On April 20th, in thousands of schools across America, your hard-earned tax dollars will help underwrite the homosexual indoctrination of your kids. Yes, April 20th will mark the annual Day of Silence, described on its website as “a student-led national event that brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools.” As for those who do not support a special school day devoted to gay indoctrination, they are the ones who can expect to be silenced.

Originally the brainchild of some college students in 1996, the Day of Silence has been aggressively promoted for the last 12 years by GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network. (Based on its activities, GLSEN would better be described as the Gay & Lesbian Sexual Education Network.) GLSEN calls on students to remain silent during non-instructional school times on the Day of Silence, thereby standing in solidarity with LGBT youth who are silenced through bullying and harassment.

But don’t some schools already have generic, anti-bullying programs in place along with special, daylong events to highlight the destructive effects of bullying, a subject that should concern all of us? Of course they do, but that’s not enough. GLSEN insists that a special focus must be put on LGBT kids, as if bullying a gay kid was worse than bullying a fat kid.

But there’s more that takes place on the Day of Silence: A pro-homosexuality message is often sent to the students, with teachers and administrators frequently promoting homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism over the course of the day. That’s why thousands of schools (and not just students) officially participate in the event, with the explicit backing of GLSEN. What about other messages being introduced during the day to balance the discussion? Perish the thought.

Just ask PFOX (Parents and Friends of ExGays and Gays), which announced its intention to hand out literature on the Day of Silence. According to PFOX president Greg Quinlan, “PFOX is calling on students to distribute flyers promoting acceptance of ex-gays. Former homosexuals and their supporters are ridiculed and forced to live in silence. Our nation’s schools deny students with unwanted same-sex attractions any support or fact-based information that feelings can and do change.”

How was this announcement welcomed? According to one gay journalist, “the fact that they are attempting to sneak in their harmful message on the Day of Silence, a day which is supposed to show support for those who are forced into silence by outside pressures, shows just how deceptive their message truly is.”

How dare they introduce their message on the Day of Silence! As expressed in 2004 by gay activist Kevin Jennings, founder of GLSEN and most recently President Obama’s Safe School Czar, “Ex-gay messages have no place in our nation’s public schools. A line has been drawn. There is no ‘other side’ when you’re talking about lesbian, gay and bisexual students.” Ah yes, the voice of tolerance speaks once again.

What about the Day of Dialogue, sponsored by the evangelical Christian organization Focus on the Family, and scheduled this year for April 19th, the day before the Day of Silence? This event encourages “student-initiated conversations about the fact that God cares about our lives, our relationships and our sexuality. . . . [Jesus’] example calls us to stand up for those being harmed or bullied while offering the light of what God’s word says.”

Surely this event will be welcomed, right? Not a chance. As expressed by a professing Christian woman with a self-described “hair-trigger sensitivity for the protection of LGBT youth,” the Day of Dialogue has something “very rotten” at its core. She writes (on LGBTQNATION.com), “Allowing Focus on the Family to export their historical and counter-productive sacred discrimination of the LGBT community to Christian youth is a mistake.” To repeat the words of Kevin Jennings, “There is no ‘other side’ when you’re talking about lesbian, gay and bisexual students.”

Last week an elementary school teacher from Florida called into my radio program, identifying himself as a black male but not wanting to give any specifics about the grade he taught at school. He was concerned that his job could be in jeopardy if he dared speak out against the Day of Silence. (Other elementary school teachers have told me privately that they dare not speak out against the overt homosexual activism they see on a regular basis in their schools – remember, we’re talking about elementary schools – for fear of losing their jobs.)

Although the Day of Silence had not yet been introduced to this gentleman’s school in Florida, the faculty members were discussing strategies for its future implementation, with explicit instructions to present this as a civil rights issue. (Needless to say, this black American also did not approve of equating gay activism with the civil rights movement.) And what should the teacher do if a student raised a religious or moral objection to homosexuality? The conversation, he was told, should immediately be turned back to gay civil rights, and no religious or moral objections should be entertained.

Yes, the Day of Silence has become the Day of Silencing – unless parents and educators and students determine to let their voices be heard. Now would be a good time to start.

From Liberty Counsel

On Friday, April 20, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) will encourage students to remain silent for an entire school day in solidarity with the radical lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) agenda. 

While “peaceful” in name, schools face harsh pressure from the radical LGBT movement to support and promote the Day of Silence. Despite the huge push on schools and teachers from GLSEN to advance the LGBT agenda through this event, no one can be legally forced to participate or condone the Day of Silence. 

Last year, some parents chose to withdraw their children from school on that day. Parents are encouraged to call the schools and tell them the reason their children will not be attending. School administrators usually listen, because the school loses money for each absence. 

School teachers should be aware that students do not have the right to remain silent when they are called upon by teachers. Conduct on the part of a student that causes a substantial disruption or material interference with school activities is not protected under the First Amendment. Students cannot learn if they refuse to participate in class, and they harm other students’ experience by not contributing to a dialogue of learning. 

School administrators do not have to promote the Day of Silence. In those states that require abstinence instruction, schools do not have to recognize clubs that promote sexual activities. 

Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, said, “The Day of Silence is not about tolerance or bullying. It is about pushing a sexual agenda. Students and staff who disagree with a radical sexualized agenda are demonized and made to feel like outsiders. Children should be afforded a rigorous education opportunity and not be forced to accept a radical sexualized agenda subsidized with tax dollars. Parents and lawmakers should take the time to learn about the extreme views of GLSEN and the intolerance promoted by the Day of Silence.”

While many conservatives call for a forfeit — I mean, truce — on the social issues, the other side gleefully forges ahead using our money to indoctrinate our kids in public schools. Conservatives used to be asleep at the wheel, but now we’re just asleep. We forfeited the wheel decades ago.

It’s true that public education is public in the sense that whatever it is that goes on in our schools is paid for by the public, but, at least on sexuality issues, there is no education going on. “Progressive” agents of change are unabashedly engaging in censorship in the service of promoting their social and political interests. Their motto: “Critical thinking and intellectual diversity be damned.”

Here is a just a sampling of the “educational” activities, events, projects, and resources that our agents of change and their ideological compeers from the world of homosexual activism have introduced to our public schools during the “truce”:

• Changing the Game: the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s (GLSEN) new sports project “is an education and advocacy initiative focused on addressing [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] issues in K-12 school-based athletic and physical education programs” (emphasis added).
  
  
• Ally Week (GLSEN)
  
  
• GLSEN Elementary Toolkit (Read more HERE.)
  
  
• Welcoming Schools (Human Rights Campaign): “Welcoming Schools” provides “tools, lessons, and resources,” including activities and consultants to administrators and teachers that seek to normalize and affirm homosexuality, bisexuality, and gender confusion in elementary schools.
  
  
• Spirit Day (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation)
  
  
• Transgender Day of Remembrance
  
  
• National Coming Out Day (Human Rights Campaign)
  
  
• OK4U2BGAY, created by the organization H8SUX (Read more HERE.)

• National Sexuality Education Standards (GLSEN, Planned Parenthood, SIECUS et al) (Read more HERE.)
  
  
• “Do Something!” Transforming Critiques of Gender Stereotypes Into Activism” (Southern Poverty Law Center’s Educational Project, Teaching Tolerance): This series of lessons on gender confusion is intended for children in pre-school through grade 5 who, according to Teaching Tolerance, will “benefit from participating in activism because it helps them understand the socially constructed nature of gender” and “overcome the damage done by internalized gender stereotypes.”
  
  
• And last, but not least, the queen of public school political protests: the Day of Silence

The Day of Silence, which is promoted by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, takes place in middle and high schools all around the country this Friday April 20. GLSEN asks students to refuse to speak in class on the Day of Silence, which, of course, disrupts the normal course of a school day. Imagine if multiple groups were permitted to engage in this kind of political protest during the year.

GLSEN provides cards to students to give to teachers explaining the reason for their refusal to speak. In 2002, this is what the card said:

Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. I am participating in the Day of Silence, a national youth movement protesting the silence faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies. My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by harassment, prejudice, and discrimination. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward fighting these injustices. Think about the voices you are not hearing today. What are you going to do to end the silence?

A few observations on this card:

• GLSEN itself called it a protest.
• GLSEN suggests that homosexuals are “silenced,” which is ironic in light of the of the primacy of homosexuality-affirmation in public education, the mainstream news media, and the arts, and the concomitant censorship of dissenting voices in most of those contexts. It is often noted that even FOX News has become increasingly silent on (if not downright supportive of) the homosexuality-affirming movement, with numerous “conservative” FOX contributors displaying an overt hostility and condescension to conservative positions on issues related to homosexuality.
• This 2002 Day of Silence card given by students to teachers challenges teachers to “do” something to “end the silence,” which, translated into plain English, means teachers are supposed to do something to eradicate moral disapproval of homosexuality.

The 2012 card now says this:

Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. I am participating in the Day of Silence (DOS), a national youth movement bringing attention to the silence faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies. My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by anti-LGBT bullying, name-calling and harassment. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward building awareness and making a commitment to address these injustices.

Think about the voices you ARE NOT hearing today.

A few observations about this newer card:

• GLSEN hopes to distance the Day of Silence from the notion of “protesting.” Instead, they’re  merely “bringing attention” to an issue.
• They have added the always useful language about “bullying,” and “name-calling.” This language shift enhances GLSEN’s ability to promote the lie that opposition to the Day of Silence constitutes support for bullying.
• They removed the presumptuous suggestion that others have a moral obligation to fight for the eradication of conservative moral beliefs—which is the ultimate end game of GLSEN.

It’s not just parents who should be opposing the Day of Silence. Every conservative taxpayer, every conservative teacher, and every conservative administrator should be coming alongside parents and working to restore integrity to public education.

First, it’s a stewardship issue. Our taxes are being used for illegitimate political purposes.

Second, students in school today are the culture-makers of tomorrow. We have a vested interest in the soundness of their education.

Third, this isn’t one isolated event. It’s one part of a large, ominous picture that includes curricular resources and activities in theater, English, and social studies classes; sex ed classes that promote liberal assumptions about homosexuality; anti-bullying programs; and countless activities created and promoted by homosexual activist organizations. Re-examine the list above and note the cacophonous sounds of “silence.”

Fourth, the rarely told truth is that many students and teachers on both the political right and left dislike intensely the Day of Silence. They hate the dissension that the Day of Silence brings to their school day. Not all liberal teachers use the classroom for political purposes. Many just want to teach their subject matter. Many teachers resent having to modify lesson plans or expectations to accommodate student silence but feel if they don’t, they will be viewed as bigots and bully-enablers.

Administrators:

Tell teachers they have no legal obligation to allow students to refuse to speak in class and that they should not permit political protests in the classroom. Communicate to parents and students that students have no legal right to refuse to speak in class and that classes will take place as usual.

Teachers:

Plan activities that involve student verbal participation and follow all normal disciplinary procedures that would apply to students who refuse to obey instructions.

Community members without students in the school:

Contact your local middle and high school administrators. Ask them if teachers are permitted to allow students to refuse to speak in class on the Day of Silence. If they permit this political protest, tell them you object to public school teachers who are subsidized by your taxes allowing instructional time to be used to promote controversial moral and political views in the classroom. Send a letter to your local press and read a prepared statement at the next school board meeting expressing the same ideas.

Parents:

Call your children’s middle and high schools today. Ask if the school is permitting teachers to allow students to refuse to speak in class on the Day of Silence. If the school says “no,” ask them how and when this will be communicated to parents, teachers, and students. It should be communicated at least several days before the Day of Silence.

If your administration does not communicate this expectation to parents, teachers, and students, call your child out of school, because it means the administration is ignoring the issue and tacitly permitting teachers to allow the silent protest to take place.

If your school administration says that teachers may permit students to refuse to speak during class, call your child out of school. Tell your administration and school board that since they are permitting instructional time to be exploited for a political protest, your child will not be in school. This will remove your child from an environment that fosters controversy, and your child’s absence will cost the district money.

Then go to your next school board meeting and lodge an unequivocal complaint.

While homosexual activism has infiltrated public schools in countless ways, the Day of Silence Walkout is is virtually the only organized effort available to parents to express their opposition to such activism. And it’s one that takes very little courage. If we continue to do and say nothing, the pro-homosexual activism increases and the children who are targets of such indoctrination become ever younger.

For more information, click here: Day of Silence Walkout.

Written by Linda Harvey of Mission America

A broad coalition of pro-family groups recommends that students stay away from school on Friday, April 20, 2012, the national “Day of Silence,” if the school is officially recognizing and/or allowing students and teachers to observe this event during instructional time by a silent protest. High schools and even some middle schools are now the targets of this event.

The Day of Silence is supposedly led by students, but actually led by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which describes itself as “championing LGBT issues in K-12 education since 1990.” Did you catch that– “K through 12”? Younger and younger students are the target of this group. The younger, the better because they are easier to manipulate.

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

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

Here are ten reasons I believe Christian students in particular should refuse to honor this event by school attendance and why Christian teachers should plan activities that require students to verbally participate:

1. A silent protest in support of immoral, God-dishonoring behavior is in itself profoundly deceptive. All sexual behavior outside man/woman marriage is sinful in God’s eyes. Why should Christian students and teachers be in the position of accommodating this flagrant violation of their principles? Teachers would not want polyamorous students to be bullied, but would schools permit students to participate in a classroom protest in support of polyamory?

2. Any explicit or implicit message encouraging teens and even younger students to view homosexual acts as normative or moral is not “social justice” or “tolerance,” but, in reality, child corruption.

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

4. The Day of Silence fosters hostile and bigoted attitudes toward Christians and others with traditional moral beliefs; spreads inaccurate and harmful information; and promotes unproven, non-factual Leftist moral beliefs as objective truths.

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

6. Teachers know real bullying when they see it, and most teachers address it. But GLSEN and the Day of Silence pressure teachers not merely to address bullying behavior but to affirm Leftist moral and political beliefs. Since when did it become the job of government employees to become public relations agents for Leftist moral propositions or the good reputation of homosexuality?  Stopping bullying can be accomplished without becoming champions of the non-factual assumptions of the homosexuality-affirming movement.

7. There are legitimate lessons students should learn about prejudice and bias. But Day of Silence promoters deceptively link moral objections about homosexuality to racial discrimination or anti-Semitism in an attempt to legitimize the pro-homosexual ideology and portray homosexuals as perennial victims, while censoring through social pressure all dissenting views.

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

9. The health and lifestyle risks of homosexuality are virtually never shared on the Day of Silence. Instead, students are given the deceitful impression that homosexuality is just as safe and worthy an identity as heterosexual dating and marriage. The notion that same-sex attraction and volitional acts constitute an identity worthy of affirmation is not a fact, and government employees have no right, either explicitly or implicitly, to promote it to other people’s children.

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

Linda Harvey founded Mission:America in 1995, a Christian pro-family organization tracking current cultural issues. The organization’s flagship website is www.missionamerica.com, with weekly e-newsletters transmitted to a national audience.  As a former advertising executive, Mrs. Harvey specialized in creating new communications’ vehicles. She has started more than twenty-five publications and overseen multi-million dollar advertising campaigns, primarily in the health care field. She was formerly Director of Marketing Communications at Ohio State University Hospitals.

Mrs. Harvey has spoken on Capitol Hill and testified numerous times before state legislative committees. She serves on the National Pro-Family Forum and the Ohio Pro-Family Forum.

Linda Harvey holds a B.A. in English from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and has done graduate work at both Miami and Ohio State University. She is the wife of Tom Harvey and the mother of two children. They live in Columbus, Ohio.

How did they vote?

IFI strongly opposes the bill proposed by lesbian activist State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago).  Sixty votes were needed to pass this bill in the Illinois House, and it passed by a vote of 61-49-2. It will now be considered in the Illinois Senate. Look at the official roll call below to see how your state representative voted on HB 5290, or click HERE to download it.

Lest anyone be deceived about the central goal of Illinois’ anti-bullying laws, remember that homosexual activists created the original anti-bullying law, served on the task force charged with making recommendations for implementing the anti-bullying law, and sponsored the anti-bullying bill that just passed in the House. 

Here are a few of the problems with the bill: 

1. In order to prevent the kind of ideological indoctrination to which homosexual activists want to expose students, we requested that this language be added to the bill:

This course shall not include any instruction, resources, or activities that implicitly or explicitly contradict or undermine students’ or parents’ beliefs, including religious, moral, political, and philosophical beliefs, or that might be construed as criticisms or indictments of students’ or parents’ beliefs.”

Our request was ignored.

Some may argue that the following language in the existing anti-bullying law is sufficient protection against indoctrination:

Nothing in this Section or in the prevention course is intended to infringe upon any right to exercise free expression or the free exercise of religion or religiously based views protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or under Section 3 or 4 of Article 1 of the Illinois Constitution. 

This is not sufficient. We know from experience with the civil union bill that proclaimed “intentions” are meaningless in the face of committed homosexual activists.

It’s interesting to note how much stronger the language in Sections 3 and 4 of Article 1 of the Illinois Constitution is than that in the anti-bullying law:

The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination, shall forever be guaranteed, and no person shall be denied any civil or political right, privilege or capacity, on account of his religious opinions….

All persons may speak, write and publish freely….

Moreover, even a course that teaches wildly liberal views of homosexuality and gender confusion could be construed as not infringing on right to exercise free expression and as not infringing on the right to freely “exercise one’s religion or religiously based views.” Even if students are forced to listen to Leftist propaganda in a “youth programming” context, schools could argue that listening to such ideas does not infringe upon students’ rights to exercise free expression or freely exercise their religion or religiously based views. IFI is trying to prevent the government from forcing kids to be exposed to ideas that contradict their personal or religious beliefs.

This bill should say something stronger like “no student will be required to participate in any course, program, or activity that infringes upon free expression or contradicts personal beliefs or religious beliefs.”

2. This bill calls for a range of “restorative measures” to be implemented by schools in order to reduce the incidence of suspensions and expulsions, but one of the recommended restorative measures is the use of “peer juries, peer circles, and peer mediation.” IFI asked that language be included to ensure that participation in potentially emotionally manipulative peer juries, circles, and mediation be voluntary only. Our request was ignored.

3. We are deeply troubled by both the enumerated protected groups in existing law as well as the addition of yet more enumerated protected groups in Cassidy’s bill. Since it is impermissible to bully any student for any reason, enumerated categories are unnecessary.

Retaining and expanding enumerated categories opens the door to other special interest groups demanding the inclusion of yet more categories in this ever-expanding enumerated list. In addition, it will increase resentment among those groups who are bullied for reasons not enumerated.

In addition, since “sexual orientation,” and “gender identity” (conditions enumerated in existing law) are conditions constituted by behaviors that many consider immoral, their inclusion raises the possibility that those who affirm other conditions constituted by volitional acts that many consider immoral (e.g., polyamory) will demand inclusion of their conditions.

Cassidy “promised” that the categories she added to the bill would be deleted from the Senate bill, but as Representative Jerry Mitchell (R-Sterling) pointed out, this is a promise that Cassidy can’t guarantee will be kept.

Even if her promise is kept, however, all the enumerated protected groups from the original law will remain. What is the rationale for eliminating the newest protected groups while retaining the ones included in the disastrous original 2010 law?

Before the Senate version is passed, all enumerated protected groups should be eliminated.

4. We’re also troubled by the following squishy, ambiguous language regarding restorative measures, which opens the door to all sorts of problematic and mandatory ideological training:

Restorative measures means a continuum of school-based alternatives that contribute to maintaining school safety; protect the integrity of a positive and productive learning climate; teach students the personal and interpersonal skills they will need to be successful in school and society; [and] serve to build and restore relationships among students, families, schools, and communities.

Who will determine the nature of the “personal and interpersonal skills” needed for “success in school and society”? Who will decide what constitutes “the integrity of a positive and productive learning climate?” Homosexual activists believe that expressing conservative beliefs about homosexuality or having students study resources that express conservative moral beliefs creates a negative learning environment and will undermine chances for social success.

Who will decide how “safety” is defined? Homosexual activists have redefined the term “safety.” For them, it means absence of the expression of any ideas that dissent from theirs on the nature and morality of homosexuality. Homosexual activists believe that if students who identify as homosexual hear the idea that homosexual acts are immoral or that children deserve a mother and a father, they feel bad; and if they feel bad, they’re “unsafe.” That’s precisely how liberals defend censorship in public schools.

5. The existing Illinois anti-bullying law states that “‘Bullying’” means any severe or pervasive physical or verbal act or conduct.” It is critical to change the language from “severe or pervasive” to “severe and pervasive.” The Supreme Court decision in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, which was a case dealing with sexual harassment in schools, illuminates the potential problems with the language “severe or pervasive”:

Courts…must bear in mind that schools are unlike the adult workplace and that children may regularly interact in a manner that would be unacceptable among adults. See, e.g., Brief for National School Boards Association et al. as Amici Curiae  (describing “dizzying array of immature . . . behaviors by students”). Indeed, at least early on, students are still learning how to interact appropriately with their peers. It is thus understandable that, in the school setting, students often engage in insults, banter, teasing, shoving, pushing, and gender-specific conduct that is upsetting to the students subjected to it. Damages are not available for simple acts of teasing and name-calling among school children….Rather, in the context of student-on-student harassment, damages are available only where the behavior is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it denies its victims the equal access to education

The Davis decision was clear that if the language of the law is “severe or pervasive,” it opens the door to onerous litigation for school districts:

Although [i]n theory, a single instance of sufficiently severe one-on-one peer harassment could be said to [deny victims the equal access to education], we think it unlikely that Congress would have thought such behavior sufficient to rise to this level in light of the inevitability of student misconduct and the amount of litigation that would be invited by entertaining claims of official indifference to a single instance of one-on-one peer harassment.

 While this bill is being debated in the Illinois Senate, an amendment should be proposed that changes “severe or pervasive” to “severe and pervasive” in order to protect schools from potentially costly lawsuits.

Time permitting, we will shortly expose some of the embarrassingly weak reasoning–if it can even be considered “reasoning”–offered by Cassidy during floor debates just prior to the vote.

Please contact your senators and urge them to vote “No” on this bill unless the reasonable changes discussed above are implemented.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your senator and urge him/her to oppose HB 5290.

Last week, IFI published a press release that was sent to us by Luke Montgomery announcing yet another campaign to use public schools to promote acceptance of homosexuality. The campaign is the creation of his organization, H8SUX, which previously exploited young children by having them use the F-word in a video campaign to promote affirmation of perversion.

I try to respond to as many emails as possible, even from those with whom IFI disagrees. I rarely publish my responses and had no intention of doing so when I responded to Mr. Montgomery, the founder of H8SUX . Subsequently, I thought it might be helpful to others who may find themselves falsely accused of hating those who identify as homosexual. 

One point I regret not including in my email was a response to a claim made in the H8SUX press release. The press release made the astonishing claim that “Kids are born gay, lesbian, bi and trans.”  There is no research proving such a claim, and for Mr. Montgomery to assert that as fact is not only dishonest and irresponsible, it is destructive. 

Here is the email I sent Mr. Montgomery: 

Hi Luke, 

I just read your bio, and your story is really a terrible and sad story. 

What troubles me about homosexual activists and their ideological allies is that they, like you, conflate moral propositions about behavior with hate. In so doing, you actually cultivate hatred and diminish the possibility of both discourse and relationships with people who believe differently than you do. 

I worked in a public high school writing center for eight years, until the summer of 2008. Some of my tutors identified as homosexual, and all four of my children have had friends who identify as homosexual. Their friends’ same-sex attraction and embrace of a homosexual identity had no effect on my respect for them as human beings, my appreciation of their gifts and positive characteristics, or the delight I took in their company. They knew I cared about them and enjoyed their company. I don’t agree with them on the nature and morality of homosexuality, but we had a world of other topics to talk and laugh about. 

I think their understanding of what homosexuality is ontologically is completely in error, but I’m sure they think my ontological views are in error. I think their views of the morality of volitional homosexual acts are in error; they think mine are in error. That’s what happens in a diverse world. My belief that volitional homosexual acts are not moral does not constitute hatred of those who engage in them. I don’t believe polyamorous acts are moral either, and yet I don’t hate those who identify as polyamorous. 

I have never felt hatred toward those who identify as homosexual, spoken hatefully to anyone, or treated anyone uncivilly. Those on your side will argue that expressing the view that homosexual acts are immoral is inherently uncivil or disrespectful or hateful, but they don’t apply that principle consistently. They don’t argue that their expressions of moral disapproval of volitional acts constitute incivility, disrespect, or hatred. 

The implication of the claim that moral disapproval of volitional acts constitutes hatred is that the only way any human being can demonstrate love toward or respect for other humans is to affirm all of their beliefs and all of their volitional acts, which of course, would require you to affirm all of my beliefs and volitional acts. 

The truth is that it’s entirely possible to deeply love and enjoy the company of people with whom we profoundly disagree on questions of belief and morality. People do it all the time. 

Are there people who actually hate those who identify as homosexual? Yes, but I don’t know a single one. I know of Fred Phelps and his family, but I don’t personally know a single person who hates homosexuals, even though I know many who believe homosexual acts are not moral acts. And I know many people who believe like I do who would defend at great personal cost someone who was being assaulted by bigots. 

If my belief, and the belief of some of the finest scholars working in the most prestigious academic institutions around the world (including Princeton, Yale, and Oxford), are true that homosexual acts are not moral acts, then saying so can’t be hateful. You may reject a belief in God and an afterlife, but I believe in both. Further I believe that the best exegesis shows that God loves all of his creation, but not all of our desires and acts. And among the acts He hates are homosexual acts, which He says will cost us eternal life. I know you must reject everything I’ve just said, but you know it’s what I believe. What would it mean if I told you I didn’t care what happens to you after death? Would that not be the ultimate hateful act? 

I would urge you to be more circumspect in your assumptions and your statements about hatred. I’ve experienced the kind of virulent hatred that rhetoric like yours is generating among young people. 

If you’d ever like to talk, please don’t hesitate to call or email me. And if you’re ever in the Chicago area, I’d love to meet with you. 

Sincerely, 

Laurie Higgins

Perhaps some remember the loathsome and vulgar campaign that has young children using the F-word in a video series to promote affirmation of homosexuality. Well, they have a new campaign and the creator, Luke Montgomery, sent IFI an email about it, saying, “Hello, I thought you might find this of interest…” 

Below is the press release he thought would interest us and which provides another reason to call your kids out of school on the Day of Silence. The more cowardly we are, the more brazen homosexual activists become in their efforts to promote acceptance — not tolerance — but acceptance of homosexuality via government-subsidized public schools: 

Gay Activists Recruit Kids to Fight Homophobia in Schools by Giving Away Thousands of Free “OK4U2BGAY” T-Shirts to Teens 

Activists Launch H8SUX.com, Use Slick “Glee-Inspired” Viral Video to Promote Acceptance of Homosexuality and Fight Bullying and Suicide 

San Francisco – March 14, 2012 – H8SUX.com, a gay activist and T-shirt website, launched today and released its first viral video campaign targeting school kids with an offer of a free “OK4U2BGAY” T-shirt. The free pro-gay shirt will be shipped to any teen who simply makes a special YouTube video pledge to speak out against homophobia at school and support gay marriage. Inspired by the hit show “Glee,” the organization released a slickly-produced musical commercial showcasing a same-sex teen kiss and kids dancing in front of hot-pink school lockers while singing a catchy pro-gay song.

Organizers say the teen-targeted campaign is in response to who they call, “ballot box bullies” – politicians who directly inspire a climate for schoolyard bullies to torment LGBT kids. They cite initiatives to ban gay marriage in North Carolina and Minnesota, “Don’t Say Gay” Bills in Utah and Tennessee, and Rick Santorum’s promise to “force-divorce” thousands of legally married gay and lesbian couples as motivation for their pro-gay message to kids.

“We are recruiting kids to the cause of promoting the acceptance of homosexuality in schools,” said Luke Montgomery, director of the H8SUX.com video. “In a world full of bullies, suicide and hate, thousands of school kids wearing a pro-gay message in classrooms can be lifesaving and great. Kids are born gay, lesbian, bi and trans – and when I came out at 15, I was brutally beaten and left unconscious and bloody in a ditch. In 2012, kids should not be bullied and attacked just for being who they are. This free T-shirt will be a pro-gay billboard plastered on the chests of thousands of kids in classrooms across the nation. Our agenda is simple: to tell kids that it’s “OK4U2BGAY.” H8SUX.com is all about giving kids, gay and straight, the power to speak out against hate – and get a cool free T-shirt while doing it. Everyone says ‘it gets better’ – this makes it better.”

Featuring T-shirts with slogans such as “Legalize Love” and “Bullies Suck,” the H8SUX.com website is also making an appeal to adults using a model like the successful “One for One” charitable efforts of the TOMS shoe company. For every hoodie, tank to or tee sold on H8SUX.com, the organization will give a teen an “OK4U2BGAY” tee for free.

Video Sound Byte: “It’s OK to be gay. It’s great if you’re straight. But I ain’t down with this homo-hate!”

The H8SUX.com campaign also plans a national “Pink School Bus Tour” of T-shirt & wristband giveaways at schools in “homophobia hot-spots.” Using funds received through branded product sales, including T-shirts, bumper stickers, and wristbands, the company will continue to produce creative video campaigns targeting kids designed to be spread by teens and adults alike on YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter.

The company will be holding frequent T-shirt and wristband giveaways via Facebook and Twitter to grow the online           movement of teens and to promote acceptance of homosexuality in classrooms across the nation. (emphasis added)

I will shortly post my email response to Mr. Montgomery.

Make sure your Illinois friends & neighbors see the IFI Voter Guide 
before they go to the polls on Tuesday!

Not only did Illinois pass a terrible “anti-bullying” law two years ago, but now lesbian activist and appointed State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) has proposed an amendment that has the potential to make school “bullying” policies even more intrusive. Here are some of the problems with HB 5290:

1. This amendment would mandate that the State Board of Education establish “restorative measures” for schools to use to combat bullying. Restorative measures that include potentially intrusive and emotionally manipulative activities involving what’s called “social and emotional learning” and “peer juries, circles, and mediation.”
   
   Illinois was the first state to mandate that “Social and Emotional Learning” (SEL) standards be incorporated into curricula. Psychologist Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book Emotional Intelligence was influential in propelling the desire of liberal educators to expand their areas of influence to children’s emotions, values, and beliefs through what has come to be called SEL standards. It is through SEL standards that a host of troubling ideas about homosexuality and gender dysphoria/Gender Identity Disorder are working their way into curricula.
   
   One of the foremost organizations dedicated to promoting SEL is the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) which is located in Chicago.  One of CASEL’s co-founders is Daniel Goleman, and CASEL cites the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) as one of its resources.
   
   CASEL boasts that one of “SEL outcomes related to success in school and life” is “improved ethical attitudes and values.” What are the ethical attitudes and values that public schools will be promoting, and is it really the role of public schools to teach ethics, particularly on topics on which there is no cultural consensus?
   
   The current president of CASEL, Dr. Robert Weissberg, is a member of the DuPage County Anti-Bullying Task Force that created the 2011 “Best Practices in Bullying Prevention and Intervention,” which makes clear the connections between bullying prevention, “social and emotional learning” and the promulgation of liberal beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality.
   
   This document states that “’When schools are able to scaffold bullying prevention onto a larger more comprehensive framework for prevention and positive youth development, they strengthen their prevention efforts while also addressing some of the underlying contributing social, emotional, and environmental factors that can lead to bullying. A social and emotional learning (SEL) framework can serve just this purpose.’” Liberals believe that conservative moral and theological beliefs constitute the central underlying contributing factor in the bullying of students who identify as homosexual, and, therefore, a central plank of their efforts is to eradicate those beliefs.
   
   Further, this document emphasizes the importance in bullying education to work “together with parents, families and community to understand… sexual orientation.” There can be no doubt that the “understanding” of “sexual orientation” that is being promoted is “progressive” in nature.
   
   Tufts University lecturer Deborah Donahue-Keegan, who teaches “Education for Peace and Justice,” states that “High school teachers, particularly those who teach history and/or social studies, subjects where issues of civic concern are central, have an increasingly complex ‘explicit pedagogical responsibility for promoting their students’ social, moral and emotional growth.’” Integral to the social and emotional learning movement is the effort to influence moral beliefs.
   
   Combating bullying is a critical goal of public schools, but in many public schools, the issue of bullying is dominated by discussions of homosexuality and gender dysphoria (or what liberals call “gender identity”). Current efforts to prevent bullying focus on trying to influence student beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality and behaviors related to gender confusion. These efforts to influence student beliefs or feelings about homosexuality or gender confusion are dangerous and inappropriate means to curb bullying.
   
   
2. This law would mandate that “restorative measures” be implemented before suspension or expulsion, which means that students may be compelled to be exposed to ideological and/or emotional manipulation. The goal of keeping students in school is a good goal, but the means for achieving this goal should not include requiring students to participate in activities involving peer juries, peer circles, or peer mediation that carry serious emotional risks.
   
   Furthermore, the language of this amendment should be changed to state that “Restorative measures may not include any instruction, resources, or activities that implicitly or explicitly contradict or undermine any student’s or parents’ beliefs (including religious, moral, political, and philosophical beliefs) or that might be construed as criticisms or indictments of any student’s or parents’ beliefs”.
   
   
3. This law adds yet more categories of conditions for which students may not be bullied. Since it is impermissible to bully any student for any reason, enumerated categories are unnecessary.
   
   Retaining and expanding enumerated categories opens the door to other special interest groups demanding the inclusion of yet more categories in this ever-expanding enumerated list. In addition, it will increase resentment among those groups who are bullied for reasons not enumerated.
   
   In addition, since “sexual orientation,” and “gender identity” (conditions enumerated in existing law) are conditions constituted by behaviors that many consider immoral, their inclusion raises the possibility that those who affirm other conditions constituted by volitional acts that many consider immoral (e.g., polyamory) will demand inclusion of their conditions.
   
   All categories should be eliminated.
   
   
4. This law requires that the “State Board of Education recommend that schools create professional development [i.e., the training of staff and faculty] and youth programming for bullying prevention that are consistent with State Board of Education recommendations.” In other words, the State Board of Education will tell districts what kinds of ideas they should teach to staff and faculty. Does this mean that the State Board of Education will mandate what every school district will have to teach staff and faculty? Will youth programming be required?
   
   
5. This amendment changes the original law from requiring schools to “create and maintain” bullying policy to requiring schools to “create and administer,” which seems to mean that schools must not merely have the policy but must also actively promote it, presumably through the “professional development and youth programming” mentioned above.
   
   
6. This amendment would mandate that even “allegations of incidences of bullyingbe collected, maintained, and submitted to the State Board of Education, which shall keep a record of each incident.” There isn’t enough specificity in the bill’s language to know what information would be included in such a permanent record, which makes this dangerous. If allegations of bullying are not proved, no permanent records should include identifying information about alleged perpetrators.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your representative and urge him/her to oppose HB 5290.

District 116 in Round Lake, Illinois is embroiled in a controversy over a proposal to put a “school-based health center” (formerly called school-based health clinics) in Round Lake High School.

School-based health centers are a creation of the Left. The beliefs that propel this movement are the same beliefs that drive the push for comprehensive sex ed. Liberals in the education and health care fields try to put innocuous, non-controversial aspects of school-based health clinics front and center, hoping that they can distract gullible taxpayers from their real agenda, which is to facilitate adolescent sexuality, to sever sexuality from moral considerations, to undermine the ties between children and their parents, and to render sexual activity immune from all consequences.

Here are ten issues to consider when debating the merits of installing school-based health centers in more public schools:

1. Those who support school-based health centers believe that it is the role of government to provide everything to citizens that they see as good, which is why the United States is drowning in debt and spawning generations of citizens who lack personal fiscal discipline and a sense of responsibility for their own lives. We are becoming lazy, self-indulgent consumers who believe we’re entitled to everything we want, but believe we have no responsibility to pay for it. This is not an indictment of truly needy people. This is a comment about liberals who control public schools and about those who have an entitlement mentality toward government, like the Georgetown University law student who believes that other people have an ethical obligation to pay for birth control for female students enrolled at one of the most prestigious and expensive law schools in the country.
    
2. Taxpayers do foot the bill for school-based health centers. I was amazed at the statements made by pro-health center consultant Brenda Bannor who spoke at a District 116 school board meeting.
   
   Bannor said that no school funds and “no tax dollars are used to operate the school-based health center…It will be run by the Lake County Health Department. The school provides only the space and there’s actually a federal grant that will be coming out that’s specifically for building school-based health centers.”
   
   What, pray tell, does Bannor think federal grants are other than tax dollars?
   
   Bannor goes on to say that Round Lake High School would use the Lake County Health Department to administer the health center because it is a “federally qualified health center” and therefore “they are able to get enhanced reimbursements through Medicaid.” She stated that “there will be billing done, so the health center will be able to recoup dollars through billing.” And she stated that the district will not be “asking the federal government to constantly fund the health center.” How can Bannor say that money will be recouped by billing Medicaid and in the same sentence say that the government will not be constantly funding the health center?  Again, where does Bannor think funding for Medicaid comes from other than tax dollars?
   
   Initially I thought Bannor didn’t understand funding issues, but after reading her bio on the Millenia Consulting site, I realized that she couldn’t possibly be as ignorant of funding issues as her statements to the district suggested. Therefore, I can’t help but wonder if she was deliberately trying to mislead Round Lake community members.
   
   
3. School-based health center advocates emphasize the parental consent form as a way to assuage the concerns of parents. What they don’t fully explain is that the form is usually a general consent form, giving students permission to use the center.
   
   These forms often fail to provide a detailed explanation of what parents are agreeing to. For example, parents might not realize that they are agreeing to allow their child to be provided with birth control or abortion referrals or be counseled in affirmative ways about same-sex attraction.
   
   Many parents do not realize that the health center will not inform them when their child has used the center and cannot tell them if their child has received any mental health treatment or services related to sexual activity. Some on the Left will argue that teens can access mental health services and birth control through other organizations that must also conceal this information from parents. The difference, however, is that in those cases, public schools are not participating in the process.
   
   
4. Liberal educators, who view themselves as “agents of change,” believe that it is both the right and responsibility of public schools to solve all of society’s ills. The scope of what liberal educators view as the role of public education is remarkable in its breadth. Liberal teachers believe it is their job to teach the “whole child,” which is why we see public schools and publicly funded school-based health centers promoting liberal beliefs about homosexuality and gender confusion to other people’s children.  
   
   Of the school-based health centers that provide reproductive health services, 63% offer “sexual orientation counseling” on-site. Another 22% provide referrals for “sexual orientation counseling.” Eighty percent provide on-site pregnancy testing. Seventy percent provide on-site birth control counseling. Is it really the task of public schools to make available these services during the school day? And is it really the public’s responsibility to pay for these services to be provided to other people’s children?
   
   We need to think deeply about what the purpose of public education is and what it should be. Should the purpose of public education be to solve all teen problems? Is it to solve all societal ills? Just because a problem like teen pregnancy exists does not mean that it is the task of public schools to try to solve it, particularly when the solutions liberal educators propose are controversial and expensive. There are many societal problems that stand outside the purview of public education to solve. School-based health centers illegitimately expand the role of public schools.
   
   Some parents, usually liberal, argue that they want their children to have access to reproductive services. But, the fact that some parents want their children to access reproductive services doesn’t mean it’s the role of public schools to provide them or for taxpayers to fund them.
   
   
5. Promoters of school-based health centers believe that teens have an absolute, unfettered right to sexual autonomy and privacy in matters related to sexuality. They believe that the sexual liberty of minors should supersede parental rights.
   
   
6. School based health centers provide mental health services that address homosexuality and gender confusion from a liberal perspective only, which means they provide counseling that affirms homosexual acts and gender confusion as normative, healthy, and moral. We must remember that these non-factual beliefs are being promoted with public money.
   
   
7. School-based health centers are promoted as means to provide essential health care to “undocumented,” students. But what kinds of services are taxpayers morally obligated to subsidize for those who are here illegally? An argument can be made that decent, compassionate people are morally obligated to pay for emergency care and illnesses, but are we obligated to pay for nutrition education, gender counseling, and contraceptives for anyone let alone people who are in the country illegally. The children of undocumented aliens are not responsible for being in this country illegally, but that doesn’t make Americans responsible for paying for their birth control counseling or pills.
   
   
8. The more money the government takes to “solve problems,” which almost always results in costly, bureaucratic nightmares, the less money individuals have to give to organizations and institutions that offer better ways of solving problems, organizations like churches and parachurch organizations.
   
   
9. When society continually uses the minority of irresponsible parents as justification for allowing the government to do more and more, as school-based health center proponents do, we actually rob responsible parents of the liberty to do their jobs. In addition, we encourage government dependence.
   
   
10. When we remove all obstacles to and consequences for unmarried adolescent sexuality, we get more of it.

    Society has eliminated emotional and psychological consequences by eliminating social taboos about non-marital sex. We have been taught that guilt, shame, and fear are inherently bad when in reality appropriate guilt, shame, and fear serve important social functions.

    We try to eliminate the physical consequences of sex by providing birth control, abortion, and free medicine.

    And we try to eliminate all financial consequences by providing housing, medical care, and food stamps to unmarried mothers.

Some suggestions and questions for the District 116 School Board:

• The school board should be required to provide a comprehensive summary of the pros and cons of school-based health centers to all district taxpayers after which they should ask for feedback.
  
  
• This comprehensive summary should include the actual costs to taxpayers, including monies that will come from local, state, and federal coffers, including federal grants.
  
  
• The feasibility study already conducted by District 116 states that it included discussions with “stakeholders.” Anyone who pays taxes in District 116 is a stakeholder. Actually, since much of the funding is apparently coming from the federal government, the stakeholders are really every taxpayer in the nation. Were any community opponents of school-based health centers included in the discussions?
  
  
• The feasibility study has a list of “Health Needs of District 116 Students” that includes “reproductive health services,” “comprehensive sex ed,” and “nutrition education.” Some questions for the board should include the following: Exactly how many people were interviewed for the feasibility study? How were they chosen? Exactly how many people identified each item as a need? Were the categories of needs provided to the interviewees or were the questions open-ended? Isn’t nutrition education addressed in health classes in middle school and high school?
  
  
• Do community members understand in detail the differences between abstinence education and comprehensive sex ed? Were interviewees provided with research from organizations like the Heritage Foundation on the efficacy of abstinence education?

Some argue that teens are going to have sex regardless of what we want, so we should do everything we can to protect them from the worst consequences. But all teens are not going to have sex. Actually some teens decline sex when there are too many obstacles in place. In the good old days when parents were semi-feared authority figures, condoms were hard to come by, and society maintained taboos against non-marital sex, we didn’t have astonishing rates of sexually transmitted infections; we didn’t have between 800,000 to 900,000 teens getting pregnant annually; and we didn’t have 230,000 thousand teen abortions each year.

Here are some other sexually related activities that some teens are going to engage in:

• Some teens will have sex in public places. Should schools provide rooms for them to have sex in, in order to prevent these teens from getting caught by police?
• Some teens will engage in autoerotic asphyxiation. Should schools provide ways to ensure that they don’t accidentally die while engaging in this dangerous sexual practice?
• Some teens will engage in sadomasochistic sexual practices. Should schools teach them about safe words?
• And some teens will engage in oral-anal sexual practices. Should schools provide dental dams to them?

School-based health centers offer hypothetical scenarios that they believe show why these centers are necessary, like what if a teen is too afraid to talk to her parents and as a result has unprotected sex and contracts an infection or becomes pregnant. But conservatives can offer alternative hypotheticals. What if a teen who knows how strongly her parents feel about premarital sex and, therefore, fears talking to them, decides not to have sex because she can’t easily access birth control?

Schools already have health centers in which students can be treated for chronic illnesses like diabetes, and emergencies and illnesses that occur during the school day. The central and most controversial purposes of these school-based health centers are to facilitate adolescent sexual activity and to offer counseling services that affirm homosexuality and gender confusion.

Public schools, even academically strong public schools, are playing an increasingly troubling role in America’s decline. Liberal educators seek to promote their moral and political beliefs and values with our money through our schools. In the process, they help to undermine children’s conceptual understanding of family, to weaken family unity and parental rights, and to foster dependence on government.

If that’s not bad enough, liberals seek to create a hedonist’s utopia: guilt-free, cost-free, marriage-free sex. A healthy society — which is a society with a moral foundation — must not facilitate such a corrupt world. Facilitating something wrong is never right.

The problem with many conservatives is that they refuse to look at the big picture. They fail to realize that societal change rarely happens through dramatic single events. Rather, it happens through the slow, incremental accretion of smaller events that we ignore or dismiss, like the establishment of this school-based health center.

On Friday April, 12, 2019 the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is once again exploiting public schools to promote homosexuality and gender confusion as moral and normative through the political protest called the Day of Silence.

A coalition of pro-family groups is urging parents to keep their children home from school on the “Day of Silence,” if your school is allowing students to refuse to speak in class.

GLSEN’s Day of Silence, which began on college campuses and has now infiltrated even middle schools, exploits anti-bullying sentiment to undermine the belief that homosexual acts are immoral.

GLSEN shamelessly exploits teen suicide in order to create a climate of hysteria which they then use to falsely impute culpability for teen suicide to conservative moral beliefs.

GLSEN’s end game is the eradication of conservative moral beliefs and the creation of a social and political climate in which it is impossible to express them. Their cultural vehicle of choice for this radical social experiment is public education. What a strategic coup for homosexualists: use our money to capture the hearts and minds of our children.

Efforts to exploit public education for the purpose of eradicating conservative moral beliefs are dramatically increasing every year. Homosexual activists and their allies are aggressively targeting younger and younger children through “anti-bullying” laws, policies, and curricula; through the effort to nationalize “comprehensive sex ed”; through laws mandating positive portrayals of homosexuality and gender deviance in curricula; and through events like the Day of Silence, National Coming Out Day, Ally Week, Transgender Day of Remembrance; and Spirit Week.

And conservatives do virtually nothing. Our complacence makes us complicit in the damage done to our children and our culture.

Moreover, we teach our children by example to be cowardly conformists. It’s time to resist and there’s no easier way to resist than to call your children out of school on the Day of Silence.

Parents and Guardians: Call your children’s middle and high schools and ask if students and/or teachers will be permitted to refuse to speak during class on Friday, April 12, 2019. If your administration allows students and/or teachers to refuse to speak during class, call your child out of school. Every student absence costs school districts money.

When administrators refuse to listen to reason and when they allow the classroom to be exploited for political purposes, parents must take action. If they don’t, the politicization of the classroom and curricula will increase.

If your administrator tells you that they do not permit students or teachers to refuse to speak in class, ask him or her how that is communicated to faculty and students and how it is enforced.

The ACLU has issued this statement to students regarding silence in class:

“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 do NOT have a right to remain silent during class time if a teacher asks you to speak.”

The idea that homosexual acts are moral, good, or normative is not a fact. It is an unproven, non-factual, controversial moral belief. As such, no government employee or publicly subsidized institution has the ethical right to teach it to children implicitly or explicitly. It is entirely possible for schools to work toward the important goal of eradicating bullying without affirming homosexuality or gender confusion.

It is unconscionable that conservative parents remain silent, acquiescent, fearful non-participants in our public schools while homosexuals and their ideological allies engage continuously in vociferous, vigorous, and bold action.

Conservatives need to start acting and speaking as if we think our moral beliefs are objectively true. Conservative teachers need to create activities that require students to speak on the Day of Silence, and conservative parents need to teach their children by example to take a stand for truth.

Please call your children out of school if your administration permits students to refuse to speak on the Day of Silence.

For further information, including parental instructions and a sample calling out letter, visit http://www.doswalkout.net/

On January 24th, in his State of the Union Speech, President Barack Obama told the states to raise the compulsory age of schooling to 18.  State Senator Kimberly Lightford (D-Chicago) went right to work.  On February 1st she introduced a bill to raise the mandatory age for school attendance in Illinois from 17 to 18 years of age.  The President said in his speech, “We … know that when students aren’t allowed to walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma.  So tonight, I call on every state to require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn eighteen.”

Sen. Lightford’s bill, SB 3259, will be heard in the Education Committee in Springfield on Friday, February 25, 2012 at 9:30 a.m.  A companion bill, HB 4621,  sponsored by State Representative Linda Chapa LaVia (D-Aurora) has not yet been posted for a hearing.

“Children  walk away from education the minute they step foot into a government indoctrination center, otherwise known as a public school,”  said David E. Smith, IFI Director, in response to the President.  “We all need to wake up and realize that there isn’t much education going on in our public schools.  Moreover, there is absolutely no reason for the government to usurp the God-given authority of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. ”

Smith isn’t impressed with the idea that the government is going to fix what’s wrong with education by forcing kids to stay in school for another year.  Fixing schools isn’t about more seat time for kids.  Smith says education will be fixed when we spend more time on the truth.

Veteran and prize winning public school educator John Taylor Gatto asks, “Do we really need school?  I don’t mean education, just forced schooling:  six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years.  Is this deadly routine necessary?”  Gatto goes on to list Americans who were spared the public school routine and nevertheless managed to achieve some modest success in life:  George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.  He concludes they were, “Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.”

The truth may be that public schools aren’t about education at all.

John Taylor Gatto again, “What if there is no ‘problem’ with our schools?  What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right?  Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would ‘leave no child behind?’  Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?”

Samuel Blumenfeld wrote in 1991, “The purpose of compulsory attendance is not to provide an education for all, but merely to fill classrooms with children for the convenience of the education establishment whose financial benefits depend on deluding the public into believing that education is taking place.”

Parental concern with schools is fueling the homeschool movement.  Illinois’ own homeschooling advocates David & Kim d’Escoto point out in their book Big Reasons to Homeschool,  “Prior to compulsory education, findings show that the literacy rate in America was as high as 90 to 98 percent, a remarkable level that has never been attained since the establishment of our current state-controlled education system.  A recent survey revealed the drastic decline in U.S. literacy:  21 to 23 percent, or some 40 to 44 million of the 191 million adults in the United States, demonstrated incompetence in the lowest level of reading, writing, and mathematical skill.”

Smith promised to work with friends at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and Illinois Christian Home Educators (ICHE) in opposition to this proposal.  He said, however, that he views the debate as helpful.  It focuses our attention on what is best for our young people.  They don’t need more seat time in failed schools.  Truth be told they need to be set free to learn and grow.

John Taylor Gatto opens his essay Against School, “I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom.  Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers:  They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it.  They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around.  They said teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren’t interested in learning more.  And the kids were right:  their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.”

The decision to leave children in public schools — which increasingly serve the political and moral ends of liberals — until age 18 rests with parents, not President Obama and Senator Lightford.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email or a fax to your state senator to ask him/her to vote against SB 3259 and the expanding role of government in the lives of Illinois families.  You can also call your state senator through the Springfield switchboard at (217) 782-2000.

Last week, I wrote about an article by Sabrina Rubin Erdely that appears in the Feb. 6, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. More digging into her story reveals additional problems with her account of teen suicides in the Anoka-Hennepin School District outside of Minneapolis.

Erdely wrote about a cluster of teen suicides that she attributes to two causes:  Evangelicals and a school district policy that requires faculty to remain neutral on the controversial topic of “sexual orientation.” She makes her case primarily through the use of logical fallacies.

Illinoisans should pay close attention to what’s happening in the Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota because the irrational arguments and manipulative tactics used by homosexual activists and their allies, like Erdely, are being used in every state to corrupt public education.

Erdely identifies nine teens who committed suicide over a two-year period. Five of the teens whose names Erdely mentions, however, were neither homosexual nor were they the victims of homosexual epithets. This seems rather like writing an article about deaths caused by smoking and doubling the number of deaths by including deaths wholly unrelated to smoking.

If her article had been about teen suicide in general, then the inclusion of all nine names would be justifiable, but then she should have discussed all the teen suicide risk factors. Since her article was titled “One Town’s War on Gay Teens,” it’s clear that the subject was not teen suicide in general. Readers should be asking why in an article about a purported “war on gay teens” being waged by Evangelicals, Erdely even mentions teens whose suicides were completely unrelated to homosexuality.

It should be equally clear that conservative community members are not at war with “gay teens.” They’re at war with the efforts of homosexual activists and their allies to promote their ontological, moral, and political beliefs in public schools while censoring all dissenting voices.

Erdely’s article depends on accepting her unproven assumption that moral opposition to volitional homosexual acts constitutes hatred of persons. This is a feckless but politically expedient argument that few liberals apply consistently. They never argue that their moral opposition to certain types of behavior constitutes hatred of those who engage in it.

What I’ve learned subsequently is that one of the teens Erdely mentions,TJ Hayes, was enrolled in a “progressive” charter school that was not covered by any of the school policies on which Erdely blames the suicides.

Another of the students Erdely names was Kevin Buchman who was not enrolled in any Anoka-Hennepin high school. He was, in fact, a student at the University of Minnesota.

Kevin, a bright, good-looking, popular athlete, had graduated from an Anoka-Hennepin high school  8 1/2 months before his suicide.  He committed suicide during the second semester of his freshman year at the University of  Minnesota. His family wrote this about Kevin’s suicide:

A situation happened his first year of college, that caused Kevin to question his character. He began a spiral downward into the dark cave of suicidal depression.   He treated with a doctor [sic], was on medication, and seemed to be doing better.  He kept his despair hidden and ended his life.

Depression is a treatable illness.  It is not invited or wished for.  It is a disease that ravages the mind as cancer ravages the body.  It is difficult to recognize, diagnose, and to treat.  Our son died from suicidal depression.

In order to understand the big picture implications of what’s taking place in Anoka-Hennepin, taxpayers need to consolidate the opinions expressed by liberal teachers and opponents of  school policy that require faculty neutrality on topics related to homosexuality. Although the rhetoric of liberal educators sounds superficially reasonable, the implications of their policy demands are destructive to the legitimacy of public education.

1. Anoka High School teacher, Mary Jo Merrick-Lockett, asserts that “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.”
2. Teachers’ union president, Julie Blaha, stated that teachers should be able to express their opinions on homosexuality.
3. The Anoka-Hennepin school board is poised to pass a proposed “Respectful Learning Environment Curriculum Policy,” that states the following:

Curricular discussions of such issues shall be appropriate to the maturity and developmental level of students; be of significance to course content; and be presented in an impartial, balanced and objective manner, allowing respectful exchange of varying points of view. Lessons shall be designed to help students think critically and develop decision-making skills and techniques for examining and understanding differing opinions.

In the course of discussions of such issues, district staff shall affirm the dignity and selfworth [sic] of all students, regardless of their race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex/gender, marital status, disability, status with regard to public assistance, sexual orientation, age, family care leave status or veteran status. (emphasis added)

Some questions and concerns to consider:

• What is Merrick-Lockett’s evidence for her claim that silence creates fear, repression, and harassment?

• Will the freedom to express their views on homosexuality be extended to all teachers, including conservative teachers? If Merrick-Lockett believes that silence creates a climate of fear, repression, and harassment, what would liberal teachers, administrators, and school board members think about the expression of the belief that volitional homosexual behavior is not moral, or that marriage is the union between one man and one woman, or that children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and a father?

• What precisely does the school board mean when they assert that “district staff shall affirm the dignity and self-worth of students regardless of sexual orientation?”  It is decidedly not the job of teachers to affirm students’ sexual attractions or their volitional sexual acts or their romantic relationships. Teachers, as government employees, should not affirm subjective, non-factual, and controversial ontological, moral, or political beliefs. Teachers should teach their subject matter. They should interact civilly with students. That’s it.

• If a teacher were to express conservative views, would they be found in violation of school board policy that appears to mandate affirmation of liberal assumptions about homosexuality?

• Since the new policy would require that “lessons be designed that help students think critically and develop decision-making skills and techniques for examining and understanding differing opinions,” will those teachers who present pro-homosexual resources (e.g., plays, novels, magazine articles) to students be required to present resources that espouse opposing views?

• If conservatives are not permitted to express their opinions and if teachers are not required to present resources from both sides of this contentious debate, is sound pedagogy compromised? Liberals are stacking the deck: First, they say that in order to prevent bullying and suicide, public schools must talk about homosexuality, and in order to prevent bullying and suicide, public schools must talk about homosexuality in exclusively positive terms. But that corrupts the entire educational enterprise.

• If silence creates a climate of fear and harassment, then how will conservative kids feel if their ontological, moral, and political beliefs are censored, while others are permitted?

• Who decides if curricular discussions are “appropriate to the maturity and developmental level of students?” Does this statement refer to emotional maturity, intellectual maturity, or moral maturity?

• Who decides if a curricular discussion is of “significance to course content?” Is that decision made at the sole discretion of each individual teacher? English teachers in particular are notorious for finding virtually any topic they want to discuss “significant to course content.”

• Merrick-Lockett suggests that homosexual acts are not shameful or wrong, but those are unproven, non-factual, a-historical, arguable moral beliefs that no public school teacher — in his or her official role — has a right to express to students. Many believe that homosexual acts are, indeed, shameful and wrong, and efface human dignity. If Merrick-Lockett or any other teacher wants to tell students that homosexual acts are not shameful or wrong, they should go teach in a private school. Public school teachers, whose salaries are paid by the public, have no right to teach controversial moral beliefs as objective truths.

Any school policies that treat homosexuality and heterosexuality as equivalent are not neutral policies. They are Leftist policies built on prior acceptance of Leftist assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexuality. It is only those on the Left who believe that homosexuality is ontologically and morally equivalent to heterosexuality. It is those on the Left who believe that homosexuality is the morally neutral flip side of the sexuality coin.

Conservatives believe that homosexuality represents a disordering of the sexual impulse;  that homosexual acts efface human dignity; and that heterosexual acts are the only moral form of sexual expression.

The only school policy that is truly neutral is the policy that either prohibits resources that address homosexuality, or the policy that mandates equal time be spent studying resources from both sides of the debate.

For the past couple of months, I have been working with a dedicated, courageous, and tireless community group from the Minneapolis suburbs: the Parents Action League (PAL). They live in the Anoka-Hennepin school district, which has been facing a relentless campaign by homosexual activists and their “progressive” allies to use their public schools to normalize homosexuality.

These activists pretend their ultimate goal is to end bullying, but only the naïve or ignorant believe that whopper.  The truth is that they are exploiting legitimate anti-bullying sentiment in order to implement their politicized anti-bullying programs, all in the service of achieving their ultimate goal: the eradication of conservative moral beliefs about homosexuality.

If they can’t achieve that doctrinaire goal, they will reluctantly settle for bullying conservatives into silence.  They will accept an America in which it is politically, legally, or socially impossible for conservatives to express the moral beliefs homosexual activists can’t eradicate, leaving homosexuals and their allies free to gambol about the public square with all  their  First Amendment rights intact–rights they seek to diminish for conservatives.

The current skirmish is turning into a battle royale, now that Rolling Stone Magazine has poked its huge proboscis into the fray with an outrageous piece of agitprop.  This exercise in faux-journalism shamelessly exploits a tragic series of teen suicides to malign the conservative community group by asserting with arrogant absolutist certainty that Evangelicals caused the suicide cluster.  The subtitle of the article includes these words: “evangelicals have created an extreme anti-gay climate.”

And what evidence does writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely provide for her imputation of guilt to Evangelicals?  She points to the Anoka-Hennepin School Board-created policy that requires teachers to remain neutral in their curricula regarding the topic of “sexual orientation.”  The Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy (SOCP) states that “Anoka-Hennepin staff, in the course of their professional duties, shall remain neutral on matters regarding sexual orientation including but not limited to student-led discussions.”

The SOCP, which is informally called the “neutrality policy,” has been challenged by homosexual activists and the teachers’ union, whose president, Julie Blaha, was surprisingly candid in publicly stating to the press and the school board that teachers should have the right to express their opinions on controversial issues in class.  That’s a remarkable and troubling public admission.

Of the many remarkable rhetorical abuses Erdely commits in her article, perhaps the most remarkable is that Erdely doesn’t even attempt to prove a direct connection between Evangelicalism, Evangelicals, or the neutrality policy and  bullying.

I wonder how many conservative teachers oppose the SOCP?  Conservative teachers know that even if the policy were eliminated, they would be hauled before administrative kangaroo courts if they dared speak their opinions on homosexuality.  They know that without such policy, homosexual teachers and their progressive colleagues are the only teachers who really enjoy the freedom to express their opinions, which transforms education into indoctrination. I’m guessing that conservative teachers appreciate policy that levels the pedagogical playing field; keeps emotionally charged, contentious subjects out of curricula; and helps keep their self-righteous and mouthy “progressive” colleagues in check.

Erdely revealed that, thanks to a district teacher (not named in her article) who contacted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the malignant, money-grubbing, press-hungry SPLC is on the scene as well, suing the district.

Here are some thoughts and questions regarding the Rolling Stone hit piece:

1. In an article about a purported Evangelical “war on gay teens,” Rolling Stone writer Erdely mentions nine suicides, while only one of the teens identified as homosexual and three others were called anti-“gay” epithets.  It should be pointed out that, contrary to Erdely’s claim, being called an anti-“gay” epithet does not necessarily mean that a teen is being perceived as “gay.”  As Erdely surely knows, epithets are hurled around with little concern for their content or accuracy.  If a term has acquired negative connotations, bullies often pay no attention to its actual meaning.  If they think a term is negative, they use it indiscriminately.  How many kids have been called “retards” when they were neither mentally challenged nor perceived to be.
2. That means that only four of the nine suicides, which took place over two years at six different schools, had any connection to homosexuality, with three of those teens being called anti-“gay” epithets.
3. Not once did Erdely suggest that the bullies were Evangelicals or motivated by Evangelical beliefs about homosexuality, which are simply orthodox Christian beliefs widely held by the finest contemporary Protestant and Catholic theologians as well as virtually all theologians in the history of Christendom until the late 20th Century.
4. Not once did Erdely provide evidence that the neutrality policy, which students didn’t even know about, caused the bullying of the one homosexual student or the three who were called anti-“gay” epithets.
5. Erdely says that the mother of one of the students who committed suicide “acknowledges that her daughter….likely had many issues that combined to push her over the edge, but feels strongly that bullying was one of those factors.”  This mother’s “feeling” that bullying was one of multiple contributing factors to her daughter’s suicide led Erdely to conclude with utter certitude that the school’s curricular neutrality policy and Evangelicals were the ultimate cause.  Erdely never explained precisely how the neutrality policy or Evangelicals were the ultimate cause.  Did she talk to the bullies?  Were they Evangelicals?
6. Did Erdely look into the beliefs and backgrounds of any of the purported bullies?  Did she ask if they are Evangelicals?  Did she inquire into the motives for their bullying?  Do they come from dysfunctional families or single parent homes?  Have they experienced violence in their homes?  Do they have academic problems or psychological disorders?  Do they watch a lot of violent television or play violent video games?
7. Did she talk to any teens who have deeply held Evangelical beliefs to find out what their thoughts are about homosexuality and bullying?
8. If Erdely is really concerned about preventing suicides, why did she spend virtually no time exploring all the factors that experts identify as contributing to suicidal ideation, like mental illness, family dysfunction and divorce, family financial problems, and substance abuse?
9. Erdely cites 10th-grader Sam Pinilla who says he was pushed to the ground and called “faggot” while a teacher stood nearby and did nothing.  Erdely also describes a 10th-grade girl who said she was called a “‘lesbo’” and “‘sinner” within “earshot of teachers” and that when she reported the incident to an associate principal, he told her to “lay low.”  Did Erdely verify those incidents?  Did she track down the teacher who supposedly heard and did nothing?  And again how does Erdely connect curricular neutrality policy to the teachers’ purported failure to properly enforce anti-bullying policy?
10. Did Erdely talk to any conservative teachers to ask if they thought the neutrality policy or Evangelicalism caused bullying?  If so, how?  If not, what do they think causes bullying?  Did she ask them if they have ignored bullying?
11. Did she ask liberal teachers who oppose the neutrality policy precisely how the neutrality policy causes hatred or bullying? Did she ask if they could provide evidence that either Evangelicals or the neutrality policy caused the  bullying?
12. Erdely employs a deceitful modus operandi throughout her screed.  She tries to make the extraordinarily strained case that the curriculum neutrality policy causes bullying without providing a single piece of evidence.  She simply describes bullying incidents and then mentions the neutrality policy or conservatives who support it. Apparently in Erdely’s irrational world, geographic proximity within her article proves that the SOCP policy causes bullying.  The entire article constitutes an extended example of use of the false cause fallacy.
13. Erdely contacted the parent group (PAL) and asked them eight questions. PAL sent back a 1,540-word response. Of those 1,540 words, Erdely used 54.  Perhaps their responses didn’t fit her narrative.
14. In a clear attempt to marginalize the efforts of PAL, Erdely reports that she was told the PAL group is relatively few in number. Is Erdely suggesting that the size of a group indicates the goodness or rightness of its mission? Might there be understandable reasons for the reluctance of many conservatives to publicly oppose homosexual activism? Would Erdely admit that homosexual activists and their allies accuse anyone who disagrees with their moral assumptions of hatred?  Would she acknowledge that fear of the wrath of the “tolerant” might lead many who support the actions of PAL to stay out of the public square, thus making the numbers of supporters appear smaller than they really are?
15. Erdely included a distasteful caricaturization of the appearance of one of the women who leads PAL.  Erdely describes her as Michele Bachmann’s “dowdier doppelganger… A bespectacled grandmother with lemony-blond hair she curls severely toward her face.”  Why does Erdely include no unflattering physical descriptions of, for example, teachers’ union president, Julie Blaha?  What hypocrisy from a representative of the “no name-calling” crowd.
16. In its response to Erdely’s questions, PAL included a link to a recent op-ed that appeared in the homosexual magazine The Advocate, in which David McFarland argued that articles just like Ederly’s can contribute to teen suicide.  Here’s an excerpt from that relevant  editorial that Erdely didn’t even mention, probably because it didn’t fit her narrative either:

[W]e have a responsibility to change our tactics….

Communicating about this crisis is complicated because the reasons a person attempts suicide are also complicated. Even talking about specific suicides online and in the media can encourage more deaths.

…

[T]here are ways of talking about suicide that could increase the likelihood of other at-risk people attempting to take their own lives.  This is because suicide is closely tied to psychological well-being.

When we draw direct lines from sexual orientation or bullying to suicide, it can influence someone who is at-risk to assume that taking your own life is what you’re supposed to do next if you are LGBT or bullied. This may not seem rational, but attempting to take your own life is an irrational act.

As a caring community, we can help avoid making suicide appear like a logical choice by putting distance between statements or stories describing instances of bullying and instances of suicide.

Another factor that increases risk is suicide contagion – the link between media reports and a person’s decision to attempt suicide. In other words, the more a story of a particular victim is out there, the more likely one or more people who are at-risk will also attempt suicide.

I hope readers will take the time to read Erdely’s article, in which she relies on the use of logical fallacies, including appeals to emotion, false cause, and ad hominem attacks, to manipulate her readers. I will grant this possibility: Perhaps she is unfamiliar with logic.

Clearly, Erdely is not concerned with ending teen suicide.  Her mission, pursued with messianic fervor, is to humiliate conservatives into submission by any unethical means necessary.  Christians in Minnesota and other school districts around the country must not cower in fear.

Teachers are employees of the government.  In that role, they have no right to affirm controversial moral beliefs, even if they believe that doing so will reduce the incidence of bullying.  There are ways to curb bullying without affirming controversial, non-factual moral (or political assumptions). Schools must ensure that teachers not exploit their government-subsidized employment to engage in moral or political philosophizing.

To prevent the kind of ideological propagandizing in which homosexual activists and their allies seek to engage in the classroom, policy must explicitly prohibit teachers from expressing their personal views on controversial issues.  In addition, policy must be written that requires teachers who use resources that embody or espouse one set of views on controversial topics to spend equal time studying resources written by scholars who espouse competing views. This is particularly important in English, theater, and social studies classes.

I hope that Anoka-Hennepin taxpayers, with or without children enrolled in schools, will join with the Parents Action League by appearing at their upcoming school board meetings, contacting school board members, and writing letters to their local press.  This is not a battle for the fainthearted, thin-skinned, or spineless.  But it is a battle worth fighting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 8, 2012

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that writer Sabrina Rudely Erdely had identified the names of only seven suicide victims, when she had identified the names of nine.  Of the nine, one identified as homosexual, and four had been called anti-“gay” epithets. The suicides of five of the students had no connection to homosexuality or anti-“gay” epithets. IFI regrets the error.

In January 2012, a new plan to usurp local control and impose liberal assumptions about sexuality on our nation’s children was unveiled. It is titled “National Sexuality Education Standards: Core Content and Skills, K-12,” and it’s a creation of the portentously named “Future of Sex Education.”

The “Future of Sex Education” (FoSE) project, which is a joint effort of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), Advocates for Youth, and Answer, “seeks to create a national dialogue about the future of sex education and to promote the institutionalization of comprehensive sexuality education in public schools.”

In addition, one of FoSE’s goals at the “national level…[is to] create an enabling environment that includes federal policies, regulations and funding to support and sustain comprehensive sexuality education at the local level.”

The stated goal of the new “National Sexuality Education Standards” is “to provide clear, consistent and straightforward guidance on the essential minimum, core content for sexuality education that is developmentally and age-appropriate for students in grades K-12.”

Further, “The purpose of standards in general is to provide clear expectations about what students should know and be able to do by the conclusion of certain grade levels. Other equally important components of the student learning experience include pre-service teacher training, professional development and ongoing support and mentoring for teachers, clear school policies that support sexuality education implementation and the teachers who deliver sexuality education.“

For each age group, the document includes the topics “Identity” and “Healthy Relationships” in which are found deeply troubling ideas about homosexuality and gender confusion. Embedded in these “standards” are radical assumptions about sexuality and gender that are biased, subjective, non-factual, and unproven.

In addition to members of SIECUS, Advocates for Youth, and Answer, contributors to the “National Sexuality Education Standards” include representatives from Planned Parenthood; the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN); and the National Education Association.

Here are a few of the ideas from the “National Sexuality Education Standards” that these groups believe are “essential and developmentally and age-appropriate”:

Grades K-2

Under “Identity” (which is clearly designed to prepare young children to accept radical ideas about gender):

• “Describe similarities and differences in how boys and girls are expected to act.”
• “Provide examples of how friends, family, media, society and culture influence ways in which boys and girls think they should act”

Under “Healthy Relationships” (designed to prepare young children to affirm families headed by homosexuals):

• “Identify different kinds of family structures”
• “Demonstrate different ways to show respect for different types of families”

Grades 3-5

Under “Identity”:

• “Define sexual orientation as the romantic attraction of an individual to someone of the same gender or a different gender”
• “Identify parents or other trusted adults of whom students can ask questions about sexual orientation”

Under “Healthy Relationships”:

• “Differentiate between gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation”
• “Analyze external influences that have an impact on one’s attitudes about gender, sexual orientation and gender identity”
• “Access accurate information about gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation”

Grades 9-12

Under “Identity”:

• “Differentiate between biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression”
• “Analyze the influence of friends, family, media, society and culture on the expression of gender, sexual orientation and identity”
• “Explain how to promote safety, respect, awareness and acceptance”
• “Advocate for school policies and programs that promote dignity and respect for all”

The bias of the “National Sexuality Education Standards” is exposed through its rhetoric. For example, the term “sexual orientation” is a biased, political term created to equate heterosexuality and homosexuality. While the creators of this document believe that homosexuality and heterosexuality are flip sides of the sexuality coin, others believe — rightly — that homosexuality is a disordering of the sexual impulse.

“Sexual orientation” also connotes the idea that homosexuality is biologically determined, immutable in all cases, and inherently moral, all of which are controversial assumptions.

Further evidence is the inclusion of the terms “gender identity” and “gender expression.” Like “sexual orientation,” both are subversive rhetorical inventions designed to legitimize gender confusion by distancing it from the truth that gender confusion is a disorder.

When activists who seek to normalize homosexuality and obliterate gender talk about promoting “dignity and respect for all,” they are not talking about promoting civil interaction among diverse people. They are talking about promoting a particular set of ontological, moral, and political beliefs. They are not promoting respect for persons but rather respect and affirmation of a set of non-factual, unproven, and arguable beliefs.

Society cannot promote the dignity of persons and at the same time approve volitional homosexual acts, cross-dressing, and elective amputations of sexual anatomy, for those very acts efface human dignity.

Respect means to hold something in esteem. No child should be taught that in order to respect persons, they must hold in esteem all beliefs, all family structures, or all behavioral choices. Nor does respect of persons require that we withhold expression of our beliefs. All that respect of persons requires is that we interact civilly with others.

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Using the presumptuous title “National Sexuality Education Standards,” a group of anti-abstinence “experts” have offered a questionable version of what, when, and how, topics regarding sexuality should be taught in American schools. The National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA) challenges these so-called “standards” that ignore the optimal health message for students, and instead place a priority on a simple risk reduction message. “When we set standards, we should communicate the ideal, the best message to achieve optimal health,” stated Valerie Huber, Executive Director of NAEA. “When a set of guidelines fails to provide any meaningful emphasis on optimal health but instead gives priority to ‘condom negotiation’ skills, we have not set standards; we have lowered them and put our children at increased risk” added Huber.

In addition, NAEA disputes the appropriateness of introducing sensitive and often controversial topics into the K-12 classroom, essentially using sex education guidelines as a vehicle for promoting ideological agendas rather than health and well-being. “Standards claiming national influence should maintain an objectivity that is devoid of special-interest agendas,” added Huber.

NAEA advocates for strong, clear Sexual Risk Avoidance programs as the best standard for educating youth regarding sexuality.