for  queer and gender-variant art makers and purveyors to share work and praxis, aiming to amplify those with intersectional identities.”

He also “likes” Rainbow Moms which invites “Proud Rainbow Moms [and] parents of LGBTQ kids! We are proud of our kids, and we are here to support each other in our new community! What is NOT welcome: Intolerance, Religious rhetoric, Anti LGBT speech or links.”

While Wheaton is under scrutiny for the doctrinal beliefs of a faculty member and cultural application of those beliefs, perhaps it would be a good time to hear with clarity what Mangis, Howell and all other Wheaton faculty members believe about issues upon which theology directly appertains, like abortion, homosexuality, and gender dysphoria.

What is really revealed through this controversy is not hidden racism, white privilege, academic provincialism, or an institutional resistance to learning. What is revealed is spiritual warfare. The nature and intensity of the criticism directed at this small private college, which stands courageously for Christ and His Kingdom in the midst of an ocean of colleges and universities that stand arrogantly in opposition to Christ and truth, exposes nothing other than old-as-the-hills spiritual warfare. Make no mistake, doctrinal fidelity at Wheaton College matters.

Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem

We are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington. Click HERE to register today!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

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