School Board officials in Township High School District 211 — which includes Palatine, Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates — have implemented a controversial and dangerous policy to allow male gender confused student access to a girls’ locker room at a high school in the district, despite the overwhelming objections of parents, students and taxpayers.

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Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

There’s an enormous misunderstanding regarding the U.S. Constitution as it relates to religion and it’s causing all sorts of trouble for folks that just want to pray. The misunderstanding is being intentionally propagated by an atheist group that wants to ban religious expression in public.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has a notion that government and religion are mutually exclusive. Their mission is “to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state.”

The problem here is that there is no such “constitutional principle.”

Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or the Declaration of Independence is there a word about keeping religion out of public life; or the so-called “separation of church and state.” In fact, what the U.S. Constitution does say is that the government has no authority to make any laws pertaining to the free exercise and expression of religion.

But that doesn’t stop this atheist group from demanding that coaches not take part in team prayers.

One of the latest cases comes from the western suburbs where a high school football coach is under fire for simply being present with his players during team prayers. (Click here to read the local article.)

The complaint came after a picture of the Naperville Central High School football team, including the coaches, was sent to the FFRF. They sent a letter to the school district demanding the action cease immediately.

Now, first of all, I want to know why the school district didn’t tell the FFRF to take a hike. The FFRF has no legal power and very little influence. In fact, when schools or other groups stand up to the FFRF they tend to back down and slink back into the shadows. So I can’t help but wonder why the school district didn’t simply dismiss the letter. I will applaud their response though, in letting the FFRF know that what takes place is voluntary and student led, and does not force anyone to participate. In other words, it’s none of their business.

But let’s consider the larger issue here.

Are we really ready to concede that school employees have no religious freedom? Just because someone works for a school doesn’t mean their religious rights are thrown out the window. I’m not suggesting that teachers or coaches can demand their class or athletes attend a Bible study, but the idea that they can’t attend a student led prayer is absurd.

The FFRF says that school employees taking part in a student led prayer is the government supporting religion and a form of coercion. Such a notion is so preposterous it almost doesn’t deserve a response. By the way, why doesn’t the FFRF get upset and send angry letters when our president mentions God or tells Americans to pray? That’s odd.

This shows that the FFRF doesn’t know the history of our country and the intentions of our Founders. History is rife with what our Founders thought of the Bible and faith. Not only were they themselves Christians, but they worked tirelessly to create a country where faith was not relegated to a Sunday ritual but was integrated into every facet of daily life. (Click here to read quotes from our Founders regarding faith.) The idea that public prayer by school employees would be considered wrong would be foreign to them.

In an update to this ongoing story I was impressed to read the statement released by the football team. In response to the attack from the FFRF they wrote:

“The players will continue this tradition of praying before our games, and would like to extend an invitation to all members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, to come out next fall and watch us pray and play the game we love…We, as a football team and a family, give Coach Stine our full support…[Coach Michael Stine] “is the best coach in the state, and cares about each and every one of us more than any other coach cares about his players.”

That sounds like a well-reasoned, mature response from a group of athletes that have a great deal of respect for their coach. The response of the FFRF to the football team’s statement sounds like a spoiled-child that couldn’t bully someone to get their way. They said of the football team’s statement:

“It’s not the fault of these students that they do not understand the legal principle being violated when a coach leads, encourages or participates in prayer with student players.”

The FFRF appears to think the football team is too dumb to understand what’s going on. I think they understand perfectly. I think what is going on before and after games reflects the heart of this community and that both students and parents are supportive. And what the FFRF is unwilling to recognize is that a majority of people in America are supportive of moments of silence and even prayers before and after sporting events. They understand these voluntary exercises of religious freedom as being necessary and healthy.

What this really comes down to is the FFRF’s contempt for Christianity and wanting to impose their “religion” of secularism on our society.

Jesus said, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” John 15:18

They hate the One to whom we pray. They don’t want to see any Christian religious expression in public places or as part of anything associated with the government. But they are perfectly content to allow and support expressions of atheism. This hypocrisy is contemptible because atheism itself is a religion with tenets as any other religion.

There is no “constitutional principle” that gives them the right to impose their religion of atheism while Christianity is banned.

The FFRF doesn’t like anything religious. As secular humanists they believe that this world is all there is. So they are happy to help develop someone physically and mentally. But when it comes to spiritual development they see that as a waste of time. And they think a coach that cares enough to develop his players physically, mentally, and spiritually is misusing his position.

I’m reminded of a high profile coach that was targeted by the FFRF for his voluntary spiritual development activities. Mark Richt, the famed coach of the Georgia Bulldogs (now with the Miami Hurricanes) made it clear that he and his staff care about every aspect of their players, including their spiritual well-being. When he was attacked by the FFRF he responded:

“I think we’re made of our body, we’re made of our mind, we’re made of spirit. We work hard on our bodies as far as getting them in shape. We’re working on schemes, plays, lifting, running, nutrition, sleep. When we work on the mind, we care very much about them getting their degrees, tutoring, academic appointments, classes and all, meetings. All those things are mandatory. But anything that has to do with growing spiritually, which I encourage our guys to grow spiritually, I believe our spirit is going to live beyond our body. I encourage them to grow spiritually but I don’t tell them what to believe in. Everything we do is strictly voluntary in that regard.”

Coach Richt and Coach Stine represent what the Founders envisioned of America. A place where people could freely take part in spiritual development and expressions of their religious beliefs without coercion. That includes the right to abstain from such expressions as well. The support that both of these coaches have been given shows that Americans continue to see value in such voluntary expressions. Those who disagree should exercise tolerance and be reminded that the Constitution ensures the government can make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

Take ACTION:  If you know anyone who goes to this Naperville high school (teacher or student) who would like to challenge this feckless mandate, please contact us by email at contactus@illinoisfamily.org.

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Please consider supporting IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2016!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

District 200

It’s not just District 211, the largest high school district in Illinois, that’s allowing gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex facilities. Rumors are circulating that gender-dysphoric students, enabled by their deceived parents, are asking school districts all over Illinois for permission to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms. School administrations are accommodating these requests (or demands) in diverse ways and doing so without community input, without parental notification, and without establishing policy. One of those districts is District 200, a K-12 district in DuPage County that serves Wheaton, Warrenville, and portions of Carol Stream, West Chicago, and Winfield, which has multiple gender-dysphoric students, at least one of whom—an actual girl—is allowed to use a curtained changing area in the boys’ locker room. This information has been withheld from the public.

Dr. Robert Rammer, assistant superintendent for administrative services, likens restroom and locker room accommodations for gender-dysphoric students to accommodations made for students who have reading problems. He posits the ludicrous claim that if school districts do not share accommodations made for students with reading problems with parents of District 200 students, then there is no reason to share restroom and locker rooms accommodations for gender-dysphoric students with district parents. His comparison works only if no other student is affected in any way by the accommodations made for gender-dysphoric students. But all students are affected by such a practice because it embodies and teaches a number of assumptions about the nature of the relationship between physical embodiment and “gender,” and about how society ought to respond to gender-dsyphoria.

Rammer also stated that the district has no policy regarding gender-dysphoric students. The district’s response depends on the particulars of each case. So, what happens if or when a gender-dysphoric student and his parents demand, as the ACLU demanded for the boy in District 211, that he be permitted unfettered access to the girls’ restrooms and locker room? What will District 200 do, and are there any accommodations of which they think other parents are entitled to be apprised?

Rammer, like many administrators, believes that the presence of stalls in restrooms provides sufficient privacy to justify allowing gender-dysphoric students in opposite-sex restrooms. When asked, “If stalls provide sufficient privacy to justify allowing gender-dysphoric students in opposite sex restrooms, why not make all restrooms co-ed,” Rammer admitted he has no answer. He did, however, acknowledge that the presence of urinals in boys’ restrooms creates a problem that is not present in girls’ restrooms. I guess there remains a line—now measured in micrometers—over which administrators are not quite ready to cross.

Rammer’s acknowledgement about urinal’s constitutes a tacit admission that the District 200 gender-dysphoric girl is not in reality a boy and that physical embodiment (i.e., maleness and femaleness) matters.

Another issue that will eventually arise is the problem of district-wide mandated lying. As all educators know, or should know, pronouns denote and correspond to objective biological sex—not to desires about one’s sex. Therefore, using opposite-sex pronouns to refer to or discuss gender-dysphoric students constitutes not merely a misuse of grammar but lying. When asked if the district requires staff and faculty to use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric students, Rammer responded with a definitive “Yes.”

When asked if the administration would make accommodations for faculty members who have either religious objections or non-religious moral objections to lying, he said, “Why would any conscientious teacher want to harm students?” Wow. No discussion of what constitutes harm, no attempt at an argument. Rammer simply assumes that using correct pronouns constitutes harm.

Others, however, believe that facilitating a delusion or unhealthy, disordered desire constitutes harm. And many believe that government employees have no ethical, legal, or constitutional right to require subordinates to lie.

Rammer then posited another absurd comparison, suggesting that a refusal to call a student named “Robert” by the nickname “Bob” is analogous to refusing to refer to a girl as “he.” He believes it’s a sound analogy because in both cases, a student would “feel bad.” This illustrates the feckless thinking that permeates public schools. Many administrators and teachers falsely believe that the subjective feelings of students determine what constitutes harm or benefit. This is, indeed, the fallacious foundation of the toxic environment on college campuses. “Progressive” thinking holds that the subjective feelings of hearers determine the ethical legitimacy of speech—well, the subjective feelings of those groups certified “oppressed” by “progressives.”

Rammer further shared that no teacher has complained about the requirement to participate in a fiction (i.e., to lie). And as everyone knows, since public schools are bastions of free speech, diversity, and “safe spaces” for all, conservative teachers always speak truth to administrators. This is also the near-universal rhetorical ploy of school administrators to silence critics: “Well, by golly, yours is the first complaint I’ve heard.”

Sooner or later a Christian teacher will muster the courage to live with integrity no matter the cost. They will do what theologian John Piper has said Christians should do:

[I]f in the office where we worked, I was compelled to identify every so-called transgendered person by the pronoun they preferred in all of my emails, or conversations…or I would get disciplined…, at that point I would say to my superiors, I cannot treat he’s as she’s and she’s as he’s….I would be lying to call a he a “she.” I am not lying to call a male “Sally.” That is a culturally arbitrary weird fluke. But I am lying if I say about a true Jim who wants to be called Sally, “she.” And it would be contrary to my understanding of sexuality and I would start looking for another job.

Questions for school administrators

Below are questions that every taxpayer should ask their local school administrators, including the administrators of elementary and middle schools, and then they should hightail it to the next school board meeting to request that policy be written mandating that restrooms and locker rooms correspond to objective biological sex. The specificity of the questions is necessary in order to ensure that accurate information is obtained, to make explicit the assumptions embedded in Leftist restroom/locker room practices, and to prevent administrators from obfuscating:

1.) What are your policies and practices with regard to restroom and locker room-usage by gender-dysphoric students?

2.) Do you allow gender-dysphoric students to use multiple-stall, opposite-sex restrooms?

3.) Do you allow gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex locker rooms?

4.) If gender-dysphoric students are permitted to use locker rooms, do they have to walk through any area where opposite-sex students may be changing or showering?

5.) If you allow, for example, an objectively male, gender-dysphoric student to use the girls’ restrooms and locker room, on what basis would you prohibit objectively male, non-gender-dysphoric students from using them? If school policy prohibits discrimination based on “gender identity,” wouldn’t the district be violating policy by prohibiting non-gender-dysphoric students from using opposite-sex restrooms?

6.) If gender-dysphoric students shouldn’t have to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share, why should other students be forced to use facilities with those whose sex they don’t share?

7.) If restroom stalls and privacy changing areas are sufficient to force students to use facilities with those whose sex they don’t share, then why aren’t restroom stalls and privacy changing areas sufficient to force a gender-dysphoric student to use facilities with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share?

8.) If restroom stalls and privacy changing areas are sufficient to allow a male student in the girls’ facilities, then why aren’t stalls and privacy changing stations sufficient to allow all male students in the girls’ facilities?

9.) If restroom stalls are sufficient to allow a male student in the restroom, would you also allow all male staff and faculty in the women’s staff and faculty restrooms that are equipped with multiple stalls?

10.) Do you agree that many, perhaps most girls and women prefer not to urinate and defecate in a stall next to an unrelated male doing likewise? Do you find something unnatural or pathological about those feelings? Do you think such feelings deserve to be respected and honored through policy and practice?

11.) Do you think it’s possible that policies and practices that allow gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms may be communicating to other boys and girls that their discomfort with sharing facilities with opposite-sex students are wrong, ignorant, bigoted, or lacking in compassion?

12.) Why should girls care whether the boy in the restroom likes his body or not?

13.) If you allow gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and/or locker rooms, do you notify all parents and guardians that their sons or daughters may be using facilities with opposite-sex students?

14.) How long have you allowed gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms?

15.) Do you require staff, faculty, and administrators to use opposite-sex pronouns when talking to or about gender-dysphoric students?

16.) Since pronouns denote and correspond to objective biological sex—not feelings about one’s sex—what if a staff member, teacher, or administrator views using opposite-sex pronouns for gender-dysphoric students as lying, and for moral and/or religious reasons object to lying or deception. Will you accommodate their objections to lying or deception?

17.) Many “trans-activists” argue that “gender identity” is not fixed. What will the school do when faced with a student whose gender identity is “bi-gender” or “genderfluid” and he/she demands to use whichever facilities correspond to his/her gender on any particular day or year?

18.) Liberal sex and gender researchers J. Michael Bailey at Northwestern and Dr. Eric Vilain at UCLA write that 80% of males—who constitute the majority of gender dysphorics—will accept their real sex by adulthood. They claim that “it looks like parental acquiescence leads to persistence.” In other words, if parents accommodate their children’s efforts to pretend to be the opposite sex, their children are more likely to persist in their rejection of their sex. Do you have concerns that by allowing gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex facilities, you may be increasing the likelihood that they will persist in their rejection of their sex?

Title IX specifically states that schools have the legal right to maintain separate restrooms, locker rooms, and showers for girls and boys. Further, case law confirms that right. Yet, school administrations are kowtowing to the Left. Evidence for that can be found both in school policies, school practices, and in the language administrators use. When parents and other community members talk to their local administrators, they should pay close attention to their rhetoric. If I were a betting woman, I would bet all my money that school administrators will use Leftist language, including “transgender” and opposite-sex pronouns for gender-dysphoric students.

Take ACTION:  Please email or call your local school administrators pronto. Let’s not be Johnny come-latelies to yet another culture battle. There is too much at stake for children—including gender-dysphoric children who are being harmed by schools that embrace the pernicious sexuality ideology of the Left.

Support IFI

Please consider supporting IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2016!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

Following a public spat between the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the District 211 Board of Education over their tentative agreement regarding locker room use by a gender-dysphoric boy, the district has decided to move forward with the agreement. The district already allows gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms, and now they will allow this boy to use curtained, private changing spaces within the girls’ locker rooms.

The dispute arose when the OCR and ACLU, who is representing the boy in his lawsuit against the district, publicly stated that the agreement applied to any gender-dysphoric students in District 211 and that the agreement gives the boy at the center of the controversy the option of using the private changing areas created for him within the girls’ locker room, but that he was not required to do so. The district refuted both claims and demanded a retraction from the OCR who initially refused.

Shortly before an emergency school board meeting on Monday night to reconsider the proposed agreement, the OCR blinked, stating that the agreement applies only to this one student and that the student is required to use one of the private changing areas.

Of the over 100 people who signed up to speak, only 39 were able to do so, and many of them were not residents of District 211. It has been reported that of those 39, 9 identified as “transgender.” Astonishing. While “transgenders” constitute .2-.3% of the population, they constituted almost 23% of the speakers.

So, how did our friendly neighborhood, science-denying “progressives” defend a policy that requires all students to pretend a boy is a girl? Here are just a few of their arguments:

Claim 1. Preventing the body-rejecting boy from using the girls’ locker rooms is analogous to forcing blacks to use separate drinking fountains. Prohibiting a boy from using the girls’ locker room amounts to “institutionalized segregation.”

The problem with this analogy is that blacks are not different from whites in any substantive way, whereas men are fundamentally and substantively different from women—a fact that even homosexuals tacitly acknowledge when they say they are attracted only to members of their same sex.

If this analogy were sound, then all separate restrooms and locker rooms for girls and boys are egregious moral offenses. If prohibiting boys from using girls’ restrooms or locker rooms is tantamount to prohibiting blacks from using the same drinking fountains as whites, then there should be no sex-segregated restrooms or locker rooms anywhere. And how has society gone all these years without noticing the grave civil rights violation and moral offense of prohibiting men from using women’s restrooms?

But, of course, recognizing and respecting that men and women are not identical is both proper and good. When the boy—and he is objectively a boy—at the center of the controversy demands to use the girls’ facilities, he is acknowledging sexual differentiation and the importance of privacy and modesty, which derive from physical embodiment (i.e., maleness or femaleness). He is at the same time denying the importance of privacy and modesty for the girls whose privacy he seeks to invade. 

Claim 2. High school students have all seen opposite-sex genitalia, so one penis in the girls locker room is a non-issue.

This argument assumes that the reason society separates boys from girls for toileting, changing, and showering is that society has believed and still believes that neither boys nor girls have seen   opposite-sex genitalia.

That should be a self-evidently foolish argument since boys and girls grow up with opposite-sex siblings, cousins, and/or playmates whom they see in various states of undress.

Moreover, if unfamiliarity with opposite-sex anatomy were the sole or primary reason for opposite-sex restrooms, dressing rooms, and locker rooms, then why are there separate restrooms, dressing rooms, and locker rooms for men and women even in facilities that serve adults exclusively? Surely, no one has ever assumed that there are humans who make it to adulthood without seeing opposite-sex anatomy.

If anatomical ignorance is the only justification for sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms, and if everyone everywhere is familiar with opposite-sex anatomy, then why not eliminate all sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms, starting with those for administrators and faculty in District 211?

But of course, anatomical ignorance is not the reason we have sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms. We have them because maleness and femaleness per se have meaning. The parts of human anatomy that are involved in excretory or sexual activities are called “private” parts because they are supposed to be, well, private. The physical maturation that is taking place in adolescence only intensifies feelings of modesty and increases the importance of privacy.

Those on the Left who claim that a penis in the girl’s locker room is unimportant because girls have seen a penis fail to distinguish between seeing strangers of the opposite sex undressed online or in movies and seeing a particular person—a classmate—of the opposite sex undressed. And Leftists focus not at all on the violation being seen undressed by an opposite-sex student constitutes. Such a violation isn’t felt only by adolescent girls but by boys as well.

Culture can either cultivate or deracinate modesty. Allowing students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms undermines the inherent meaning of physical embodiment and the virtue of modesty. Furthermore, it teaches the radical and nonsensical notion that being partially clothed or unclothed in front of someone of the opposite sex is trivial as long as the person of the opposite sex dislikes his body.

Claim 3. Already in other schools in the district, gender-dysphoric students are using opposite-sex locker rooms, and no one cares.

First, many, probably most parents of students in District 211 had no idea that gender-dysphoric students were using opposite-sex restrooms and/or locker rooms until this controversy blew up in public, so they can’t complain about that which they had no knowledge.

Second, many students and parents are reluctant to express their opposition to students using opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms out of fear of being labeled ignorant, hateful, or lacking in compassion. Heck, people are afraid to say that this boy is a boy for fear of being labeled hateful. This may explain why Superintendent Daniel Cates continually refers to the student as “she” and “her.” Surely Cates knows that pronouns denote objective sex—not desires about sex—and yet he speaks nonsense anyway.

Speaking of pronoun-use, in a remarkable display of presumptuousness and liberal hypocrisy, ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka actually admonished the board for not instructing speakers to use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to the boy in question. He scolds others for not capitulating to his philosophical assumptions, which he believes should upend the English language.

Third, there are, indeed, some in the district who do care, including the District 211 girls who last night courageously expressed their opposition to allowing a boy in the locker room.

One girl said she speaks for the silent majority of girls who are uncomfortable with a boy in the locker room. She talked about the numerous times she’s had to change into a swimsuit and how uncomfortable it would be if a boy could enter the locker room while she’s changing. She described her feelings of vulnerability and said her feelings derive from neither irrational fear nor over-zealous religious belief. She believes that privacy and emotional security matter and that modesty should be protected by the school.

Another girl expressed that students who are directly affected by this decision have been ignored. She talked about the insecurity most girls feel about their changing bodies and about other psychological struggles they experience, implying that the presence of a boy in their locker rooms would add to their own struggles. She feels that this boy’s problems take precedence over the struggles of the girls whose privacy he seeks to invade. And she said that girls who feel like she does are now being bullied. She pleaded with the school board to take a stand for the majority of students and rightly predicted that if the district blurs this line now, one day there will be no lines left.

A third girl shared what she should never have been compelled to share in a room full of adults who should have had the courage and wisdom to fight relentlessly to protect girls’ privacy:  Restrooms and locker rooms are places where girls tend to and talk about feminine hygiene issues. Boys should not be present. 

And finally, school policies should be based on principles—not on the desires or feelings of students. If schools established policy based on students’ feelings, there would be no dress codes. More students object to sharing a locker room with opposite-sex peers than object to short skirts, spaghetti straps, or t-shirts with pro-drug messages, all of which most schools ban.

One of the principles on which policies and practices have long been based is the principle—well, the fact—that males and females are fundamentally different and that the differences that matter with regard to areas in which students change clothes, shower, or engage in toileting activities are their anatomical/biological differences.

Adults are supposed to teach children, including teaching them the meaning of physical embodiment, modesty, and privacy. Policies and practices are two of the ways schools teach. Yes, sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms help keep students safe but, like dress codes, they also teach.

Apparently, Cates and the feckless five school board members (aka the “sorry six”) who voted for the agreement with the tyrannical OCR believe it’s okay for teenage boys (and by extension I presume, men) to use girls’ locker rooms as long as these boys don’t like their male bodies. Perhaps the the sorry six, the OCR, and the ACLU can explain why it should matter to women if the man entering their restroom or locker room likes his body or not.

The sorry six are inordinately enamored of bathroom stalls. They believe that as long as stalls are present, body-rejecting boys and girls should be able to use opposite-sex restrooms. But why do stalls suddenly make it comfortable, proper, or good to allow girls and boys in opposite-sex restrooms? If stalls make separate restrooms unnecessary, why did we ever have separate restrooms in the first place?

I feel confident in saying this (not eager to say it but confident): Most women do not want to do their business if in the stall next door an unrelated man is doing his. I suspect many men feel similarly. A divider provides insufficient privacy.

Leftists can wish all they want that humans were less modest, and they can do their devilish best to eradicate both modesty and the “gender binary,” but their destructive efforts will eventually lose because sexual differentiation and the attendant feelings of modesty are both intrinsic and good. Too bad so many people will be hurt by their foolhardy efforts—including the boy in District 211.

There was one last major argument proffered by supporters of the agreement. It was expressed by speakers and seen on a sign that read, “Trans Lives Matter,” which might make sense if anyone were claiming they don’t. What the sign meant was that the only way anyone can demonstrate that the lives of body-rejecting people matter is by affirming their feelings and pretending that gender dysphoric boys and girls are in reality the sex they wish they were.

But real acts of compassion depend first on knowing what is true. If rejecting one’s body is neither healthy nor good, and if the discordance between body and mind is in reality a mind problem rather than a body problem, then affirming gender dysphoria is the most pernicious of acts, no matter what their intent is.

Support IFI

Please consider supporting IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2016!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

In our world of normalized perversion, erotic love is severed from sexual differentiation, marriage is severed from sexual differentiation, sex is severed from marriage, sex is severed from procreation, procreation is severed from marriage, and people are severed from their bodies. What unites all these subversive severances is untethered narcissistic desire. And tragically, normalized perversion is harming children and transforming education into anti-education.

A disturbing article about a San Francisco elementary school illustrates that reality and points to the future of all our schools unless those who know better, do better.

Last September SFGate told the story of Miraloma Elementary School which is doing away with sex-separated restrooms, starting first with the lower grades and working their way up through the higher grades. As we all know, the younger the child, the easier the indoctrination.

Two of the children featured in this troubling story are the six-year-old Braverman twins, Ari and Ella. Ari is a boy who, according to the article, “doesn’t fit boy stereotypes.” According to his parents, “He wears boys and girls clothes and doesn’t discriminate between pink and blue toys.”

His mother, Sarah Mattison-Earls, offered more detail about his binary-shattering history: “He wore dresses for a couple of years and now…‘still rocks the gold lamé stretch pants.’”

How his ability to rock gold lamé stretch pants interferes with his ability to use the boys’ restroom is still unclear.

Ari’s father, Gedalia Braverman, pontificated that “As parents, you eventually realize it’s not your job to change your child’s personality….It’s not my job to identify and pigeonhole my children’s genders, and certainly it’s not the school’s.”

What a sorry, diminished understanding of “personality” Mr. Braverman possesses.

If “personality” is merely the aggregate of a child’s untutored desires, and if it is not the job of parents to “change” their children’s “personality,” what precisely is a parent’s role?

Some might argue—if they could do so without risking the vitriol of the tolerant—that one part of a parent’s job is to help shape or direct their children’s desires, beliefs, values, and actions toward that which is good, true, and beautiful. More specific to the topic, it is the job of parents to help their children accept and view as good the sex in which their genes have pigeonholed them.

Further, it is properly the job of schools to recognize objective, scientifically verifiable sex. It is decidedly not the job of arms of the government to subordinate objective, scientifically verifiable sex to subjective, mutable feelings about sex.

Ari’s twin sister Ella expressed her happiness about the gender-neutral restrooms: “If someone doesn’t refer [sic]to either gender, they might not be sure which bathroom to use….I think it’s nice because then people don’t have to be separated just to go into bathrooms.”

“Just” to go into bathrooms? How does a six-year-old arrive at the notion that separate bathrooms for people of different sexes is trivial? And if it is trivial, then why won’t gender-dysphoric boys, girls, men, and women use the bathroom that corresponds to their sex?

A six-year-old who discusses “gender” and expresses a preference for gender-neutral restrooms has obviously been inculcated with a set of assumptions about sex and “gender identity.” And it seems unlikely that Ella has been taught that physical embodiment (i.e., maleness and femaleness per se) is both immutable and profoundly meaningful.

While Ella and Ari’s parents have the right to inculcate them with any nonsense they want, public school administrators do not have the right to inculcate other people’s children with nonsense using taxpayer monies.

Ari and Ella Braverman have a sad backstory that perhaps explains their precocious and perverse notions about maleness and femaleness.

Their father, Gedalia Braverman, is a 56-year-old single, HIV-positive, homosexual father who acquired the twins through a sperm donation from a friend who had leftover sperm from donating to a lesbian couple, and an egg donation from the niece of his best college buddy. This young woman was “in her 20s, the time in a woman’s life when the largest number of best quality eggs can be harvested. She also met Braverman’s criteria for health and intelligence.” Finally, Braverman had to rent a womb—a womb that the gestational surrogate ended up losing as a result of a difficult delivery of the twins Braverman wanted:

Braverman had dreamed not only of parenting, but of having multiple children. Having one pregnancy was costing him approximately $150,000. Not to mention the entire process takes about a year. For each additional pregnancy he would have to pay the amount and invest the time all over again.

He was starting the process at 48, and would be 49 when a child was born, if all went well. “I didn’t want to have another child at 51, 52. I also didn’t know whether I was going to get pregnant the first time,” he said. In some cases, if things don’t all go smoothly, it can take years to successfully conceive and carry a term. “So given that, I really wanted to have as many kids as possible, as quickly as possible, within reason.”

In their effort to mimic true marital relations whose natural end is children, those in naturally sterile unions (or as in Braverman’s case, in no union) resort to purchasing eggs and/or sperm, and when necessary renting wombs, thus turning children into commodities. Many of them believe their desire and extraordinary efforts to procure what they have no moral right to make them better parents than “breeders.”

What concerns those in intrinsically sterile sexual relationships (or in no relationship) less are the needs, rights, and desires of the children they acquire who will be hurt in numerous ways:

• They will be intentionally deprived of their birthright. They will be intentionally deprived of their right to know, be known by, and be raised by both their biological mother and father. It should go without saying that the desire to know and be connected to one’s biological lineage is powerful and universal. Libraries, genealogical organizations, and even a popular television show testify to this enduring human desire.

• They will be intentionally deprived of their right to know, be known by, and be raised by both a mother and father. Mothers and fathers are as different by nature as women are from men—a truth which even homosexuals acknowledge when they claim to be attracted only to persons of their same sex. Children deserve to experience those differences—some of which play a role in their very creation.

• These children will suffer when mothers and fathers in normal relationships prohibit their children from spending time in homes in which perversion is embraced and affirmed. Homosexual activists will try to blame conservatives for the sadness children raised by homosexuals will feel when their friends cannot play at their homes. But the ultimate cause for their sadness will rest with the selfish decisions of homosexual adults who insist not only on embracing perversion as identity but also on acquiring children. No responsible parent ought to allow their young children to spend time in a home in which homoeroticism is affirmed. Prohibiting young children from being exposed to such wickedness is not hateful even though, tragically, other young children will feel sad. Homosexuals intuitively know that young children and even teens have a limited capacity for moral reasoning. Homosexuals know that if children perceive someone as kind, they are predisposed to think of everything they do as good. Through their relationships with other people’s children (including in public schools), homosexuals seek to transform their moral views of homoerotic relationships.

• These children will suffer because they will not be taught truth about the essential connection between physical embodiment and self-conception and between both of those and human flourishing. They won’t be taught properly about modesty, privacy, and compassion. And they won’t be taught the truth about marriage and sexuality.

Homosexuals take umbrage at any suggestion that children ought not be placed with or purchased by homosexuals. They view good parenting as constituted solely by the capacity to love and provide for the needs of children. But such a claim raises the question: What are the needs of children?

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Perhaps I owe an apology to District 211.

While District 211 is guilty of egregiously poor judgment in allowing gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and in agreeing to allow a gender-dysphoric boy into the girls’ locker room to use private changing areas, perhaps the district was neither incompetent nor dishonest with regard to the statements they made about the agreement with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Perhaps it is the ACLU and the OCR that are incompetent, dishonest, or both. Untangling who’s inept or lying may require Solomonic discernment. All that’s certain at this point is that there’s a tempest raging between District 211 and the devilish OCR.

Superintendent Daniel Cates has issued an angry statement in which he accuses the OCR of negotiating in bad faith and of inaccurately portraying the requirements of the agreement. Further, he demanded a full public retraction, which the OCR has thus far refused to issue. Therefore, Cates has called for an emergency board meeting on Monday night to decide whether the district will pull out of the proposed agreement.

The district is outraged that the OCR publicly claimed that the district is in error in claiming that the boy must use the privacy changing areas, and that the OCR has said this agreement applies to all gender-dysphoric students. The ACLU posted this statement:

We also remain disturbed by the inaccurate, misleading and fundamentally troubling language used by the District, even as they adopt this agreement. For example, the District said last night that transgender students who are provided access to locker rooms consistent with their gender identity “will utilize a private changing station when changing clothes or showering” and will not be allowed unrestricted access to the locker room. This is not what the agreement with OCR provides. The agreement specifically says that “based on Student A’s representation that she will change in private changing stations in the girls’ locker rooms, the District agrees to provide Student A access to locker room facilities designated for female students at school.” Nowhere does the agreement require Student A to use a private area to dress and such a requirement would be blatantly discriminatory. [emphasis added]

Superintendent Cates issued this blistering response on the district website:

On the heels of what was an appropriate and balanced approach to resolving an important issue of access to our locker rooms by one transgender student, we are outraged by the mischaracterizations in the press by Catherine Lhamon of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and her blatant disregard for the facts of the negotiated agreement.

The OCR appears to be stating to the media what they wish was in the agreement, rather than what was actually agreed upon by both OCR and the District 211 Board of Education – and this, after countless hours of listening, reviewing and careful consideration.

It is wrong, it is an act of bad faith, and our school district will not let it stand.

To be clear, what was agreed upon between District 211 and the OCR struck a critical balance for safeguarding the privacy of all students, recognizing the dignity of all students, and allowing all students to participate fully in our education programs.

The resolution agreement’s provisions on locker room access, approved by our School Board just 36 hours ago, apply ONLY to the student who lodged the complaint. It does not apply district-wide, nor set precedent for other school districts in the country. It gives this student access to the gender-identified locker room with this student’s stated assurance that privacy curtains will be used. And, if this student doesn’t comply, access will no longer be allowed. The agreement also removes the threat of the loss of federal funds and states that no violation of Title IX or discrimination by the District has occurred.

We communicated to the OCR that we expected a full retraction of their inaccurate portrayal of the agreement in the media. They refused. Failing that, we will convene an emergency board meeting to discuss taking action, including retraction of the agreement because the OCR acted in bad faith. Citizens have a right to expect more from a federal agency than smoke and mirrors.

The date, time, and location for the emergency Board of Education meeting will be posted on the District 211 website once it is established.

It is farcical to claim that allowing a boy in the girls’ locker room even to change in “private changing areas” is “appropriate” or “balanced,” but we have to give credit where credit is due: Steadfastly refusing to allow an objectively male student unfettered access to the girls’ locker room is a very good decision on the part of District 211.

All concerned community members should make it a priority to attend the Monday school board meeting and express their view that no students should be permitted access to opposite-sex restrooms or locker rooms. Restrooms and locker rooms should correspond to objective, scientifically-verifiable sex—not subjective feelings about sex.

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Written by Scott Phelps

Charlie Sheen’s HIV diagnosis comes as a great surprise to Hollywood and the rest of the nation. Sheen says that the news of his infection was “a mule-kick to my soul.” Indeed. The news is particularly startling because HIV in the U.S. is an extremely rare disease even among those who like Charlie Sheen are notoriously promiscuous.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, there are an estimated 20,000,000 cases of sexually transmitted diseases per year in the United States. Of these infections, an estimated 41,000 are HIV. This means HIV represents less than one quarter of one percent of all STDs. This isn’t to minimize concerns about HIV but rather to place it in context with other STDs such as human papilloma virus, chlamydia, and herpes for example.

Sheen’s news is especially surprising because while HIV is rare, it is almost unknown among white heterosexual men in the U.S.  Of the estimated 41,000 annual cases of sexually transmitted HIV, the CDC estimates that white heterosexual males account for just 422 of those cases.  That estimate is about 40 percent higher than the reported 305 cases in the current report.  In other words, the high-water CDC estimate is that white heterosexual men account for just 1 percent of HIV cases in the U.S.  So yes, Charlie Sheen’s news is a big surprise.

With Hollywood, the internet, and the entertainment media being the primary educators of our youth in today’s culture, those of us who are parents and teachers have our work cut out for us to wrestle back our roles as primary educators on these matters. The CDC provides helpful guidelines:

“School systems should make programs available that will enable and encourage young people who have not engaged in sexual intercourse and who have not used illicit drugs to continue to:

• Abstain from sexual intercourse until they are ready to establish a mutually monogamous relationship within the context of marriage.

• Refrain from using or injecting illicit drugs.”

“For young people who have engaged in sexual intercourse or who have injected illicit drugs, school programs should enable and encourage them to:

• Stop engaging in sexual intercourse until they are ready to establish a mutually monogamous relationship within the context of marriage.

• To stop using or injecting illicit drugs.”

This is the primary prevention message on HIV/AIDS of which we hear far too little and is virtually unknown to America’s youth.

On World AIDS Day and throughout the year, we who are parents, pastors, and educators would do well to provide a clear, honest, simple message for our youth: “HIV is an almost entirely preventable disease and the best way to avoid infection is to save all sexual activity for marriage.”

Charlie Sheen says he will now work to help others avoid his fate. If he will promote this primary message he will succeed where many have failed and will leverage his pain for the good of others. We wish him all the best in this noble effort.

Scott Phelps is executive director of the Abstinence & Marriage Education Partnership near Chicago. Learn more at abstinenceandmarriage.com.

This article was originally published at chicago.suntimes.com.

ACLU attorney John Knight who represents the gender-dysphoric boy in the lawsuit against District 211 has issued this statement about the agreement reached between the district and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR)—a clarification that should deeply trouble District 211 community members:

We also remain disturbed by the inaccurate, misleading and fundamentally troubling language used by the District, even as they adopt this agreement. For example, the District said last night that transgender students who are provided access to locker rooms consistent with their gender identity “will utilize a private changing station when changing clothes or showering” and will not be allowed unrestricted access to the locker room. This is not what the agreement with OCR provides. The agreement specifically says that “based on Student A’s representation that she will change in private changing stations in the girls’ locker rooms, the District agrees to provide Student A access to locker room facilities designated for female students at school.” Nowhere does the agreement require Student A to use a private area to dress and such a requirement would be blatantly discriminatory. [emphasis added]

According to the ACLU of Illinois, the Office for Civil Rights “clearly stated that our client, like all students, does not have to use a privacy curtain. She may choose to do so, but she is not required to use the privacy curtain under the settlement.”

To my non-attorney eyes, it appears that Knight and the OCR are correct. This is what the agreement actually states:

For the duration of Student A’s enrollment in the District:

1. based on Student A’s representation that she will change in private changing stations in the girls’ locker rooms, the District agrees to provide Student A access to locker room facilities designated for female students at school and to take steps to protect the privacy of its students by installing and maintaining sufficient privacy curtains (private changing stations) within the girls’ locker rooms to accommodate Student A and any students who wish to be assured of privacy while changing;

There is no requirement that the boy use the private changing stations.

Moreover, again according to the ACLU of Illinois, the OCR claims the agreement between District 211 and the OCR “applies to all students, not just our client,” which directly contradicts what the district is claiming in its Frequently Asked Questions:

Will this Resolution Agreement require specific locker room access for all transgender students in District 211?

No. The Resolution Agreement pertains to one student in District 211 — the student who filed the original complaint with the Office for Civil Rights.

Will this Resolution Agreement require specific locker room access for transgender students in all school districts throughout the state and nation?

No. The Resolution Agreement pertains to one student in District 211 and does not extend to other students in District 211 or to other school districts.

District 211 taxpayers should be troubled by either the incompetent lack of understanding by district leaders or their deception.

In another frequently asked question, the district admits that the school which the gender-dysphoric boy attends will not be identified and that no parents will be notified if a gender-dysphoric student will be using a locker room with their sons or daughters.

Hard science-denier John Knight also made this ludicrous and ironic statement:

[T]he District continues to demonstrate a wanton ignorance of the science of gender by persisting in drawing a false distinction between transgender persons’ gender and anatomy. Let me be clear. My client is a girl – full stop.

The District’s refusal to accept transgender students as girls and boys is extremely harmful for all students, but especially those who are transgender. We had hoped the District would embrace this moment as an opportunity to educate itself and its community about what it means to be transgender. Unfortunately, that has not happened.

Precisely what “science” proves that there exists no distinction between gender-dysphoric persons’ “gender and anatomy”? If there were no distinction between their “gender” and anatomy, then gender-dysphoric persons would not be lopping off breasts and penises, shaving down Adam’s apples, adding fake breasts, and taking puberty-blockers and dangerous cross-sex hormones.

Clearly there is a distinction between the gender-dysphoric boy’s anatomy/biology and his “gender” (i.e., his desire about his anatomy/biology). His objective, scientifically verifiable anatomy (and barring the presence of an intersex condition, his DNA) is male. He desires to be female. That, Mr. Knight, is a distinction.

No one is obligated to accept the a-scientific proposition that the descriptor “girl” refers to a psychological condition rather than a biological condition. Mr. Knight’s client is a boy—full stop.

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Palatine resident and pastor of the Village Church of Barrington, David W. Jones, attended the District 211 Board of Education meeting on Wednesday night and sent the following letter to the District 211 School Board immediately following the meeting. If only every pastor, priest, elder, and lay person would follow Pastor Jones’ example, perhaps further harm to children and truth can be prevented.

Make no mistake, the kind of assault on truth and reality that is taking place in District 211 is coming to all public schools—including elementary schools. The issue of how biological sex is treated in public schools should not concern just families with children in schools. It should concern every follower of Christ. First, the children in school today will be our culture-makers tomorrow. Second, if we love our neighbors as ourselves, we should care deeply about the dissemination of body- and soul-destroying lies. And third, what our taxpayer-funded schools teach through curricula, policy, and praxis is a stewardship issue.

Please read, be inspired by, and emulate Pastor Jones:

I am writing to express my disagreement with the outcome of last night’s school board meeting vis-à-vis the OCR agreement. I was present at the meeting. It was clear that a significant majority were opposed to settling with the OCR. Although I did not keep score, I would estimate that at least 80 percent of those who spoke—some eloquently—were opposed to any compromise with the federal government on this issue. It grieves me that the board caved in to the OCR’s unlawful demands. The OCR cannot redefine our society’s legal definition of gender. What will the federal government demand next? (I acknowledge the previous sentence to be a type of “slippery slope” argument. But that form of argument is not always invalid, if one can demonstrate the mechanism by which further changes will likely happen.)

It was also surprising to find the D211 website updated shortly after the meeting with several statements that appear to have been worded carefully and approved by legal counsel. This suggests that the decision was a fait accompli before the hearing began. If this is true, then it was not a hearing at all but rather only the appearance of one. It is hard not to feel betrayed as a resident and taxpayer. This feeling only increased when I read the board’s statement: “We have implemented practices surrounding transgender student access to restrooms for two-and-a-half years, without incident.” Is this the first time that policy has been made public? If so, why were not parents informed about this earlier?

We are kidding ourselves if we think that this issue is limited to one student. Now that the precedent has been set, and the OCR knows that it can intimidate local school districts in general and D211 in particular, it will just be a matter of time before it comes knocking again. There will be more gender-dysphoric students, and they will demand special rights like “Student A.” How can they be denied? Also, how will a school board be able ultimately to deny access to any student who claims to be the opposite gender? How could that person’s claim be invalidated? If male students begin to populate female sports teams, that will give them an unfair advantage. If female students begin to populate male sports teams (e.g., football), they could actually be hurt. Title IX was originally about leveling the playing field. The OCR’s current interpretation will actually have the opposite effect, putting female students at a distinct disadvantage. That is not a little ironic.

With all due respect, last night’s decision by the board was a bad one. It fails to protect adequately the privacy of actual females, while granting special rights to a young man who is confused about his gender. The requirement to retain an adolescent gender expert—at taxpayer expense—also concerns me. What ideology will drive this individual? What else will they force upon our schools and, therefore, our students? I am afraid that the board’s decision could have significant consequences down the road, many of them unintended. I do not know if the board can reverse its decision; I would urge you to do so.

Sincerely,

David W. Jones

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Against the wishes of the majority of community members who spoke at last night’s District 211 Board of Education meeting, the district capitulated to most of the Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) demands with regard to the gender-rejecting boy who wants unfettered access to the girls’ locker room.

According to one attendee, approximately 80 percent of attendees who spoke opposed any capitulation to the leftist demands of the OCR, and yet within hours of the meeting’s conclusion, the agreement with the OCR had been posted on the school website, indicating that the “hearing” was merely for show. The Faustian bargain had already been struck and the school board held the charade of a hearing just to placate community members. Community members never really had a voice in the district’s momentous, ignorant, unjust, anti-science, anti-rationality, anti-sex decision.

The only small bit of good news is that the gender-rejecting boy at the center of the controversy still does not have unfettered access to the girls’ locker room. He may enter the locker room at will, but when changing clothes, must use private, curtained areas. Apparently any girls who wish not to be seen unclothed by him must use these areas also.

Now that a boy is allowed in the girls’ locker room, the district will provide what are essentially uber-tiny locker rooms within locker rooms.

Even locker rooms that exist solely to separate boys from girls can no longer separate boys from girls. Nothing, not even reality can stand in the way of feelings of sexuality anarchists.

In addition to forcing girls into privacy stalls if they don’t want to be in the presence of a boy while changing clothes in their own locker room, the district has caved to the almighty and highly politicized federal bureaucrats by agreeing to hire a consultant to make sure their capitulating efforts are sufficiently Leftist.

To ensure that the district’s efforts to pretend this boy is a girl are pleasing to Leftists, it must not only hire a consultant who is practiced at the art of deception but must also report back to the OCR begging for their approval and a forgiving kiss on the brown nose.

According to the agreement, the consultant must be an expert in “transgenderism” and “gendernonconformity,” which means the consultant must embrace Leftist assumptions about “gender identity.” Before the district may hire this consultant, it must be granted permission from the unelected, dictatorial, paternalists at the OCR.

You think my rhetoric is excessive? Well, chew on this excerpt from the agreement:

Reporting Requirement: Within 30 calendar days of the execution of this Agreement, the District will provide OCR with a written summary of the expert consultant it proposes to engage, including that individual’s application and resume and/or documentation concerning the individual’s previous position(s), employer(s) or professional affiliation(s).

The OCR has final approval of the Leftist consultant “nominee,” whose salary must be covered by the district.

Oh, but that’s not all, no that is not all.

Already, unbeknown to community members, the district has allowed gender-rejecting students to use opposite-sex restrooms, play on opposite-sex athletic teams, and change their names and sex on official school forms. This spanking new agreement forged in secret with no community input, however, also requires the following:

• When the district sponsors off-campus activities (e.g., prom), the district must work with the hosting facility to ensure that the gender-rejecting boy has access to opposite-sex facilities in the “least disruptive manner” for him. No mention about the degree of disruptiveness high school girls or the employees of the hosting facility must endure.

• The actual sex (or as Leftists and District 211 call it “assigned sex,” by which they must mean “assigned by DNA”) of the gender-rejecting boy on any school documents must be kept separate from his school records in order to better conceal reality and in order to better deceive others.

• If any other students request additional privacy, the school must make reasonable accommodations. So, if a girl—I mean an actual girl—is uncomfortable changing in one of the uber-tiny, makeshift, curtained “privacy” rooms with a boy changing in the uber-tiny “privacy” room beside her, the school must find another solution, and report all of this to the OCR. Of course, what high school girl is going to risk being called hateful by saying this whole mess makes her uncomfortable? The Left wins by humiliating people into submission.

• If the gender-rejecting boy desires a “support team,” well by golly, he gets an entire support team that must include “at a minimum” the boy, his parents, “an advocate or representative of the parents’ choice (if any), a medical professional of the parents’ choice (if any), and relevant District personnel familiar” with the boy. All details related to the composition of the team and content of the meetings must be reported to Big Brother.

• The district is required to create and submit for approval to Big Brother a new non-discrimination policy, and is required to submit “compliance reports” so that Big Brother can make sure the district is behaving in a sufficiently toady-like fashion.

• The district is required to provide a “detailed description of all gender-based discrimination or harassment complaints or incidents” that occur during the OCR’s “monitoring” period which extends to June 30, 2017.

The ACLU, who represents this tragically confused boy, the OCR, and every other Leftist organization promoting ignorant beliefs about sexuality are also guilty of exploiting children. Lying homosexualists put children on the frontlines of an ugly cultural war against truth and then blame those who speak truth when children are bloodied.

Every board member who voted for this agreement should be voted out come their next election, and the cowardly superintendent should be fired.

While those efforts are underway, parents should seriously consider alternative educational options for their children. Public schools are only going to get worse.

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A 1,061-page rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is better known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), suddenly popped up in the House on Monday and was voted on late Wednesday, passing 359-64. All 64 “no” votes were cast by Republicans.

At over 1,000 pages, S. 1177, the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA) [also known as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)], like Obamacare, was too lengthy to read and digest in just two days, and yet House Republicans rammed it forward despite Paul Ryan’s prior assurances that as House speaker he would provide voters ample time to read bills prior to votes.

On November 19, Erin Tuttle, writing for the non-partisan Truth in American Education argued that Americans are entitled to read this bill before the vote:

Because the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (No Child Left Behind) will be the largest piece of federal education legislation Congress will pass in over a decade, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) should allow the bill to be made publicly available for at least 60 days before the House considers it.

The bill is not scheduled to be made publicly available until November 30^th. Thus, a vote should not be scheduled until late January. Currently, it is scheduled for December 2; two days is clearly not sufficient. House members will be forced to vote on a bill they haven’t read.

The American people expected a new style of leadership under Speaker Ryan, not more of the same. If he allows a bill of this magnitude to become law without adequately vetting its merits and faults, it will affirm that the same ills that plagued Congress under Speaker Boehner remain fully intact.

ECAA includes some positive changes in terms of diminishing the role of the federal government in state education business, such as eliminating onerous Adequate Yearly Progress mandates. That said, there are serious problems with the bill, including the following change explained by Education Week:

[S]tate accountability systems would be required to include “not less than one indicator of school quality or student success that allows for meaningful differentiation in school performance and is valid, reliable, comparable, and statewide, which may include measures of – (I) Student engagement; (II) Educator engagement; (III) Student access to and completion of advanced coursework; (IV) Postsecondary readiness; (V) School climate and safety; and (VI) any other indicator the state chooses that meets the requirements of this clause.”

These criteria or measurements are troubling for several reasons:

• Several are woefully ambiguous.
• Several are difficult to measure and would be based on subjective responses.
• Evaluation of “School climate and safety” would surely be based at least partly on subjective responses by students and would likely be used to justify further school involvement in controversial, political school-sponsored activity related to homosexuality and gender dysphoria.

Another troubling aspect of ECAA is its involvement with pre-kindergarten programs. Under Title IX, ECAA authorizes $250 million for a new federal preschool program to be administered by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education. This massive expenditure of money the government does not have is being made despite the fact that many scholars like Grover Whitehurst at the Brookings Institution doubt the efficacy of pre-kindergarten programs:

The best available evidence raises serious doubts that a large public investment in the expansion of pre-k for four-year-olds will have the long-term effects that advocates tout. 

This initiative requires that preschool curricula align with Head Start (which is administered through HHS). Few are aware that since 2012, Head Start has been quietly working to align its standards with Common Core, which explains why some are calling ECAA “Baby Common Core.”

If you’re not troubled yet by the prospect of Big Brother poking his proboscis through the preschool door, perhaps this excerpt from a Head Start document will illuminate some of the goals Head Start has for our nation’s disadvantaged little ones:

Last month the Early Head Start National Resource Center hosted a conversation with key stakeholders to explore how lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) families are being served by Early Head Start programs….Stakeholders included program and parent representatives, federal staff, Head Start training and technical assistance representatives, and experts from the LGBT community….what do welcoming Head Start/Early Head Start programs look like?

The group brainstormed ideas of what a welcoming program looks like. And some of the characteristics of welcoming programs include:

• Welcoming symbols for LGBT families such as  the rainbow flag or equality stickers, and diverse images of parents and families in marketing materials
• Inclusive intake and enrollment forms that are not specific about the gender of parents and caregivers
• Partnerships with organizations that help LGBT families get information and support that they need

Is this the organization Americans want to receive more tax dollars?

ECAA does not allow Title I funds to be portable, thus limiting school choice for parents.

ECAA does not include an Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success (A-PLUS) provision that would have allowed states to opt out of programs that fall under ECAA and instead direct money in ways that best serve their state’s needs.

ECAA neither eliminates wasteful, inefficacious, and duplicative programs, nor reduces spending, nor establishes funding limits.

So, who loves this bill? The National Governor’s Association, which gave us Common Core; the Third Way, a center-left think tank; the Center for American Progress, a leftist public policy and advocacy group; the National Education Association; and President Obama.

Who dislikes this bill? Heritage Action, a conservative grassroots activist organization that deems a vote for ECAA to be a “key vote,” that will be reported on the lawmaker’s legislative record.

All that remains is for President Obama to sign it into law, which he has promised he will.

How Did Illinois’ Congressional Delegation Vote?

TheECAA passed late yesterday afternoon in the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 359 to 64.  Democrats voted 181 to 0. Republicans voted 179 to 64.  Unfortunately, our Illinois Congressional Delegation voted unanimously in favor of this intrusive, immoral, big government bill.

Voting Results:

Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D)—YEA
1st Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-4372
District Phone: (773) 224-6500
Webform

Rep. Robin Kelly (D)—YEA
2nd Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-0773
District Phone: (708) 679-0078
Webform

Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D)—YEA
3rd Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-5701
District Phone: 312-886-0481
Webform

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Washington Phone: (202) 225-5905
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Rep. Darin LaHood (R)—YEA
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Written by Dennis Prager

For over half a century, American universities, with few exceptions, have ceased teaching and begun indoctrinating. In the last few weeks, this downhill spiral has accelerated. The university is now a caricature of an educational institution. It is difficult to come up with an idea or policy that is more absurd than the ideas and policies that now dominate American campuses.

The University of California, once an elite public institution, now circulates a list of “microaggressions” that students and faculty must be careful to avoid lest they engage in racism and bigotry.

Some examples:

“There is only one race, the human race.”

You read that right. The denial of the significance of race in favor of the primacy of the individual and the affirmation of the equality of all human beings — one of the noblest achievements of liberal Western society — is now officially listed by the University of California as a racist statement. It is a pure expression of moral inversion.

“America is a melting pot.”

The University of California considers this, too, a racist statement. Throughout American history the melting pot idea has been an expression of America’s unique ability to transform people of every race, ethnicity, and nationality into Americans. It is now deemed racist.

“I don’t believe in race.”

Again, this statement — which is the opposite of racism — is deemed racist. In terms of the inherent importance of race, the American university is now closer to Fascism than to traditional liberalism.

“America is the land of opportunity.”

According to the University of California, this is a “myth” that is also racist. It implies that some of those who fail do so not because they haven’t had opportunities to succeed but because of their failure to take advantage of those opportunities.

Meanwhile university after university allows students to take over administration buildings and even president’s offices. University presidents and other moral weaklings who administer colleges — aka leftists — never demand that these students leave the buildings they have illegally occupied. Rather they give in to just about all of their “demands.”

Thus the president of the University of Missouri was forced to resign for allegedly not doing enough about a handful of isolated instances of alleged racism.

The president of Princeton University has agreed to demands of students who occupied his office to consider removing the name of Woodrow Wilson from buildings and institutes. Wilson, president of Princeton prior to becoming the president of the United States, held racist views common to many fellow progressives of his time.

Protesters at Dartmouth College invaded the school’s library and screamed at white students studying there. According to the New York Post, “About 150 Dartmouth students this week protested in the school’s Baker-Berry Library, chanting “Black Lives Matter” — and harassing kids who tried to keep studying. Oh, and assaulting them, too, according to The Dartmouth Review, which reported that protesters pinned one girl to a wall while calling her a “filthy white b?-?-?-?h.”

Other chants included “F*** your white privilege!” and “F*** you, you filthy white f****s!”

The response of Dartmouth? An apology to the racist attackers: “The school’s vice provost for student affairs, Inge-Lise Ameer, told the BLMers [Black Lives Matter] “I’m very, very sorry that you feel this way. We don’t want you to have this experience here. … We told them [the protesters] that … the protest was a wonderful, beautiful thing.”

As reported by Newsweek, more than 400 students at Occidental College took over the school’s administrative building “stating that they intend to stay until a list of 14 specific points relating to diversity and inclusion of students of color are met.” Occidental immediately agreed to 13 of the 14.

The universities, along with the rest of the American left, have repeatedly told students that America is a racist society, and many black students now believe it, even though they live in the least racist multiracial country on earth and attend the protective cocoon known as college. Likewise, the left has repeatedly told American women that the universities are rape cultures where they have a 1 in 4 chance of being raped.

So, the universities are imploding by their own doing. They produce aggrieved and angry young Americans whose primary identity is that of victim.

And there may be worse to come. There is little that produces violence as surely as does a victim mentality.

At this time, if you donate money to an American university, you are doing much worse than wasting your money. You are subsidizing the most anti-liberal, anti-American institution in America.

This article was originally posted at TheStream.com

In light of the self-indulgent, self-referential, and oppressive efforts of both students and faculty to impose their ideological views and circumscribe speech on college campuses, it is refreshing and inspiring to see that not all students can be intimidated. A student group has formed at Princeton University that seeks to restore the mission of Princeton to pursue truth through a critical examination of all ideas. They seek to prevent university-sponsored separatism and de facto censorship, arguing that not even “identity-forming values” should be immune from criticism.

Read this letter to the president of Princeton University from the ten Princeton students who formed the Princeton Open Campus Coalition, and be thankful for their wisdom and courage. Then have your children read it, especially if they’re in high school or college:

Dear President Eisgruber,

We write on behalf of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition to request a meeting with you so that we may present our perspectives on the events of recent weeks. We are concerned mainly with the importance of preserving an intellectual culture in which all members of the Princeton community feel free to engage in civil discussion and to express their convictions without fear of being subjected to intimidation or abuse. Thanks to recent polls, surveys, and petitions, we have reason to believe that our concerns are shared by a majority of our fellow Princeton undergraduates.

Academic discourse consists of reasoned arguments. We simply wish to present our own reasoned arguments and engage you and other senior administrators in dialogue. We will not occupy your office, and, though we respectfully request a minimum of an hour of your time, we will only stay for as long as you wish. We will conduct ourselves in the civil manner that it is our hope to maintain and reinforce as the norm at Princeton.

This dialogue is necessary because many students have shared with us that they are afraid to state publicly their opinions on recent events for fear of being vilified, slandered, and subjected to hatred, either by fellow students or faculty. Many who questioned the protest were labeled racist, and black students who expressed disagreement with the protesters were called “white sympathizers” and were told they were “not black.” We, the Princeton Open Campus Coalition, refuse to let our peers be intimidated or bullied into silence on these–or any–important matters.

First, we wish to discuss with you the methods employed by protesters. Across the ideological spectrum on campus, many people found the invasion of your office and refusal to leave to be troubling. Admittedly, civil disobedience (and even law-breaking) can sometimes be justified. However, they cannot be justified when channels of advocacy, through fair procedures of decision-making, are fully open, as they are at our University. To adopt these tactics while such procedures for debate and reform are in place is to come dangerously close to the line dividing demonstration from intimidation. It is also a way of seeking an unfair advantage over people with different viewpoints who refuse to resort to such tactics for fear of damaging this institution that they love.

Second, we welcome a fair debate about the specific demands that have been made.

We oppose efforts to purge (and literally paint over) recognitions of Woodrow Wilson’s achievements, including Wilson College, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and his mural in Wilcox Dining Hall. As you have noted, Wilson, like all other historical figures, has a mixed legacy. It is not for his contemptible racism, but for his contributions as president of both Princeton and the United States that we honor Wilson. Moreover, if we cease honoring flawed individuals, there will be no names adorning our buildings, no statues decorating our courtyards, and no biographies capable of inspiring future generations.

We worry that the proposed distribution requirement will contribute to the politicization of the University and facilitate groupthink. However, we, too, are concerned about diversity in the classroom and offer our own solution to this problem. While we do not wish to impose additional distribution requirements on students for fear of stifling academic exploration, we believe that all students should be encouraged to take courses taught by professors who will challenge their preconceived mindsets. To this end, the University should make every effort to attract outstanding faculty representing a wider range of viewpoints–even controversial viewpoints–across all departments. Princeton needs more Peter Singers, more Cornel Wests, and more Robert Georges.

Similarly, we believe that requiring cultural competency training for faculty threatens to impose orthodoxies on issues about which people of good faith often disagree. As Professor Sergiu Klainerman has observed, it reeks of the reeducation programs to which people in his native Romania were subjected under communist rule.

We firmly believe that there should be no space at a university in which any member of the community, student or faculty, is “safe” from having his or her most cherished and even identity-forming values challenged. It is the very mission of the university to seek truth by subjecting all beliefs to critical, rational scrutiny. While students with a shared interest in studying certain cultures are certainly welcome to live together, we reject University-sponsored separatism in housing. We are all members of the Princeton community. We denounce the notion that our basic interactions with each other should be defined by demographic traits.

We hope that you will agree to meet with us. We will be happy to make ourselves available to meet in your office at your earliest convenience. We are also requesting a meeting with the Board of Trustees. For reasons you have articulated in your recent message to the community, there is no time to waste in having these discussions.

Unlike their counterparts at other universities, Princeton undergraduates opposed to the curtailment of academic freedom refuse to remain silent out of fear of being slandered. We will not stop fighting for what we believe in.

Thank you very much for your consideration. We look forward to your reply.

-The Legislative Committee of Princeton Open Campus Coalition
Allie Burton ‘17
Evan Draim ‘16
Josh Freeman ‘18
Sofia Gallo ‘17
Solveig Gold ‘17
Andy Loo ‘16
Sebastian Marotta ‘16
Devon Naftzger ‘16
Beni Snow ‘19
Josh Zuckerman ‘16

Before spending thousands of dollars on their children’s college education, parents should critically examine how fully the colleges and universities their children are considering are committed to intellectual diversity. And when selecting a college, perhaps a consideration of how likely the institution is to foster wisdom and a love of truth should take precedence over the prestigious reputation of  the school.

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Written by Walter Williams

The 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress report, also known as The Nation’s Report Card, shows that U.S. educational achievement, to put it nicely, leaves much to be desired.

When it comes to reading and math skills, just 34 percent and 33 percent, respectively, of U.S. eighth-grade students tested proficient or above — that is, performed at grade level or above. Recent test scores show poor achievement levels in other academic areas. Only 18 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in U.S. history. It’s 27 percent in geography and 23 percent in civics.

The story is not much better when it comes to high schoolers. According to 2010 and 2013 NAEP test scores, only 38 percent of 12th-graders were proficient in reading. It was 26 percent in math, 12 percent in history, 20 percent in geography and 24 percent in civics (http://www.nationsreportcard.gov).

Many of these poorly performing youngsters gain college admission. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education reports, “Every year in the United States, nearly 60 percent of first-year college students discover that, despite being fully eligible to attend college, they are not ready for postsecondary studies.” That means colleges spend billions of dollars on remedial education. Many of the students who enroll in those classes never graduate from college. The fact that many students are not college-ready takes on even greater significance when we consider that many college courses have been dumbed down.

Richard Vedder, emeritus professor of economics at Ohio University, argues that there has been a shocking decline in college academic standards. Grade inflation is rampant. A seminal study, “Academically Adrift,” by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, argues that very little improvement in critical reasoning skills occurs in college. Adult literacy is falling among college graduates. Large proportions of college graduates do not know simple facts, such as the half-century in which the Civil War occurred. Vedder says that at the college level, ideological conformity is increasingly valued over free expression and empirical inquiry.

While educational achievement among whites is nothing to write home about, that for blacks is no less than a disaster. Only 13 percent of black eighth-graders score proficient or above in math, and only 16 percent do in reading. In 2013, only 7 percent of black 12th-graders scored proficient in math, and only 16 percent did in reading. The full magnitude of the black education tragedy is seen by the statistics on the other end of the achievement continuum. “Below basic” is the score given when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. In 2013, 62 percent of black 12th-graders scored below basic in math, and 44 percent scored below basic in reading.

Dr. Thomas Sowell has written volumes on black education. The magnitude of today’s black education tragedy is entirely new. He demonstrates this in “Education: Assumptions Versus History,” a 1985 collection of papers. Paul Laurence Dunbar High School is a black public school in Washington, D.C. As early as 1899, its students scored higher on citywide tests than any of the city’s white schools. From its founding in 1870 to 1955, most of its graduates went off to college. Dunbar’s distinguished alumni included U.S. Sen. Ed Brooke, physician Charles Drew and, during World War II, nearly a score of majors, nine colonels and lieutenant colonels, and a brigadier general.

Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School also produced distinguished alumni, such as Thurgood Marshall and Cab Calloway, as well as several judges, congressmen and civil rights leaders. Douglass High was second in the nation in black Ph.D.s among its alumni.

The stories of the excellent predominantly black schools of yesteryear found in Sowell’s study refute the notion of “experts” that more money is needed to improve black education. Today’s Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frederick Douglass high schools have resources that would have been unimaginable to their predecessors. Those resources have meant absolutely nothing in terms of academic achievement.

This article was originally posted at Capitalism Magazine.