The U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce just released its report on sex education. Liberal proponents of comprehensive sex ed who profit from promoting early sexualization of children, premarital sex, sex severed from morality, promiscuity as entertainment, and deviant sexuality must be apoplectic because the report affirms that abstinence education serves the welfare of children and adolescents better than does comprehensive sex ed.

Here are some highlights from this report, which concludes that abstinence education, referred to as Sexual Risk Avoidance (SRA), is “the best public health strategy to prevent unintended teen pregnancies and sexually-transmitted infections”:

Sexual Risk Avoidance (abstinence education):

• Emphasizes risk avoidance as opposed to risk reduction
• Provides clear directives and guidance about sexual behavior
• Assumes teens can, do, and will make choices that enable them to avoid risky behaviors
• Sets realistic and age-appropriate expectations for teens and then shows them how to avoid  risky behaviors
• Better responds to research on adolescent brain development and its effect on decision-making, particularly in regard to risky behavior
• Better reflects current research that shows that teens are helped in the process of learning how to negotiate risky behavior by having teachers and other authority figures reinforce the guidance and limits provided by parents
• Better mirrors programs that have proved effective in reducing teen car accidents, underage drinking, and tobacco use

Comprehensive Sex Ed (CSE):

• Emphasizes risk reduction as opposed to risk avoidance
• Assumes teen cannot and/or will not choose abstinence despite research suggesting they can and do
• Because of assumptions about the inevitability of teen sexual activity, CSE promulgates messages that undermine clear, unequivocal abstinence messages
• CSE assumes that if teens are provided “accurate” medical information and provided interpersonal skill training, they will be “able to assess the risk involved with sexual activity and disease prevention,” even though developmental research has proved that adult guidance is necessary for teens to avoid risky behavior

Effect of Funding Imbalance

The report states that despite much research proving that abstinence-centered education is effective, CSE is the dominant form of sexuality education in the U.S., and the reason for its predominance is federal funding. Even more troubling, the report states that Americans believe that CSE is more effective because of its prevalence. *

Here is what the well-respected Heritage Foundation has to say about the funding imbalance:

[T]he U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that, in the fiscal year 2008, for every dollar the department spent on abstinence education, it spent $4 on comprehensive sex education and family planning services targeting teens. In FY2008, the department spent $176.5 million on abstinence education. By contrast, pregnancy and STD prevention programs and family planning services for teens received $609.3 million.

Sadly, despite the social science evidence, the Obama administration and Congress have eliminated all federal spending on abstinence education and, instead, have created additional funding for comprehensive sex education.

To reiterate, the federal government provides vastly more resources to the type of sex ed that is least effective (and most morally problematic), which increases the prevalence and visibility of comprehensive sex ed. This prevalence and visibility in turn persuade Americans that comprehensive sex ed must be the most effective form of sex ed.

Here’s another nice mess liberals have gotten us into.

Comprehensive Sex Ed Profiteers

Add to the miasmic stew all the organizations with voracious appetites for money, power, and sex and we’ve got a powerful lobby working to keep American schools moving in the wrong direction. Organizations like SIECUS; Planned Parenthood; GLSEN; Illinois Safe Schools Alliance; Go Ask Alice!; and Advocates for Youth lust for the hearts, minds, and bodies of our nation’s children. Neither common sense, nor logic, nor research can stop “progressives” from gobbling up our tax money and exploiting our schools to pursue their libertine goals. And though they claim to want to reduce teen pregnancy, their real goal is guilt-free, consequence-free sexual activity in all its “diverse” forms.

Values of the “Values-Neutral” Crowd

The report states the obvious: programs that are effective, such as those to curb teen-drinking, drug use, reckless driving, and smoking, offer clear, unequivocal directives, whereas comprehensive sex ed provides mixed messages that undermine the effort to curb teen sexual activity. Comprehensive sex ed proponents claim that though they really want to reduce teen sexual activity, they are simply being pragmatic realists when they seek to provide to teens every bit of deviant sexuality information known to man. They argue that no amount or kind of moral direction will prevent teens from having sex, so adults must provide them with information about every aspect of sexual activity that any person may think about or engage in. And they think schools should provide this “values-neutral education.”

The very notion that sex or the teaching about sex can or should be value-neutral is a value judgment. Sex is an inherently moral activity. Treating sex as if it can be severed from morality is a deceit.

The truth is, however, that comprehensive sex “educators” are not begrudging participants in teaching about something they wish teens weren’t doing. They’re eager facilitators of children and teen sexual exploration.

What gets lost in sex ed discussions is that for many parents the goal is not merely to reduce unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, but to prevent adolescent sexual activity. That is not the goal of comprehensive sex ed proponents.

Separation of Church and State

In tracing the history of the federal government’s involvement in sex education, the report discusses the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA), which under President Reagan provided grants to non-profit organizations and states for abstinence education. According to the new congressional report, “Opponents of AFLA suggested the approach was nothing more than religion masquerading as public health policy.” This is a cunning way to approach the debate. Liberals take any cultural issue to which religious values may be pertinent, manipulate rhetoric to turn those religiously derived values into religion per se, and then proclaim that permitting those perspectives to bear on public policy would violate the separation of church and state. And Christians buy it.

The problem is that for Christians, the truths revealed in the Bible will shape all of life, including sexuality.

Curiously, liberals don’t express similar umbrage when liberals bring their religiously derived values to public policy decisions. For example, do liberals take umbrage when those who attend homosexuality-affirming churches work for the legalization of so-called “same-sex marriage”? Did liberals object when Martin Luther King Jr. in fighting for the civil rights of blacks, proclaimed, “a just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God,”? Did liberals object when the Berrigan brothers, both priests, fought tenaciously against the Vietnam war?

Christians need to gain a proper understanding of the relationship between religion and the state so that they will not be duped by the sophistry or ignorance of “progressives.”

Illinois’ Comprehensive Sex Ed Bill

This new report from the Energy and Commerce Committee provides yet more justification for whacking down HB 3027, the comprehensive sex bill that keeps popping up in Springfield like an annoying mole in an arcade game. You can read more about the bill here and here .

*There are numerous studies that point to the efficacy of abstinence-centered education, which the mainstream press prefers not to discuss. Moreover, it’s difficult to find sound research proving that comprehensive is more effective than abstinence-centered sex ed. The Heritage Foundation and the National Abstinence Education Association are very helpful resources for information on research concerning sex ed.

Take ACTION:  Please click HERE to send an email or a fax to your state representative about this anti-family bill. The Illinois House could vote on this bill at any time during the Veto Session!  Ask him/her to vote “NO” on HB 3027.

I’ve wanted an excuse to share with moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, and anyone else who reads to little ones three of my favorite picture books for children, none of which are any longer published but are available in public libraries and can be purchased used online. A holiday weekend in the summer seems the perfect excuse.

The books are A Special Trade by Sally Wittman, Yellow and Pink by William Steig, and Sir Cedric by Roy Gerrard.

A Special Trade is the story of a little girl Nelly who is taken for daily stroller rides to a neighbor’s vegetable garden by her elderly neighbor Old Bartholomew. They encounter friendly dogs and unfriendly dogs. Old Bartholomew warns Nelly of bumps in their path which elicit  recurrent shouts of “BUMP!” from Nelly. And when a sprinkler intrusively sprays water in their path, Old Bartholomew yells “Charge” as they hurtle through the spray.

One day, Old Bartholomew doesn’t come for Nelly. Day after day passes and then one day he returns in a wheel chair. The smile was “gone from his eyes,” and he could no longer push Nelly in her stroller. Undaunted, the Nelly takes hold of his wheel chair and takes Old Bartholomew for their daily walks, hurtling through the sprinkler as if nothing has changed.

It’s a heartwarming story that portrays through the simplest of acts the worth of all people, including those who possess little of those things that preoccupy Americans, like physical perfection, wealth, or power. While we worship at the altar of everything new and showy, this book shows the richness of routine and simplicity. While the culture tells us to put ourselves first, this book shows that joy comes from sacrificing for others and that interdependence is not only unavoidable but beautiful. And in a culture that recoils from aging and warehouses the aged, this book shows what both aging and the aged contribute.

Yellow and Pink by William Steig is the story of two wooden puppets, Yellow and Pink, who debate their origins, with Yellow arguing that they came to be through random accidents of nature while Pink believes they were designed.

Pink found “Yellow’s color, his well-chiseled head, his whole form admirable. ‘Someone must have made us,’ he said.” Yellow responds, “’I say we’re an accident, somehow or other, we just happened.’”

As their debate progresses, the arguments of Yellow, who denies a maker, become increasingly absurd. Yellow says, “’Suppose a branch broke off a tree and fell on a sharp rock in just the right way, so that one end split open and made legs….There you have legs. Then winter came and this piece of wood froze and the ice split the mouth open. There’s your mouth. Then maybe one day a big hurricane took that piece of wood and sent it tumbling down a rocky hill with little bushes, and it got bumped and chipped and brushed and shaped this way and that. Sand blowing in the wind might have helped with the smoothing. That piece of wood could have hung around at the bottom of that hill for eons, until one day—ZING!—lightning struck in such a way as to make arms, fingers, toes.’”

Yellow’s conjecturing continues becoming ever wilder until the enormous puppet-maker appears, picks up his two creations, and walks away with the clueless puppet asking his companion, “Who is this guy?”

As with all analogies, the correspondences between puppets and humans and between the puppet-maker and God are limited. But while the image of humans as puppets is perhaps inapt and the image of God as a puppet-maker who needs a haircut and sings out of tune is definitely inapt, Steig’s depiction of Yellow’s intellectual contortions in the service of denying his obvious design and the possibility of a designer hilariously pokes at the “logic” of atheist elitists.

Sir Cedric by Roy Gerrard is the story of a “cheerful and gallant” and “gentle but bold” knight who rescues and ultimately marries the pudgy Princess Matilda from imprisonment by the evil knight, Black Ned.

After Matilda’s parents consent to Cedric and Matilda’s marriage, word comes that Black Ned is returning with an army to seek revenge and recapture Matilda. The King’s men begin to succumb to fear, but Sir Cedric, like Shakespeare’s Henry the V in his St. Crispin Day speech, inspires them to fight for justice against the bully Black Ned. The battle ensues and Black Ned is defeated, following which Sir Cedric shows him mercy, which transforms Black Ned.

Though the story follows a conventional heroic storyline, it is remarkable because it is written in rousing rhymed verse with a delightful vocabulary and glorious illustrations. What is even more remarkable is that Roy Gerard is both the writer and illustrator.

Cultural critics regularly criticize the dumbing down of America, as evidenced by the unsophisticated level of rhetoric found in political speech and our daily newspapers. Children’s vocabularies and their imaginations will be fed by spending time in the worlds created by Roy Gerrard.

The Wemstroms expressed their regret that a recent proposed bullying bill (HB 5290) failed to pass in the Illinois Senate [“Bullying bill should have been passed,” Freeport Journal-Standard June 26] and laid the blame for this failure on the Illinois Family Institute (IFI). Despite assertions to the contrary, IFI, like the Wemstroms, deeply desires an end to bullying. We simply disagree with the Wemstroms on the best means to achieve that end.

Anyone who has been playing close attention to the bullying issue knows that homosexual activists believe that the only way to end bullying of students who identify as homosexual is to eradicate conservative views on the nature and morality of homosexuality or to make it socially and legally impossible to express them. Homosexual activists are exploiting legitimate anti-bullying sentiment to achieve that goal through anti-bullying programs in public schools.

Perhaps the Wemstroms are unaware that a comprehensive — and in our view troubling — anti-bullying bill passed (SB 3266) and was signed into law in 2010. That law mandated that the state superintendent of schools create a bullying prevention task force charged with making recommendations for schools on bullying policy. Illinois’ State Superintendent of Schools Christopher Koch assembled an ideologically biased task force that came up with such recommendations in the form of a 106-page document that was posted on the Illinois State Board of Education website on March 1, 2011.

As IFI reported, HB 5290 would have mandated nothing. It was a set of non-mandatory “guidelines” that simply restated the recommendations created by the leftwing anti-bullying task force.

In addition, during floor debates on HB 5290, the bill’s sponsor admitted that only three school districts out of approximately 900 public and non-sectarian districts lacked bullying policy.

The Wemstroms suggest that IFI wanted an opt-out provision “which presumably would have allowed students not to attend assemblies where bullying was discussed.” Actually, we and others, including lawmakers, sought an opt-out provision so that parents had the right to opt their children out of any “youth programming” that includes explicit or implicit assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexuality or gender confusion. The bill’s sponsors refused to include such a reasonable protection of parental rights.

The Wemstroms have engaged in the usual rhetoric of “progressives,” which involves demonizing anyone who doesn’t support every particular piece of legislation proposed by homosexual activist organizations like the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance that created the existing bullying law and served on the task force that created the ISBE recommendations. In that effort, the Wemstroms call IFI “anti-gay,” a term which cunningly conflates moral opposition to volitional acts with hatred of persons.

IFI believes that volitional homosexual acts are immoral and harmful to individuals. We believe that widespread cultural affirmation of volitional homosexual acts is destructive to society. And we unwaveringly oppose the exploitation of legitimate anti-bullying sentiment to change the moral and political beliefs of students in public schools.

Our beliefs about the morality of volitional homosexual acts, however, do not diminish our recognition of the infinite worth of those who experience unchosen same-sex attraction and who choose to make those unchosen feelings central to their identity. Nor do our moral beliefs diminish the pleasure we take in the company of those who hold views different from ours or the love we have for friends and family members who believe and act in ways that we think are wrong.

Opposition to bullying does not require support for every proposal to come down the legislative pike.

ADF letter supports board’s decision to listen to concerns of community

There’s a remarkable news story coming out of Erie, Illinois. A wise and courageous school board has voted to remove a homosexuality-affirming picture book titled The Family Book from its elementary school library. Further, it has voted to remove all materials created by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a partisan advocacy group committed to using public schools, including elementary schools, to advance their moral, political, and ontological beliefs. 

The Family Book was written by homosexual author Todd Parr and recommended by GLSEN. The “Alternatives to Marriage Project” highly recommends The Family Book for managing “both to naturalize and celebrate family diversity” and describes it as a favorite “among the toddler set.” “Naturalize” seems an ironic choice of words to describe a book that includes types of “parental” relationships that are unnatural and, by design, sterile. The “Alternatives to Marriage Project”  is a group committed to “equality and fairness” for “same sex couples and those in relationships of more than two people.”

Treating homosexuality and heterosexuality as equivalent is not a neutral position

Treating homosexuality as equivalent to heterosexuality does not reflect a neutral ideological position. Treating homosexuality as equivalent to heterosexuality is a leftist position. Believing that homosexuality and heterosexuality are morally and ontologically equivalent is a controversial, unproven belief that public schools — particularly elementary schools — have no ethical right or obligation to promulgate.

Leftists try to make the case that including books that treat homosexuality positively reflects ideological neutrality and balance since there are already so many books that depict heterosexuality positively. But that argument is based on prior acceptance of yet another Leftist assumption, which is that homosexuality is simply the flip side of the sexuality coin. It’s not. Homosexuality is a disordering of the sexual impulse.

Humans were quite obviously created anatomically and biologically as heterosexual beings. Using any objective criteria, all humans are heterosexual.  There exists no argument about the morality of heterosexual acts per se, so the number of books in a library that depict heterosexuality positively is irrelevant to any discussion of the appropriateness of including a book that depicts homosexuality positively. Publicly funded schools have no right to make available to young children ideas and images that many believe are profoundly immoral.

What neutrality or true diversity of opinions would look like in public schools

A neutral position would take one of two forms: Neutrality on topics involving homosexuality can be demonstrated by simply not addressing it at all; or neutrality can be demonstrated by including picture books that affirm homosexuality and picture books that portray homosexuality as immoral and destructive. Of course, neither side of the debate is going to like the second option.

Further, the opposite of a homosexuality-affirming book is not a heterosexuality-affirming book. The opposite of a homosexuality-affirming story would be a story that is critical of homosexuality. A picture book that dissents from the view that homosexual-led familes are equivalent to heterosexual-led families is not a book that depicts heterosexual-led families positively. A picture book that offers a dissenting view from one that positively depicts homosexual-led family structures would be one that negatively depicts homosexual-led family structures.

Who really censors?

The use of the terms “book banning” and “censorship” represents yet another “tool” in the bulging toolbox of manipulative and hypocritical strategies used by those who have lost their moral compasses and seek to pervert the moral compasses of other people’s children in public schools. Teachers make choices all the time about what books should be purchased with limited resources. And particularly in elementary schools, the criteria used to determine book choices include considerations of age-appropriateness. Although leftwing extremists may think picture books that affirm homosexual family structures are appropriate, they, leftist ideologues, are not the ultimate arbiters of appropriateness.

Charges of censorship are leveled at only conservatives. When, for example, high school teachers refuse to have their students study any resources on the topic of homosexuality written by conservative scholars while at the same time having them read novels, plays, or articles that espouse liberal ideas, we rarely if ever hear them called censors.

I’m speculating here, but I doubt whether any school district that chose not to purchase a picture book that positively depicted polyamorous families or families in which the parents were siblings would be accused of book banning or censorship.

I can already hear the cacophonous howls of indignation from “progressive” ideologues. How dare I compare morally neutral homosexual relationships to immoral polyamorous and incestuous relationships. But that’s the crux of the debate that homosexuals think is settled: Many still believe that homosexual acts are profoundly immoral.  And if homosexual acts are, indeed, objectively immoral, then family structures that center on homosexual couples are inherently morally flawed.

Are picture books that address homosexuality centrally about love?

The problem with picture books on the subject of homosexuality is that they ignore — as they must — the central issue: the morality of homosexual acts. That’s what makes this debate about picture books so dishonest and so dishonorable: In picture books for young children, leftists can’t address the fundamental and abstract question of sexual morality, and, therefore, they get away with saying with feigned wide-eyed innocence, “But this book is just about love.” No, it’s not, and they know it.

Homosexuality, unlike heterosexuality, is constituted by only subjective feelings and volitional acts, which are legitimate objects of moral assessment. The morality of homosexual acts is central to any presentation of homosexuality, and it is the morality of homosexual acts that is intellectually, pedagogically, and developmentally inappropriate in elementary schools.

The Family Book vividly captures the emotive dimensions of families in colorful, whimsical, and appealing illustrations, which makes it all the more troubling. Books like Parr’s lure little ones into an ideological snare before they’re old enough to realize it. It doesn’t matter that Parr in his moral ignorance thinks he’s doing a good thing. His good intentions, shaped as they are by moral delusion, do not mitigate the offense of presenting perversion as positive. Adding sugar to poison doesn’t make it less toxic; it makes it more likely to be consumed.

Should minor positive references to homosexuality get a pass?

And the fact that in his book, the positive images of homosexual families are few, doesn’t justify the inclusion of this book in a public elementary school library. Should libraries include picture books with just one or two positive references to polyamorous families? As I have written earlier, cultural change rarely happens through dramatic, single events, but rather through the slow, accretion of little events that we ignore or dismiss as minor. All that pro-homosexual dogmatists have to do to get their resources into public schools is make sure their references to homosexuality are few and indirect. Once in, they gradually increase the number and directness of homosexuality-affirming messages.

Must bullying prevention efforts include affirming homosexuality?

Of course, homosexual activists are dragging in the bullying issue again as a means to intimidate the Erie administration and school board. They’re making the case that choosing not to include resources that affirm homosexuality will contribute to bullying of students who identify as homosexual or whose caretakers are homosexual.

Should we apply that principle consistently? Will the absence of resources that affirm polyamory contribute to bullying of students who identify as polyamorous or whose caretakers so identify? Will the absence of resources that affirm promiscuity contribute to the bullying of promiscuous students? Will the absence of resources that affirm laziness contribute to the bullying of “slackers”? (Just to be clear to homosexual activists who seem to struggle mightily with analogies: I’m not comparing promiscuity and laziness to homosexuality–homosexual acts are far more serious moral offenses. I’m extrapolating the argument that absence of affirmative resources contributes to bullying to conditions other than homosexuality.) No elementary school librarian, teacher, administrator, or school board member would entertain the fanciful notion of including polyamory-affirming resources in school libraries or curricula as a means to combat the bullying of students being raised by polyamorists.

The homosexual website Chicago Pride reports that a lesbian teacher from Minnesota says that choosing not to include homosexuality-affirming resources in elementary school libraries sends “a strong message that gay and trans issue [sic] are inappropriate to discuss in a classroom setting.” In other words, she believes that it’s important to discuss homosexuality and “transgenderism” in elementary school classrooms. Wow.  We now have educators that believe that it’s important in elementary schools to discuss issues related to the sexual predilections and acts of  1.7 percent of the population.

Is it the responsibility of elementary schools to affirm every family structure or sexual phenomenon?

It’s important is to understand that the mere fact that a particular family structure (or sexual phenomenon) exists does not mean public schools are compelled to teach about or affirm it. It’s tragic that selfish adults deliberately create motherless or fatherless family structures, but schools have neither the obligation nor the right to affirm those immoral structures even in order to make children feel better.

Some questions for this homosexual activist teacher:

• Why should her pedagogical view that controversial topics like homosexuality and gender confusion should be discussed in elementary school classrooms be imposed on every school district?
• What is her defense for the belief that these topics, for which moral considerations are central, are intellectually and developmentally age-appropriate?
• Since she believes that these topics should be discussed in elementary schools, is she willing to have children exposed equally to resources that affirm homosexuality and those that disapprove of it?

GLSEN is quoted as saying that they are “’reaching out’” to the Erie Community Unit School District to “’understand their decision to reject the unanimous decision of a community-based committee in favor of the adoption’” of GLSEN’s Ready, Set, Respect! curricula about which IFI has written.

Questions about curricula selection committees

I wonder who served on this community-based committee. How many people served on it? How were they selected? Did those who formed the committee ensure that all ideological views on homosexuality and its presence in elementary school curricula were represented? How many character development curricula were reviewed? What criteria were used in the selection process? Who established the criteria? Did all members of the committee read all the curricular resources? Did they investigate the biases and controversial history of GLSEN, including that of its founder, Kevin Jennings?

These are some of the questions that should be asked in order to hold accountable those who made the boneheaded decision to use GLSEN resources.

This news story shouldn’t be remarkable, but because we see so few public school administrations and teachers with the wisdom and spine to oppose the efforts of homosexual activists to impose their beliefs on public schools — or infuse curricula with their beliefs — the courage of the Erie Community Unit School District stands out.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to offer words of encouragement and support to the School Board President Charles Brown and Superintendent Bradley Cox, who you can bet your bottom dollar will be on the receiving end of vicious attacks from the advocates of “tolerance.”

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Yesterday in Springfield, knowing that she wouldn’t have the votes to get the comprehensive sex ed bill passed, the bill’s chief House sponsor, State Representative Camille Lilly (D-Chicago) decided not to call it for a vote. This is a huge victory and one for which we want to thank every Illinois voter who took the time to express their opposition to it to their representatives, friends, and neighbors.

We also want to thank every lawmaker who made it clear to Rep. Lilly and other sponsors of the bill that they would not vote for it.

This week also saw the failure of the Illinois Senate to pass the ideological and unnecessary bullying bill. The bill’s sponsors failed to garner the 30 votes necessary to pass it. The vote was too close for comfort and reveals that Illinoisans, with and without children in public schools, need to remain vigilant and actively involved in the political process. But it was a significant victory for which IFI wants to thank every voter and lawmaker who worked to oppose this troubling bill.

The failure of this bill underscores the fact that opposition to bullying does not obligate lawmakers to vote for every bill that comes down the legislative pike.

All of us, citizens and elected representatives alike, need to be discerning and to think deeply about how bills may in the future be interpreted and applied. We need to think critically about whether proposed bills are necessary; about who creates and promotes them, including outside organizations; and about the arguments used and evidence (or lack thereof) to defend them during floor debates.

Again, IFI wants to extend our heartfelt thanks to every Illinois citizen and lawmaker who worked to protect children from exposure to false and destructive ideas and to protect sound pedagogy in publicly funded schools from further incursion by ideologically driven dogmatists.

How did they vote?

HB 5290–an unnecessary “bullying” bill that promotes “youth programming” and “restorative measures” which will be used to shape students’ beliefs about homosexuality and gender confusion–failed in the Illinois Senate by a vote of 29-21-06 late in the afternoon on May 29th.

Last week, HB 5290, also known as the “bullying bill,” failed to pass in the Illinois Senate.  The sponsor, Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago), put it on postponed consideration–meaning the bill would get a second chance at a vote. 

Late this afternoon, the bill was called for re-consideration.  We are happy to report that this onerous bill failed for a second time in a week, this time by a vote of 29-21 with 6 voting present, and is now dead for the session!

While proponents tried to convince lawmakers and the public that the bill had nothing to do with indoctrinating Illinois school children with liberal beliefs about homosexuality, they refused to include a requested opt-out provision. 

If it were strictly about bullying and not about pushing controversial beliefs about homosexuality, why did the House sponsor of the bill, lesbian activist  State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) come over to the Senate to lobby members and watch the bill’s vote? 

Homosexual activists like Cassidy, the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, and Equality Illinois try to intimidate lawmakers and the public by arguing that a vote against a particular bullying bill is a vote for bullying, which is absurd. There can be good bullying prevention bills and bad ones. The Cassidy/Steans bullying bill was clearly a bad one. It was not only unnecessary, but ideologically driven. 

Virtually every Illinois school district already has bullying policy, and those administrations that feel they need further guidance can easily access the Illinois State Board of Education’s bullying prevention recommendations on the ISBE website. 

IFI wants to thank publicly every lawmaker who had the courage and wisdom to oppose HB 5290.

Click HERE to see the official voting record of how your state senator voted or look below at the graphic.

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Your support of our work and ministry is always much needed and greatly appreciated. Your promotion of our emails on Facebook, Twitter, your own email network, and prayer for financial support is a huge part of our success in being a strong voice for the pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family message here in the Land of Lincoln.

Please consider standing with us by giving a tax-deductible donation HERE, or by sending a gift to P.O. Box 88848, Carol Stream, IL  60188.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that President Barack Obama invited the obscene, Christian-hating, homosexual, manboy Dan Savage to the White House. After all, President Obama’s  “Safe School Czar” was the homosexual founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Kevin Jennings; and Obama awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to the infamous homosexual Harvey Milk who was deified in the Hollywood film Milk.

And why am I bringing this up? I’m bringing it up because May 22 is “Harvey Milk Day” in California–yet another abuse of public schools to advance the moral beliefs of homosexuals and their ideological allies. There are few reasons to be thankful to live in Illinois, but this is one: We don’t yet have a law proclaiming a day of commemoration for Harvey Milk in our public schools.

I’m also bringing it up because many have seen or heard of the eponymous film about Harvey Milk and starring Sean Penn but may not know how far from reality the film’s depiction of Milk is.

In 2009, then governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 572 into law. This law, introduced by openly homosexual Senator Mark Leno, designates May 22 “as having special significance in public schools and educational institutions and would encourage those entities to conduct suitable commemorative exercises on that date.”

And why do liberal California lawmakers consider May 22 significant in public schools? They believe that children in grade K-12 should commemorate annually the birthday of the “first openly gay man to be elected to public office in a major city of the United States,” who was murdered by a disgruntled colleague.

The law states that “all public schools and educational institutions are encouraged to observe…and to conduct suitable commemorative exercises as follows: On Harvey Milk Day, exercises remembering the life of Harvey Milk, recognizing his accomplishments, and familiarizing pupils with the contributions he made to this state.”

Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council says this about the man whom Obama and Schwarzenegger think should be honored: “Milk is famous only for winning one election, being murdered – and having sex with men.”

And it wasn’t just adult men with whom Milk had sex. Sprigg recounts that Milk was also fond of teenage boys. In fact, one of his live-in relationships was a pederastic relationship with a 16-year-old boy when Milk was 33.  Yes, I can understand why Obama wanted to honor him and Schwarzenegger thinks children should commemorate him.

According to Daniel Flynn, “the real Harvey Milk was a short-tempered demagogue who cynically invented stories of victimhood to advance his political career.” And contrary to the implication in the film, Milk was not murdered because of his homosexuality, but rather because he was instrumental in preventing a board of supervisors member from regaining his seat.

The most shocking omission from the film and likely from the tall tales California public school teachers tell their young students is that Harvey Milk was a huge supporter of Reverend Jim Jones:

Nine days prior to Milk’s death, more than 900 followers of Jim Jones — many of them campaign workers for Milk — perished in the most ghastly set of murder-suicides in modern history. Before the congregants of the Peoples Temple drank Jim Jones’s deadly Kool-Aid, Harvey Milk and much of San Francisco’s ruling class had already figuratively imbibed. Milk occasionally spoke at Jones’s San Francisco–based headquarters, promoted Jones through his newspaper columns, and defended the Peoples Temple from its growing legion of critics. Jones provided conscripted “volunteers” for Milk’s campaigns to distribute leaflets by the tens of thousands. Milk returned the favor by abusing his position of public trust on behalf of Jones’s criminal endeavors.

“Rev. Jones is widely known in the minority communities here and elsewhere as a man of the highest character, who has undertaken constructive remedies for social problems which have been amazing in their scope and effectiveness,” Supervisor Milk wrote President Jimmy Carter seven months before the Jonestown carnage. The purpose of Milk’s letter was to aid and abet his powerful supporter’s abduction of a six-year-old boy. Milk’s missive to the president prophetically continued: “Not only is the life of a child at stake, who currently has loving and protective parents in the Rev. and Mrs. Jones, but our official relations with Guyana could stand to be jeopardized, to the potentially great embarrassment of our State Department.” John Stoen, the boy whose actual parents Milk libeled to the president as purveyors of “bold-faced lies” and blackmail attempts, perished at Jonestown. This, the only remarkable episode in Milk’s brief tenure on the San Francisco board of supervisors, is swept under the rug by his hagiographers.

This is the man that homosexuals and their allies celebrate and seek to promote as a hero in our taxpayer-subsidized schools. In their effort to exalt Milk as a civil rights hero in public schools to young, naive students,  the truth about him is concealed. There’s even a children’s picture book designed to indoctrinate little ones, titled The Harvey Milk Story. It’s been positively reviewed by Kirkus Reviews and by K.T. Horning, children’s librarian, author, and educator who has served on numerous influential literary boards, and “many book award and evaluation committees, including the American Library Association’s “Rainbow List.”

Public schools are one of the central battlegrounds for the war on moral truth regarding homosexuality. Specious “civil rights” arguments, like the ones promoted by worshippers of Harvey Milk, based on an absurd, untenable comparison of homosexuality to race, and media-fomented hysteria about bullying are driving the exploitation of public education.

Unless and until parents become willing to tell administrators and teachers preemptively that under no circumstances are their children to be exposed to any resources or activities that mention homosexuality or gender confusion, the exploitation will not merely continue, it will increase.

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For those who despite all evidence to the contrary still believe that the bullying amendment that is pending in the Illinois Senate is centrally about stopping bullying, please read what one of Illinois’ chief homosexual activists organizations, Equality Illinois, recently sent out to its devotees:

SAFE SCHOOLS – AMENDMENT SUBMITTED FOR ANTI-BULLYING LEGISLATION

Thanks to the work of Representative Kelly Cassidy and broad Prevent School Violence Coalition, which includes groups like Equality Illinois, Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, ACLU of Illinois, among others, bill passed the House and is now going to State Senate.

Equality Illinois is a homosexual activist organization. The Illinois Safe Schools Alliance is a homosexual activist organization that was once part of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). The ACLU is an organization as committed to normalizing homosexuality and gender confusion as GLSEN, Equality Illinois, and the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance.  And State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) is openly homosexual.

Equality Illinois also made clear that HB 5290 is unnecessary: “House Bill 5290 modifies current law by integrating the specific recommendations of the Illinois School Bullying Prevention Task Force.” HB 5290 restates the recommendations created by the very liberal Bullying Prevention Task Force. Those recommendations are easily available on the Illinois State Board of Education website for any school district that feels it needs further guidance.

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, which mandates nothing, 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 or worse. No decent person wants promiscuous girls bullied, so why don’t anti-bullying laws and school policies include promiscuity in their lists 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?

Or replace “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” with polyamory?  What if some students are bullied because either they or their “parents” identify as polyamorists? Will schools have anti-bullying “youth programming” in which polyamorous unions are  portrayed as morally equivalent to families headed by two people?  Mary Jo Merrick-Lockett, a teacher in a Minneapolis high school that has recently been at the forefront of a national bullying campaign to malign and sue the district into ideological submission to the great and powerful pro-homosexual lobby had this to say:

If you can’t talk about [homosexuality] in any context, which is how teachers interpret district policies, kids internalize that to mean that being gay must be so shameful and wrong. And that has created a climate of fear and repression and harassment.

Will teachers assert that silence on the issue of polyamory creates a climate of harassment for polyamorists? Do teachers believe that internalizing the belief that polyamory is wrong is damaging to students?

What if a student is bullied because her parents are siblings in a committed, loving incestuous relationship? Will public school administrators treat adult consensual incest exactly as they are treating homosexuality and gender confusion — all in the service of ending bullying?

We all know the answer to these questions. Schools would never have students read plays, novels, and magazine articles; or watch films; or perform plays; or attend “youth programming” sessions; or listen to invited speakers that affirm promiscuity, adult consensual incest, or polyamory — not even to end bullying. The reason that lawmakers wouldn’t seek such remedies and administrators would not permit them is that they would not want to affirm something as positive that they believe is immoral — not even to end bullying.  And this is the point: public schools are both implicitly and explicitly taking sides in the public debate about the nature and morality of homosexuality.

Some will take offense at my comparison of homosexuality to polyamory or adult consensual incest because — they argue — those conditions are immoral and homosexuality is not. But that is precisely the unsettled debate. The moral beliefs of homosexuals and their ideological allies who oppressively control public schools are just that: beliefs, assumptions, moral propositions — not facts.

All the various organizations committed to using public schools to normalize homosexuality are trying to make the case that opposition to their anti-bullying laws, policies, and programs constitutes support for bullying, and our lawmakers are falling for it. Our lawmakers are quaking in their boots because they know homosexuals will call them supporters of bullying if they don’t toe the pro-homosexual ideological line. Allowing their fear to control their actions is destructive and embarrassing. 

The truth is it is entirely possible to oppose bullying without mentioning every possible condition for which students may be bullied, without “youth programming,” and without duplicative non-mandatory laws that will before long be made mandatory.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your senator and urge him/her to oppose this unnecessary bullying bill.

Help expand our reach by forwarding this email to like-minded family and friends.

Click HERE to make a donation to the Illinois Family Institute.

After an objective review by the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Sexual Risk Avoidance abstinence curriculum, Heritage Keepers, has been approved and found effective in delaying sexual initiation among youth. The curriculum is offered by Heritage Community Services located in Charleston, SC.
 
The rigorous program design involved 2,215 youth in 7-9th grades. Findings showed that those receiving the Heritage Keepers curriculum were significantly less likely to initiate sex than a comparison group at the 12 months follow-up.  The study reports,  “Sexual experience increased from 29.1 percent to 33.7 percent for the program participants, and from 29.2 percent to 43.2 percent among the comparison group.”  
 
“It is important to understand what works in empowering youth to eliminate the risks of teen sexual activity. The National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA) is committed to promoting research that can inform this goal. We congratulate Heritage Community Services on their success in impacting the lives and sexual health of youth, “ stated Valerie Huber, Executive Director of  NAEA.

IFI readers, please, whether you have children in schools or not, take seriously the assault on the minds and consciences of students, and take action against the newly amended and completely unnecessary anti-bullying bill: HB 5290.

IFI has requested that a provision be added that would guarantee students and school employees the right to opt out of any programs or activities that promote ideas that conflict with their personal or religious beliefs. If such a provision were added, IFI has agreed to adopt a neutral position on the bill, but so far the bill’s sponsors and the ACLU have steadfastly refused to add an opt-out provision.

It has already passed in the House. Please contact your state senator and ask him or her to oppose the bill unless this opt-out provision is included:

No student or school employee will 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.

Listening to the audio of the House floor debate on HB 5290 was an illuminating and frustrating experience. Here are some of the illuminating and frustrating excerpts from that debate in which the bill’s chief sponsor, State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) was questioned:

Rep. Mike Bost (R-Murphysboro):

If someone has a different belief than you and they explain that belief and express their belief, and express it in a hard way, but doesn’t put a hand on the person, could that be considered bullying?

Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago):

I don’t believe it does. This would have to rise to the level of harassment and torment.

Rep. Bost:

But what is torment to you and harassment might not be torment to me and harassment.

Rep. Cassidy:

A single statement, I don’t think, can be reasonably predicted to have the following outcome. There is no reasonable person under any standard of law that would say one statement, one single statement that “I disagree with you” would put me at fear of physical harm. So, I don’t believe that your situation would rise to that level. Bullying is about behavior, not belief.

What Cassidy “thinks” and “believes” about how this law would be applied in schools is hardly reassuring.

In addition, she is either ignorant of the text of the existing law or deceitful. The law passed in 2010 does not define bullying as only “harassment,” “torment,” or being in “fear of physical harm” as Cassidy implies in her response to Bost. The law defines bullying as any severe or pervasive physical or verbal act or conduct, including communications made in writing or electronically that can be reasonably expected to place the student in fear of their person or property, cause a substantial detrimental effect to their physical or mental health, or substantially interfere with their academic performance or ability to participate in school activities.  

Since the law does not state — as it should — that bullying acts must be severe and pervasive, a single act, including a verbal act, could be construed as constituting bullying. In addition, a single verbal act that is expected to interfere with academic performance or a student’s ability to participate in school activities could be construed as bullying even if it does not constitute harassment or torment, or “put a student in fear of physical harm.”

It should have been obvious to Cassidy that Bost was not asking if students would be permitted to say literally, “I disagree with you.” He was asking if a student who expresses ideas or beliefs that another student finds offensive could be accused of bullying.

For example, if a student were to say in a classroom discussion or to her friends in the cafeteria, “Homosexual acts are perverted,” or “Gays shouldn’t be allowed to adopt,” or “When men have sex with men, they degrade themselves,” could she be accused of bullying? Could someone claim that those verbal acts caused a “detrimental effect to his mental health”?

Bost’s questioning continued:

Rep. Bost:

What does your bill add to this [existing anti-bullying] law?

Rep. Cassidy:

The underlying [existing] law required that school districts adopt policy on bullying. We have not had compliance statewide and many of the schools have very minimal policies…This [bill] defines what a policy on bullying would look like….There are 3 school districts with no policy at all and over 20 with inadequate policies—one-line policies at best.”

According to Cassidy, 20 schools have “inadequate” bullying policy, but the law passed in 2010 does not mandate any particular policy formulation, so perhaps the very liberal Task Force and Cassidy may not view the policies of these 20 unnamed school districts as adequate, but as long as they have even a one-sentence policy, they’re in compliance with the law. Moreover, no one provided any evidence that these schools’ bullying policies have been problematic. To reiterate, there are about 879 public school districts in Illinois and dozens more non-public, non-sectarian schools to which existing law applies. Of those, only 3 districts, according to Cassidy, have not complied with the law.

State Representative Dennis Reboletti (R-Elmhurst) suggested that the Illinois State Board of Education(ISBE) should be working with the districts that have no policy, rather than passing yet another law. He suggested that the judgment of “inadequacy” seems subjective and the decisions regarding “adequacy” are best left to communities and their elected school boards.

Bost’s question about what HB 5290 adds to current existing law is critical. Despite Cassidy’s obfuscation to the contrary, HB 5290 adds nothing. No school is required to adopt any of HB 5290’s recommendations.

Furthermore, a comparison of the recommendations that HB 5290 makes to the recommendations that the Task Force made and posted  on the ISBE website over a year ago reveals that they’re virtually identical.

State Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie) asked Cassidy if the State Board of Education has made “an effort with those 23 school districts to resolve those issues [no or inadequate bullying policy]. Cassidy responded awkwardly in the passive voice: “The desire was to have a more fully defined guideline.”

First, as already discussed, the guidelines in HB 5290 are not more fully defined. They are the same as the guidelines provided by the Task Force.

Second, who precisely is the person or persons whose identity Cassidy craftily concealed by using the passive voice. Who exactly desired “to have a more fully defined guideline for the school districts”? Suspicious minds would guess that the desirers were Cassidy; the homosexual activist groups Equality Illinois and the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance; and the ACLU of Illinois.

Cassidy claimed during the floor debate that she “hears very often from parents,” presumably about bullying issues. How many parents over the past year since the Task Force published their bullying policy recommendations have contacted Cassidy? Did Cassidy verify their stories with their school districts? Did the parents who contacted Cassidy identify their school’s bullying policy as the problem? Did Cassidy ascertain whether these parents live in one of the 23 districts that purportedly have no or inadequate bullying policy? Did Cassidy ask these parents if they had addressed the issue with their principals, superintendents, and school boards? Did Cassidy point these parents to the Task Force’s non-mandatory recommendations, which HB 5290’s non-mandatory recommendations merely restate?

The fact that HB 5290’s recommendations are virtually identical to the Task Force’s recommendations raises a few issues:

• If HB 5290 proposes nothing new, why waste time creating and debating it?
• If HB 5290 mandates nothing, how is it different from a resolution?
• The Illinois State Bullying Prevention Task Force has already issued and posted its recommendations in a 106-page document (about which I have written). Since the Task Force has already issued its recommendations, why are multiple homosexual activist organizations pushing for the passage of HB 5290 if not to establish a beachhead from which to launch their next attack on local control?  The next step will be to make all of their non-mandatory “recommendations” mandatory. The next step will require students and school personnel to attend indoctrination sessions—I mean, “programming” and “training”—that will promote “progressive” views on homosexuality, gender confusion, and cross-dressing.
• If any administrators have contacted Cassidy or other lawmakers requesting further guidance, did the lawmakers direct them to the Task Force’s recommendations, which are posted on the Illinois State Board of Education’s website and are essentially identical to HB 5290?

Imagine we’re playing the childhood game of “Red Light, Green Light.” Homosexual activists and their ideological allies see conservatives with their backs turned away from the game and know they have the green light. Some will career wildly toward their goal of total societal transformation, while others take baby steps, hoping no one will notice until it’s too late.  

Don’t be fooled again. HB 5290 is not about bullying prevention. If we’re going to allow this unnecessary, partisan bill to pass, at least make sure it includes an opt-out for students and school employees. 

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your senator and urge him/her to oppose this unnecessary bullying bill.

WARNING: Not for younger readers

With Bill Clinton-esque rhetorical slipperiness, Dan Savage responds to my criticism of his anti-Christian hate speech by citing a video from which I did not quote and to which I did not provide a link in either of my two articles this week. About that video, he asks the following:

[S]ee if you can detect hate speech, ‘virulent anti-Christian bigotry,’ or ‘language so hateful’ that I make ‘Reverend Fred Phelps look like a choir boy’ in my advice to gay kids with evangelical Christian parents.

Dan Savage claims that the video I was referring to when providing evidence that he exhibits virulent anti-Christian bigotry using hateful language was the video about homosexuals coming out to their Evangelical families. Of course, that is an offensive video, but it isn’t the one from which I quoted this week.

The video  (now removed) from which I quoted and to which I provided a link was a video from a speaking engagement of Savage’s at Rhodes College.

By directing attention to a video that I did not quote from or link to in either of this week’s articles, Savage maladroitly attempts to divert attention away from the adjectives he used to describe orthodox Christians and which I quoted several times in this week’s articles.

The question Savage needs to answer is: Did he describe orthodox Christians (i.e., those who hold traditional, historical biblical views on the nature and morality of homosexuality) as “bat sh*t, a**h*le, dou**ebags” while speaking at Rhodes College?

One final note: Savage reports that the video production service he uses, Hypomania Content, removed six of his videos purportedly due to their “poor quality” rather than their “content.” It’s completely understandable that Hypomania Content would want only “high quality” obscene and perverse videos from Dan Savage gamboling about the Internet. 

WARNING: Not for younger readers

My article on Dan Savage’s upcoming speaking engagement at Elmhurst College was posted and sent out late Monday afternoon. By early Tuesday morning, we discovered that several of Savage’s YouTube videos had been “removed by the user,” including two of the videos for which I had provided links in my article. One of those is the video in which Savage savages Christians in general and Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins in particular, using hateful, vulgar language.

Subsequently, I discovered that a Savage video I had referenced in an earlier article has been removed also. That one was titled “How to Come Out to Your Evangelical Family.”

Since multiple videos in which Savage discusses perverse sexual practices in obscene language remain on YouTube, it appears that the videos that have been removed are those in which Savage expresses virulent anti-Christian bigotry using language so hateful, he makes Reverend Fred Phelps look like a choir boy.

Elmhurst College administrators must be happy about the removal of these videos, since they’ve been busy doing damage control in the past few days over their foolish decision to invite Savage to speak at Hammerschmidt Chapel this Sunday.

Elmhurst College’s Managing Director of Public Affairs, Desiree Chen, is sending out this letter to critics of Dan Savage’s invitation:

Many of our speakers are controversial to one segment of society or another, and Mr. Savage is no exception. While we understand that Mr. Savage writes a newspaper column that deals with provocative topics and sometimes addresses them in debatable ways, the column is not why he was invited to speak here, and is not the topic of his presentation.

Mr. Savage will talk about the It Gets Better Project, which he created in 2010 in response to a number of heartbreaking incidents in which young students took their own lives after being bullied in schools across the country. Mr. Savage’s project invites mature people to create online videos that support and reassure young people facing harassment. The videos are specifically aimed at struggling lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth. Their message is one of hope for a life of dignity in a society that needs their service and perspective. The Project has led to the creation of more than 40,000 videos, which have been viewed more than 40 million times.

It is important to note that an invitation to speak at Elmhurst College does not represent an unqualified institutional endorsement of everything the speaker says or does, here or elsewhere. We ask a speaker to come here because we believe that he or she has something significant to say that is worthy of the consideration of our campus and the larger community. Not everyone will agree with all of our selections; but we do try to achieve a balance of thought-provoking speakers and topics.

What remarkably euphemistic, reductive language and compartmentalization Ms. Chen employs in the service of defending the indefensible. Savage’s advocacy for extramarital sexual dalliances and  his lighthearted approval of using excretory functions as sexual practices are merely “provocative topics” and calling Christians “bat sh*t, a**h*le, dou**ebags” is merely a “debatable way” of talking about theological differences.

Does Ms. Chen believe that Reverend Fred Phelps’ similarly hateful beliefs about homosexuals constitute merely a “provocative topic” and that the rhetoric Phelps uses to describe them is merely a “debatable way” to talk about that topic?

Chen, speaking for the Elmhurst College administration, goes on to defend Savage’s invitation based on the fact that he was not invited to talk about his sexual ideology. Rather, Elmhurst invited him to speak about his much-viewed “It Gets Better” online video project, which she asserts promises “hope for a life of dignity.”

Chen is asserting as fact the disputable notion that telling hurting kids that embracing a homosexual life offers them hope for a life of dignity. Many, however, would argue that the embrace of a homosexual life effaces human dignity and compromises human flourishing. 

Moreover, neither the number of video submissions, nor the number of viewings mean that the project is a good one or  justify hiring a speaker who uses the very same kind of ugly, hateful, bigoted language that he claims hurts teens. What utter hypocrisy to invite a man to speak against bullying who calls people “bat sh*t, a**h*le, dou**ebags” and who recently called teens “pansies” who walked out during one of his anti-Christian rants.

Even those who believe that the “It Gets Better” project has value should be able to see that Savage’s other public work is so corrosive , so puerile, so hateful, and so obscene as to render him a lousy advocate for a life of dignity and a woefully unsuitable guest speaker.

I wonder if in the service of exploring provocative topics and trying to “achieve balance,” Elmhurst College will invite a speaker to explore ideas that oppose Savage’s, preferably in less “debatable ways.” 

I wonder too how much Elmhurst College paid Savage.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact Elmhurst College President Dr. S. Alan Ray in protest of this event.

WARNING: Not for younger readers

Let’s hope that audience members at the Dan Savage speaking engagement this coming Sunday, April 29, 2012 at Elmhurst College demonstrate the good sense and courage that several high school students recently demonstrated.

Dan Savage, the vulgar, vitriol-spewing, homosexual sex columnist was for some bizarre reason invited to be the Friday keynote speaker at a national convention for high school journalism students held in Seattle, Washington last week.

Savage, being Savage, employed his usual anti-religious, obscene rhetoric, and when some offended high school students walked out, the middle-aged Savage called them “pansies.”

In the convention’s program, Savage is described as a “popular, sex advice columnist” who offers “frank, funny advice on sex and relationships” and “creates a safe space for all audiences to discuss ‘taboo’ topics.” Two things to note: 1. The event planners knew exactly what they were getting in hiring Savage for an event for high school students. 2. In academia, a “safe space” means a place where volitional homosexuality must be affirmed as moral. The presence of any dissenting ideas renders a space “unsafe.”

After Savage’s presentation, faculty adviser for students from Overland Park, Kansas, Jim Mccrossen, told his students that “‘it is important to be challenged in what you believe because you never become stronger in anything if you are not challenged.'” When I worked at Deerfield High School, English teacher Jeff Berger-White made this same claim in our local press when defending his decision to teach the obscene, homosexuality-affirming play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes by homosexual playwright Tony Kushner:

‘There are going to be times during their years in high school, if we (teachers) are doing are (sic) jobs well, when most students should feel intellectually, emotionally, and even morally challenged.’ 

Some questions emerge from these teachers’ claims: First, is it really the job of public high school teachers to challenge students emotionally and morally? Second, if it is, how often do teachers in public schools provide resources or activities that challenge “progressive” views of homosexuality? How often do they have students read essays by scholars who dissent from the views of Dan Savage or Tony Kushner? How many students have read an essay by Princeton law professor Robert George or Providence College English professor Anthony Esolen or Amherst professor Hadley Arkes? How many students have read any essays at all by a conservative scholar on topics related to homosexuality?

Dan Savage’s signature project, the effort for which he is most well-known, is the “It Gets Better” Campaign in which actors, politicians, and ordinary people affirm homosexuality while telling hurting kids who experience same-sex attraction that life will get better. This has the superficial gloss of a positive message but is based on foundational assumptions that are ultimately socially irresponsible, intellectually bankrupt, and an affront to human dignity — the very opposite of the values Elmhurst College claims to hold.

Here are some of the values and visions that Elmhurst College affirms:

Mission

Elmhurst College inspires its students…to prepare for …ethical work in a multicultural, global society. … [W]e foster learning, broaden knowledge, and enrich culture through…scholarship.

Vision for the Future

Elmhurst College …asks our students to become… academically grounded, intellectually engaged, and socially responsible citizens, who understand and respect the diversity of the world’s cultures and peoples.

Core Values

Intellectual Excellence
We value intellectual freedom, curiosity, and engagement; [and] rigorous debate.

Community
We are committed to… mutual respect among all persons…and fairness and integrity in all that we do.

Stewardship
We are committed stewards of the human, fiscal, and physical resources entrusted to us.

Faith, Meaning, and Values
We value the development of the human spirit in its many forms and the exploration of life’s ultimate questions through dialogue and service. We value religious freedom and its expressions on campus. Grounded in our own commitments and traditions as well as those of the United Church of Christ, we cherish values that create lives of intellectual excellence, strong community, social responsibility, and committed stewardship.

Let’s see if Dan Savage reflects the mission of Elmhurst College to prepare students for “ethical work”; or its vision to have students become “academically grounded” and socially responsible citizens who “respect the diversity of the world’s peoples”; or the college’s core values regarding “mutual respect,” “integrity,” “intellectual excellence,” and “social responsibility.”

Here are some quotes from Savage (with links to videos, lest anyone think I’m cherry-picking quotes or pulling them out of context):

He describes conservative Christians like “Tony Perkins” as “right-wing, fundamentalist, bat sh*t, a**h*le, dou**ebag Christians,” and as the “Evangelical Taliban Christian Family Association.” He also tells “progressive” Christians to start “screaming in Tony Perkins’ face.”  I wonder if such rhetoric creates a “safe space” for people who hold orthodox, historical theological beliefs?

Even with asterisks, I can’t repeat what Savage says at his speaking engagements. If you choose to watch the ones we’ve provided links to, bear in mind that Savage has an adopted son who was between 10-12 years old when Savage was saying things publicly that no father should say even privately (WARNING—GRAPHIC,  OBSCENE LANGUAGE):  HERE, HERE,  HERE, HERE and HERE.  (UPDATE:  We discovered last night that a number of Savage’s YouTube videos were removed after this article was published.)

What is ironic is that after Rush Limbaugh used offensive language to describe a feminist activist, the Obama Administration took him to task, but even Dan Savage’s well-documented history of referring to conservative Christians as “bat sh*t, a**h*le, d**chebags” and advocating the most perverse sexual practices in the most foul language doesn’t stop President Obama from inviting him to the White House.

Elmhurst College claims to value “rigorous debate,” the “exploration of life’s ultimate questions through dialogue,” intellectual engagement, and diversity. If so, will the college be inviting speakers who espouse different views of the nature and morality of homosexuality than Savage and who do so in a different manner, that is to say, without obscene language that degrades rather than develops the human spirit.

Savage’s invitation seems to be part of a larger effort on the part of Elmhurst College to promote arguable assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexuality. Some months ago, Elmhurst College made the national news for being the first college in the nation to ask on its college application whether applicants identify as homosexual, bisexual, or transgender. The administration defended this question by asserting an offensive and absurd comparison of race to conditions constituted by subjective desire and volitional sexual acts.

In so doing, Elmhurst College administrators reveal their own ignorance. And by promoting contemporary ideas about “LGBT identity,” they reveal their theological heresy — not that theological orthodoxy is important to Elmhurst College, which bears virtually no imprint of its theological heritage. But boy oh boy does it proudly show the mark of sexual unorthodoxy to which even pedagogical soundness must bow in obeisance.

Elmhurst College’s Hammerschmidt Memorial Chapel, which once echoed with the thoughtful, civil voices of Elie Weisel and Martin Luther King Jr., will now be polluted by the odious rhetoric of Dan Savage. 

On Wednesday morning, IFI received an email from a gentleman in Stockton, California, who is angry at our national effort to encourage parents to keep their children home from school on the Day of Silence if their school permits students to refuse to speak during instructional time.

He made accusations that I believe warrant a response. I also believe that the email exchange warrants publication, so that others are not confused if they should encounter similar criticisms.

Below is his email followed by my response:

Dear Director, 

Your use of the ACLU source is horrendously flawed. While you are quick to use the quote that “You DO have a right to participate in Day of Silence and other expressions of your opinion at a public school during non-instructional time: the breaks between classes, before and after the school day, lunchtime, and any other free times during your day.”

You completely ignore the next lines that add that “If you want to stay quiet during class on Day of Silence, we recommend that you talk with your teachers ahead of time, tell them that you plan to participate in Day of Silence and why it’s important to you, and ask them if it would be okay for you to communicate in class on that day in writing. Most teachers will probably say yes.”

While that omission can at least be justified, the next omission cannot. The very site that you base your argument for walking out on the DOS clearly states that:

Students who oppose Day of Silence DO have the right to express their views, too. Like you, they must do so in a civil, peaceful way and they only have a right to do so during noninstructional time. For example, they don’t have a right to skip school on Day of Silence without any consequences, just as you don’t have a right to skip school just because you don’t like what they think or say. (*see note below) 

Your site is blatantly misrepresenting the ACLU’s statements and giving incorrect advice to parents. By taking their students out of class parents are going beyond their rights (unless you claim that you have a better understanding of civil rights than the ACLU Lawyers). You are endangering the education and well-being of the students are parents who are trusting your advice. By taking their students out of class they are not covered by speech, and can be penalized. Quite frankly, I am horrified at the reckless and shortsighted disregard your organization is showing for the very people you are supposed to be helping.

Sincerely,

David T.

 Dear Mr. T., 

Our goal is to correct the false idea many administrators, teachers, students, and parents have which is that students have a legal right to refuse to speak in class. 

You are incensed that we omitted this: 

Students who oppose Day of Silence DO have the right to express their views, too. Like you, they must do so in a civil, peaceful way and they only have a right to do so during noninstructional time. For example, they don’t have a right to skip school on Day of Silence without any consequences, just as you don’t have a right to skip school just because you don’t like what they think or say.

The first sentence regarding expressing views during “non-instructional time” illustrates precisely our objection to the Day of Silence: Day of Silence participants are exploiting instructional time to express their views through a refusal to speak. We are not objecting to silence during non-instructional time. And we’re not objecting to Day of Silence participants verbally expressing their views during non-instructional time. 

We are not asking parents to keep their children home from school “just because we don’t like what Day of Silence participants are saying” and certainly not because of what they’re “thinking” (frankly, that statement from the ACLU blogger is just a silly statement). We don’t object to Day of Silence participants saying what they want during non-instructional time or thinking what they want anytime. 

We are asking parents to keep their children home if schools are permitting a political action–that is, a silent protest–during instructional time. Like those who oppose the Day of Silence, supporters of the Day of Silence are free to express their views during non-instructional time. 

I find it ironic that you charge us with “endangering education.” GLSEN has for years encouraged students to use instructional time to engage in political action and when we respond, we’re accused of “endangering education.” You seem to think that sound education entails passive acquiescence to GLSEN’s exploitation of public schools. The reality is that the very integrity and legitimacy of public education is jeopardized by partisan political action in the classroom and by the curricular censorship of all resources that dissent from GLSEN’s ontological and moral assumptions about homosexuality and from GLSEN’s socio-political goals. 

Additionally, you have charged us with “endangering the well-being of students and their parents” by urging them to remove their children from school when administrations permit political action during instructional time. We, however, believe that the well-being of students and parents is compromised by the presence of homosexuality-affirming political action in the classroom. 

One final comment: If the ACLU has taken the time to comment on parents keeping their children home from school on the Day of Silence, the Walkout must be having an effect. 

*GLSEN has not included in any of its formal Day of Silence documents the statement that students “don’t have a right to skip school on Day of Silence without any consequences, just as you don’t have a right to skip school just because you don’t like what they think or say.” I finally found that statement, which was cited with much indignation by David T. It was posted by a “guest” blogger from the ACLU on a Day of Silence blog in 2010.