It’s refreshing to see college students take politically incorrect and counter-cultural positions on sexual matters because to do so risks both hostility and ridicule. Recently a group of courageous and principled Bradley University students risked both to oppose the resolution that was passed by the administration, which will compel all Bradley students to pay for condoms for those Bradley students who, lacking a moral compass, choose to engage in anal or vaginal intercourse and are too irresponsible and/or cheap to purchase their own.

One interesting aspect of the issue is that while the administration has committed to facilitating promiscuous sex, administrators make clear that the school “will not be held liable for the quality or effectiveness of the condoms provided.” Well, isn’t that special: Help students have non-marital sex by paying for and distributing condoms that often fail to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and then take no responsibility for the inevitable consequences.

Student Body President Tricia Anklan recently expressed her deep disappointment that as a dorm resident advisor (RA), she is “not able to provide condoms for our residents.” Not to worry, however, because Anklan, along with student body officers Devon Schulz, Kyle Mathers, and Jeff Baumgartner, had a plan to use students’ compulsory health fees to buy condoms and give them out for free in all the dorms as well as the recreation center’s offices and information offices.

They defend this resolution using a feckless analogy (flawed analogies seem to be the stock-in-trade of sexual libertines). They laughably compare Bradley’s provision of flu shots and hand sanitizer to the provision of free condoms.

Those Bradley University students who do not want their, or their parents’ money, used to subsize the sexcapades of fellow students wrote the following letter to the Student Senate and prominent locals:

We are Bradley University students who are writing you today in order to make you aware of a resolution that has been made policy here at our university. The Bradley Student Senate passed a Sexual Health Resolution that would allocate funds from tuition that is reserved for the Student Health fee to cover condoms. Starting Spring 2012, condoms will be free and widely available across campus, and every student will have to provide funding for these condoms. This resolution was passed by the administration. However, we object to the Sexual Health Resolution.

First, the content of the Sexual Health Resolution is not reflective of the views of a majority of Bradley University students. It also directly affects the image of Bradley University.

The resolution itself was passed quickly and quietly with little publicity. In the resolution, it was stated that just like hand sanitizer and flu shots, the Sexual Health Resolution ensures that students are safe from illness:

Just as Bradley University takes preventative action in preventing illness by subsidizing flu shots, providing hand sanitizer, and offering programs like Get Fit, Stay Fit, the Student Senate hopes the university will be just as action oriented in promoting sexual health.

It is within Bradley University’s duty to provide preventatives to disease such as flu shots and hand sanitizer because students get sick and spread diseases in the classrooms and in the cafeterias and other public places. Also, professors and visitors, as well as staff, can become ill from the germs that are spread in this manner. However, sexual actions are in full consent and do not occur within the natural context of the learning environment…. It is also not the university’s responsibility to provide contraceptives…

[W]hen condoms fail, the result is more catastrophic than failed hand sanitizer. Yet, the resolution clearly states:

Bradley University will continue to not be held liable for the quality or effectiveness of the condoms provided.

This service will not promote sexual health as much as charge all students for the contraceptives of a minority of Bradley students. According to the resolution, of students polled, only 23.9 percent reported they always used a condom during sexual intercourse in the past 30 days. We ask …, why should the other 76 percent pay for their condoms?… If students do not have the motivation to purchase their own condoms, can they deal with the possibility of the consequences of sex…?

Also, we ask why Bradley University would put its image at risk for the demand of a few students? The resolution implies it is Bradley University’s responsibility to take tuition money, purchase condoms, and have them sitting out for students to utilize.

Our second objection is that this resolution forces every student to pay for contraception: this is against our religion, and it’s against our conscience. In fact, the resolution, in its last clause, states: “Whereas, Bradley University is not a religiously affiliated institution.” This implies a religious controversy with the purpose of the resolution. Therefore, we hold this resolution is blatantly and in fact unashamedly discriminating against religious students.

Free condoms would be available in the health center, in the gymnasium, and in the residencies. This unabashed promotion of premarital sex is against all major Christian denominations. Also, Bradley University’s student body is an estimated 30 percent Roman Catholic; this resolution would force Catholic students to pay for contraceptives, which is a mortal sin (the highest level of sin), and, therefore, is a direct violation of their First Amendment Rights.

Finally, we ask that you please support our efforts to appeal this policy by voicing your opinion to the administration at Bradley University or anyone else who would share our concern. Please do not hesitate if you would like to contact any of the student leaders listed below. If we are united in our efforts to overcome this detrimental and discriminatory policy, we may have a positive impact on Bradley’s campus.

Thank you,

Bradley Students

Watch this You Tube video of a coalition of students, alumni, and community members being interviewed about this debate:

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By Leigh Jones, World Magazine

Sexual activity and pregnancy among teens is declining

Two reports recently released by the Centers for Disease Control show teens are embracing abstinence, despite the prevalence of promiscuity portrayed in music, movies and on television.

Abstinence advocates say the new statistics on sexual activity and birth rates among teens are an encouraging sign that young people understand the risks associated with having sex, even though most of them have been taught that taking the right precautions makes it safe. The new numbers also disprove one of the main arguments used by advocates of sex education, said Cindy Hopkins, vice president for center services at Care Net, which operates pro-life pregnancy centers across the country.

“The message we hear from the other side is that teenagers cannot control their hormones, so they need to be taught about safe or safer sex,” she said. “It’s encouraging to know they can control themselves. When they hear the truth, they can assess it and make wise decisions.”

The increasing rates of abstinence also show teens are capable of making wise decisions even though many of the adults around them are sending them messages that normalize teen sex, said Valerie Huber, president of the National Abstinence Education Association.

According to a report on teen sexual activity released in October, the number of girls having sex between the ages of 15 and 19 dropped 8 percent between 1988 and 2010, from 51 percent to 43 percent. The number of boys having sex dropped 18 percent, from 60 percent to 42 percent.

The rates of abstinence were highest among 15- to 17-year-olds, with only 27 percent of girls and 28 percent of boys reporting sexual activity. In 1988, 37 percent of girls and 50 percent of boys in the same age range told researchers they already had started having sex.

Huber called the declines good news, especially for parents and mentors who encourage teens to wait.

“Abstinence is a life choice that is resonating with teens,” she said. “They are not ashamed of it. They are embracing it.”

Another report released earlier this month showed birth rates for teens also are declining. In 2010, the number of babies born to mothers between 15 and 19 years old dropped to the lowest level ever recorded in the United States, a 9 percent decrease from the previous year. Births to teens younger than 20 declined 10 percent, reaching the lowest level recorded since 1946.

Statistics released by the liberal Guttmacher Institute show a corresponding decline in abortions.

According to a report released last year, the number of teens who chose to terminate their pregnancies dropped 55 percent between 1988 and 2006, from 45 to 20 abortions per 1,000 women. But Hopkins warned those numbers might not show the full picture. More women are choosing medical abortions in the early stages of pregnancy, taking a pill to induce an abortion instead of going to a clinic for a surgical procedure, she said. Because medical abortions are universally acknowledged to be underreported, it’s hard to know for sure how many pregnancies are being terminated, she said.

Huber, who will spend Friday briefing lawmakers on a bill that would bring renewed emphasis and funding to abstinence education efforts, said the government’s own research proves that the current messaging about safe sex isn’t working. And the choices teens are making prove the message isn’t even relevant, Huber said.

“The current messaging, culturally and in sex ed classes, is one that normalizes teen sex,” she said. “It’s communicating that if everyone isn’t doing it, everyone will soon. But that’s not necessarily the case.”

By Joe Carter, FirstThings.com

 “Foes of gay rights are now seen by the press as fighting the bad war, roughly analogous to Vietnam,” wrote Fred Barnes in The Weekly Standard. “Pro-lifers are waging the good war, like World War II.”  Timothy Dalrymple has an excellent post examining this analogy and shares a story that most evangelical editors can relate to:

Consider this little bit of anecdotal information. As an editor and director for a large religion website now, I can tell you: It’s substantially easier to find Christians and evangelicals to write on the abortion issue than it is to find ones who will write on same-sex marriage. Academics in particular are terrified that anything critical of homosexuality or same-sex marriage will come up before hiring or tenure committees. One of the first subjects we addressed in our “Public Square” at Patheos was the same-sex marriage debate, and nearly every person I approached to write on the topic had to ask himself or herself: “Am I willing to give up the next job, the next promotion, the next award, because of my views on this topic?”

In academic circles, you can question the morality of abortion and still be tolerated. But if you question the morality of homosexuality, you are an oppressor and an opponent of human rights. They’re perfectly justified in rejecting you, since your opinion is not only factually wrong but morally wrong, reprehensible and oppressive. By rejecting you, they’re not being prejudicial or intolerant; they’re protecting the rights of gay faculty and students.

Ah, but we just have to wait until these evangelicals are established in academia. They have to remain silent now, but once they gain tenure they find their courage to speak truth to power, right?

Sadly, no. I catch flack every time I point it out but it’s the shameful truth:  Most evangelicals serving in the secular areas of academia will always be too frightened to stand up for unpopular moral truths. Though they may be our allies in secret, we have to relinquish the hope that they’ll slip from their Ivory Towers and come to our aid in the Public Square. We can stop looking to them for support; they ain’t coming. The most we can do is hold the line, and pray that God will ensure that future generations of evangelical academics are born with backbones.

Warning: The following article includes offensive and graphic content.

A recent New York Times article titled “Teaching Good Sex,”  fawns over comprehensive sex educator Al Vernacchio, a 47-year-old homosexual Catholic “Sex Scholar” who teaches English and human sexuality at a private high school near Philadelphia. In light of the fact that the Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts constitute violations of divine and natural law, Vernacchio’s affirmation and embrace of homosexuality reveal that he affirms heresy and embraces sin.

Read the following excerpts to learn what Vernacchio talks about with high school students and to learn what many “comprehensive sex educators” would like to see in public schools:

“First base, second base, third base, home run,” Al Vernacchio ticked off the classic baseball terms for sex acts….”Give me some more,” urged the fast-talking 47-year-old, who teaches 9th- and 12th-grade English as well as human sexuality. Arrayed before Vernacchio was a circle of small desks occupied by 22 teenagers, six male and the rest female….

“Grand slam,” called out a boy (who’d later tell me with disarming matter-of-factness that “the one thing Mr. V. talked about that made me feel really good was that penis size doesn’t matter”).

“Now, ‘grand slam’ has a bunch of different meanings,” replied Vernacchio, who has a master’s degree in human sexuality. “Some people say it’s an orgy, some people say grand slam is a one-night stand. Other stuff?”

“Grass,” a girl, a cheerleader, offered.

“If there’s grass on the field, play ball, right, right,” Vernacchio agreed, “which is interesting in this rather hair-phobic society where a lot of people are shaving their pubic hair – “

“You know there’s grass, and then it got mowed, a landing strip,” one boy deadpanned, instigating a round of laughter. While these kids will sit poker-faced as Vernacchio expounds on quite graphic matters, class discussions are a spirited call and response, punctuated with guffaws, jokey patter and whispered asides….

[Vernacchio’s class] Sexuality and Society begins in the fall with a discussion of how to recognize and form your own values, then moves through topics like sexual orientation (occasionally students identify as gay or transgender, Vernacchio said…) safer sex; relationships; sexual health; and the emotional and physical terrain of sexual activity….

The lessons that tend to raise eyebrows outside the school, according to Vernacchio, are a medical research video he shows of a woman ejaculating – students are allowed to excuse themselves if they prefer not to watch – and a couple of dozen up-close photographs of vulvas and penises. The photos, Vernacchio said, are intended to show his charges the broad range of what’s out there. “It’s really a process of desensitizing them to what real genitals look like so they’ll be less freaked out by their own and, one day, their partner’s,” he said….

It was drummed into him as a human-sexuality master’s student, Vernacchio said, to never be explicit merely for the sake of being explicit: have a rationale for every last thing you say. Which occurred to me one day listening to him answer an anonymous question – there’s a box on the bookshelf where students can drop them – about whether a girl’s urge to urinate during intercourse might be a precursor to female ejaculation. He laid out a plethora of explanations for the feeling, everything from anxiety about having sex to a bladder infection to the possibility that the young woman was getting “some really good G-spot stimulation” and in fact verging on ejaculation.

“If kids are starting to use their bodies sexually, they should know about their potentialities,” Vernacchio told me later. “It’s O.K. that boys ejaculate, that’s totally normalized” – wet dreams have been standard fare for middle-school health class for decades – “but girls, gross! Girls will think they’re peeing themselves, and it’s really shameful.”…

As to whether his class encourages teenagers to have sex – a protest perennially lodged against even basic sex ed (though pretty firmly disproved by research) – Vernacchio said that he portrays sex in all its glory and complications. “As much as I say, ‘This is how orgasms work, and they’re really cool,’ I say there’s a lot of work to being in a relationship and having sex. I don’t think I have the power to make sex sound so enticing that kids are going to break through their self-esteem issues or body stuff or parental pressures or whatever to just go do it.” And anyway, Vernacchio went on, “I don’t necessarily see the decision to become sexually active when you’re 17 as an unhealthy one.” His goal is for young people to know their own minds, be clear about what they do and don’t want and use their self-knowledge to make choices….

To that end, he spends one class leading the students through a kind of cost-benefit analysis of various types of relationships, from friendship to old-school dating to hookups. When he asked his students about the benefits of hookups, the kids volunteered: “No expected commitment,” “Sexual pleasure” and “Guarding emotions,” meaning you can enjoy yourself without the messiness of attachment.

“Yep,” Vernacchio said, “sometimes a hookup is all you want.” Then he pressed them for drawbacks.

“You may not be able to control your emotions,” someone called out.

“O.K.,” Vernacchio said approvingly. “What else?”

“It’s confusing,” said the student-council vice president.

“Yeah,” Vernacchio said, explaining that two people may have different ideas about what it means to hook up, which is why communication is so important. (“If you can’t talk about it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it,” he says.)

“People saying, ‘Oh, she’s a slut,’ ‘Oh, he’s a man-whore,’ ” floated a boy who described himself to me as a “lonesome outcast” until 11th grade, when he finally started to make friends. “I guess for women it’s usually seen as more of a bad thing.”

“Right,” Vernacchio agreed, “but there’s pressure on guys too. Guys get the, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s a player,’ but what if you’re really not? And then you feel pressure to maintain that.”

Vernacchio rarely misses a chance to ask his students to examine gender bias in their sexual attitudes or behavior. The girl who “admitted” to liking sex as much as boys did said that Vernacchio’s consistent affirmation of the variety of sexual preferences (“Guys aren’t necessarily naturally hornier than girls – there’s a huge social piece of this,” he told the class) helped her shake her sense of deviance and shame….

During one class, he handed out a worksheet with the five senses printed along the top and asked the students to try and list sexual activities that optimized each. (There were examples to prod their thinking: under hearing, for instance, was “listening to your partner read an erotic story.”) [The purpose of the exercise] purpose was to open their minds to a broader sexuality.

Regarding the statistic that Vernacchio alluded to earlier – that 70 percent of women do not orgasm through vaginal penetration alone – one boy exclaimed when we talked, “That shocked me, a lot.” The other boys also told me they’d been in the dark about the mysteries of female sexual satisfaction. “I think I sort of knew where the clitoris was, but I didn’t know it was, like, under something,” one said. Another declared, “It’s almost like a wake-up call.” He paused. “To not just please yourself.”

The female students were nearly equally surprised. “I always thought, Is it weird that I don’t get an orgasm from, you know, just like vaginal penetration?” said a girl who’d had intercourse with one boy, though she’d had orgasms before that from being touched genitally. “It was comforting to hear that for most people it doesn’t happen. I mean, I’d heard it, but it was nice hearing it from Mr. V., who knows so much about it, and other people saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s right.’ “

Not that information was always power for these young women. One girl said that while she could advise her boyfriend on how to increase her pleasure, she wouldn’t, because he’s “very insecure” about his lack of experience. Another estimated she’d had only two orgasms with her boyfriend of longstanding, each during intercourse, though she climaxes on her own through masturbation. Somehow, when she and her boyfriend “do anything, we just end up having sex,” she said, seeming both a little perplexed by the situation, and a little afraid to make waves.

Who gives oral sex to whom is common fodder for Vernacchio’s gender-parity conversations. All but one of the students told me they’d had it, but sometimes only once or twice, and the vast majority within monogamous relationships.

Although Vernacchio encourages students to think about fairness, he certainly doesn’t encourage a direct quid pro quo for oral sex – and the girls, the main givers, were not terribly enthused about being the recipients. “[My boyfriend] completely offered, and I did not want that,” one said. Another agreed: “It just creeps me out.” None were thrilled about performing it, either, and they seemed to be wrestling – in thought and deed – with why they continued to do so. “I do think girls like to take care of people,” the student-council V.P. mused, “and I know that just sounds horrible, like you should send me right back to the ’50s, but my mom is like the most liberal woman I know and still is so happy to make food for people. To some extent, women are just more people-pleasers than men.” One girl said she’d come up with “tricks” to make giving oral sex more enjoyable for her, and that she’d set “strict rules” for herself: “I only do it if they do something on me first, and it has to be below the belt.” And another said she doesn’t enjoy cunnilingus, but taking the personal is political to heart, she asked her boyfriend to do it anyway: if she was expected to service him orally, he should have to return the favor.

All the boys said that Vernacchio had increased their sensitivity to the girls. One recounted how in an effort to consider his girlfriend’s feelings he’d asked her if she was willing to give him oral sex – none of that pushing her head down in the heat of the moment – and she’d considered it for an excruciating hour. Or maybe it just felt like that. “Do you have to think about it this long?” he finally pleaded. Eventually, she agreed.

Pleasure in sex ed was a major topic last November at one of the largest sex-education conferences in the country, sponsored by the education arm of Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey. One of sex educators’ big problems, [keynote speaker and sex educator Paul Joannides] told the New Jersey audience, is that they define their role as the “messengers of all the things that can go wrong with sex.”…

As much as Joannides criticizes his opponents on the right, [Joannides]also tweaks the orthodoxies of his friends on the left, hoping to spur them to contemplate how they themselves dismiss pleasure….

For instance, in addition to pulling condoms over bananas – which has become a de rigueur contraception lesson among “liberal” educators – young people need to hear specifics about making the method work for them. “We don’t tell them: ‘Look, there are different shapes of condoms. Get sampler packs, experiment.’ That would be entering pleasure into the conversation, and we don’t want that.”

While the conference attendees couldn’t have agreed more with Joannides about what should be taught in schools, much of the crowd thought he was deluded to imagine they could ever get away with it. Back in 1988, Michelle Fine, a professor of social psychology at the City University of New York, wrote an article in The Harvard Educational Review called “Sexuality, Schooling and Adolescent Females: The Missing Discourse of Desire.” In it, she included the comments of a teacher who discouraged community advocates from lobbying for change in the formal curriculum. If outsiders actually discovered the liberties some teachers take, Fine was told, they’d be shut down….

That more expansive sex education has to be done in code was something I came across repeatedly. A veteran advocate in the field gave me a short list of teachers to contact who might be willing to talk to me but then warned, “I don’t know if any of them are going to want to have what they’re doing out there.”

There you have it, friends. These are the kinds of ideas that typical comprehensive sex educators want to teach our children. They focus obsessively on affirming and facilitating unfettered teen sexual autonomy and pleasure. Comprehensive sex educators fervently seek to sever sex from any fixed moral system. They never explain precisely how explicit conversations with teens about sexual autonomy and pleasure will reduce the incidence of unintended pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections, nor do they provide proof that such conversations will reduce the numbers of teen pregnancies or STIs. What these kinds of conversations reveal is that the perverted legacy of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, who “worked tirelessly to promote sexual liberation,” “undermine traditional morality,” and “soften the rules of restraint,” lives on in comprehensive sexuality education.

The sexual worldview of “Sex Scholars” like Al Vernacchio should provide sufficient justification for every Illinois lawmaker to oppose any bill that compels every school district to use comprehensive sex ed curricula.

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Abstinence education programs are being credited with the good news coming in a new report the CDC issued Thursday from the National Center for Health Statistics showing teen birth rates dropping.

The birth rate for U.S. teens aged 15-19 years hit a record low in 2010, according to the report, “Births: Preliminary Data for 2010,” from CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. The report is based on an analysis of nearly 100 percent of birth records collected in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.

The birth rate for teenagers aged 15-19 has declined for the last three years and 17 out of the past 19 years, falling to 34.3 births per 1,000 teenagers in 2010 – a 9 percent decline from 2009 and the lowest rate ever recorded in nearly seven decades of collecting data.  Birth rates for younger and older teenagers and for all race/ethnic groups reached historic lows in 2010.

Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association reacted to the report in an email to LifeNews, and the said the good news on teen birth rates is tempered by news on teen rates of sexual diseases.

“While we want to celebrate good news, we may also want to hold our applause while we review the two new reports coming from the CDC,” she said. “Admittedly, good news is not easy to come by in the world of teen sexual activity. So, the new CDC report from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) on the decline in teen births hitting a new low is to be cheered.”

“The 9% drop is impressive but not entirely surprising. This news follows another recent report from the CDC showing that nearly 75% of 15-17 year olds are not having sex,” Huber added. “When data shows the majority of teens are choosing to be abstinent, a decrease in pregnancy rates is to be expected and we are very encouraged by the positive choices teens are making.”

“However, our congratulatory spirit may be given pause when we consider the soaring rates of certain STD’s among all groups including teens.  NAEA has long held the view that teen pregnancy prevention programs are not enough,” she said. “Simply curbing teen pregnancy is a short-sighted goal that ignores the larger issue of teen sexual activity that must be addressed. Just because pregnancy is prevented does not mean that STDs are prevented, as these reports illustrate. The myth of ‘protected sex’ is clearly exposed by the high prevalence of STDs in teens and falls tragically short of what is the healthiest message.”

NAEA believes the proven programs of Sexual Risk Avoidance abstinence education have contributed greatly to this positive decline. Against a barrage of disingenuous claims that the abstinence message is unrealistic for teens, NAEA has continued to promote programs that empower teens to make the healthy choice of abstinence. The 22-peer reviewed studies showing the effectiveness of such programs are now being validated in the recent decline in teen birth rates.

But Huber is concerned by numbers showing chlamydia rates are the highest they have been in twenty years and have increased 24% since 2006, with African American teen girls bearing the greatest burden. And while Gonorrhea rates are down, the CDC warns that strains are becoming increasingly resistant to treatment, showing that sexual risk avoidance should be given priority.

“Teen pregnancy prevention efforts are insufficient. This is a simplistic response to a complex problem. Only an approach that helps teens avoid all the risk associated with sexual decision-making will adequately address the myriad of potential consequences related to teen sexual activity,” she concluded.

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Liberal lawmakers in cahoots with homosexual activists and the Obama Administration will not rest until they’ve perverted every significant cultural institution in ways that will hasten America’s decline.

Pro-homosexual “agents of change” masquerading as “educators” have usurped government schools through curricula and deceitful anti-bullying programs. Pro-homosexual activists have set in motion radical changes in the military through the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And now pro-homosexual activists are going after marriage through the oxymoronically titled “Respect for Marriage Act” (ROMA), which, if passed, would overturn the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA).

ROMA embodies absolute ignorance of and disrespect for marriage, and lawmakers who support it expose their own ignorance of and disrespect for marriage.

On November 10th, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to advance ROMA (S. 598) to the full Senate. Illinois’ senior U.S. Senator, Dick Durbin, is a co-sponsor of this anti-marriage legislation. In the U.S. Senate, however, Democrats are expected to have a more difficult task mustering the votes to overcome an expected Republican filibuster.  Illinois’ junior U.S. Senator, Mark Kirk, will be a critical vote in maintaining a filibuster. Serious questions about Kirk’s commitment to conservative values continue to abound. The ROMA vote will be a key opportunity for Kirk to reassure Illinois conservatives that he stands squarely for natural marriage.

The assault on marriage is virtually relentless. Currently, there are no fewer than 11 challenges to the federal marriage law in the U.S. court system, and now liberals in the U.S. Senate are seeking the repeal of DOMA in order to compel the federal government to recognize same-sex “marriage.”

Furthermore, if DOMA is repealed, all 50 states would have to recognize homosexual “marriages” from other states, essentially making this counterfeit form of marriage the law of the land.

Despite what homosexual activists and foolish legislators claim, marriage is not solely a private institution concerned with the subjective feelings of those seeking to marry. Marriage — as a government-recognized institution — is a public institution that affects the public good. Government does not create marriage. It merely recognizes a type of relationship that exists and serves the public good. That type of relationship is a sexually complementary relationship between one man and one woman that may result in children. It would be no more legitimate for the government to jettison the criterion of sexual complementarity than it would be for the government to jettison the criterion of numbers of partners by legalizing plural marriage.

The cowardice and ignorance of conservative Americans, including our lawmakers, on virtually every issue related to homosexuality have facilitated the usurpation of public education and the military for the pernicious purpose of normalizing homosexuality. And these successes have emboldened an already arrogant homosexual movement that has turned its anarchic efforts toward radically redefining marriage. With a Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate, their chances for success are better than they’ve ever been.

Let’s hope and pray that there are enough conservatives with wisdom and spines of steel to prevent homosexual activists and their ideological allies from winning another corrosive victory, this time in the U.S. Senate.

Take ACTION:  Contact Senator Kirk’s office to urge him to to support DOMA and oppose any effort to repeal it.  You can also call his D.C. office at:  (202) 224-2854.

Your child goes to class and the teacher opens discussion by saying, “I want you all to think about the things that turn you on.” Then she distributes a handout entitled Activity E: “What Turns You On???”

Some students start working right away, and others give the teacher a blank stare. She then gives clear directions from her Horizons curriculum guide: “If the participants have a hard time thinking of something that turn them on some, here are some probes you can use.” The teacher is then told to suggest body rubbing, earlobe kissing, watching erotic movies and several more explicit turn-ons.

Then the guide instructs the teacher to give a warning: “You really can still do all the things you listed that turn you on as long as you are clear about setting boundaries with your partner prior to having sex.”

These are directions for sex education material that will meet new curriculum standards that Illinois lawmakers could vote on this week. Legislators could decide whether comprehensive sex education such as the classroom activity described above will be the standard for Illinois schools – at the same time they’re deciding what to do about expanding gambling, fixing the pension problems and digging Illinois out of its worst budget crisis ever.

But that’s exactly when things like this happen, while the media spotlight is elsewhere.

The Mokena-based Illinois Family Institute sounded the alarm this week on HB 3027, the bill that would require all public schools to teach comprehensive sex education like that in the Horizons curriculum.

The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Heather Steans (D-Chicago), points to the teen pregnancy rate increase as proof abstinence education doesn’t work. Currently, schools may choose between comprehensive sex ed or abstinence ed, or a combination of both. Steans is ready to eliminate the abstinence option.

For years, more federal funding has gone to comprehensive sex ed than to abstinence education. In fiscal 2008, the feds spent $176.5 million on abstinence ed for teens and $609.3 million on pregnancy, prevention programs for sexually transmitted disease and family planning services.

But since 2008, the Obama administration and Congress have eliminated all federal spending on abstinence ed and dumped more funding into comprehensive sex ed.

Steans’ idea to remove the choice of teaching students to wait for marriage to be sexually intimate reflects the current cultural groupthink that “they’re going to do it anyway” and throws in the towel on promoting the confidence that learning to say “no” instills.

With HB 3027, not only will parents be bullied by a state-mandated curriculum to allow their teens to be sexually active, they’ll be forced to pay for the end results in taxes to local high schools and medical bills for their sons’ and daughters’ sexual experiments.

The whole thing is embarrassing, outrageous and ridiculous.

On one hand, American parents are shocked and appalled when they hear presidential candidates accused of past inappropriate sexual advances. In the 1980s, sexual harassment charges were common, and millions of dollars exchanged hands in settling lawsuits from “unwanted touching” between workplace superiors and underlings.

Ethics and workplace training reprogrammed workers’ thinking about the legal and financial ramifications of inappropriate and illegal behavior, and most learned not to mention sex or sexual topics around colleagues.

Now our immature and socially inexperienced students are learning the opposite. They are being encouraged to speak openly about sex and explicitly about what makes them feel good.

The Horizons sex ed materials instruct teachers to tell their students to be clearly set boundaries with their partners prior to having sex. The message is that there are no limitations when it comes to sex, as long as its mutually agreeable. That’s a dangerous concept for minors to absorb.

Nowhere in Horizons’ lesson plan is the warning that adults over 18 who engage in sexual intercourse with underage partners are committing statutory rape. Nowhere in the lesson plan are they reminded about the danger of sexually transmitted diseases or the ramifications of pregnancy.

Only in subsequent lessons do students learn how to apply condoms with the “Open, Pinch, Roll and Hold – OPRaH” method to ward off STDs and HIV-AIDS while doing what turns them on.

After decades of this form of sex education, there are two things we’ll see disappear from the American scene – sexual innocence and cultural shock, especially when a presidential candidate is accused of sexual harassment.

This generation of students is learning that expressing a desire for, or being involved in, immoral behavior is socially acceptable. They’re learning it’s all about how and where boundaries are mutually agreed upon and drawn.

And, yes, they’re learning all about what turns them on.

Illinois State Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago), the original sponsor of the comprehensive sex ed bill (HB 3027) that passed the Illinois State Senate on May 25, 2011 and may be called for a vote soon in the Illinois House, posted on her website that she proposed this bill in order to reduce the number of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and unintended pregnancies. Ironically, even though her bill requires that sex ed information be research-based, neither she nor State Representative Camille Lilly (D-Chicago), the Illinois House sponsor of the bill, nor any other co-sponsor has provided any research-based proof that comprehensive sex ed curricula is consistently more effective at reducing STDs and unintended pregnancies than abstinence-centered curricula.

This ideologically driven — rather than research-driven — effort is reminiscent of the specious arguments used by voracious comprehensive sex ed proponents to eliminate all federal funding for abstinence education:

[A]bstinence foes launched yet another attack, attributing the rise in teen pregnancy and birth rates, after more than a decade of dramatic decline, to federally-funded abstinence programs.  However, a funding analysis by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that, in the fiscal year 2008, for every dollar the department spent on abstinence education, it spent $4 on comprehensive sex education and family planning services targeting teens.  In FY2008, the department spent $176.5 million on abstinence education. By contrast, pregnancy and STD prevention programs and family planning services for teens received $609.3 million.

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

According to the Chicagoist, 60 percent of Illinois schools already teach contraception. If most Illinois schools already teach about contraception and if our liberal lawmakers believe that current sex ed curricula are failing, what sense does it make to compel all Illinois communities to use the type of curricula that are failing?

Currently, IL schools are free to use comprehensive sex ed if they choose. Why should those districts that choose abstinence curricula lose their freedom to choose, particularly when no lawmaker has provided definitive research proving that comprehensive sex ed is more effective at reducing STDs and unintended pregnancies?

And let’s not overlook the homosexuality-affirming elements of typical “comprehensive” sex ed curricula that homosexual activists and their legislative allies hope Illinoisans won’t notice before the law is passed. For evidence, just review the SIECUS “Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education” or ask Senator Steans why the original bill included the requirement that “all course material and instruction shall be free from bias in accordance with the Illinois Human Rights Act.” The Illinois Human Rights Act defines sexual orientation as “actual or perceived heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, or gender-related identity, whether or not traditionally associated with the person’s designated sex at birth.” If this bill were solely about reducing the numbers of STDs and unintended pregnancies, why would it have included this requirement, which is completely irrelevant to the problems of STDs and unintended pregnancies?

Most mainstream media sources and comprehensive sex ed websites report that abstinence programs are failures because they’re no more effective than comprehensive sex ed programs. These comprehensive sex ed promoters evidently don’t notice that such a claim indicts comprehensive sex ed programs. If it’s true that abstinence programs have largely the same results as comprehensive sex ed programs and lawmakers view abstinence programs as failures, then comprehensive sex ed programs should be viewed as failures too.

But, the claim is not true. Between 1992-2010, there have been multiple studies that demonstrate that authentic abstinence curricula are not only effective but often more effective than comprehensive sex education.* If lawmakers have not read the research regarding the effectiveness of abstinence-centered programs and if they cannot produce research proving that comprehensive sex ed programs are consistently more effective than abstinence programs at reducing STDs, unintended pregnancies, sexual activity rates, and age of sexual initiation and more effective at increasing condom use and knowledge of STDs, they should not pass this law. Perhaps if the bill’s sponsors had thoroughly studied the research on this controversial topic, they never would have proposed the bill in the first place.

*Information on abstinence education research can be found either HERE or HERE or HERE.

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Money. It makes the world go round, or so I’ve heard. But when it comes to choice in education, money is usually what brings meaningful change to a screeching halt. As new development s emerge in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal, perhaps it’s time to take a closer look at how the school system is using its funds and to learn a lesson that applies to every school system across Georgia regarding education spending.

People often agree that parents should be allowed to choose the educational setting that is best for their child. Yet suggest that the money the state is spending on that child should be free to follow him to the educational setting selected by his parents-and the hesitation sets in.

The most cited reason against a “money follows the child” model of education is entirely monetary: “It will take money from cash-strapped public schools.”

The simple fact is that educational choice programs actually provide schools with larger per-pupil funding. Public schools receive local, state, and federal dollars, and with a “money follows the child” model, only the state dollars follow the child. The public school retains the local dollars, resulting in larger per-pupil funding.

Supporters of educational choice have always maintained that it is not about money, or systems, or adults. It’s about kids having access to the best education possible-by whatever delivery mechanism best suits their individual needs.

Some Georgia students are already attending the school of their choice through one of Georgia’s successful “money follows the child” opportunities. The state portion of education spending follows a child choosing a public charter school, or even a private school under the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Program.

But given recent headlines, maybe we should talk about money for a minute.

Former Atlanta Public School Superintendent, Beverly Hall, recently made headlines after 11 Alive News reported that she cost the school system over $127,000 in legal fees in just three months. And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the school system could be forced to pay back nearly $1 million in federal money earned with falsified test scores.

And that’s not the worst of it.

The AJC reports that the 126 teachers on administrative leave cost Atlanta Public Schools $1 million per month while they are being investigated for cheating on the state’s standardized tests.

Some say that giving parents and students more choices in education is too expensive, yet we sure spend an awful lot on the adults who quite literally cheated our students out of a quality education.

Leaving Ms. Hall’s legal expenditures and possible returned funds aside, the $1 million monthly price tag used for teachers accused of cheating could buy Atlanta:

· An additional 2,611 students each month attending a state-chartered public school at the average amount expended by the state per student, or

· An additional 1,595 Georgia Special Needs Scholarships each month at the average scholarship amount.

Experience shows that these types of school choice opportunities are life changing for kids.

Remember, we’re only talking about what we could do with the dollars currently being wasted in one month following a cheating scandal perpetrated by a school system. And it’s one of the school systems from which school choice supporters are incorrectly chastised about taking “much-needed funds.”

Imagine the hope we could offer tens of thousands of families across the state of Georgia if we just let the money follow the child.

Since we say that education is all about the kids, maybe it’s time we actually put our money where our mouth is and fund students, not systems.

Jamie Lord is the Government Relations Director for the Georgia Family Council.

The problematic and completely unnecessary Comprehensive Sex Ed bill, HB 3027 (Amendments 1 and 3), may be voted on in the Illinois State House this week. This bill is unnecessary because any school district that wants to use a comprehensive sex ed curriculum is currently free to do so. If passed, this law will be used to get increasingly graphic and controversial information into middle and high schools.

Once again, liberal lawmakers are attempting to usurp local control in their quest to impose their moral views about sexuality — including homosexuality — on other people’s children through mandated comprehensive sex ed. To compound the outrage, they have no evidence proving that comprehensive sex ed curricula are more effective than authentic abstinence curricula. Despite mainstream media accounts to the contrary, there is substantial evidence that abstinence curricula are at least as effective and often more effective than comprehensive sex ed curricula.

Using sex ed research is a tricky, complex, and confusing business, made all the more challenging by the indefensible bias of the mainstream media and the problematic claims of comprehensive sex educators. Here’s just one example:

Critics of abstinence programs point to a Mathematica Policy Research report released in April 2007 that compared the behavior of students in abstinence programs with that of students who were in comprehensive sex ed programs as evidence of the failure of abstinence programs. That study revealed the following:

• Kids in both groups (abstinence and control groups) were knowledgeable about the risks of having sex without using a condom or other form of protection.
• Condom use was not high in either group.
• By the end of the study, when the average child was just shy of 17, half of both groups had remained abstinent.
• The sexually active teenagers had sex the first time at about age 15.
• More than a third of both groups had two or more partners.

This study, however, also found this:

• A greater number of students in abstinence programs correctly identified STDs than did students in control groups.
• A greater number of students in abstinence programs reported correctly that birth control pills do not prevent STDs than did students in control groups.

After reading this report, Martha Kempner of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States declared that, “Abstinence-only was an experiment and it failed.” Curiously, Ms. Kempner looked at the abstinence programs analyzed in this study, which have largely the same results as comprehensive sex ed programs–except that they better prepare students with a knowledge of STD-prevention–and she declares that only abstinence programs are failures.

I would argue that if abstinence programs are deemed a failure and worthy of defunding, then comprehensive sex ed programs, which in some studies have virtually the same results, should also be deemed a failure and defunded.

Some state lawmakers need to ask State Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago) and State Representative Karen Yarbrough (D-Chicago) — the bill’s chief sponsors — or any of the co-sponsors of the bill the following questions:

• Precisely why do you believe this legislation is necessary?
• Do you have research that proves typical comprehensive sex ed curricula solve the problem or problems you see within the adolescent population?
• Is there research proving that comprehensive sex ed curricula are more effective than abstinence curricula in delaying age of initial sexual encounter (i.e., intercourse)?
• Is there research proving that comprehensive sex ed curricula are more effective than abstinence curricula in reducing the numbers of sexual partners during adolescence?
• Is there research proving that comprehensive sex ed curricula are more effective than abstinence curricula in reducing the number of STDs and STIs?
• Is there research proving that comprehensive sex ed curricula are more effective than abstinence curricula in reducing the numbers of teen pregnancies?
• Is there research proving that comprehensive sex ed curricula are more effective than abstinence curricula in reducing the numbers of teen abortions?
• Is there research proving that students who have been taught in classes that use comprehensive sex ed curricula are more knowledgeable about STDs and STIs than students who have been taught in classes that use abstinence curricula?

No lawmaker should sponsor or vote for this bill unless they can provide strong, unchallenged research proving that comprehensive sex ed curricula are significantly more effective in achieving these goals.

And no lawmaker should sponsor or vote for this bill if they haven’t read the following articles that put the lie to claims that abstinence curricula are ineffective:

Abstinence Education Effective in Reducing Teen Sex, Comprehensive Sex Ed Not (Heritage Foundation)

Evidence on the Effectiveness of Abstinence Education: An Update (Heritage Foundation)

The Whole Truth about Comprehensive Sex Education (Heritage Foundation)

The Case for Maintaining Abstinence Education Funding (Heritage Foundation)

“Another Look at the Evidence: Abstinence and Comprehensive Sex Education in America’s Schools” and ‘Abstinence’ or ‘Comprehensive’ Sex Education?” (Institute for Research and Evaluation)

Governor Quinn in the Minority in Rejecting Title V Abstinence Education Funds (Illinois Family Institute)

Abstinence Education Works (Illinois Family Institute)

An Oct. 18, 2011 New York Times article co-written by Princeton University law professor, Robert P. George, exposes another dimension to the problem of mandated comprehensive sex ed curricula. He exposes how such laws usurp parental rights and authority.

Please click HERE to read this article, and then email and call your legislators urging them to oppose 3027.

Our Illinois state lawmakers will be returning to Springfield next week (October 25th-27th) and in early November (8th-10th) for the annual Fall Veto Session.

One of the bills that we are working against is HB 3027 — a bill being promoted by the ACLU of Illinois. This unnecessary and ill-conceived proposal mandates that every public school which teaches sex education in grades 6-12 must teach “comprehensive” sex education.

Contraception-centered sex-education curricula encourage children and youth into early sexual experimentation. They mislead youth by teaching them that condoms will provide sufficient protection from the physical, emotional and social consequences of early sexual activity.

Abstinence-emphasis curricula already address condom use for protection against sexually transmitted infections, and research suggests such curricula are more effective in educating students on STDs than are comprehensive sex ed curricula.

In addition, typical comprehensive sex ed curricula include homosexuality-affirming ideas, usually without information on the serious health risks of homosexual practices.

This bill has already passed the Illinois Senate and we must stop it in the Illinois House.

Background
This “comprehensive” sex education bill will affect secondary AND elementary schools by mandating “comprehensive” sex education in grades 6 – 12. “Comprehensive” sex education refers to sex-education curricula that emphasize and encourage contraception use, rather than abstinence. In reality, we are talking about teaching children to use a condom.

HB 3027 is completely unnecessary and an intrusion into local control. Public schools in Illinois already have the ability to teach “comprehensive” sex education if they wish. Local public school administrators do not need a mandate from Springfield telling them they must teach comprehensive sex education when the preponderance of evidence suggests that authentic abstinence education is successful.

IFI’s Laurie Higgins identifies a number of significant problems with the bill:

• HB 3027 requires that “course material and instruction shall place substantial emphasis on both abstinence… and contraception…” First, “substantial emphasis” is vague, ambiguous language open to interpretation, Second, typical “comprehensive sex ed” curricula give short shrift to abstinence teaching both in terms of amount of material and tone. Typical sex ed subordinates abstinence to contraception.
• Three different sections of HB 3027 require that sex education “material and instruction shall be developmentally and age appropriate, medically accurate, and complete.” (SIECUS, the nation’s “experts” on sex-education, believes this information is age-appropriate for your child.) The word “complete” is ambiguous and potentially opens the door to the inclusion of deeply problematic material. For those districts that want to teach about methods of contraception, the term “complete” is unnecessary in that elsewhere in the amendment is wording that requires contraception to be taught.
• HB 3027 defines important terms, but “abstinence” is not defined. What will students be taught to abstain from? Will they be taught to abstain from just vaginal intercourse — or will they be taught to abstain from all erotic interactions. Does abstinence education include abstaining from oral sex, mutual masturbation, anal sex, bestiality, and paraphilias?

Contraception-centered sex-education curricula encourage children and youth into early sexual experimentation. They mislead youth and create a false hope that condoms will provide sufficient protection from the physical, emotional and social consequences of early sexual activity. Authentic abstinence education programs provide youth with life and character skills, not condom skills. Sexual activity among youth is far too costly for adolescents, families, society and taxpayers.

Passing HB 3027 would mandate the teaching of curricula that most parents and taxpayers would find objectionable.

The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand an Illinois law requiring the observance of a moment of silence in Illinois public schools. The High Court declined to hear an appeal of a federal appeals court decision that upheld the law. Last year the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The Illinois statute is titled the Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act, but is known as the “Moment of Silence” law. It requires that each school day begin with a brief time for “silent prayer or silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day.” The law stated that the time set aside “shall not be conducted as a religious exercise.”

The Seventh Circuit had ruled that the law did not amount to an endorsement of religion. Judge Daniel Manion, writing for the court, stated that the law did not advance nor inhibit any particular religion. Manion said there must be a legitimate secular reason for the law, and that the observance of silence satisfied a secular purpose.

The Illinois Family Institute, the Alliance Defense Fund and allied attorneys filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in October of 2009, in hopes that the court would uphold the “Moment of Silence.” IFI believes that this case is significant because while the law does not establish or endorse a particular religion, it does recognize students’ First Amendment rights to exercise — or not exercise — their religious liberties. Simply offering students a moment of silence for prayer or reflection each school day in appreciation of that sacred right should not create a constitutional crisis.

IFI’s Laurie Higgins agrees, “The Illinois’ law is important because it makes clear to students that prayer is permissible, an idea that many students may not realize because of the pervasive cultural hostility to religion and the poor understanding that many Americans have about church-state relations. Many students may mistakenly believe that voluntary silent prayer is prohibited by law. Illinois’ law communicates that the state neither prescribes nor proscribes the content of private thoughts.”

The original lawsuit challenging the “Moment of Silence” law had been filed in 2007 by the Illinois ACLU against Buffalo Grove High School in suburban Chicago on behalf of Rob Sherman, a well known atheist activist and his high school daughter. Sherman was represented in his appeal to the Supreme Court by Michael Newdow, another atheist activist who has litigated numerous cases seeking to squelch religious expression in public settings.

The ACLU had argued that the law did have a “predominantly religious purpose,” and that it had the effect of “coercing children to pray in our public schools.” Sherman contended that the Illinois Legislature was “sabotaging public education” by imposing the “moment of silence” requirement.

Matthew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, believes the federal courts have made the right call. “A moment of silence does not endorse a religion contrary to the First Amendment. A moment of silence is just that — a moment for a person to pray or meditate or do nothing. They are not forcing anyone to pray or not to pray. It’s an accommodation of people who may choose to use this time for prayer.”

The subject of a “Moment of Silence” has a long history in Illinois. The Legislature first passed a law permitting the observance of a moment of silence in 1969. That law was amended in 2007 to make the “moment of silence” mandatory. Governor Rod Blagojevich vetoed it, but the Legislature overrode his veto.

The Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Illinois law to stand is significant because it stands in contrast to a prior U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1985 known as Wallace v. Jaffree. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Alabama law establishing a moment of silence in that state’s schools. The High Court decided that Alabama legislators did not have a secular purpose for their law, having declared that their objective was to return prayer to the public schools.

Judge Manion drew that distinction between the Alabama and Illinois statutes, saying that Illinois had “offered” a secular purpose for their law, namely, “establishing a period of silence…to calm the students and prepare them for a day of learning.” Illinois joins Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia in requiring a dedicated “moment of silence” at the beginning of the school day.

A freshman boy in Ft. Worth, Texas, Dakota Ary, was recently given an in-school suspension and two days out-of-school suspension because he told a classmate that because he’s a Christian, he believes homosexuality is wrong.

The German teacher in whose class this took place accused Dakota of “possible bullying” and wrote that the student’s comments should not be expressed in public school, even though the class discussion was on religion in Germany and another student had asked a question about homosexuality. How can the expression of a moral position about behavior, even a negative moral position, constitute bullying or even “possible bullying”?

Last week this same teacher put up a poster that depicted two men kissing, telling students that they should accept homosexuality. Put another way, this teacher has told orthodox Christian students that their moral positions on homosexuality are wrong. In doing so, has this teacher engaged in “possible bullying”?

According to student complaints, this teacher frequently discusses homosexuality. Apparently to this presumptuous teacher only conservative comments should be banned, and only liberal views are protected by the First Amendment.

Liberty Counsel, who is representing Dakota, has been successful in persuading the school to rescind the two-day suspension, and they’re working to ensure his formal record is clear.

But Christians should not be expecting organizations like Liberty Counsel, Alliance Defense Fund, and the Thomas More Society to do all the heavy cultural lifting. We need to actively and courageously work to restore sound pedagogy in the public schools that our taxes help subsidize. There are several things that parents and all other taxpayers can do:

1. Push for school policy that prohibits presumptuous educators like the German teacher in Texas from expressing their personal moral or political views through their comments, their curricula, or visual symbols in the classroom.

2. Push for a law (or at minimum a school policy) like the one that’s being promoted in Massachusetts (Click Here), which requires all schools that “present, implement or maintain a program that involves human sexual education, human sexuality issues or alternative sexual behavior ” to “adopt and implement a written policy ensuring parental/guardian notification of such school programs and a description of their content …. All such school programs shall be offered only in clearly identified non-mandatory elective courses or activities in which parents or guardians may choose to enroll their children through written notification to the school, in a manner reasonably similar to other elective courses or activities offered by the school district.”

The term “alternative sexual behavior” means “homosexuality, bisexuality, lesbianism, transsexuality , transgenderism , cross-dressing, pansexuality , promiscuity, sodomy, pederasty, prostitution, oral sex, anal sex, masturbation, polygamy, polyandry, sex re-assignment treatments, “bondage and discipline”, sado -masochism, bestiality, and similar behaviors. It also includes issues and relationships deriving from those behaviors, including but not limited to ‘sexual orientation,’ and alternative family, parenting, and marriage constructs.

This law (or a similar school policy) would prevent students from being exposed to any resource or activity that mentions any of these sexuality issues unless their parents are notified and give explicit permission for their child to enroll in the class or be present during the activity.

3. In addition, this law states that “No public school teacher or administrator shall be required to participate in any such school programs that violate his religious beliefs.”

4. Push for school policy that ensures intellectual diversity or parity. Taxpayers should ask school boards to create policy that requires teachers to spend equal time on and present equivalent resources from all perspectives on controversial issues. So, for example if a teacher assigns The Laramie Project or an article from a magazine that affirms “transgenderism,” he should be required to assign essays, commentaries, or journal articles written by conservative scholars on the issue of homosexuality.

I recently wrote about the persecution that Christian author and apologist, Frank Turek, has experienced because of his beliefs about homosexuality. Please watch the entirety of this short video in which he identifies the group that bears significant blame for the loss of our religious liberty: Christians.

By Alicia Constant — World Magazine

More Indiana parents are choosing to send their children to private and parochial schools in the state, which has enacted the nation’s largest school voucher program.

More than 3,200 students received vouchers to attend private schools this year-with nearly 70 percent of them attending Catholic schools.

Catholic schools are in the minority among Indiana private schools but received a majority of vouchers because many are venerable and already have state accreditation. They also have more space: One Catholic school in South Bend had seen enrollment dwindle from 702 students in 1953 to 135 last year. This year, due to the voucher program, enrollment has jumped to 212 students.

Most voucher systems enacted elsewhere in the United States are limited to poor students, those in failing schools, or those with special needs. But in Indiana, any student whose family has a household income less than $60,000 is eligible.

Because of the popularity of the program, public school officials have been contacting parents of voucher students, begging them to keep their children in the public schools. And these administrators have strong incentive. For example, if families in South Bend who signed up for vouchers don’t return, administrators there estimate they will have $1.3 million less to spend.

“They’re making the argument that the money belongs to the system and not to the parents,” said Robert Enlow of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.

The vouchers in Indiana are government-issued certificates that allow parents to pay private school tuition with tax money they would have normally paid to public schools.

Nate Schnellenberger, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, complained that “public money is going to be taken from public schools, and they’re going to end up in private, mostly religious schools.”

The teachers’ union, which is suing, claims the voucher program is in violation of “the separation of church and state” since only six of 240 participating private schools in the state are secular.

But Enlow called the lawsuit a “misdirection,” adding that parents are simply choosing available schools: “We’re giving aid to students, not aid to religion.”

The ACLU finds itself in the midst of another controversial legal battle, this time in Missouri where they are suing a school district to allow K-12 students to access GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) websites. The ACLU’s Eastern Missouri chapter wrote to the school district in May telling it to stop using the sexuality blocker on its filtering software. But doing so would likely put the school in violation of the federal Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires public schools and libraries to protect children from harmful web content as a condition of receiving federal funding. The heros at the Alliance Defense Fund are taking up the school district’s case.

What’s disturbing about the ACLU’s demand is that it goes beyond the usual lines about tolerance and nondiscrimination to demand that the district stop filtering sexually graphic content. What about GLBT websites do kids need to be seeing if their content won’t pass a sexuality filter? The school’s policy is not discriminatory; children should be protected from all illegal pornography — especially when it is distributed on taxpayer funded computers — regardless of its sexual orientation. The federal government recognized this with CIPA.

The reason school’s Internet filters block GLBT websites isn’t because of the so-called “identity” of the people who run them, but that the sites contain inappropriate and sexually graphic material.