It’s by design. As I, and others, have repeatedly warned, the establishment of so-called “gay marriage” as a newfangled federal “right,” and the free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment simply cannot coexist in harmony. Things diametrically at odds cannot possibly occupy, with any coherence, the same time and space.

The secular left is tripping over itself right now to prove my point. In the wake of last month’s Obergefell v. Hodges opinion – an opinion that somehow divined a top secret “constitutional right” for Patrick Henry to “marry” Henry Patrick – liberals are now demanding, as both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito predicted, that Christian university’s immediately abandon recognition of, and obedience to, God’s unequivocal natural sexual order, and adopt, instead, the new pagan orthodoxy.

In a July 14 article in The Atlantic headlined, “Gay Marriage and the Future of Evangelical Colleges,” University of Tampa professor David R. Wheeler asks, “Now that same-sex couples have the right to wed, will higher-ed institutions that condemn LGBT students still be eligible for federal funding?”

Wheeler is not alone in asking. “As cultural evolution on the issue of LGBT rights continues to accelerate, it’s inevitable that some Americans will start asking hard questions about whether it makes sense to allocate scarce public resources to institutions that are not only anti-gay, but proud of it,” opines anti-Christian bigot Barry Lynn, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “For starters, can federally supported educational institutions bar married same-sex couples from living together in student housing? I doubt it,” he adds.

In other words, Christian universities must together embrace and facilitate homosexual sin, or lose, at once, both tax-exempt status and access to all students who choose to fund their education via federal loans and grants (which is most of them).

This presents quite a conundrum. It’s also a test. Christian universities must either obey God, disobey man and suffer unsavory temporal consequences, or obey man, sell their souls for mammon and suffer a-little-more-than-unsavory eternal consequence.

This is where faith comes in.

German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a man who faced the gallows for faithfully opposing the Nazi Holocaust. He once wrote, “For faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience.”

It’s really not that complicated. The Christian university that chooses the path of least resistance and conforms to the world – that is, disobeys God and adopts the world’s morally relative (read: unbiblical) standards (or lack thereof) on sex and sexuality – immediately becomes at enmity with God. The Christian university that intentionally turns a blind eye to sexual immorality of any kind, or otherwise allows and recognizes sin-based “same-sex marriage,” ceases to be a Christian university and, instead, becomes an apostate university – a university better identified as “Christian in name only.”

As Jesus admonished, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).

Indeed, on the question of whether Christian universities will capitulate on sodomy-based “marriage,” the path of least resistance is the broad road that stems from the wide gate and leads to destruction.

By way of example, and to its shame, formerly Christian Baylor University, located in Waco, Texas, has chosen the path of least resistance. This hits especially close to home for me. I was born in Waco and my parents both attended Baylor. Two of my uncles graduated from Baylor Law, and my grandfather, J. Dell Barber, was a Baylor benefactor. In fact, he has a room in the law school named after him and, before he died, set up the Bertha J. Barber memorial scholarship fund in honor of my great grandmother.

Reports Baptist News Global: “Baptist-affiliated Baylor University has quietly removed a ban on ‘homosexual acts’ from its sexual conduct code. …”

“Lori Fogleman, assistant vice president for media communications, said the change is part of an ongoing review ‘to ensure that the university has the necessary policies and processes in place to comply with the many legal and ethical mandates to which universities are subject as institutions.’ She said a review of the sexual conduct policy was contemplated for a couple of years, because officials didn’t believe the language in the old policy ‘reflected Baylor’s caring community.’”

And so, under Baylor University’s new apostasy, it is somehow “caring” to affirm students, faculty and staff in a mortal sin that, in the absence of repentance, will lead them to eternal separation from God – to destruction.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.

It breaks my heart to be so closely affiliated with a Christian university that has so lost its way.

A colleague of mine once praised yet another for being a person who “applies biblical ethics in ways both faithful and nuanced, both orthodox and relevant.” I’m not exactly sure what that means, but, in my experience, and in the context of biblical exegesis, the term “nuanced” is usually invoked to rationalize some unbiblical behavior or otherwise cave on some fixed biblical principle.

“Nuance” is the bucket of dirt used to muddy crystal clear living waters.

And how does the faithful, Bible-believing Christian remain “both orthodox and relevant”? How can a Christian be both in the world and of the world? To the world, biblical orthodoxy is, in every way imaginable, irrelevant. Biblical orthodoxy represents absolute truth, who is Christ, and the world denies that Truth.

It hates Him in fact.

Pastor Brian Houston, founder of the popular Hillsong movement, recently said, “It can be challenging for churches to stay relevant. … Many mainstream churches upheld what they would believe is the long established view of what the Bible says about homosexuality. But the world has changed around and about them. …

“So the world’s changing and we want to stay relevant as a church,” he continued. “So that’s a vexing thing. You think, ‘How do we not become a pariah?’”

Pastor Houston, respectfully, you have it exactly backwards. We, as Christians, are obliged to become pariahs. We must pick up our cross and follow Christ, the ultimate pariah – the one and only God-man who was such a pariah, in fact, that he was scourged, mocked, spat upon and tortured to death on a tree so that all who are willing to become pariahs right along with him, might have eternal life.

No, to remain faithful, Christian universities must abandon efforts to become “nuanced” and “relevant.”

It’s a fool’s errand.

If Christian universities wish to remain faithful, they must, instead, become pariahs.

They must obey God.

Written by Tal Fortgang

Among the great ironies surrounding the state of academia is the continued insistence on hearing more and more “marginalized voices” and increasing “diversity” on campus, as if there is some kind of archaic conservative establishment making that difficult to do.

One would likely be hard-pressed to find a more left-leaning group than college professors and admissions officers, who prioritize pulling marginalized groups out of their marginalization and adding people of diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds to campus conversations.

Yet in their efforts to achieve a more egalitarian conversation, left-wing academics and their students completely ignore (at best) and marginalize (at worst) students and the rare colleague who disagree with them politically.

And therein lies the ultimate irony: The very voices that decry inequality in all its manifestations either accept or turn a blind eye to the stunning dearth of conservative academics and the de facto censorship of right-wing students on overwhelmingly left-wing campuses.

Were it some other group suffering such a marginalization, there is no doubt that the left would be up in arms, crying discrimination and demanding rectification.

Some might even call such a monopoly on prevailing campus orthodoxy a type of “privilege,” defined as an asset “of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to,” to quote Peggy McIntosh, the matriarch of privilege’s modern construction.

While the marginalization of right-wing thinkers on campus in no way compares to the experience of black Americans throughout history, it might behoove left-wingers on college campuses to think about the various privileges from which they benefit simply by being members of the overwhelmingly dominant group in their academic communities.

1. I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my political persuasion most of the time.

2. I can spend my entire college career taking only classes with professors who think exactly as I do.

3. I can take classes and earn degrees in departments that are designed to line up exactly with my worldview.

4. I can be sure that an overwhelming majority of the material I am assigned to read for class will confirm what I already believe.

5. My professors will assume that I already think just like them, and use examples and anecdotes that testify to our philosophical uniformity.

6. I can almost always be sure that my professor will present or corroborate my side of a debate.

7. I will likely never have to make the choice between writing what I believe to be true and writing what I think will get a good grade.

8. If I do not get the grade I was hoping for, I can be sure it had nothing to do with the professor’s antipathy towards the political views I have expressed, or me personally.

9. I do not have to fear tipping my hand about my political views in my schoolwork.

10. I can pursue an English degree out of my love for literature, not put off by the lenses of critical theory that influence the way literary analysis is taught.

11. I can speak up in class without fear of being derided for my politics.

12. I can feel confident that even if I don’t personally speak up for my side of an issue, it will likely cross my classmates’ minds.

13. I can be sure that even if people disagree with me, they will not call me evil or bigoted.

14. I can avoid spending time with people whom I have been taught to disagree with, and who have learned to disagree with me.

15. I can be sure that no one will chalk up my opinions to privilege or lack of empathy.

16. More generally, I can express my views on controversial topics without my motives and character being questioned.

17. If my ideology becomes a source of personal issues, I have ample support available at an institutional level.

18. If I need a role model with whom I agree politically, I can easily find one or more.

19. I can freely use social media to share my politics (not that I should) and I will receive encouragement and support in ‘likes,’ ‘shares,’ and especially in comments.

20. I can be social and go to parties without facing mockery and looks of confusion from those who assume my lifestyle is ascetic and Puritanical.

21. I can act disrespectfully toward figures of authority and remain immune from criticism.

22. I can talk about my politically oriented extra-curricular activities without fear of judgment or derision from my peers.

23. I can describe my summer writing job without censoring the name of the publication or its political leanings.

24. If I am religious, others will assume that my beliefs are a force for good and not an extension of an anachronistic and oppressive legacy of superstition.

25. I can use buzzwords and academic jargon to make my arguments, and they will be accepted as legitimate.

26. I can safely say that the arc of history bends in my direction and anyone who disagrees will be “on the wrong side.”

27. I can write off opinions of those who disagree with me because of their overarching ideology.

28. If I can categorize someone who disagrees with me as “powerful” or “oppressive,” I don’t even have to listen to them to begin with.

29. I can be confident that no one will dismiss the sources of my news and information as biased.

30. I can easily obtain my college’s support for explicitly political events I’d like to organize.

31. I can get “trigger warnings” appended to texts that challenge me or make me feel uncomfortable.

32. I can get commencement speakers, recipients of honorary degrees, and other guests disinvited from my campus if I disagree with them.

33. I can disrupt and disrespect speakers whom I do not wish to hear; I will subsequently be praised for my denial of their freedom to speak.

34. I can monopolize terms like “justice” and claim that they only apply to what I am saying.

35. I can accuse those who disagree with me of “violence.”

36. I can claim that my personal experiences are “invalidated” by those who disagree with me.

37. If I have to follow current events for class, I can be confident that the recommended sources of news will be slanted in my direction.

38. If I find my ideas challenged, I know I always have a “safe space” to retreat to, where people will massage my challenged beliefs and sing me a lullaby of things I’d like to hear.

This article was originally posted at The College Fix website.

Written by Frederick M. Hess

Like fascists, Communists, and boy-band producers, the American Left has always believed it could fine-tune human nature if it could only “get ’em while they’re young.” That’s why the Left works so hard to impose its will on schools and universities. As John Dewey, America’s high priest of educational progressivism, explained in 1897, the student must “emerge from his original narrowness” in order “to conceive of himself” as a cog in the larger social order.

Last week’s gay-marriage ruling will yield a new wave of liberal efforts to ensure that schools do their part to combat wrong-headed “narrowness.” Justice Anthony Kennedy’s sweeping 5–4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges opened by declaring, “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.” Kennedy took pains to opine that marriage “draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education.” In finding that the Fourteenth Amendment secures the right to “define and express [one’s] identity,” the Obergefell majority has issued a radical marker. (If gay marriage had been established by democratic process, things might have played out in a more measured manner.)

Justice Samuel Alito predicted, “Today’s decision . . . will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy,” and “they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.” Alito is almost assuredly right, and that poses serious questions for schools and colleges.

At the collegiate level, the implications are pretty clear — especially for religious institutions. Christian colleges are going to find their nonprofit tax status under assault unless they agree to embrace gay marriage. (The relevant precedent is the 1983 Supreme Court ruling that enabled the IRS to strip Bob Jones University’s tax-exempt status because of the school’s ban on interracial dating.) Policies regarding “family housing,” employee benefits, use of chapels for marriages — all will come under fire. And then we’ll start getting to questions of readings, campus programs, and curriculum, where familiar First Amendment rights will clash with the new Fourteenth Amendment right to “define and express [one’s] identity.” For religious colleges stripped of their nonprofit status, many — if not most — will be compelled to close their doors. (It’s safe to say that plenty of progressives would regard this development as a bonus).

More broadly, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that gay-rights advocates believe the decision will “help them move on to other issues, such as access to higher education and mental-health concerns for young LGBTQ students of color and transgender students of color.” Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, said, “I’m hopeful we can now say we won one game; now the next game is looking at trans rights, how we treat queer people of color, especially first-generation LGBTQ students of color.”

LBGT crusaders are also pushing for big changes in K–12 public schooling. Education Week’s legal-affairs reporter noted that the decisions “holds various implications for the nation’s schools, including in the areas of employee benefits, parental rights of access, and the effect on school atmosphere for gay youths.” I can’t say with certainty what’s coming. But here are four things to watch for. Expect demands for schools to amp up their efforts to feature “nontraditional” families in all kinds of contexts.

Educators have long celebrated “diversity.” Now they can expect heightened pressure to do more, and to ensure that nothing stymies a student’s “identity.” When a tiny handful of social crusaders complain that this play feels too stereotypically masculine or that those stories don’t include enough LGBT students, they’re going to pull Obergefell out of their pocket. Things will prove particularly contentious in history, where a dearth of gay marriages and nontraditional families will invite creative efforts to “balance” things out.

School leaders have judged that American flag T-shirts are unacceptably provocative when worn on Cinco de Mayo. Clothing and artifacts perceived as hostile to another’s “defined and expressed” identity, such as badges of religiosity, may well come under the closest of scrutiny. After all, the Court has long held that freedom of speech and religion may be circumscribed in educational settings. Now, protestations on behalf of free expression and free speech can be answered with Fourteenth Amendment claims.

Expect demands for schools to amp up their efforts to feature “nontraditional” families in all kinds of contexts. Schools may be scrutinized for the mixture of families that wind up in posters, brochures, student art displays, instructional materials, and the rest. Failure to include a satisfactory percentage of gay parents (or other nontraditional family groupings) may be judged evidence of a hostile environment.

And casual language will have to change. Teachers may instinctively ask a volunteer father about his wife or mention mothers and fathers; when they do, it won’t be long until a sensitive parent decides that this kind of “heteronormativity” is an unconstitutional violation of their identity. Pity the poor assistant principal who knows two parents are attending a meeting and mistakenly asks the woman sitting in the office if her “husband” is running late — rather than asking about her “spouse.” In the wrong circumstances, that could be a career-ender. Minimizing such mistakes means schools will soon be at pains to replace the terminology of “moms and dads” with that of genderless dyads.

America’s principals, superintendents, and school boards generally don’t have a lot of stomach for waging these fights. Even those who hate being bullied don’t want the exhausting slog or public criticism. Far more likely is that they’ll pack it in, lending Justice Kennedy’s rhetorical flourishes a practical import even he may not have imagined.

— Frederick M. Hess is director of education-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.  This article was originally posted at National Review Online.

According to a recent study in the American Public Health Journal, kids who identify as “LGBTQ” are not only getting pregnant, even though they claim to identify with sexual behaviors which are non-procreative same-sex interactions, they are getting pregnant at MORE THAN TWICE the rate of their heterosexual peers!

The study comes out of New York. Liberals have been quick to blame abstinence education. However, according the Guttmacher Institute, New York doesn’t even require abstinence as a part of their sex education, nor are parents required to give consent regarding their child’s sex education instruction.

Ironically, the Centers for Disease Control has reported that LGBTQ youth are much more likely to engage in unsafe sexual behaviors than heterosexual youth.  So abstinence messages might be extremely beneficial to youth claiming to be homosexual.

This higher incidence of pregnancy raises the question of sexual desire and the idea of unchangeable or exclusive homosexuality.  It would seem that many young people who externally identify with homosexuality are betraying the group with which they choose to identify.  In other words, they identified as a certain lifestyle for reasons that may not have been due to their real sexual attractions, but because society is so intent upon embracing LGBTQ causes as the vogue rage of our age.

“Progressives,” always plagued by inconsistency and hypocrisy, have been for years waxing self-righteous about their deep commitments to diversity, to “honoring all voices,” and to “critical thinking.” They’ve also been devotees of relativism, subjectivism, radical autonomy, and deconstructionism. But when it comes to homosexuality and gender confusion, all liberal principles are abandoned in their voguish, slavish devotion to absolute, transcendent, eternal pro-perversion orthodoxy. They will abuse academic institutions to censor and mock assumptions that they have ordained by the power invested in themselves to be ignorant, prudish, biased, hateful, false, or oh-so-uncool. Their declarations are often unaccompanied by reason and evidence, but chock ‘o’ block full of feelings, nothing more than feelings.

Since the 1960s, secular colleges and universities as well as colleges and universities affiliated with liberal religious denominations have slowly moved away from a commitment to help students know truth. Homosexualist ideologues have for decades controlled academia and, therefore, are culpable for the  corruption of public elementary, middle, and high schools through their “education” of public school teachers.

Liberals exult in the sad reality that younger Americans—including Evangelicals—increasingly affirm homoerotic activity and relationships as morally equivalent to heterosexual activity and relationships. These same liberals rarely (if ever) examine the reasons for this troubling affirmation of sexual perversion as normative and good. Princeton law professor Robert George illuminates the reasons:

The [homosexual] lynch mob came for the brilliant mild-mannered techie Brendan Eich.

The lynch mob came for the elderly florist Barronelle Stutzman.

The lynch mob came for Eastern Michigan University counseling student Julea Ward.

The lynch mob came for the African-American Fire Chief of once segregated Atlanta Kelvin Cochran.

The lynch mob came for the owners of a local pizza shop the O’Connor family.

The lynch mob is now giddy with success and drunk on the misery and pain of its victims. It is urged on by a compliant and even gleeful media. It is reinforced in its sense of righteousness and moral superiority by the “beautiful people” and the intellectual class. It has been joined by the big corporations who perceive their economic interests to be in joining up with the mandarins of cultural power. It owns one political party and has intimidated the leaders of the other into supine and humiliating obeisance.

…

[I]t is certainly true that the political, economic, and cultural power now arrayed against people of faith and their rights and liberties is formidable.

It is not reasoned argument that has allowed folly and ignorance to metastasize within the culture, destroying temporal and eternal lives, children’s rights, parental rights, and First Amendment protections. Rather, self-serving desire, appeals to emotion, censorship, propaganda, and intimidation are incrementally destroying American “culture”—if such a thing even exists anymore.

Here are just three recent examples of the insalubrious excrement served on gilded platters to our children by self-righteous, hubristic “intellectuals”:

• Omar Currie , a 25-year-old homosexual, 3^rd-grade teacher from Efland Cheeks Elementary School in North Carolina read the homosexuality-affirming picture book King & King to his class without parental notification or parental permission. This was his presumptuous effort to address bullying. Imagine a teacher reading a pro-polyamory book to 3^rd-graders in order to address ridicule of “consensual non-monogamy.” Or imagine a teacher reading a book that presents promiscuity positively in an effort to end ridicule of those whose parents may be swingers. The issue isn’t whether polyamory or promiscuity per se is ontologically or morally equivalent to homoeroticism. The issue is whether government employees have the right to promote their personal feelings and beliefs about sexual deviance to other people’s minor children.

• In February, the University of Chicago held its annual Sex Week during which students could choose from a smutty smorgasbord of freakish workshops designed to appeal to the baser instincts of adolescents and perverts, including the following:

“Dirty Talking, Etc.”: They say the most powerful sex organ is the one that resides between your ears! Keep your mind engaged during awesome sex with this peer-led how-to on dirty-talking, role-play and fantasy.
“Positions 101”: Tea Time and Sex Chats presents a tutorial on different ways to spice up your sex life. Covering a variety of positions, you’re guaranteed to find one to suit your fancy.
“Taste of Kink”: Ever wonder what people get out of floggers, wax, electricity, and more? Intrigued by the possibilities but don’t know where to start? Try our smörgåsbord of sensation, where you’ll be able to safely sample a variety of props and toys in a low-key setting and at your own pace. 18+, bring ID.
“A Consumer’s Guide to Sex Toys”: Come learn about sex toys from the owner of one of the most popular sex toy shops in Chicago! Searah Deysach, owner of Early to Bed, will answer all your questions on the best toys to buy, the questions to ask when purchasing, and the best way to care for your toys once you take them home.
“Trans 101 Panel”: Students Anaïs (she), Amalia (they), Devon (they), and Hex (it) talk about life as trans people and trans issues as they affect them.

It doesn’t matter how many or few students attend this annual sexuality freak show. What matters is that the University of Chicago administration permits it. Thankfully, Mortimer Adler isn’t around to witness this pseudo-intellectualized bacchanalia. (Well, perhaps “pseudo-intellectualized” grants too much.)

• Smith College is following in the disoriented footsteps of purportedly all-women’s colleges Mill’s College, Mt. Holyoke, Simmons, Scripps, Bryn Mawr, and Wellesley. Smith will now admit men who pretend to be women, but, forced to accommodate an ontologically incoherent ideology, Smith will not admit actual women who pretend to be men.When announcing the change, Smith president, Kathleen McCartney said, “In the years since Smith’s founding, concepts of female identity have evolved.” Clearly.

According to the pontificating panjandrum of liberal academia, female identity has nothing whatsoever to do with XX chromosomes and their accompanying biochemistry and anatomy. But if objective biological sex has no inherent meaning, then the very idea of “women” and women’s colleges have lost their meaning as well. The fixed lodestar of objective biological sex has been devoured in this tangled ideological web. The doctrinaire and absurdist gender ideology embodied in these admissions policies is like the “black swallower” fish that ingests prey so large that it decomposes before the swallower can digest it. The object the black swallower ingests for sustenance kills it.

From kindergarten through college, cultural regressives control education, manipulating the feelings of other people’s children and filtering out ideas (otherwise known as censorship) that dissent from pagan sexuality dogma. It is mind-boggling that so many orthodox (small “o”) Christians allow  secular academicians (as well as the “beautiful” people)—who are lost in spiritual and intellectual darkness—to inform or deform their hearts and minds and to determine what they say publicly about homoeroticism and marriage.

While “progressives” claim to honor diversity, free speech, and intellectual freedom, the reality is their commitment ends at the bedroom and dungeon doors. Societal health and welfare were enhanced through the influence of Judeo-Christian sexual ethics that rejected the sexual perversion embraced by prior pagan cultures. This cultural health is eroding as Americans embrace pagan sexual perversity and profligacy.

We are witnessing the tragedy of frogs blithely simmering in fetid cultural water, thinking it’s the rejuvenating, liberating water of life.

Written by Laurie Higgins

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Recently at Horace Mitchell Primary School, a K-3 school in Kittery Pointe, Maine, parents were sent a letter explaining that  school guidance counselor Dana Rickerich had read a picture book to 20 of the 22 classes about a boy (yes, an actual boy) who experiences gender confusion—a picture book that the administration clearly deemed age-appropriate. Parents were not notified ahead of time, and, therefore, were not offered the option of exempting their children from exposure to Leftist beliefs about gender confusion.

According to the local press, superintendent Allyn Hutton said this about Rickerich reading I Am Jazz to 5-9-year-olds: “[E]ducating students about transgender people is important because there are students within the district that identify as such.”

First, reading a biased picture book imbued with Leftist beliefs about gender confusion is not “educating.” It’s indoctrinating.

Second, while Hutton may believe it’s important to expose young children to every phenomenon experienced by students in the school or affirmed by their parents, others disagree.

Third, if schools were not permitting cross-dressing and adopting changes in restroom, locker room, and pronoun-use policy that embody Leftist beliefs, young children who cannot possibly understand this psychological disorder would have no need to be “educated” about other students’ disordered desires.

Fourth, there is no justification for indoctrinating students into Leftist ideology on gender confusion.

It is tragic that these parents can never eradicate from the imaginations of their children the confusing and perverse ideas that presumptuous, ignorant government employees have now introduced to them. If these  employees truly understood and respected conservative beliefs, they would weep over what they have done—not merely regret getting caught in the blowback from their own hubris.

The parent of a gender-confused student in this district offered this feckless attempt at justifying the unjustifiable:

Reading ‘I am Jazz’ by Jazz Jennings to students is a way of showing them that gender can be more complicated than just boys and girls. Some people are born somewhere in between. LGBTQ issues should never be classified as a ‘sensitive subject’—there is nothing sensitive about the way we are born. Blonde hair, brown hair, gay, straight, or somewhere in between, we are all people and we all need acceptance.

Unless this parent is referring to children born with objective intersex conditions, he or she is wrong. What, pray tell, is this parent’s proof that some children with no genetic or anatomical disorders are born somewhere in between male and female?

Children born genetically male or female with fully functioning anatomy are boys or girls. It is unproven, subjective, Leftist assumptions that are making this issue unduly complicated. And an issue so fraught with complexity, subjective assumptions, and controversy is wholly inappropriate for 5-9-year-olds.

Further, this parent has no right to impose his or her absolutist belief that homosexuality and gender confusion “should never be classified as a sensitive issue” or the belief that acceptance of people requires affirmation of all their beliefs, desires, or behaviors.

Incidents related to gender confusion are happening with increasing frequency in elementary schools. In some schools, parents of gender-confused students are requesting permission to send letters to all families in their child’s school in which they appeal to the emotions of parents, trying to persuade them that cross-dressing is an appropriate and compassionate response to gender confusion. In other words, they are trying to persuade parents that Leftist assumptions should be adopted and that opposition to Leftist assumptions is cruel.

Perhaps other parents should be permitted to send letters to all families to persuade them of the ways their child is harmed by being forced to share restrooms with opposite sex children, or by being forced to treat cross-dressing as if it’s normal and good, or by being forced to pretend that a boy is a girl by referring to him with opposite sex pronouns.

Would the principal of Horace Mitchell School permit the mother of a 7-year-old boy to whom Rickerich read I am Jazz send a letter to all families sharing the confusion and distress that discussions of Gender Dysphoria caused him and evidenced when he asked his mother “if he was ‘transgender’ or not and also whether or not he could be ‘a girl in love with a girl’”?

Rickerich shares her pernicious Leftist ideology on the school’s website:

Some may think primary school students are too young to worry about addressing issues surrounding gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) students. Not so, experts say. It’s never too early to begin teaching children about respecting differences.

Does Rickerich actually believe that all differences are worthy of respect (which means to hold something in esteem)? One would hope that adults would be wise and prudent enough to know that some “differences” found in the human family are not worthy of esteem.

Now that “LGBTQ” activists are on the verge of hoisting their rainbow flags over public high schools and middle schools, they are arming themselves to take the battle for the hearts and minds of 5-11-year-olds. Ineffectual middle school and high school administrators and teachers—including even followers of Christ—have demonstrated time and time again that they lack the knowledge, wisdom, courage, and integrity to properly engage the enemy. And no matter how “nice” they are or well-intentioned, no matter how prestigious the academic institution from which they graduated or how many advanced degrees they have, those who seek to expose little ones to lies about sexuality and physical embodiment are enemies of God, truth, love, and families.

Emboldened purveyors of perversion seek to change the feelings and beliefs of other people’s children while these children are too young to think critically about an issue of such complexity. Moral regressives do this by deliberately exposing children to biased images and ideas and by censoring dissenting ideas.

So, when the confused parents of a gender-confused student come to your school requesting inappropriate accommodations, here are some questions and concerns that should be posed to school board members before they implement foolish and destructive policies:

1.)  If gender-confused students should not be required to use restrooms or locker rooms with students whose “gender identity” they don’t share, why should other students be compelled to use restrooms or locker rooms with students whose biological sex they don’t share?

 2.)  If there are two distinct phenomenon, biological sex (constituted by objective DNA/anatomy/biology) and “gender identity” (constituted by subjective feelings/desires), why should locker rooms and restrooms be separated according to “gender identity” rather than objective biological sex? What justification is there for subordinating objective biological sex to “gender identity”?

 3.)  Bathrooms and locker rooms have historically corresponded to objective biological sex. Any policy change that allows students to use restrooms and locker rooms that do not correspond to their objective biological sex signifies a deeply troubling policy change. It would mean telling every student that facilities in which private, intimate activities take place no longer correspond to objective biological sex but to subjective feelings about the sex users wish they were.

 Such a policy would teach students that “gender” is not related to or determined by DNA and manifest in biology and anatomy, but that it is determined solely by subjective feelings. Such a policy change would teach young children that their physical embodiment has no inherent, immutable meaning. It would teach them that their maleness or femaleness is wholly detached from physical embodiment, and that maleness or femaleness is determined by thoughts and feelings. This is a momentous and troubling proposition—not a fact—and public schools have no right to teach it either implicitly or explicitly through school policy. Further, no community member has any obligation to accept as true the theory that “gender” has no connection to DNA and anatomy.

5.)  Allowing gender-confused students to use opposite-sex restrooms would teach all students that modesty about one’s body is less important than the subjective feelings of those who experience gender confusion.

Many parents believe that boys should leave a bathroom if a girl enters, and girls should leave a bathroom if a boy enters. How will it make a gender-confused student feel if opposite-sex students who are properly using the correct restroom leave when the gender-confused student enters? Are we now going to tell girls that they have no moral right to leave a restroom when a gender-confused boy enters?

6.)  Regarding “age-appropriateness” of picture books about gender confusion:

First, parents should demand to know what specific criteria are used to determine “age-appropriateness” and specifically who (that means schools must name names) makes the determination regarding age-appropriateness.

Second, the central issue under debate concerns what is objectively true about physical embodiment. Public schools, which are arms of the government, should promote only that which is objectively true. Picture books about gender confusion are always biased, espousing only liberal views of gender confusion and cross-dressing. And a biased presentation of a highly controversial topic constitutes not education but propaganda.

These books are intended to persuade readers—including young impressionable readers—to accept one set of ideas about gender confusion. They are intended to appeal to emotions—not to critically examine the topic. These picture books advance one set of beliefs about the nature of Gender Dysphoria and how best to treat it.

If children are too young to be exposed to both sides of the debate, or if parents of gender-confused children and schools are unwilling to expose students to both sides of the debate, then these picture books and, indeed, this entire topic is age-inappropriate.

7.)  No matter how well-intentioned, a letter from parents of gender-confused children to all families will embody only one set of beliefs about what gender-confusion is and what best serves the child. Such a letter will serve to manipulate the feelings of families and, therefore, is highly inappropriate.

8.)  Changes in restroom policy (as well as letters from parents and picture books) would teach all children in school that compassion requires that others affirm the belief that feelings—not bodies—determine maleness and femaleness. That is a controversial and subjective belief—not an objective fact.

9.)  Changes in restroom policy (as well as letters from parents and picture books) would teach all children in school that it is good to affirm the belief of a gender-confused child that he or she is, in reality, the opposite sex. Arms of the government, which public schools are, have no business affirming as objective truth such a subjective, arguable claim.

10.)  Regarding cross-dressing:

If a gender-confused boy wants to wear distinctly female clothing or a gender-confused girl wants to wear distinctly boys clothing, they themselves recognize that clothing has profound meaning relative to objective biological sex. If that’s the case, the government has no right to tell students that cross-dressing is morally acceptable, or that students shouldn’t notice that a student is cross-dressing, or that students shouldn’t find cross-dressing peculiar or wrong.

If teachers would not tell students that their expressions of disapproval of, for example, skimpy clothes are wrong, then teachers have no right to tell students that their expressions of disapproval of cross-dressing are wrong. Teachers have no ethical right to pick and choose which moral propositions regarding clothing may be expressed and which may be censored.

 11.)  Pronoun use:

Pronouns correspond to objective biological sex—which cannot change. Pronouns do not correspond to the sex people wish they were. There exists no right for one segment of the population to unilaterally change grammar or demand that others subscribe to their novel and self-serving beliefs about grammar and  “gender.”

No school should require either teachers or students to use pronouns that do not correspond to objective biological sex, because such a requirement would constitute the government requiring an employee or student to lie. No arm of the government has the ethical right to require individuals to lie. And no arm of the government has the right to tell its employees or students that compassion requires changing how pronouns are used or what pronouns denote.

Taxpayers must with sense of urgency seek preemptively to establish in policy that restrooms, locker rooms, and pronoun-use correspond to objective biological sex. These issues are not trivial. We should know that by the passion and tenacity with which the Left pursues them. The policy changes that “progressives” are pursuing will necessarily teach lies  to all children about physical embodiment, cross-dressing, modesty, and compassion.

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with Dr. Erwin Lutzer

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The Day of Silence, which is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), fast approaches. This year it will take place in most public schools on Friday, April 17.

On this day, thousands of public high schools and increasing numbers of middle schools will allow students to remain silent throughout an entire day-even during instructional time-to promote GLSEN’s socio-political goals.

Parents must actively oppose this hijacking of the classroom for political purposes. Please join the national effort to restore to public education a proper understanding of the role of government-subsidized schools.

You can help de-politicize the learning environment by calling your child out of school if your child’s school allows students to remain silent during instructional time on the Day of Silence.

If students will be permitted to remain silent, parents can express their opposition most effectively by calling their children out of school on the Day of Silence and sending letters of explanation to their administrators, their children’s teachers, and all school board members. One reason this is effective is that most school districts lose money for each student absence.

School administrators err when they allow the classroom to be disrupted and politicized by granting students permission to remain silent throughout an entire day.

Visit www.doswalkout.net for complete information on opposing the Day of Silence.

TAKE ACTION

1. Call your local schools and ask whether they permit students or teachers to remain silent in the classroom on “Day of Silence.” IMPORTANT: Do not ask any administrator, school board member, or teacher if the school sponsors, endorses, or supports DOS. Schools do not technically sponsor the Day of Silence. Technically, it is students, often students in the gay-straight alliance, who sponsor it. Many administrators will tell you that they do not sponsor the DOS when, in fact, they do permit students and sometimes even teachers to remain silent during instructional time. Also ask administrators whether they permit teachers to create lesson plans to accommodate student silence.

2. Find out what date the event is planned for your school. (The national date in 2015 is Friday, April 17, but some schools observe DOS on a different date).

3. Inform the school of your intention to keep your children home on that date and explain why.

This alert was originally posted at the American Family Association website.

Written by Linda Harvey

On a day when the truth is suppressed and sin exalted, why let our children participate?

A broad coalition of pro-family groups recommends that students stay away from school on Friday, April 17, 2015 the national “Day of Silence,” if the school is officially recognizing and/or encouraging students to observe this event during instructional time by a silent protest. High schools and even some middle schools are now the focus of this event.

The Day of Silence goal is not, as I am told frequently by outraged emails from misinformed students, to “help end all bullying.” The real goal is to exploit the tender sympathies of kids to promote homosexuality and gender confusion. The agenda is everything, Judeo-Christian morality is the enemy—and sadly, kids are the tools.

GLSEN teaches students that homosexuals and gender confused people are “silenced” and under persecution by those who object to this behavior, and that traditional moral concerns cause bullying. No hard, objective data exists to support this contention, and the event itself causes hostility, confusion, and division.

Here are ten reasons I believe Christian students in particular and possibly even teachers and staff should refuse to honor this event by school attendance:

1. A silent protest in support of immoral, God-dishonoring behavior is in itself profoundly deceptive. All sexual behavior outside man/woman marriage is sinful in God’s eyes. Why should Christian students and teachers be in the position of accommodating this flagrant violation of their principles?

2. Any explicit or implicit message encouraging teens and even younger students to experiment freely with homosexual behavior is not “social justice” or “tolerance,“ but actually, child corruption.

3. Allowing classroom silence to honor the Day of Silence unleashes tremendous peer pressure for students and even teachers to endorse sexual immorality, or be considered “enemies” of those peers and teachers proudly involved in homosexuality. This puts people of faith in the position of violating Christian doctrine through tacit approval ( Romans 16:17-18; Ephesians 5:11). They are also intimidated into self-censoring their First Amendment rights.

4. The Day of Silence encourages students to nurture prejudiced, hostile and bigoted attitudes against Christians and others with traditional moral beliefs, and to spread inaccurate and harmful information.

5. Using legitimate concerns about bullying and teen suicide to advance the promotion of homosexuality in schools is educational malpractice. It’s totally unnecessary to stop bullying and prevent harm to students, and Christians should not be a party to this gross distortion of a genuine problem. No one needs to embrace homosexuality or gender confusion in order to prevent bullying, but GLSEN routinely takes this deceitful position.

6. Teachers know harassment when they see it. They can simply say, “Cut it out!” But GLSEN and the Day of Silence pressures teachers to amend this to, “Cut it out, because you are only permitted to say good things about homosexuality!” When did we all sign up to become public relations agents for the good reputation of homosexuality? This viewpoint discrimination forces an untruthful and ungodly agenda on staff members, when stopping verbal harassment can be accomplished without becoming champions of “gay” behavior.

7. There are legitimate lessons students should learn about prejudice and bias. But Day of Silence promoters deceptively link moral objections about homosexuality to racial discrimination or anti-Semitism in an attempt to legitimize the pro-homosexual agenda and portray homosexuals as perennial victims, while disguising the harmfulness and risk.

8. Teachers have used the DOS to inappropriately become classroom advocates and models of this deviant behavior. In one Ohio school, a teacher used a Power Point to tell students about her “gay” support and even disclosed to students that she was a lesbian, without prior notice to parents or permission from her principal.

9. The health and lifestyle risks of homosexuality are virtually never shared on the Day of Silence. Instead, students are given the deceitful impression that homosexuality is just as safe and worthy an identity as heterosexual dating and marriage.

10. The DOS message inhibits Christians from witnessing to their peers caught up in homosexuality or gender confusion. There is salvation through Jesus Christ and the hope of leaving this sin behind. Calling homosexuality a sin on the Day of Silence would be considered “hateful,” when it is actually God-honoring and respectful to the hearer. It may lead them to an eternal home with God. But that won’t happen if the truth is suppressed, which it always is on the Day of Silence. Stay home that day, and choose to witness on another, where perhaps you will have a fair chance of being heard.

For more information about the DOS Walkout, go HERE.

Originally posted at MissionAmerica.com.

Since Christians are sending their children to government schools—often out of necessity—where they will be taught that soul-destroying homoerotic activity is good and that disapproval of it is hateful, parents should be aware of what many liberal teachers think of them and their beliefs.

Rich Robinson, homosexual high school English teacher from Freeport High School in Freeport, Maine sends email messages to IFI in which he expresses views that many “progressive” teachers hold but are too cagey to admit publicly. Here are two that he sent to IFI recently:

1. “It is nothing short of exhilarating to see Laurie Higgins quiver in anger because a learned and caring nation says her vitriol and Indiana’s covert attempt to discriminate have been called out in grand fashion. Laurie, own your hate. State your hate. Terms like homoerotic are silly and a reflection of your infantile hurt because you just can’t get your way. Sorry, silly bigot. You just don’t get to deny others because you hate them. Welcome to a world of responsible inclusion.”

2. “Squirm Laurie squirm. Other than today and your implosion from hate, I look forward to June when, perhaps, you will, then, explode in your own version of a nuclear cataclysm brought about by a SCOTUS decision that relegates you to the ancient history of bigotry.”

Yes, nothing says “responsible inclusion” (or tolerance or respect for diversity) quite like the protests against religious liberty that took place in Indiana last week—or the email messages Robinson sends to IFI.

Unfortunately, the government is paying people like this to shape the hearts and minds of other people’s children. The government is paying people like Robinson who think the embrace of homoeroticism is evidence of learnedness and compassion to train up our children in the way they should go.

Robinson waxes indignant that I often use the term “homoeroticism” in addition to “homosexuality.” A few years ago, a homosexual activist in California became similarly enraged because in an email exchange with him I would not kowtow to his demand that I use “gay” rather than “homosexual.” Their rage illuminates the strategic and epistemic importance of language in this culture war.

A note of explanation about my choice of “homoerotic” seems in order.

The term “sexual” denotes both sexual complementarity (or sexual differentiation) and sexual reproduction:

“occurring between or involving the two sexes; reproducing by processes involving both sexes” (Random House Dictionary of the English Language),

“of, pertaining to, or designating reproduction involving the union of male and female gametes” (The American Heritage Dictionary),

“pertaining to sex as concerned in generation or in the processes connected in this” (Oxford English Dictionary)

Another definition of “sexual” pertains to “erotic activity,” but so as to avoid any confusion when discussing same-sex hanky-panky—which is inherently sterile—“homoerotic” seems a more precise and fitting linguistic choice.

The redefinition of terms by homosexual activists and their petulant demands that their terms and theirs alone be used should illuminate why we must resist their demands for linguistic conformity. Like Rumpelstiltskin, homosexuals stamp their angry little feet when their words are found out. Then, trembling with fear, thin-skinned conservatives capitulate, choosing to use the Left’s white-washing diction rather than be called names by no-name-calling, anti-bullying Rumpelstiltskins.

On Friday, April 12, a homosexuality-affirming socio-political protest is taking place at most highs schools and increasing numbers of middle schools. This protest is called the Day of Silence, and it’s sponsored by the partisan, Leftist organization, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), whose raison d’être is to exploit public schools, captive minor audiences, and legitimate anti-bullying sentiment to advance their ultimate goal of eradicating conservative moral beliefs.  Many schools even permit teachers to participate by wearing Day of Silence t-shirts or other paraphernalia.

For example, the “gay”-straight alliance at Glenbard East High School in Lombard, Illinois, PRISM, has been selling Day of Silence t-shirts to students and faculty, many of whom will be wearing them according to a school administrator. Although an announcement was made to students and teachers were invited to participate, parents were  not notified, nor is the Day of Silence identified on the school website or school calendar.

Parents should be demanding that school administrations notify all parents that the Day of Silence is taking place, that GLSEN is the sponsoring organization, that both students may be refusing to speak in class, and that teachers may be participating by wearing Day of Silence paraphernalia.

For a better sense of what is taking place within schools, click here to see a snapshot of what took place in a New York middle school four years ago:

Conservative students and teachers know full well that the Day of Silence is aimed at silencing the expression of conservative moral beliefs, which makes this annual event a day of discomfort for those who don’t affirm GLSEN’s beliefs about homosexuality.

In a recent Huffington Post article titled “I Have Come To Indoctrinate Your Children Into the LGBTQ Agenda (And I’m Not a Bit Sorry),” homosexual activist S. Bear Bergman makes clear the ultimate intent of homosexual activism—which is not to end bullying:

I am here to tell you: All that time I said I wasn’t indoctrinating anyone with my beliefs about gay and lesbian and bi and trans and queer people? That was a lie. All 25 years of my career as an LGBTQ activist, since the very first time as a 16-year-old I went and stood shaking and breathless in front of eleven people to talk about My Story, I have been on a consistent campaign of trying to change people’s minds about us…. That is absolutely my goal. I want to make your children like people like me and my family, even if that goes against the way you have interpreted the teachings of your religion. I want to be present in their emotional landscapes as a perfectly nice dad and writer who is married to another guy. Who used to be a girl (kind of)….

….That is our job: to encourage people, especially children, to think differently about a subject than they do now. To…allow the light of truth and fairness to shine in.…

At the moment, I am helping to put the finishing touches on a series of children’s books that all feature lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer kids or families. There are six books…filled with girls and women doing cool things, page upon page of kids enacting their own identities in joyous and peaceful ways…. hey have lesbian mums and gay dads and big extended queer chosen families; some are gender-independent.

…

If that makes me an indoctrinator, I accept it. Let me be honest — I am not even a little bit sorry.

A national coalition of pro-family organizations is urging parents to keep their children home from school on the Day of Silence if their school will be permitting students to refuse to speak in class or if faculty, staff, or administrators will be wearing Day of Silence paraphernalia, including t-shirts. Click here and scroll down to see all coalition partners.

Keeping children home for one day to protest the exploitation of public schools does not prevent students from being salt and light, which they can do on the other 185 days of the school year.

And keeping kids home is not directed at students who experience unchosen same-sex attraction.

Rather, keeping kids home on this one day is a protest against administrations that are allowing Leftist political events into the classroom and allowing teachers to participate. If conservatives continue in their acquiescence, pro-homosexual activism will increase and further metastasize into our elementary schools.

The next time someone points out that Millennials—including even Christian Millennials—are becoming more “gay”-affirming, we should by now know why. And it’s not because they are organically “evolving” in the direction of truth and wisdom. This particular arc of the moral universe has been deliberately bent and not toward justice.

Last Call for IFI’s Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

CLICK HERE for Details

In a recent article about the upcoming political protest in public schools sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), I referred to the “sickening sweetness” of increasing numbers of Christians. By that expression, I am not suggesting that Christians are sickening, as in disgusting. Nor am I referring to civility, kindness, compassion, or genuine love—which is inseparable from mercy, grace, truth, holiness, and justice.

Rather, “sickening sweetness” refers to the superficial “niceness” that so often passes for love within the body of Christ. It’s the equivalent of sugary candy that tastes oh-so-yummy, but provides no nourishment, nothing that can restore health to dying people. It sickens, rather than strengthens. Its sweetness attracts and deceives, making consumers feel good for a moment but contributing only to decay and death. It’s a cheap, easy counterfeit of biblical love, which Christians exploit to conceal the truth that they are avoiding the costly way of Christ. It ignores eternity while paving the way to eternal destruction.

When I refer to the sickening sweetness of Christians, I’m describing those Christians who misuse—make that torture—Scripture to argue that Christian bakers should make wedding cakes for homosexual anti-weddings.

I’m referring to Christians who misuse Scripture to defend keeping kids in school on the Day of Silence even as administrators and faculty use their schools to promote homosexuality as equivalent to heterosexuality and good.

I’m referring to Christians—including public school teachers and church leaders—who say nothing as five-year-olds are exposed to positive images of and assumptions about homosexuality and gender confusion in our taxpayer-funded schools.

I’m referring to Christians—including teachers and church leaders—who said nothing when the sacrilegious and egregiously obscene homosexuality-affirming play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes was taught at Deerfield and Highland Park High Schools or when the deceitful Laramie Project is taught virtually everywhere.

I’m referring to Christians—including teachers and church leaders—who said nothing when The Perks of Being a Wallflower was included by public school teachers on a middle school recommended book list in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

I’m referring to Christians—including teachers and church leaders—who say nothing when schools decide that restrooms no longer correspond to objective biological sex but rather to the disordered desires of confused children.

The exegetical positions that theological contortionists twist themselves into in their effort to avoid acting in accordance with Scripture on matters related to serving or attending same-sex anti-weddings are evident when Christians say, “But Jesus spent time with sinners, including even prostitutes and tax collectors.” Christians who say this conveniently omit inconvenient parts of these biblical accounts. Jesus didn’t merely hang out, eat,  and chew the fat with sinners. He spent time with them, defining what constitutes sin, and calling them to repent of their sins and follow him.

And Jesus did not spend his time with sinners facilitating, participating in, or celebrating their sin. Jesus would not help a prostitute solicit johns or celebrate her career path. Jesus would not help tax collectors cheat their neighbors or celebrate their ill-gotten gains. Jesus did not sit passively by smiling benignly in the presence of men and women who were lost in spiritual darkness and at risk of spending eternity separated from God.

Some who claim to be Christians say that God does not hate, ignoring that God does, indeed, hate. He hates sin and so too should followers of Christ, even as we love those in need of the redemption we have found through God’s grace.

Purveyors of sickening sweetness claim that Christ came to bring peace, ignoring that he also came not to bring peace but a sword that will divide even families.

The peace Jesus brings is a peace constituted by reconciliation with a holy God. This peace does not include, nor will permit affirmation and celebration of acts that God abhors.

Since the fall of man, there has been enmity between God and Satan. Jesus came to bring peace by destroying the enemy—not by affirming and celebrating the sinful activity in which Satan tempts humans to engage.

Some Christians offer the unbiblical argument that Christians should never be angry, whereas God commands us to be angry, but sin not. The salient questions are what constitutes a sinful expression of anger, and what constitutes a sinful absence of anger about that which we should feel and express anger.

In a novel but futile attempt to ennoble cowardice, Andrew Walker writing on First Things advocates fiscal fungibility. He penned an open letter from a fictitious Christian baker to his customers acknowledging that he would be caving in to Leftist tyranny and bake cakes for homoerotic anti-weddings, but that he would donate his 30 pieces of silver to organizations that are willing to suffer for Christ.

Walker argues unpersuasively that “If Caesar insists that bakers must be made to bake cakes or else close up shop, we’re going to see to it that Caesar’s edicts get undermined by channeling resources designed to fight Caesar.”

I think Jesus said something slightly different: “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22: 21). Our gifts, time, and labor are God’s.

In a blog post Jessica Kantrowitz argues that  Jesus’ command to his followers that “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles” constitutes a mandate to provide goods and services for same-sex faux-marriages.

It’s important to note that Kantrowitz admits to believing that “gay marriage” is not immoral,” so we know that even as she cites Scripture as the authority for baking cakes for same-sex faux-marriages, she rejects biblical authority on both marriage and homoeroticism.

Kantrowitz ignores critical differences between being commanded to carry a soldier’s pack and being asked to bake an anti-wedding cake. In the first instance, a Christian is being forced to do something, whereas in the contemporary case, a baker is being asked. Second, there is nothing inherently immoral about carrying a pack for someone—not even for a Roman soldier—whereas volitionally making a cake to adorn a homosexual anti-wedding is, indeed, immoral.

The only way that creating a product to enhance an anti-wedding can be construed as morally neutral would be to argue that an anti-wedding is ontologically identical to a true wedding. But at some level even Leftists must recognize that as false. Would Kantrowitz make this argument in regard to a commitment ceremony between a 40-year-old and a 14-year-old? Would she make the same argument in regard to a commitment ceremony between two brothers? If plural unions are legalized—as they will be in the not too distant future—would she argue that Christian bakers have a biblical mandate to create goods and provide services for a polygamous or polyamorous wedding?

Would she make this argument in regard to a commitment ceremony between a person and an animal? This is not to suggest that a homosexual anti-wedding is identical to a zoophile’s anti-wedding. It’s to suggest that Kantrowitz likely holds a prior and unspoken assumption about same-sex faux weddings. In addition to believing that they are inherently moral, which she has already admitted believing, she likely believes same-sex anti-weddings are, in reality, weddings.

What if the government commanded Christian restaurant-owners to refuse to serve blacks? Would Kantrowitz cite Matthew 5:41 as proof that Christians have a biblical obligation to comply? Is Matthew 5:41 an absolute command for Christians always to do the bidding of non-Christians, including when force is not involved and the act requested violates Scripture? Was Jesus’ command intended to compel Christians to carry a pack that they knew would serve a profound evil and even to do more in the service of the evil? Would Kantrowitz argue that as a Christian she has a biblically mandated duty to engage in an activity that she believes is profoundly immoral and which she believes God detests (e.g., refusing to serve blacks in her restaurant or providing goods for a “wedding” between a human and an animal).

And then there are those other pesky biblical passages that point uncomfortably to God’s countercultural mandate:

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. (Eph. 5:11)

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1: 2-4)

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. (Mark 8:34-35)

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name. (1 Pet. 4: 12-16)

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. (John 15: 18-21)

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. (Matt: 10: 34) 

 [A]nd anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Matt. 10: 38)

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matt. 5: 10, 11)

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. (2 Cor. 4: 1-2)

How many rationalizations will Christians, in their fear and desperation, attempt in order to avoid doing what they must know is expected from those who claim to love Jesus? God is calling his people in America to deny themselves, to take up their crosses and follow him, and to rejoice when people falsely say all kinds of evil against us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this in The Cost of Discipleship:

The messengers of Jesus will be hated to the end of time. They will be blamed for all the division which rend cities and homes. Jesus and his disciples will be condemned on all sides for undermining family life, and for leading the nation astray; they will be called crazy fanatics and disturbers of the peace. The disciples will be sorely tempted to desert their Lord. But the end is also near, and they must hold on and persevere until it comes. Only he will be blessed who remains loyal to Jesus and his word until the end.

And let’s not forget that our children are watching us. Perhaps we can set an example of courageous, faithful self-sacrifice for them, and perhaps we can gain a moment more of freedom for them and their children.

IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

CLICK HERE for Details

The halcyon days for Christians in America are over. A time of persecution and stigmatization of Christians is just over the horizon. It’s time for Christians to wipe the gold dust from their eyes left over from over two hundred years of American history during which Christians were left largely unmolested outside their pews and homes, welcome to exercise their religion even in the public square.

The central driving force behind the circumscription of religious liberty and the coming persecution is the pro-“queer” juggernaut that is moving with blinding speed through the culture, aided and abetted by the cowardice and sickening sweetness of American Christians.

Pastor and theologian Doug Wilson warns about the “besetting sin” of Evangelicals—which, unfortunately, besets other Christians as well—and has greatly contributed to the rapid destruction of marriage and the infiltration of government schools by perversity pushers:

The entire sexuality battle is about approval….We are being maneuvered into the place where we start using ethical air quotes. “Well, I do ‘disapprove’ of this behavior, and yet, will do absolutely nothing to express that disapproval in a way that might be taken as disapproving.”…

Evangelicals are nice, there is no getting around it. It is our besetting sin. That means about the worst thing you can tell us is that we are being mean to somebody. Maybe that meanness is turning someone away from Jesus. Our niceness is the steering wheel that we always want to put our critics behind. Not surprisingly, they always steer us straight into compromise.

But actually one of the biggest stumbling blocks that we really do manufacture is this great idol of Nice. When someone is turned away from Christ because some Christian was mean, everybody notices it. But when we have turned the whole world off because we are nicer than a hailstorm of cotton balls, nobody notices that problem at all.

For the umpteenth year and in the umpteenth way, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight “Education” Network (GLSEN) has steered Christians into a compromise with the Day of Silence, just one of their dizzying array of activities that infect public schools. GLSEN urges children and teens to refuse to speak for an entire day, including during class, to draw attention to the silenced voices of homosexuals.

GlSEN’s propagandizing pedants exploit government schools and captive audiences to promote the normalization of homosexuality, and all the while, sheeplike conservatives silently submit like lambs to ideological slaughter. It’s getting to look less like a compromise and more like a surrender.

A national coalition of organizations committed to religious liberty, parents’ and children’s rights, and ethical education are urging parents to stop compromising and keep their children home from school on the Day of Silence, which will take place in middle and high schools around the country.

Here is what the Day of Silence, sponsored and promoted by GLSEN is not:

1. It is not centrally, solely, or most saliently about bullying.
2. It is not about education.
3. It is not a day during which Christian children and teens should be expected to be missionaries or apologists for sexual truth.

Here’s what the Day of Silence is:

1. It is a Leftist political event.
2. It is a propaganda event designed and intended to eradicate conservative moral beliefs about volitional homoerotic acts and/or to make it socially impossible to express them.
3. It is disruptive to the educational environment and process.

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

Seriously, that’s what they claim.

In most cases, I think the real motive for their proposal represents a flailing about for some sort of defense of yet more passive acquiescence. Some Christians are desperate to rationalize compliance and conformity. Their proposal fails to take into account three tiny realities: 1. the nature of adolescents, 2. the nature of public schools,3. the nature of the Christian role models most Christian teens have had in their lives.

Children and teens are not missionaries. It’s not their job in school to teach ethics or engage in apologetics. I’m not suggesting that children and teens shouldn’t do these things. I’m arguing that these are the years that children and teens should be trained up in the way they should go. Their formal educational context should not be a place of emotional intimidation, political indoctrination, and affirmation of falsehoods as truth. Sound, holistic education and training precede the mission field.

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

Adolescents have a powerful desire to fit in. Peer pressure and the prospect of ridicule and ostracism make countercultural witnessing to truth almost impossible for teens who are not yet fully mature. I would argue that the current state of Christendom reveals that few adult Christians have matured much beyond adolescence and matured far too little in their faith.

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

How many Christian lawmakers speak boldly (and articulately) in defense of marriage, or against adoption by homosexuals, or against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)?

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

How many priests and pastors preach on homosexuality or teach on it in other contexts, expounding equally on both loving the sinner and hating the sin (an expression, by the way, that homosexuals detest)?

How many pastors, priests, and elders submit letters to the press on cultural issues related to homosexuality or show up at school board meetings to oppose the inclusion of homosexuality-affirming books in curricula or on recommended reading lists in the schools children in their flocks attend?

And yet some Christians expect Christian teens and children, most of whom have witnessed very little bold truth-telling from the adult role models in their lives and who have been inculcated with lies from the culture, to do what their parents and church leaders steadfastly refuse to do.

If Christian kids were to speak truth in the classroom, for example when discussions of homosexuality arise, they would have to hold their own against multiple students and often their teachers, and then have to remain in school for the rest of the day, for the rest of the week, for the rest of the school year.

Most parents and church leaders won’t attend a school board meeting to make a two-minute statement about an inappropriate book after which they can leave and never see the school board members or attendees again. Tenured Christian teachers won’t speak out during department meetings or professional development meetings because of fear buttressed by a specious, unbiblical notion that niceness trumps truth.

Far too few children have truth-telling, courageous role models—not in their homes, not in their churches, and certainly not in their schools. Adult Christians attempt to justify their unjustifiable cowardice by fretting that they may suffer repercussions for standing up for truth. They will speak out if and only if they’re guaranteed that doing so will be cost-free. Word to American Christians, God has guaranteed that being a follower of Christ is costly.

In addition, children and teens lack understanding of the fallacies that drive the pro-homosexual and pro-gender confusion inanity. And why would we expect them to be able to do so? Most adult Christians are unable to offer an intelligent critique of homosexualist dogma from either a theological or secular perspective.

Rod Dreher senior editor at the American Conservative, describes what we are doing to our children:

We have allowed our children to be catechized by the culture and have produced an anesthetizing religion suited for little more than being a chaplaincy to the liberal individualistic order…. [H]ow can we produce Christian civic life when we are not producing authentic Christians?

Keeping kids home from school one day a year for a countercultural mini-effort to protect them from GLSEN’s indoctrination and to tell administrations and school boards in the language they understand (i.e., lost revenue) that you object to disruptive political stunts events in the classroom is a way to ease into non-compromise.

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Last month, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone published a statement on Catholic teaching derived from the Catechism of the Catholic Church that he intends to add to the faculty and staff handbook that governs four Catholic high schools in his diocese. This much-needed statement has generated a nationwide dust-up. He has received both support and opposition, but as usual the usual “progressive” suspects are the most cacophonous.

Here’s an excerpt from Cordileone’s statement, which makes clear what is required of administrators, faculty, and staff:

As effective professionals in a Catholic School setting, we all—administrators, faculty and staff—are  required and expected to avoid fostering confusion among the faithful and any dilution of the schools’ primary Catholic mission. Therefore, administrators, faculty and staff of any faith or of no faith, are expected to arrange and conduct their lives so as not to visibly contradict, undermine or deny these truths. To that end, further, we all must refrain from public support of any cause or issue that is explicitly or implicitly contrary to that which the Catholic Church holds to be true.

Further, those who identify as Catholic have even more rigorous expectations, especially teachers:

[A]ll administrators, faculty and staff who are Catholics, and particularly those engaged as classroom teachers, have an even higher calling, according to which they must not only avoid public contradiction of their status as professional agents in the mission of Catholic Education, but are also called to conform their hearts, minds and consciences, as well as their public and private behavior, ever more closely to the truths taught by the Catholic Church.

Apparently, faculty and staff are shocked, shocked to find Catholic doctrine going on in Catholic schools. Now, 80% of them have signed a petition objecting to the requirement that Catholic teachers affirm Catholic doctrine.

And to which tenets of Catholic doctrine do these teachers in Catholic high schools object? Apparently, their objections focus on Catholic teaching related to sexuality and abortion.

It should come as no surprise to regular IFI readers to learn that an English teacher is among the dozen teachers who created the teacher petition opposing Cordileone’s statement. Jim Jordan, chair of the English Department at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory in San Francisco, expresses these deep thoughts:

As teachers, we are not only seeking to preserve a safe and vibrant community that supports education and the free exchange of ideas, but the safety and well-being of our students. This language in this judgmental context undermines the mission of Catholic education and the inclusive, diverse and welcoming community we prize at our schools. It is an attack not only on teachers’ labor and civil rights, but on young people who are discovering who they are in the world.

Several thoughts about Jordan’s thoughts:

1.)  Requiring Catholic teachers in private Catholic schools to affirm Catholic doctrine does not prohibit the free exchange of ideas on the parts of students. Nor does it prevent teachers from exposing students to multiple points of view. It simply requires that teachers publicly affirm Catholic beliefs as truth.

2.)  Students are not made “unsafe” upon hearing in a Catholic school that Catholic doctrine views contraception as “morally unacceptable,” or that “adultery, masturbation, fornication, the viewing of pornography and homosexual relations” are “gravely evil,” or that “human life is sacred and must be protected”  Students may be uncomfortable when exposed to ideas with which they disagree or that point them toward life choices that oppose unchosen desires, but such discomfort constitutes absence of “safety” only in the infinitely expansive rhetorical universe of homosexualists. And in an academic context in which the “free exchange of ideas” is valued, discomfort should be expected.

3.)  Jordan refers to but does not define student “well-being.” Catholic doctrine has the same goal as Jim Jordan and his pedagogical posse. The Catholic Church understands that God opposes, for example, fornication, feticide, and homoerotic activity, and, therefore, such acts vitiate human flourishing and put at risk eternal life. Affirming that which God condemns undermines student well-being.

4.)  Jordan finds vexing the “judgmental context” of a restatement of Catholic doctrine in a handbook for teachers who teach in Catholic schools. Would Jordan feel similarly incensed if Cordileone required teachers to affirm Catholic teaching on consensual adult incest, which is called a “grave offense” that “marks a regression toward animality”? Would Jordan argue that such judgmental language inhibits the free exchange of ideas or undermines student well-being and safety or that it constitutes an attack on teachers’ civil rights?

5.)  Being a welcoming community does not require the affirmation of all beliefs, all feelings, and all behavioral acts. Certainly, Jesus did not think so.

Catholic moral teaching does, indeed, make judgments about what constitutes moral behavior—as do Jim Jordan and his fellow petition signatories. The problem is that Jordan and his compatriots base their judgments on something other than the Bible.

Jordan feigns opposition to “judgmental contexts” even as he creates a judgement-dripping petition for his colleagues to sign—one which states that “the recently proposed handbook language is harmful to our community and creates an atmosphere of mistrust and fear.”

Since they’re working in Catholic schools, it would behoove these teachers to know that central to the mission of Catholic education is the forging of distinctly Catholic identities in their students. And the mission of Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory’s mission is “to prepare our students to become service-oriented leaders with a commitment to living the Gospel.”

An equally outrageous action has been undertaken by a local governmental body.  The bumptious buttinskies of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who seek to impose their moral beliefs on even Catholic schools, unanimously voted for a resolution  that dogmatically proclaims Cordileone’s statement “contrary to shared San Francisco values of non-discrimination, women’s rights, inclusion, and equality for all humans.” There may have been a typo in their resolution. I think they meant to say “Sodom”—not San Francisco.

The supervisors object specifically to the parts of Cordileone’s statement that identify homosexuality, extra-marital relations, fornication, contraception, pornography use, masturbation, and assisted reproductive technologies as violations of Catholic doctrine.

The supervisors fret that if teachers in Catholic schools should be expected to “conduct their public lives so as to not visibly contradict, undermine or deny these truths,” their personal lives would be impacted. Heaven forbid that Catholic teachers should be expected to refrain from engaging in behavior that God abhors.

Further, the supervisors in all their glorious humility proclaim that “San Francisco is known around the world as a place of inclusion, tolerance, and acceptance of individuals and their life choices, regardless of their…religion.” [emphasis added]

Anticipating that the irony in such a claim might be noticed, the supervisors in all their glorious humility sought to define all religion for all the world: “All religion is rooted in the idea that God is love, which is in parallel to our shared San Francisco values of inclusion.”

I’m not sure how these supervisors arrived at the conclusion that God’s nature “is in parallel to” San Francisco values, but they certainly didn’t arrive at it via the Bible. One of God’s attributes is love, but it’s not the kind of love that involves gentle people wearing flowers in their hair at a San Francisco love-in.

God’s attributes are inseparable. God’s love is inseparable from his holiness, his justice, his immutability, his sovereignty, his wisdom, and his goodness. In 1 Corinthians 13, the “Love Chapter,” we learn, among other things, that love “does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.”

And how do we foolish, fallen humans know what is true? God tells us in his Word what is true. God has told us that homoerotic activity, fornication, adultery, looking at others with lust (i.e., porn use), and murder (e.g., abortion) are wrong.

The supervisors may be correct in one regard. The Catholic beliefs to which Cordileone’s proposed changes allude likely do not comport with “San Francisco values” regarding abortion, homoerotic activity, porn use, and marriage. And apparently San Francisco values don’t comport with San Francisco values regarding non-discrimination, because a lot of San Franciscans endorse discrimination based on religion if the religion in question is Catholicism (or orthodox Christianity).

Here’s another radical proposal: Those who hate Catholic doctrine should seek employment at non-Catholic institutions.

Folks, the Left means it when they say the free exercise of religion extends only to “hearts, homes, and pews.” They desperately want religion out of even religious schools. Translation: in this brave new world, the exercise of religion is not free at all.

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Written by Lisa Ridinger 

I suspect that many of you have listened in horror and dismay, as your child shared with you what they were being taught or exposed to in their public school. With the ever increasing depravity that is constantly being hurled at Christians, and our ever increasing marginalization, two things are clear. First, we as God’s people have become paralyzed, and second,

God’s Heart Is Being Broken

Do we care if God’s Heart is being broken?

One of the more discouraging images that plays in my mind, is seeing myself trying to bear up under a cultural torrential downpour of balls seeking to destroy me, my family, our world, and…the Gospel. For every one ball I am able to fend off, there are 20 more that follow in it’s place. These balls mock me. Calling me a “Hater!”, “Bigot!”, “Pro-life you lie, you don’t care if women die!!”, etc….  Balls that threaten to bury me under a tomb of defeat and despair.

Have you ever felt that way?

One of my biggest fears is to imagine myself, bruised and battered, stooping down to pick up one of those balls, and then just…going…home.

Do I care if God’s Heart is broken?

Do you?

Some would justifiably argue that the moral decline of our schools began in the 1960’s as a result of two landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions: Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), where state-sponsored prayer was prohibited in our public schools. While these decisions were disastrous, I would argue that what was even more disastrous was the silence of God’s people. As my friend Jacquie would say, “All you could hear were the crickets, crickets, crickets…”

Do I care if God’s Heart is broken?

Do you?

Although it may appear that I am taking a circuitous route in discussing the issue at hand, comprehensive sex-ed, the fact of the matter is I can offer you a “what to do/what not to do” list when approaching your school, and I will in the future, but this list will be meaningless if we remain paralysed in our chairs, in our schools, in our communities, and in our fear….

Do we care if God’s Heart is broken?

One of my best-loved quotes is by MLK Jr., and is especially sobering, given the persecution and martyrdom of our fellow believers in Christ throughout the world:

“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue…. And you refuse to do so because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer… You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand. Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”

Do I care if God’s Heart is broken?

Do you?

Confession # 1: I am not now nor have I ever been a member of a conspiracy group.

That said, enthusiastic supporters of more, more, and MORE federal bureaucratic intrusion into the lives of parents, students, and public education via Common Core Standards/PARCC tests/Pearson Publishing just may turn me into one.

Yet another troubling revelation about PARCC testing is coming to light. In the past few hours, parents began to learn that Pearson Publishing, the company that produces Common Core-aligned PARCC tests, is spying on students monitoring the social media of all students during PARCC tests and tattling on potential cheaters to the Department of Education via Priority 1 Alerts which then go to the students’ administrations where discipline is expected to be meted out to the student miscreant.

The incident that is generating outrage took place at Watchung Hills Regional High School in Warren, New Jersey. Late Monday night a Watchung Hills testing-coordinator received a call from someone in the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) reporting a testing “breach.”

While monitoring all test-takers’ Twitter accounts, the Pearson-created spy system detected what it thought was an unlawful “tweet” and went into full-blown KGB-mode, alerting the New Jersey Department of Education who then notified the school and recommended the gulag student-discipline. Even more troubling, apparently the Priority I cheater-Alert was incorrect.

Justifiably troubled by the spying and worried about the effect the revelation of spying may have on support for PARCC testing, Superintendent Elizabeth Jewett sent this email to her colleagues:

Good morning all,

Last night at 10PM, my testing coordinator received a call from the NJDOE that Pearson had initiated a Priority 1 Alert for an item breach within our school. The information the NJDOE initially called with was that there was a security breach DURING the test session, and they suggested the student took a picture of a test item and tweeted it. After further investigation on our part, it turned out that the student had posted a tweet (NO PICTURE) at 3:18PM (after school) that referenced a PARCC test question. The student deleted the tweet and we spoke with the parent—who was obviously highly concerned as to her child’s tweets being monitored by the DOE. The DOE informed us that Pearson is monitoring all social media during PARCC testing. I have to say that I find that a bit disturbing—and if our parents were concerned before about a conspiracy with all of the student data, I am sure I will be receiving more letters of refusal once this gets out (not to mention the fact that the DOE wanted us to also issue discipline to the student). I thought this was worth sharing with the group.

–          Liz

Elizabeth C. Jewett
Superintendent
Watchung Hills Regional High School District
108 Stirling Rd.
Warren, NJ 07059

Confession #2: I am wholly opposed to cheating in any form, from electronic cheating to sly-eyes peaking. Opposition to cheating, however, does not justify spying on students. The ends of curtailing cheating most decidedly do not justify the means of monitoring social media. Add this to the list of reasons to opt your children out of PARCC testing–or better yet, public schools.

The Truth Project

First Annual IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

CLICK HERE for Details

If you have school age children, contact your administration as soon as possible to ask this specific question: Will you be permitting students to refuse to speak in class on the Day of Silence? If the administration either answers “Yes” or dodges the question, please call your child or children out of school on the Day of Silence. Every absence costs districts money, and money talks.

Also, if your school will be permitting students to refuse to speak in class, politely insist that an email be sent to every family informing them of the following: 1. The Day of Silence will be taking place in classes on April 17, 2. Students will be permitted to refuse to speak during instructional time, 3.  The Day of Silence is organized and promoted by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

Parents have a right to know.

The Day of Silence is the queen of all the numerous homosexuality-affirming activities that take place in public schools. It started in one university and then like a cancer metastasized to thousands of high schools, and then into middle schools. Before long it will take place in elementary schools. Leftists know that it’s easier to indoctrinate 16-year-olds than 36-year-olds and easier still to indoctrinate 6-year-olds.

GLSEN promotes the Day of Silence as an “anti-bullying” effort. If it were solely about eradicating bullying, everyone—liberals and conservatives alike—would support it. But it’s not.

The Day of Silence exploits government schools, captive audiences, and anti-bullying sentiment to advance the Left’s social, moral, and political beliefs and goals. GLSEN seeks to advance the belief that all public expressions of moral disapproval of homosexual activity are bullying.

GLSEN urges students to refuse to speak all day, including during academic classes, which is disruptive to instructional time. Administrators permit students to refuse to speak in class, and teachers feel compelled to create lesson plans to accommodate student-refusal to speak. Teachers feel that if they don’t accommodate student-refusal to speak, they will be seen as supporting the bullying of self-identified homosexual students.

The little unspoken secret is that many teachers on both sides of the political aisle hate the Day of Silence because of the distraction and disruption it creates. Unfortunately, they’re afraid to say that to their administrations because GLSEN and its ideological acolytes proclaim that opposition to the Day of Silence necessarily means endorsement of bullying. The truth is one can both oppose bullying and oppose the Day of Silence.

The homosexuality-affirming legal organizations Lambda Legal and the ACLU have both stated that students have no legal right to refuse to speak in class, so school administrations have every right to require students to participate verbally in class. And teachers have every right to require students to answer questions, give oral presentations or speeches, or participate in debates or discussions.

A coalition of pro-family organizations is once again urging parents to keep their children home from school on the Day of Silence if their school administrations will be allowing students to politicize instructional time by refusing to speak. This is the only organized national effort to oppose any pro-homosexual activity or event in public schools.

Each year through the Day of Silence Walkout, parents of freshmen learn about the Day of Silence. And remarkably, there are parents of sophomores, juniors, and seniors who learn for the first time that the Day of Silence takes place in their children’s schools. This lack of awareness happens because school administrations do not notify parents about the Day of Silence.

The absence of conservative influence within the culture on issues related to homosexuality is to some extent the fault of conservatives. Ignorance, fear, and an astounding lack of perseverance on the parts of conservatives have turned our cultural institutions—including public education—into the playground of “progressives.” Our passivity has enabled homosexual activists and their ideological allies to become social, political, and pedagogical bullies. Evidence of that is everywhere, including in schools on the GLSEN’s annual April school event, the Day of Silence.

We must demonstrate the boldness and perseverance of the Left if we hope to stop the relentless appropriation of public education for the promotion of homosexuality.

Matt Barber, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, BarbWire

Dr. Michael Brown, Director, Coalition of Conscience

Brian Camenker, President, MassResistance

Linda Harvey, Founder and President, Mission America

Laurie Higgins, Cultural Analyst, Illinois Family Institute

Peter LaBarbera, President, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality

Diane Gramley, President, American Family Association of Pennsylvania

Matt Staver, President, Liberty Counsel

Debra Smith, Founder, Informing Christians

Tom Rasmussen, Executive Director, Montana Family Foundation

Pastor Scott Lively, President, Abiding Truth Ministries

Penny Nance, President, CWA

Debbie Leininger, State Director, CWA of Illinois

Beverly Uhlmer Roberts, State Director, CWA of Texas South

Linda Wall, VA Mass Resistance

Nolan Clayton, Faith and Freedom Family Ministries

Pastor Christopher Clegg, Operation Save America