Written by Stoyan Zaimov

A pro-life political scientist published research finding that as much as $16 trillion in federal revenue has been lost due to on-demand abortions in America.

“The figure of 55 million persons aborted, typically reported by pro-life groups, is a significant undercount,” says Mark Olson, a political consultant who describes himself as a former liberal activist. “Abortions did not magically begin occurring in 1973, yet that is when everyone starts counting.”

The website for the Abolition Ebook features a ticking timer of money supposedly lost due to abortions in the U.S. Olson claims that his research used pre-Roe vs. Wade estimates and includes the generations of offspring that would have been born to people who were aborted. The results suggest that the U.S. has suffered a population loss of over 125 million people.

Olson adds: “We can argue over a balanced budget amendment or tax and spend policies, but the reality is that we have lost over 125 million persons — no liberal or conservative economic policy can make up for that loss. We need to stop destroying our most precious economic resource, our people.”

Other pro-life supporters have also attempted to calculate the cost of abortion, with cultural apologist Dr. Jim Denison pointing out in a 2013 article for The Christian Post that over 55 million lives have been aborted since the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in 1973.

“Since Roe, more than 55 million lives have been aborted. According to the Movement for a Better America, the resulting labor lost to our nation will cost our future GDP some $45 trillion,” Denison wrote.

“By comparison, our national debt stands at $16 trillion. Consider the impact on Social Security: each day for the next 19 years, 10,000 baby boomers will turn 65. At current trends, Social Security will be bankrupt in 21 years. One major reason: of the generation under 45 whose taxes support Social Security, a third was aborted.”

Abortion remains a controversial topic in America, though poll results byRasmussen Reports released in July reveled that pro-life voters are “at an all-time high.”

A survey of 1,000 people noted that 44 percent of likely voters identified themselves as “pro-life,” versus 48 percent who self-identified as “pro-choice.” The previous 2012 Rasmussen poll on the topic had found that only 38 percent of voters identified as pro-life, while in 2013 it was 43 percent.

This article was originally posted at the ChristianPost.com website.

Providence College English professor, Anthony Esolen, has done it again. He’s written another must-read piece, this time an impassioned plea to Christian parents to pull their children out of public schools.

Esolen importunes parents to fulfill our God-given obligation to train up our children in the way they should go, which means removing our children from what Esolen describes as the “poisonous fog” of public schools where “pornogogues” hold our children’s minds in their depraved ideological grip.

The fact that we continue to place our most precious gifts in toxic public schools for seven hours a day, five days a week for their most crucial formative years is testament to our own lack of wisdom.

For several decades, there have been a relatively small number of Christians warning the church about the cultural degradation and oppression that is coming, and most Christians sashayed on about their worldly business with at best a momentary furrowed brow and at worst  embarrassment to be associated with contemporary prophets and embrace of worldly beliefs.

The intellectual laziness, selfishness, pride, ignorance, and cowardice of many Christians have coalesced into an anemic, effete faith. We are women and men without chests or spines. We practice a faith fed by watered down milk and then send our children to public schools that feed them tainted crumbs. And then we wonder why our youth are rejecting biblical orthodoxy in large numbers.

No more sashaying, people. No more private brow-furrowing. And definitely relinquish your profligate embrace of the harlot.

Christians need to wake up now. We need to pull our kids out of public schools, and churches need to help make this possible.  

Here’s your splash of cold water from the inestimable Anthony Esolen:

Readers of LifeSiteNews are aware of the lawsuit brought by Dr. Steve Tourloukis of Hamilton, Ontario, against the Hamilton-Wentworth school board. He is a devout member of the Orthodox Church, and he wants to be told when the school plans to introduce to his children sexual material that he finds objectionable. The school board does not want to yield. They are standing on principles, such as those are. They believe they are “co-parents,” and that “children have a right to an inclusive education,” which means, simply, they have a “right” to be educated into complete sexual indifference and chaos. For the inclusivity is notably rigid and uniform.

…

We should step back from the specifics of this case to consider just what is going on, and what we should do about it.

Suppose your child returns from visiting his friend next door, and tells you that the father has been showing the boys some interesting films involving, well, boys and girls doing things. What do you do? You call the police. If Mr. Pornogogue the neighbor says, “I believe that we are all co-parents of one another’s children,” and “Every child has a right to a full view of human sexuality,” I doubt that his sententiousness would hold up in court. You might express your rebuttal against his teeth, in the form of a firm fist and knuckles. But here is what you would not do. You would not say, “Mr. Pornogogue, whenever you are going to show those films again, I want you to give me a call beforehand, so that I can make sure that Timmy stays home.”

I mean no disrespect for Dr. Tourloukis, but the point is that the pornogogue is going to do what the pornogogue is going to do. Yes, we should do all we can to palliate conditions in the open sewer; but the main thing is to get out of the sewer. Anyone who desires to subject children to a sexually charged curriculum, from kindergarten through grade twelve, is a pornogogue – maybe a nice pornogogue, a deluded pornogogue, a daft pornogogue – and that person with a depraved imagination is going to do what he or she is going to do. Supposing you could make sure that your child is absent for the five days on the year when the offenses are most rank and smell to heaven. What about all the other days? You are leaving your child’s mind and imagination in the care of someone depraved, in the old sense of that word: bent, crooked, out of kilter. Do you really believe that the stories the teacher chooses, the things the teacher talks about, the casual remarks the teacher makes, the coloring that the teacher gives to Christianity and Christendom, will not be crooked likewise?

Or, suppose you are dealing with a panel of politicians who want to require all children, whether their parents like it or not, to spend one day a year talking to pimps and harlots. Sure, you should labor to exempt as many children as possible from the requirement. But the real problem is that you have such a panel of rogues to begin with. If they say, “We are co-parents, we will determine what is best for your child,” then you have a panel of rogues with a taste for tyranny too – boundless in their assumption of authority. You are no longer the employer of your children’s teachers. You are the serf on the manor, and if you don’t want trouble you will keep your mouth shut.

Someone will have to palliate the harm that the panel does. But once you have arrived at such a pass, it is time to face facts. The thing as a whole is irremediable. You are not going to get anything but harm from Mr. Pornogogue, even if you win a small battle once in a while. You are not going to wrest sanity for children from the totalitarians…. If you have school boards celebrating fornication and sodomy and all the rest of the sexual chaos, you are dealing with something far more brutish than the pagan schools of old. The schools are pagan and worse than pagan. The mildew has penetrated clean through. The termites have chewed the studs into sawdust. The hollow walls are filled with rats’ nests. 

It is time to get out.

…

Do not believe that you’ll save your children by talking to them occasionally at home. A few gulps of good air will not undo the harm of a whole day of poisonous fog. Their classmates, their teachers, their textbooks, the banners on the school’s walls, and the daily announcements will all be against you.

So it’s long past time when people who believe in the holiness of sexuality, marriage, and human life should build new schools, a hundred a year. Yes, it is expensive. But there’s no alternative.

Christians, be courageous and creative. Use church funds and facilities to create schools for those who aren’t able to homeschool. Entreat your members, including retirees, to volunteer their time, knowledge, skills, and wisdom in the establishment of schools dedicated to training up women and men with chests and spines who honor God in word and deed.

As you think more deeply about education, remember that our public schools undermine the capacity of children to think rationally. Instead they teach children to feel sympathy for sin and embarrassment of holiness. Public school teachers hold the one true God in disdain and teach children to worship the self. And then remember that Paul taught the Corinthians to “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” 

Help us be your voice for pro-family values! 

On Monday evening, August 25th, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting a special event at Grace Gospel Fellowship in Bensenville. Our speaker is historian and Pastor Dan Fisher.

Please join us as Pastor Dan brings to life our Christian heritage and forgotten lessons of our past.  Bring your friends, family and neighbors!

Pastor Dan and his fast-paced multi-media presentation will tell the true story of American pastors during the War for Independence who were a primary force  in the fight against tyranny and for liberty.  The  British hated these pastors and gave them the title of the “Black Robed Regiment.”  Pastor Dan illustrates how that, had it not been for the preachers’ strong stand in the 18th century, America would probably not have come to fruition.  He believes that if today’s preachers do not return to the faith and boldness of the Founders and begin to take the same stand as the preachers of the Revolution, America may not survive.

America is facing a crisis today much the same as the one faced  in 1776.  Pastor Dan says it is time for the preachers of America to respond to God’s call and fully engage in the war that is destroying our culture  and will eventually, if not checked, steal away our religious liberty and our opportunity to freely preach the Gospel.

Dan Fisher is the Senior Pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Yukon, Oklahoma.  He is also a state representative from Oklahoma. He was one of the first original Pulpit Freedom Pastors.  He is on the boards of Bott Christian Radio Network, Reclaiming America for Christ, and Vision America, a ministry of evangelist Rick Scarborough based in Houston, Texas.  He is a published author and has a national speaking ministry.

Please  help us promote this event by sending this email and this event flyer to any pastor, neighbor, church friend or patriot who you believe may be interested in attending.

For more information, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.

Support the work and ministry of IFI today! 

Click here  (*WARNING: Repellent photo*) to see what was shown to eight-graders recently at Pine Valley Middle School in (where else) California. It was part of a “humorous” sex education presentation that included hilarious jokes about “women on top” and “douchebags.” This from the crowd that insists on “ factually and medically accurate” and “age-appropriate” sex ed material.

Parents are not amused.

Not surprisingly, comprehensive sex “educators” have no concern about general, unqualified appropriateness in sex ed. Outside of the notion of consent, they have no discernible measures for determining appropriateness. Nothing seems objectively inappropriate to them—no joke, no topic, no perversion is inappropriate. Actually, one wonders if they have a category for perversion. It is a term that seems to no meaning to them.

“Progressive” “educators” will dismiss this “humorous” bloody image as not representative of typical comprehensive sex ed resources, but taxpayers should not be lulled into complacency by their dismissal. Proponents of sexually titillating or graphic resources in public schools will first claim that this image is aberrant—the choice of a rogue, unsupervised teacher. Then behind the scenes they will mock outraged parents as prudish, alarmist, and reactionary. And anyway–according to pontificating “educators”–kids see worse than this on television.

Pay no attention to the fools and deceivers behind the curtain. Our putrescent culture should not dictate what tax dollars subsidize. Education should seek to elevate the human spirit not vomit out our toxic culture to impressionable young minds.

It is hoped that this event will renew agitation about the current state and future of sex education. While Americans are in this agitated state, they should spend some time studying what are essentially common core standards for sex ed. An unholy alliance of the worst organizations working within our public school system have come up with their plan to nationalize sex ed—a plan at least as troubling as the Common Core Standards for English and Math. The National Sexuality Education Standards  were revealed 2 1/2 years ago and have received far too little exposure and critical analysis. As with anything that the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United State (SIECUS); Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN); Planned Parenthood; and the National Education Association (NEA) concoct, these standards intend to expose even our littlest ones to positive images of and ideas about homosexuality and gender confusion.

While taxpayers wait and watch for these standards to come to their children’s classes, they should contact their school’s health teachers and find out if they’re already inculcating children with “progressive” beliefs about homosexuality and if so, if they’re telling students about the horrific health risks that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) identify for the “Men Who Have Sex With Men” (MSM). 

As regular readers of IFI know, I rarely agree with far-left Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, but last Friday he wrote this:

Anyone who has ever lived with 12-year-olds…knows that they’re impulsive, naïve and malleable by nature. Delightful as they can be, you wouldn’t trust them to vote, drive, carry guns, have sex or drink alcohol responsibly. You wouldn’t leave them home alone for a weekend.

Because they’re children.

They lack the temperament, maturity, life experience and independent judgment we expect of adults.

Precisely. And that’s why children should not be exposed to obscene or graphic images of sexuality or non-factual assumptions about the nature and morality of homoerotic acts and relationships and behaviors related to gender dysphoria.

How did they vote?

This morning, the Illinois Senate voted 37 to 18 to pass HB 5707, a completely unnecessary proposal sponsored by State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) and State Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago). 

This legislation constitutes nothing more than a reiteration of the Bullying Prevention Task Force recommendations that are available to all schools on the ISBE website.  Moreover, the fact that the bill’s sponsors and the ACLU have refused to ensure the rights of students and school employees to opt-out of “programming” and “training” that promote ideas that conflict with their personal and/or religious beliefs reveals the real goal, which is to use public education to promote unproven, non-factual beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality and “transgenderism.”  

Click HERE to see how your state senator voted on this legislation, or look at the graphic below.  Unfortunately, Republican Karen McConnaughay (South Elgin) voted for this subversive bill.

The bill will soon go to Governor Patrick Quinn, who is expected to sign it into law.

If you ever start hoping that the Left will leave the rest of us alone, move on, because that’s not going to happen.

At the heart of the Founders’ vision for America was the idea of decentralized power, whereby people across the land could experiment with solutions, not follow top-down dictates. It’s why we have 50 states.

Born in the spirit of the French Revolution – which ended in tyranny – the Left has been at war with American-style freedom ever since. In their perfect world, social engineers in Washington tell everyone else what to do.

A case in point is the battle unfolding in Florida’s second-largest school district, where the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is calling for a federal probe into single-sex education. This is one of those experiments that the Left hates because it acknowledges significant differences between the sexes.

The ACLU’s 37-page complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights accuses the Hillsborough County Public Schools of violating Title IX. That’s the federal law that, among other things, is wreaking havoc with college-level sports.

Low-revenue programs like wrestling are being eliminated by the hundreds so that boys won’t have more teams than girls. Scholarship money is being spread so thin that even more popular men’s sports, such as baseball and men’s gymnastics, are threatened. Never mind that surveys and common sense (spend one hour in a sports bar) show that males typically have a far greater interest in sports than females – even though many girls and women are fine athletes and avid fans. All must bow to the sameness god.

Likewise, single-sex classrooms are in the bulls-eye. Hillsborough’s programs, the ACLU contends, are “based on stereotypes and discredited notions about how boys and girls learn and develop.”

Any of you teachers out there think boys sit as quietly as girls? Or that girls, upon finding some boxes and glue, typically create Godzilla, along with buildings to stomp? Didn’t think so.

Since 2009, Hillsborough has operated single-sex classes in at least one high school and 15 elementary schools, plus two magnet, single-sex middle schools called “academies.” Hillsborough spokesman Steve Hegarty told me by phone that the district is responding to parents who want the options. “Nobody attends single-gender classrooms without making that choice,” he said. “We’re trying to study and see what works and what doesn’t.”

Not acceptable, says ACLU attorney Galen Sherwin, who, perhaps unwittingly makes a strong case for home schooling: “Every student learns differently.”

Sherwin went on to say that, “Our public schools should not be in the business of making crude judgments about children’s educational needs based solely on whether they are a boy or a girl.”

Well, we wouldn’t want to be crude. Which is why some parents are relieved that their daughters aren’t forced to sit next to some of the less-mannered boys. Society’s No. 1 task is to socialize young males, channeling their aggression into constructive activities, like marriage. Absent that, nothing good happens. And not much good is happening in places where welfare has eviscerated responsible fatherhood, leaving cityscapes that resemble bombed-out ruins. But “equality“ is all that matters.

The ACLU also wrote a letter to the Florida Department of Education in response to Gov. Rick Scott’s signing on May 12 of a bill (HB 313) requiring teacher training for districts that create “gender specific” classrooms. The law takes effect July 1^st.

The ACLU complains that Hillsborough hired “consultants to promote the idea that boys’ and girls’ brains are inherently different, and that teachers of children as young as kindergarteners were trained in teaching methods based on sex stereotypes in sessions with names like ‘Busy Boys, Little Ladies.’”

Would the world really be worse if boys are kept usefully “busy” so they aren’t turning household goods into unguided missiles? Would it be worse if more girls took pride in being “ladies” who expect respect?

The ACLU is particularly perturbed that teachers in boys’ classrooms were encouraged to “be louder” and “have high expectations.” Since girls far exceed boys in graduation rates, scholarships and advanced degrees, educators who want “equality” might reasonably want to get boys out of instructional models that leave them bored and favor girls.

The ACLU’s “Teach Kids, Not Stereotypes” campaign rests heavily on a 2011 article in Science that was demolished by Christina Hoff Sommers in an Atlantic article last October. Sommers points out that the Science article was “a two-page summary of the state of the literature on single-sex education [which] could be useful, except that it was written by eight professors who belong to an advocacy group that opposes single-sex education.”

Sommers rejects any comparison to racial segregation, noting that, “Mandatory racial separatism demeans human beings and forecloses life prospects. Single-sex education is freely chosen and has helped millions of pupils flourish intellectually and socially.

“It’s preposterous to think of Wellesley College, the Girl Scouts or the Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy as oppressive institutions comparable to segregated schools in the Jim Crow South,” she concludes.

Preposterous, that is, unless you think like an ACLU lawyer.

Originally posted at Townhall.com

From National Review

A guest lecturer at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater, a public school, began class Tuesday with a racist, anti-Republican rant that went on for more than ten minutes.

The guest lecturer, Eyon Biddle, is the political and organizing director for Service Employees International Union Local 150. Biddle was speaking in the freshman general education course “Education 130: Individual and Society,” which allegedly “examines how people influence and are affected by their social worlds from the perspectives of anthropology, psychology, sociology, and women’s studies.”

In a video taken by a student in the class, obtained by Campus Reform, Biddle blames “white rage” for the failure of the Badger State’s 2010 recall attempt against Republican Governor Scott Walker. The union organizer goes on to say that American values are those of “division, racism, sexism, and classism.”

An excerpt of the video is below, and the full video can be found here.

“You’re looking at me like, ‘Dude you’re f*cking absurd, you’re crazy,’” Biddle said near the beginning of his lecture. “But every day you are living in a system that is telling you how to think, what to think, and when to do it.”

The SEIU official declared that blue-collar, white workers would not have voted for Scott Walker in 2010 — a vote that was “against their own interest” — if not for “white rage” and distaste over having to “pay for health care [for] blacks, browns, and gays.” He also said “racism with the first black president” was the cause of support for a governor who is trying to rein in government employee unions’ political power and head off a looming budget meltdown as public employee benefits spiral out of control.

Biddle went on to explain that Walker was not funded by normal Wisconsinites, but rather the “Koch brothers, corporations, [and] rich people” who were “confusing people, scaring people, [and] scaring the elderly about Medicare, Medicaid changes due to the Affordable Care Act.”

All of this was just “nonsense” Biddle informed his young adult audience.

Stating that his opinions “are just fact, the reality of what we live in,” Biddle said that now America focuses on “gay rights, women’s rights, things that polarize people, things that feed into the sense of those deep, like I said, American values of division, racism, sexism, classism.”

Freshman Kyle Brooks, secretary for the college Republicans, who filmed the video, told Campus Reform, “I’m very disappointed. What could have been a productive dialogue turned into a divisive rant smearing the conservative movement.”

This article was originally posted at nationalreview.com

As the Illinois House of Representatives in Springfield stands poised to pass yet another homosexuality-affirming “anti-bullying” bill out of committee and as our public schools prepare for yet another homosexuality-affirming Day of Silence—all of which are sponsored by homosexual activists—it’s a good time to be reminded of the character of the country’s premier “anti-bullying” activist: Dan Savage.

Please endure this video to its repugnant end:

WARNING: HIGHLY OFFENSIVE CONTENT

Remember, this man who speaks so stupidly on “integrity” is the creator of the “anti-bullying” “It Gets Better” campaign, and he’s the man whom Barack Obama invited to the White House “Conference on Bullying Prevention.”

IFI once again offered to remain neutral on the newest proposed “anti-bullying” bill, HB 5707, sponsored by lesbian activist State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) if the sponsors would include an opt-out conscience provision that would allow parents to opt their children out of any “anti-bullying” training that includes assumptions from homoerotic identity politics. Rep. Cassidy once again, refused.

Take ACTION:   Please click HERE to contact your state representative and urge her or him to oppose any “anti-bullying” bill that does not include an opt-out, and please keep your kids home from school on Friday if your administration is allowing students to refuse to speak in class.

Here’s more from the dishonest and vulgar Savage:

WARNING: HIGHLY OFFENSIVE CONTENT

This first video is Dan Savage speaking to a group of high school journalism students. What if a high school were to invite Savage to speak to students on bullying. If Cassidy has her way, parents could not opt their children out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao0k9qDsOvs (a biblical exegete, he’s not)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcK1NqZ-elQ  (For Protestants)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-WqjAGihoM  (For Catholics)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09RMqWo6br0

 Become a monthly supporter of IFI.  Click HERE for more information.

Written by Linda Harvey

Q. Why should parents be concerned about the so-called Day of Silence?

A. This event was started first by college students, then picked up as a national activist effort by an adult homosexual advocacy group, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). The goal is to promote homosexuality to all students in a given school, under the aegis of fighting discrimination. It has grown enormously, unfortunately, as the support for the ‘gay’ agenda has been embraced by schools and impressionable students nationwide.

The Day of Silence postures every person who identifies as a homosexual or cross-dresser as a victim of ongoing, unrelenting harassment and discrimination (being ‘silenced’). While some incidents like this do occur, this event is an overwhelming exaggeration in an effort to manipulate our kids’ natural sympathies. The result ironically is that youth develop favorable views about a controversial, high risk behavior.

Q. How widespread is the observance of the ‘Day of Silence’ now?

A. Unfortunately, thousands of schools are now involved. Some schools are passive in their participation, and simply allow a few students (usually members of a homosexual school club) to hang signs around their necks and remain silent all day. Other schools are at the other end of the spectrum, with many students, teachers and faculty remaining silent, and with the school allowing several days of outside speakers, school assemblies, announcements, even school TV shows.

Q. Isn’t the Day of Silence just a way for students to learn compassion and tolerance?

A. In reality, the Day of Silence is a one-sided campaign to manipulate acceptance of homosexuality by every student. Nationwide, parents are fed up with the political hijacking of their kids’ classrooms. What makes it even more problematic is that the results of ‘tolerating’ this lifestyle without objection can be tragic for many young people. The risks of homosexual behavior are well-understood by public health officials, but are being ignored by some politically correct school administrations.

Q. What can parents do?

A. Parents can send letters and make phone calls to schools, expressing their grave concerns about events like the Day of Silence. They can choose to remove their sons and daughters on the day the school is observing the DOS, usually in late April.

This article was first published at the MissionAmerica.com website.

UGLY-HEAD-REARING ALERT

Two years ago, yet another “anti-bullying” law (HB 5290) was defeated in the Illinois Senate. It has now been resurrected by one of Springfield’s most troubling homosexual activist lawmakers, State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) as HB 5707.

Particular Illinois lawmakers seem to believe that it’s not possible for the government to do enough to eradicate beliefs with which they disagree—including the moral, philosophical, and political beliefs of other people’s children. The beliefs these lawmakers seek to eradicate are conservative beliefs on issues related to homosexuality and gender confusion.

Cassidy’s resurrected bill is not centrally about ending bullying, which is a goal all decent people share. Illinois already has a more than ample anti-bullying law, which passed in June, 2010 and was followed up with over 100 pages of implementation recommendations that appear on the Illinois State Board of Education website.

No, this bill is centrally about using government resources to advance the non-factual Leftist assumption that conservative morals beliefs are the hateful, ignorant cause of bullying.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your representative and urge him/her to oppose HB 5707.  

The last time this politically motivated bill came around, the bill’s sponsors were asked (by even some potential Democratic supporters) to include an opt-out provision that would allow students and staff members to opt-out of any presentations that would espouse non-factual beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality that violated their consciences. IFI agreed to remain neutral on the bill, if this wording were added:

No student or school employee shall be required to attend or participate in any anti-bullying program, activity, or assembly that infringes upon free expression or contradicts personal or religious beliefs.

Liberal sponsors of the bill refused to toss even that shard of a bone to conservatives.

Here’s an excerpt from a piece I wrote two years ago when the previous incarnation of this bill was proposed:

Cassidy stated that this additional law is needed because 3 school districts (out of over 900) have no policy and 20 do not have “adequate” bullying policy. What she failed to make clear during floor debates is that the 3 school districts that don’t have bullying policy are already in violation of existing law, so HB 5290 is unnecessary.

Furthermore, HB 5290…would do nothing about the 20 school districts that have—in Cassidy’s view—“inadequate” policy. If these 20 districts have bullying policy, they are in compliance with existing law.

To illustrate that “anti-bullying” programs that address homosexuality or gender confusion (aka “gender identity” or “gender expression”) are centrally about promoting “progressive” notions about homosexuality, just replace “sexual orientation” (a Leftist rhetorical creation) with another condition constituted by subjective feelings and volitional sexual acts.

Everyone knows that teenage girls who are promiscuous are often called ugly names. No decent person wants promiscuous girls bullied, so why don’t anti-bullying laws and school policies include promiscuity in their list of conditions for which students may not be bullied? Why don’t teachers show films in which promiscuity is portrayed positively? Why don’t schools invite speakers who affirm a sexually promiscuous identity to come talk to students about how bad it felt to be bullied in high school for their promiscuity? Why don’t they have “youth programming” in which promiscuity is affirmed? Why don’t teachers have students read and perform plays in which promiscuity is celebrated and disapproval of it is portrayed as ignorant, bigoted, hateful, provincialism—all in the service of ending bullying?

In addition to the indoctrination aspects of current “anti-bullying” efforts, there would be substantial costs associated with adopting the following recommendations in this bill:

• creating, implementing, and maintaining procedures for in-school anonymous reporting of alleged bullying incidents
• creating and implementing student “training programs,” “restorative measures,” and/or “social and emotional skill-building” exercises
• creating and implementing personnel training
• collecting, maintaining, analyzing, and reporting to the State Board of Education data related to the prevalence of bullying
• “reevaluating,” “reassessing,” “reviewing,” and “revising” (whew) school policy every two years  

Eight years ago, a purportedly “Catholic” colleague of mine in the writing center at Deerfield High School told me that she was so sure that conservative moral beliefs about homosexuality were wrong that she doesn’t think they should be allowed to be spoken in schools even as “progressive” views are espoused.

And Freeport, Maine public high school English teacher Rich Robinson said this about bullying:

Bullying happens when one feels threatened physically or emotionally….[I]f “you” cause a gay kid to feel “less than” because of his/her sexuality and the expressions [and by expressions, Robinson means volitional behaviors] that will naturally result, then I say “you” are a bully and need to be called out. This is what it means to protect kids.

In the view of “progressives,” if student A says something that makes student B who identifies as homosexual feel “less than,” then student A is a bully.

That, my friends, is what liberal lawmakers and “educators” believe and seek to impose through laws and curricula.

While you’re going about the business of opposing this bill, please ask both proponents of this bill as well as your local school administrators and board members this question:

If in a classroom or cafeteria discussion, a student were to state that homosexual attraction is disordered, or that homosexual acts are immoral, or that Illinois should not have legalized same-sex “marriage,” or that homosexual couples should not be permitted to adopt, is it possible under the wording of existing law that this student could be accused of bullying?

The question is not whether sponsors Kelly Cassidy, Greg Harris (D-Chicago), or Camille Lilly (D-Chicago) thinks it would happen, but rather whether it’s possible that it could happen.

And while you’re in a civic engagement mood, please send an email to your local high school and middle school superintendents, principals, and school board members asking these two easy-to-answer questions:

1. In the classroom, are teachers permitted to express their support for the legalization of same-sex “marriage” or adoption by homosexuals?
2. In the classroom, are teachers permitted to express their opposition to the legalization of same-sex “marriage” or adoption by homosexuals?

If they answer “no” to both questions, ask them how they communicate that message to teachers. If you get a response, please send it to IFI.

Become a monthly supporter of IFI.  Click HERE for more information.

Many Americans find President Obama’s obsession with income inequality troubling. Many think the goal of equality of outcome as opposed to equality of opportunity is misguided and harmful. Many are concerned with his hyper-focus on race, class, gender, and the dubious classification “sexual orientation.” Well, get used to it, folks, because the government is breeding a new generation of Obamas, chiefly through public education.  

This indoctrination occurs in schools, colleges, and departments of education that train teachers and then through them, filters down into our high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. 

One of the scores of ways the Obama/Bill Ayers/Peggy McIntosh/Paulo Freire worldviews are promulgated is through the annual “White Privilege Conference” being held this March 26-29 in Madison, Wisconsin. And one sure sign that this conference is up to no good is that the morally impoverished Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) will be participating through its ironically named “educational” project: Teaching Tolerance. Yes, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which identifies the Family Research Council, American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Liberty Counsel, and IFI as “hate groups” because of our orthodox Christian belief that homosexual acts are immoral thinks of itself as the teacher of tolerance. 

The documents for this conference include a glossary of terms for the uninitiated in which the term “Christonormativity” is defined: “The system of oppression which assumes Christianity as the norm, favors Christians, and denigrates and stigmatizes anyone that is not Christian. Equates Americanness with Christianity.”

Oddly, I couldn’t find the term “Christophobia,” which is the system of oppression which assumes Christianity is the source of all evil and stigmatizes anyone who is an orthodox Christian.

To give you a clearer picture of the ideologies that infect public education, below is a sampling of bios and workshops from the White Privilege conference. (Remember as you read the following that when the terms “racism” and “bias” are used, they do not refer primarily to actual racism and bias, but rather to “institutional racism” and “bias” which are horses of an entirely different color—definitely not white. Just know that if you’re a white, male, heterosexual, orthodox Christian you’re automatically guilty of racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, Christonormativity, and hegemonic practices):

Paul Kivel: “The Roots of Racism in Christian Hegemony: Decolonizing our Thinking, Behavior, and Public Policy”: Before Europeans understood themselves as white they thought of themselves as Christians participating in a cosmic battle between good and evil against all those labeled Other. Today, Christian hegemony punishes the poor, destroys the environment, and contributes to our seemingly endless “war on terror.” As our crises of financial meltdown, war, racism and environmental destruction intensify; it is imperative that we dig beneath the surface of Christianity’s benign reputation to examine how it undermines our interpersonal relationships, weakens our communities and promotes injustice. Join me in a discussion of the impact of dominant Christianity on our lives and on how Christians and those who are not Christian have resisted oppression and built communities of healing and justice. 

Emily Chiariello: The Teaching Tolerance Anti-bias Framework, “Understanding Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action,” will orient participants with the first-ever road map for anti-bias education. Organized into four domains: Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action, the framework represents a continuum of engagement in anti-bias, multicultural and social justice education, moving anti-bias educators from prejudice reduction toward collective action….Participants will walk away with a copy of the complete framework and strategies for integrating the framework into classroom instruction.

Rosemary Colt and Diana Reeves: “Examining White Privilege and Building Foundations for Social Justice Thinking in the Elementary Classroom”:  Learn how to design and implement curriculum around concepts of power, justice, relationship and community building. How does white privilege impact our society at a community level, a global level? …In this session, we will share curriculum that allows children to construct an understanding of how race and privilege have determined what our neighborhoods look like. Even young students can learn to understand and think critically about white privilege and power, as well as detect bias, assume perspectives different from their own, and take social action.

Christine Saxman: “Saxman is an English teacher [at Deerfield High School, Deerfield, Illiniois], Equity leader, Pacific Education Group Affiliate and “Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity” facilitator. She works for racial justice inside her classroom, school district and community….She will be co-facilitating “Interrupting White Privilege at WPC and Beyond: How Interruption Can Strengthen Relationships and Build Community Relationships and Build Community.” What do you do if you see white privilege asserting itself at WPC? What do you do when someone shares that you’ve been asserting privilege and you didn’t realize it? This workshop, facilitated by a Woman of Color and a White woman, will examine how to recognize privilege and how to interrupt it in the service of relationships, community, and justice.   

Andrea Haynes Johnson: Johnson is a Black, female anti-racist leader and educator. Currently she serves as the Director of Diversity and Grants for [Deerfield and Highland Park High Schools], and she is an Affiliate with Pacific Educational Group. She will be the co-facilitator of “Moving K-12 Public Schools to Anti-Racist Action,” in which Participants will engage in a vibrant conversation about the paths and pitfalls to transforming Public Schools into spaces that interrupt White Privilege and promote anti-racist practices. Strategies for accountability, staff development and student engagement will be shared. The dialogue will empower participants to return to their home schools armed with language and concrete practices that can foster a more inclusive environment for all stakeholders.

White Privilege Conferences are attended by public school teachers who will take these controversial ideas about race, gender, class, “sexual orientation,” and bias into the classroom in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. There is no reason for teachers to attend this voluntary conference other than to bring the dubious ideas they ingest back to the classroom. And folks, we often pay for it. 

Take ACTION: Contact your local high school and ask if any teachers are speaking at or attending this dubious conference, and if so, ask whether the school district is footing the bill.

 Click HERE to support the work and ministry
of Illinois Family Institute.

This Wednesday, State Representative Dwight Kay (R-Glen Carbon) will be presenting HR 543 before the House Elementary & Secondary Education Committee.  This resolution will urge the Illinois State Board of Education to delay the implementation of Common Core Standards until a study is conducted showing the costs associated with Common Core.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to create a witness slip in support of Rep. Kay’s bill to delay the implementation of Common Core.  Enter information into all the fields. Click Proponent and Record of Appearance Only. Type in the Captcha Numbers, check the Terms of Agreement, then click on Create a Slip.

Background 

In 2010, Illinois became one of 48 states to opt for Common Core by accepting federal funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and through the Race to the Top Initiative of the Federal Government.  Over the next few years the Common Core Standards, which are largely untested in the United States, will substantively change the educational standards for students in Illinois, thus affecting every teacher and student in the state.   

The only substantive cost analysis of the implementation of the Common Core Standards was conducted by the Pioneer Institute, a non-partisan, privately funded research organization which estimates the financial impact for Illinois to be close to $773 million over seven years.  Moreover, there are many school districts which lack the technology, infrastructure and funding needed to purchase new textbooks and computers in order to comply with Common Core. 

According to Rep. Kay, “Even local school officials I have spoken to oppose this new program.  With each new administration, there is always a new proposal that is sold as the latest and best way to educate our children.  Without a doubt improving our education system by implementing new technology in the classroom is imperative and crucial to making our next generation competitive in the workforce and global economy.  However, until our state can meet its current obligations to our schools, I urge the State Board of Education to delay the implementation of Common Core.”

The hearing for HR 543 will be held on Wednesday, March 26th, 8:00 a.m. in room D-1 of the Stratton building located at 401 S. Spring Street in Springfield.  People are strongly encouraged to attend. But if you’re unable, please file a witness slip in support of Rep. Kay’s resolution to delay Common Core. 

 Click HERE to support the work and ministry
of Illinois Family Institute.

For those who care about how our hard-earned taxes are spent, take a look-see at the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative (TPPI) for Chicago Public Schools that is being paid for by a $20 million federal grant.

Some of this money was used to create posters like this one that will be displayed in public schools in yet another misguided attempt to curb unintended pregnancies and what Mayor Rahm Emanuel referred to recently as “socially transmitted diseases” (please, kids, abstain from social intercourse):

This poster (and another on p. 19 of the TPPI that features the Willis Tower encased in a bright red condom) follows last year’s twisted posters that depicted photos of topless pregnant teenage boys. 

In order to hammer home his message that it’s not a good idea for teenage boys—I mean, girls—to get pregnant, Mayor Emanuel is going to have free condoms distributed  in 24 Chicago high schools this coming fall. Nothing says “avoid pregnancies and STD’s” quite like a peck of free condoms.

According to the TPPI document, condoms will be distributed through “tabletop condom dispensers,” “wall-mounted condom dispensers with changeable message faces,” and “electronic locker-sized condom dispensers with LED screens.” 

What freebies are next in Chicago public high schools? E-cigarettes and clean needles?

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of Illinois Family Institute.

Written by Austin Ruse

A state legislator in Hawaii has filed an ethics complaint with the State Department of Education alleging that the Southern Poverty Law Center is bribing elementary teachers to take an SPLC course called Teaching Tolerance. State Representative Bob McDermott also charges that the SPLC course is biased against Christians and teaches leftist ideas. 

McDermott sent a letter to District Superintendant Kathryn Matayoshi on February 28 asking her to halt the implementation of the program. She did not respond to the letter and allowed the training to go ahead the weekend of March 1. 

Specifically, McDermott believes a $250 payment to teachers to implement content from the training in their lesson plan is not allowed under Hawaiian law. He says it “raises all kinds of ethical issues.” 

McDermott said, “I want political agendas, right or left, out of the schools. I want the teachers to spend the precious little time they have with students educating them in the basics. English teachers should focus on English, things like sentence structure, and not mainlanders’ political viewpoint of social justice. Make no mistake, this program only presents one side of the story.” 

McDermott believes the SPLC program is “social engineering” that includes a “disproportionate focus on normalizing homosexuality.” He said, “The theme of this curriculum is so called ‘anti-bias’ unless, of course, you are a person of faith.” He points to one lesson featuring a character named Patrick who is “being raised in a very strict and exclusionary fundamentalist Christian home…” McDermott says if this isn’t “biased, I don’t know what is.” 

Other lessons include a story called 10,000 Dresses about a little boy who likes to wear dresses and another about two homosexual penguins in a curriculum for children in kindergarten through second grade. “Why [do] first graders need to know about homosexual penguins?” McDermott wants to know. 

SPLC is coming under increased scrutiny and criticism in recent years for including Christian groups like the Family Research Council (FRC) alongside neo-Nazi skinhead groups and the KKK as hate groups. Even liberal columnist Dana Milbank of the Washington Post has scoffed at the inclusion of FRC on the hate list. 

A peer reviewed critical analysis just issued by Professor George Yancey of North Texas University demonstrates that SPLC reserves only conservative groups for its hate list, ignoring leftist groups saying the same things that land conservative groups on the list.

This article was originally posted at the Breitbart.com blog.

This weekend I published and responded to yet another email from homosexual public high school teacher Rich Robinson who has admitted to me multiple times that he believes public schools should be used to promote Leftist assumptions about homosexuality to other people’s minor children and to censor resources that espouse assumptions that he doesn’t like. 

My goal in publishing Robinson’s emails is not to defend myself or attack him. I have two goals, the first of which is to expose conservatives to the arrogance and beliefs of liberal teachers in our public schools. My other goal is to help readers understand the specious nature of the arguments (including the absence of supporting evidence for claims) that these teachers use to defend their curricular decisions. I’ve found that readers are more persuaded when they hear the actual words of teachers than when they hear only my description or paraphrase of their words.

Robinson’s words are worthy of exposure not because they insult me (which is utterly irrelevant). His words are worthy of exposure because they reveal what he and many other liberal teachers think (and say privately) about any parent, colleague, administrator, or school board member who holds views like mine, which is to say, conservative moral beliefs. And his beliefs are worthy of exposure because they inform his teaching.

Robinson and countless teachers like him conceal their views from the public that pays their salaries. Teachers like him need to be publicly exposed—by name whenever possible. They are government employees whose teaching philosophy regarding homosexuality and other controversial moral issues should be made public. Then communities can decide if these teachers’ views are consonant with district values and if their willingness to censor views they don’t like embodies district pedagogical commitments. And parents can decide if they want their children in the classrooms of censorious censors. 

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of Illinois Family Institute.