State Senator Matt Murphy (R-Palatine) has introduced SB 1932, the “School Choice Act,” which would provide to parents vouchers worth up to $3,800 or the actual tuition of a private school, whichever is less. Vouchers would be available to students in grades 1-8 who attend “low performing” or “overcrowded” schools in the Chicago School District 299.

Low-performing schools are those that rank in the lowest 10 percent in terms of the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test, and “overcrowded” schools are those that have 70 percent or more low-income students and are among “the most severely overcrowded 5 percent of schools in the district.”

This bill should receive unequivocal, enthusiastic bi-partisan support. Anyone who cares about the welfare of children and the right of parents to determine how their children are educated should support this bill.

Those on the left who care deeply about “choice” should support this bill. Those who support a mother’s right to choose to end the life of her baby and who support children’s right to choose their “gender,” should certainly support the right of parents to choose where their children spend seven hours a day, 180 days a year, for 13 years.

Those on the left who claim to care deeply about “social justice” should welcome this bill because it enables parents and legal guardians who have fewer material advantages than many to escape the worst performing schools in the city — schools in which no child should spend their days. The School Choice Act would provide these parents with just a fraction of the freedom that Barack Obama had when he chose to send his daughters to one of the most prestigious private schools in the nation where tuition runs about $30,000 per student, per year.

Some questions:

• What possible reasons could there be to oppose this bill other than political indebtedness to teachers’ unions who fear the effects of competition on their jobs?
• Why should schools that parents don’t want their children to attend and that are staffed by teachers whom parents don’t want to teach their children continue to operate?
• How do legislators who oppose school vouchers justify compelling disadvantaged parents to send their children to substandard and often dangerous schools to which they, the legislators, would never send their own children?

It seems that only a callous and self-serving legislator could oppose such a just, compassionate, and reasonable bill.

Last week Peter Geddeis, the director of student activities at Lyons Township High School, sent the entire staff and faculty an email in which he said the following (emphasis added):

On Friday, April 15, a number of our students will be participating in the National Day of Silence, sponsored by our PRISM (gay-straight alliance) club. On this day you will see some students wearing rainbow ribbons, Day of Silence t-shirts, and/or mainly black clothing. These students will not be speaking all day as they take a day-long vow of silence to echo the silence endured by LGBTA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Allies…. Please understand and be respectful toward students who choose not to speak on this day.

Students participating in the Day of Silence must attend an orientation session this week or next, which will explain clearly the expectations of the day. These students will receive Day of Silence buttons, which will denote their participation in this year’s event. Student participants will remain silent all day, including in class and in social situations, so please honor their choice to remain silent as best you can. However, these students will be informed that if a teacher or other staff member insists they answer a question, be part of a discussion, or engage in conversation, they should do so – this is a day of awareness, not defiance.

PRISM has prepared a short piece that teachers can read to their classes prior to the Day of Silence….

I know that with the cooperation of the students and staff, the Day of Silence will again be a success. If you have any questions, please contact me or Gail White (PRISM Sponsor).

Mr. Geddeis was careful and deliberate with his rhetoric. Although he does tell staff and faculty that students will be informed that if asked to speak, “they should do so,” he phrased it in a manipulative way. He said if teachers or staff members “insist,” which, as a friend points out, puts the burden on teachers to insist. What would “insisting” involve? Repeatedly asking? Demanding in an authoritarian way? Threatening disciplinary action?

Mr. Geddeis also told staff and faculty that they should “be respectful toward students who choose not to speak on this day,” and to “honor their choice to remain silent.” Someone needs to ask Mr. Geddeis and his administration, how exactly teachers would demonstrate respect for and honor students’ refusal to speak. How does Mr. Geddeis think teachers can demonstrate respect for and honor students’ refusal to speak other than allowing them to refuse to speak?

This email was intended to manipulate staff and faculty into allowing student silence and to instill fear in those teachers who “insist” that students participate verbally in class. Sounds like rhetorical bullying to me. It would be far better for the school environment for Mr. Geddeis to support teachers who want to depoliticize their classroom by eliminating controversial political action.

What Mr. Geddeis should have told staff and faculty is that according to the ACLU and the homosexual activist law firm Lambda Legal students have no Constitutional or legal right to refuse to speak during class. And in his email to staff, Geddeis should have said the following:

These students will be informed that if a teacher or other staff member asks them a question, or to be part of a discussion, of to engage in a conversation, they should do so. Students have also been told that they have no Constitutional or legal right to refuse to speak during class. Finally, students have been told that they should respect and honor teachers’ decisions to expect student participation in class.

As of Monday, April 11th, the Day of Silence provided a link to a Gay-Straight Alliances Facebook page which in turn has a link to “photos” with additional links. A visit to this page reveals how little the Day of Silence has to do with bullying and how much it has to do with affirming and celebrating deviant sexuality.

One link is a photo of five young, shirtless Thai men that takes students to this website: HERE.

Another seven links take students to this website (warning: extremely graphic material): HERE.

According to the Day of Silence website, “hundreds of thousands of students nationwide take a vow of silence,” and yet many school administrators claim the Day of Silence is not disruptive. For those who naively believe that the Day of Silence is not disruptive to the classroom, here are some comments from students posted online (printed as posted):

Lexie LoveGood: Last year while doing this one of my lab teachers wanted to make me talk. and i refued to speak he wrote me up. the kids in my lab booed him and said it was my right not to speake the 1st am may state freedom of speach but it also gives me the right not speak. the kids fought with thier voices so i could not be broken. my write up slip was tore up and thrown away.

Ziah Von Heyneman: I remember when I was in High School I went through the same thing. Most of my teachers wanted me to talk but I wouldn’t so they just sent me outside. I did report them the next day to the principle but he didn’t do anything. The only teachers who loved what I was part taking in were my art teacher and stage craft teacher.

Brandin Arsenault: I’m going to organize an event at my school, and get as many people (Middle School: Grade 5-7) to participate.

Many parents have no idea that the Day of Silence takes place annually in their children’s classrooms. Parents are also unaware of how many students, teachers, and administrators dread the Day of Silence. Even as administrators feel compelled to say that the Day of Silence is not disruptive, some — perhaps many — privately know that it is and dislike the disruption and controversy it creates. Even many teachers who hold politically liberal views on the nature and morality of homosexuality dislike the Day of Silence because they simply want to teach their subject matter without having to contend with students’ refusal to speak or with political controversies.

The instigator of the Day of Silence and other homosexuality-affirming days is the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). GLSEN’s central goal is not to end bullying. Its central goal is to transform the moral beliefs of the nation’s children through our public schools. Parents must oppose the politicization of public education, or its exploitation by homosexual activist organizations like GLSEN will continue to grow.

Call your children out of school on the Day of Silence if your administration allows students and/or teachers to refuse to speak in class. In most schools the Day of Silence is being held this Friday, April 15. And while you’re at it, you might ask for copies of any emails that were sent to staff and faculty regarding the Day of Silence and forward them to me.

Click HERE to learn more about the Day of Silence Walkout.

NEA and GLSEN Push Schools to Low-Quality Education

In the wave of heated debates about public sector unions, many are evaluating the teaching profession and teachers’ union policies. Are American students being taught to think independently and logically, to evaluate issues critically, to verify and fact-check using multiple and diverse sources?

Or do most schools, pressured by the National Education Association, employ politically biased, emotion-based, left-wing methods and practices that result in censorship and an inability to think critically and logically? Nowhere does this question surface more quickly than on the hot-button issue of homosexuality.

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s (GLSEN) upcoming “Day of Silence” on April 15 is a perfect example of the way instruction has been corrupted by a leftist political agenda. When most teachers have abandoned direct instruction, also known as lecturing, and, instead, employ interactive methodologies like classroom discussion and small group activities, the Day of Silence calls for all students and teachers to refuse to speak during classes for an entire day. Rather than have students read and discuss the best writing from the best scholars on both sides of the debate, GLSEN calls for political protest and silence in schools.

The NEA has adopted numerous resolutions in recent years supporting homosexuality, same sex unions, and even “gender change.” Its bias is well-established, and school curricula now reflect its strong-arm tactics in propagating only one acceptable viewpoint on this issue.

Responsible schools and independent-minded students should refuse any observance of the “Day of Silence” based on its advocacy group ties, exploitative tactics, and non-factual assumptions, which include the following:

1. The “Day of Silence” is based on the unproven and erroneous assumption that some people are “born gay.” In contemporary academia, so little committed to logic, evidence, and intellectual exploration, no one challenges this assumption, researches it, or demands evidence to support it.

2. DOS claims there is a nationwide epidemic of bullying based around “anti-gay” sentiments. Hard facts reflecting trends in school incident or police reports have never, to our knowledge, been used in any school district to support this claim. Instead, DOS cites the badly-constructed and highly-biased internal “research” produced by the DOS-sponsoring group, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), called the National School Climate Survey. This research uses a biased survey instrument laced with emotionally-loaded terminology and collects responses via the Internet. Paid GLSEN staff members amass the data and publish the results. No independent verification exists, and the known volatility of surveys administered to youth as well as web-based research, is never taken into account. GLSEN inflames student emotions by citing the tragic suicides of several students in recent years as proof that traditional moral opinions stimulate violence.

Homosexuality advocacy groups like GLSEN are never called on to prove that the belief that homosexual acts are immoral causes bullying. The fact that a bully may disapprove of homosexuality does not prove that his or her bullying acts were caused by his beliefs or that serious, thoughtful religious convictions cause bullying.

3. DOS believes the only way to reduce bullying is for all students and teachers to affirm homosexuality and “gender change” and for none to be allowed to question it. GLSEN holds that schools cannot be “safe” as long as conservative views on the nature and morality of homosexuality are expressed or studied. The DOS/GLSEN calls for “tolerance” and “diversity” constitute empty rhetoric.

4. Embedded in all homosexuality-affirming activities and resources is the fallacious comparison of homosexuality to race. DOS and pro-homosexual programs in general propagate emotion-based, shallow claims and diminished critical thinking skills by implying or asserting there is only one acceptable viewpoint on this issue, by not encouraging fact-based assessment, and by censoring competing viewpoints.

The National Education Association’s monolithic support for same sex unions, “safe schools” for “GLBT” students, and its “GLBT” teacher member caucus, discredits its claims to professionalism, its commitment to sound pedagogy and diversity and its purported concern for the long-term well-being of students.

Thoughtful parents and school communities will reject the Day of Silence, all pro-homosexual programs and curricula, and hold NEA member teachers to a higher standard of non-partisanship and truthfulness, with child well-being as the number one consideration.

SB 1619, the comprehensive sex ed bill that is heavily promoted by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, is one more demonstration of the left’s fervor to mainstream homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder through legislation. Some may wonder just how ideas about homosexuality and “transgenderism” will work their way into sex ed curricula if this bill should pass. This dangerous goal will be accomplished through SB 1619’s requirement that “all course material and instruction shall be free from bias in accordance with the Illinois Human Rights Act.” There are significant problems with this language and its intent.

First, 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.” The tortured silliness and postmodern slipperiness of the phrase “gender-related identity, whether or not traditionally associated with the person’s designated sex at birth,” should be so obvious as to require no discussion. But the reasons for this silliness may be less obvious. For those untutored in the ways of concealing sexual deviancy, “gender-related identity” is a more publicly palatable term for Gender Identity Disorder and its attendant cross-dressing behavior. Proponents of “comprehensive” sex ed seek to disassociate cross-dressing and elective amputations of healthy body parts from the reality that these behaviors are manifestations of a disorder.

Second, the word “bias” never appears in the Illinois Human Rights Act.

Third, the term “bias” is not defined in SB 1619. You can bet your bottom dollar if proponents are compelled to define “bias,” they will define it in such a way as to result in the inclusion of resources that affirm subversive assumptions about homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder.

Liberal ideologues use “bias” to refer to any moral propositions with which they disagree. But The American Heritage Dictionary defines “bias” as “a preference or inclination, esp. one that inhibits impartial judgment.” In its usage note it further explains that “Bias has generally been defined as “uninformed or unintentional inclination.” This definition reveals that informed, intentional, thoughtfully constructed opinions — even negative opinions — do not constitute bias. The belief that heterosexual acts are morally superior to homosexual acts does not constitute bias unless it is uninformed. Conversely, those who believe that heterosexual acts and homosexual acts are morally equivalent would be guilty of bias if they had not thought and read deeply on the foundational ontological and moral issues.

Fourth, the intent of including the reference to the Illinois Human Rights Act is to require that public schools treat homosexuality and cross-dressing as if they were ontologically and morally equivalent to heterosexuality, which, of course, requires prior assent to the propositions that they are ontologically and morally equivalent to heterosexuality. Treating homosexuality as if it’s ontologically and morally equivalent to heterosexuality is necessarily an act that embodies and expresses a moral belief. It is decidedly not a morally neutral act. Why should the left’s radical and unproven ontological and moral assumptions be codified in law?

And why should any Illinoisan allow the feckless notion that Gender Identity Disorder is not a disorder to be implicitly promoted in law and our schools. The accurate, apolitical term for the mental disorder in which an individual falsely believes that he or she is born in the wrong body is Gender Identity Disorder. This is the term used in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that is published by the American Psychiatric Association. Only liberal activists hell-bent on normalizing all manner of disordered thoughts, impulses, and behaviors would seek to use the euphemisms “gender identity,” “gender-related identity,” “gender expression,” or “transgender.” Those terms have no place in legal documents or school policies. Any legislator, school administrator, or school board member with an ounce of intelligence would vigorously oppose the inclusion of what are clearly political and rhetorically manipulative terms.

The presence of ambiguous, undefined, and euphemistic language in SB 1619 is yet more reason to reject this controversial bill that homosexual activists and their ideological accomplices are using to propagandize children.

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.

The Day of Silence, which is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), is fewer than two weeks away. GLSEN’s Day of Silence, which began on college campuses and has now infiltrated 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 can then exploit 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.

And we 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 15. 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.

Here are just a few of the governmental efforts, including proposed legislation, designed to use public schools to normalize homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder (aka “transgenderism”):

• Ten states now have “enumerated” anti-bullying laws, which specifically include homosexuality and gender confusion as protected classes.
• Comprehensive sex ed curricula portray homosexuality as morally equivalent to heterosexuality.
• California’s SB 48, if passed, will require schools to teach about homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder positively while censoring dissenting resources.
• Federal Safe Schools Improvement Act denies funding to schools to combat drugs and violence unless they agree to address homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder.
• Federal Student Non-Discrimination Act includes homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder as protected classes. If passed, schools would be prohibited from treating the objective biological fact of a student’s sex as if it had objective status. It would render the act of making common sense distinctions between boys and girls illegal.
• “Dear Colleague” Letter, which unconstitutionally expands the control of government over student speech, was sent by the Department of Justice to all school boards.
• The Department of Justice created a video submission to Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign in which federal employees affirm unproven moral propositions about homosexuality to students
• President Obama held an anti-bullying conference at the White House to which he invited representatives from virtually every homosexuality-affirming organizations that seeks to use public education to normalize homosexuality.
• The White House created an anti-bullying website that has a special image link for only one group of students who experience bullying: LGBT students.

And here are the special events concocted by homosexual activist organizations that have wormed their way into public schools, partly because conservatives fail to oppose them with the same vigor that homosexuals promote them:

• No Name-Calling Week sponsored by GLSEN
• Ally Week sponsored by GLSEN
• Spirit Day sponsored by Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)
• National Coming Out Day sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
• The Transgender Day of Remembrance sponsored by the HRC

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.”

It’s long past time that conservatives 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 or teachers to refuse to speak on the Day of Silence. For further information, including parental instructions and a sample calling out letter, visit www.doswalkout.net.

CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill. – School officials at an Illinois high school have agreed to stop organizing and leading students in transcendental meditation exercises, which are rooted in the Buddhist religious practice, during class time and as part of the honors English curriculum. Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute warned officials at Prairie Ridge High School in Crystal Lake that conducting the transcendental meditation exercises, even if students were allowed to opt out of them, put the school at risk of violating the Establishment Clause’s prohibition against the government endorsing a religion. The Rutherford Institute intervened after being contacted by a parent concerned about students being directed to assume the lotus position, conduct meditative chants, and lie on their backs with their palms to the floor in order to “become one with the earth.”

“Although school officials can teach about religion, they cannot indoctrinate students in specific religious beliefs,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “This is a victory for religious freedom.”

Doug Mann, the father of a ninth grader at Prairie Ridge High School in Crystal Lake, contacted The Rutherford Institute after his daughter was asked to participate in a transcendental meditation exercise in her ninth grade honors English class. The exercises were in connection with the study of the transcendental movement in literature. According to Mann, the teacher asked students to, among other things, assume the lotus position, conduct meditative chants, and lie on their backs with their palms to the floor in order to “become one with the earth.”

Although Mann voiced his objections to these practices as inconsistent with his family’s religious beliefs, he was told by the teacher that there was no problem because students were allowed the opportunity to opt out of the exercises. However, as Rutherford Institute attorneys pointed out in a letter to officials at Community School District 155, the federal courts have held that transcendental meditation is a religion and that school instruction in transcendental meditation violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

School officials were also informed that offering students an opt-out from a school-sponsored religious exercise does not absolve the school from having to abide by the First Amendment’s prohibition against government entities leading and organizing religious practices or endorsing a particular religion. Moreover, as Institute attorneys noted, in the context of student activities, there is an inherent coercion placed upon students to participate in school-sponsored religious activities due to peer pressure. Agreeing that such unconstitutional practices would no longer occur at the school, school officials indicated that they would also be relaying the Institute’s instructions on what schools can and cannot do in relation to teaching religion in the classroom with teachers in the English Department.

FRC is proud to announce the availability of its new policy pamphlet entitled, “Who Should Decide How Children are Educated?” by Jack Klenk. Mr. Klenk is a retired, long-time Department of Education policy expert and proponent of educational reform.

You can download the document here. [PDF]

Primarily, Klenk asks the following linked questions: “Who has the primary responsibility for making critical decisions about the education of school-aged children? Their parents? Or government and the school system it operates?”

Klenk presents an extended overview of the development of American public education and demonstrates that we now have a “top-down” model that has been designed to promote the preferences of experts, bureaucracies, and unions above that of parents. Rather, a system must be developed that overturns old patterns of behavior. The current educational system is overdue for a modernization, that will it make it more flexible, less bureaucratic, and more family-friendly. To be authentically public, it must serve all parents from the whole public.

For education to serve the public, it must give parents access to a variety of schools, not just the monolithic government option. The old system is a monopoly that is not suited to modern life. As with other monopolies, it gives disproportionate weight to itself and special interests, and not enough to the customers – the parents and children. Furthermore, monopolies always resist improvement-forcing competition. Any new system of education for the public must leave behind the mindset that only government schools can serve the public. Parents should be allowed to select the educational institutions that best suit their needs.

However, the reforms must be accomplished in a manner that does not interfere with the freedom and distinctive identities of nongovernmental schools. This is critical. Government financial support of parental educational choices cannot be allowed to threaten the independence and distinctive features (e.g., religious education) of alternative institutions. Vouchers, tax credits, and charter schools are all part of a wave of educational change that appears to be on the horizon as the public realizes that government schools are very costly and are not performing well.

There’s no federal law against bullying or homophobia. So the Department of Education recently decided to invent one. On October 26, it sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to the nation’s school districts arguing that many forms of homophobia and bullying violate federal laws against sexual harassment and discrimination. But those laws only ban discrimination based on sex or race – not sexual orientation, or bullying in general. The letter from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights twisted those laws, interpreting them so broadly as to cover not only bullying, but also a vast range of constitutionally protected speech, as well as conduct that the Supreme Court has held does not constitute harassment. In so doing, it menaced academic freedom and student privacy rights, and thumbed its nose at the federal courts.

The letter successfully left the false impression that federal law already bans bullying and anti-gay harassment. For example, a sympathetic news story reported that “the Department of Education issued guidance to all school officials in October 2010, reminding them that federal law requires schools to take action against bullying-including . . . sexual harassment of LGBT students.” The letter was part of a high-profile Obama Administration campaign against bullying, that recently culminated in “a high-visibility conference on bullying prevention March 10, with the president and first lady” and the introduction by Administration allies of “several LGBT-inclusive bills designed to address bullying of students.”

But in reality, there is no federal ban on bullying, and no federal statute prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination. Bills banning anti-gay discrimination, such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, have yet to pass Congress. Existing sexual harassment laws generally do not cover harassment aimed at gays based on their sexual orientation, as opposed to their gender – even if such harassment is sexual in nature. As the Supreme Court emphasized in its 1998 Oncale decision, “workplace harassment” is not illegal sexual harassment “merely because the words used have sexual content”; instead, victims “must always prove that the conduct at issue was not merely tinged with offensive sexual connotations, but actually constituted discrimination ‘because of'” a victim’s “sex,” such that “members of one sex are” treated worse than “the other sex.” Thus, federal courts have usually dismissed sexual harassment lawsuits brought by gay employees over bullying and foul language, in cases like Higgins v. New Balance (1999).

Harassment is legally defined even more narrowly in schools than workplaces. In the workplace, harassment need only be severe or pervasive enough to create a hostile environment in order to be illegal. A single, severe physical act can occasionally be enough for a lawsuit.

But in the school context, harassment is defined more narrowly by the Supreme Court’s 1999 Davis decision: it must be “severe” and “pervasive”: to be illegal, sexual harassment must be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it can be said to deprive the victims of access to the educational opportunities or benefits provided by the school since “schools are unlike the adult workplace” and “children may regularly interact in a manner that would be unacceptable among adults.” Moreover, the requirement of both severity and pervasiveness means that a lawsuit cannot be based solely on a “single instance” of “severe” peer harassment.

The Education Department’s letter, from Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali, flouts the Supreme Court’s harassment definition, claiming that “Harassment does not have to . . . involve repeated incidents” to be actionable, but rather need only be “severe, pervasive, or persistent” enough to detract from a student’s educational benefits or activities. The letter goes out of its way to emphasize that harassment includes speech, such as “graphic and written statements” and on the “Internet.”

The letter falsely implies that anti-gay harassment is generally discrimination based on sex. It cites as an example of illegal “gender-based harassment” a case in which “a gay high school student was called names (including anti-gay slurs and sexual comments) both to his face and on social networking sites.” This is exactly what most federal appeals courts have said does not constitute gender-based harassment. It is not clear whether this case is merely a hypothetical example, or – more disturbingly — a finding by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in an actual case. The letter says that “each of these hypothetical examples contains elements taken from actual cases.”

If it actually found a school district guilty of harassment over this, then the Education Department has flagrantly disregarded court rulings, not just about what harassment is, but about how officials are supposed to respond to harassment. In this example of anti-gay harassment, the Education Department says the school district is liable for harassment even though “the school responded to complaints from the student by reprimanding the perpetrators,” which stopped “harassment by those individuals,” because such discipline “did not, however, stop others from undertaking similar harassment of the student.”

That totally contradicts the Supreme Court’s Davis decision, which said school districts are not liable for harassment just because it continues, and are only liable if they are “deliberately indifferent” to harassment once they learn of it; they need not actually succeed in “purging schools of actionable peer harassment” or ensuring that all “students conform their conduct to” rules against harassment.

Even in the workplace, where institutions are liable for mere “negligence” regarding harassment, they are not liable for harassment that continues after steps “reasonably calculated” to prevent harassment – such as when employees stubbornly engage in harassment for which other employees have already been properly disciplined, as a federal appeals court ruled in Adler v. Wal-Mart(1998). Indeed, an institution may sometimes avoid liability even where there was no discipline at all, if it was unclear whether the accused employee was guilty, given due-process concerns.

Essentially, the Education Department has turned harassment law upside down, making schools more liable for harassment than employers, when the Supreme Court intended that they be less subject to liability. (The Education Department letter also suggests racial “sensitivity” training – never mind that this often backfires on institutions. In Fitzgerald v. Mountain States Tel & Tel. Co. (1995), where adverse employee reactions to diversity training spawned a discrimination lawsuit, the appeals court noted that “diversity training sessions generate conflict and emotion” and that “diversity training is perhaps a tyranny of virtue.”)

The letter also implies that it does not matter whether speech is “aimed at a specific target” in considering whether the speech is “harassment.” This stretches harassment law well beyond its existing reach even in the workplace, effectively prohibiting a vast range of speech that a listener overhears and objects to. Employees have tended to lose lawsuits alleging harassment over speech not aimed at them (the California Supreme Court’s 2006 Lyle decision being a classic example), although there are occasional exceptions to this rule. The courts reason that “the impact of such ‘second-hand’ harassment is obviously not as great as harassment directed toward” the complainant herself.

Banning such speech also raises serious First Amendment issues. Recently a federal appeals court cited the First Amendment in dismissing a racial harassment lawsuit by a university’s Hispanic employees against a white professor over his racially-charged anti-immigration messages. In its decision in Rodriguez v. Maricopa County Community College (2010), the court noted that the messages were not “directed at particular individuals” but rather aimed at “the college community” as a whole.

Even if the Education Department were merely trying to impose workplace rules on students, rather than going beyond that, that would still raise serious First Amendment issues. Courts have repeatedly struck down campus harassment codes modeled on workplace “hostile-environment” harassment rules, in cases like Dambrot v. Central Michigan University and DeJohn v. Temple University(2008). As the recent Rodriguez decision noted, “there is no categorical ‘harassment exception’ to the First Amendment’s free speech clause.”

The Education Department also calls on school districts to take “steps to reduce bullying in schools,” saying that “some student misconduct that falls under a school’s anti-bullying policy also may trigger responsibilities under one or more of the federal anti-discrimination laws enforced by the Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).” But if bullying is not motivated by gender or race, it cannot violate federal law. As a federal appeals court put it, “If . . . an employee’s environment, however unpleasant, is not due to her gender, she has not been the victim of” illegal discrimination.

According to the Daily Caller, “the leading advocate for the expanded” definition of harassment contained in the letter “is Kevin Jennings, who heads the Education Department’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Jennings founded the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network advocacy group, and raised at least $100,000 for the Obama campaign in 2008.” GLSEN falsely claims that the letter’s examples of harassment are supported by “current law” and it strongly supports its expansive interpretation of harassment law.

Contradicting the federal courts, the letter says that after harassment occurs, action must be aimed at students in general, not just the individual perpetrators. Following harassment, it says, “The school may need to provide training or other interventions not only for the perpetrators, but also for the larger school community.” Even if the school stops the harassment by disciplining the harassers, the letter claims it may still be liable if it does not take “systemic” and “comprehensive” actions like harassment training for the student body. Moreover, if bullying constitutes sexual harassment, the school may be liable even if it disciplines the bully, if it “failed to recognize” and “acknowledge that the bullying also constituted sexual harassment.

Federal courts have ruled to the contrary. For example, if an employer succeeds in stopping harassment, it will generally avoid liability, even if not all of the harassers – much less employees generally – are sent to harassment training, and even if it takes action under “general” misconduct rules, not a “separate, written” harassment policy. I have never previously encountered the bizarre mandates contained in the Education Department’s letter, even though I handled discrimination cases for years, including time spent working for the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights.

If the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) succeeds in chilling free speech through its overreaching letter, its officials should be held personally liable for any resulting First Amendment violations. Indeed, it was once held liable for a similar First Amendment violation in Knights of the Ku Klux Klan v. East Baton Rouge Parish School Board (1978). The Ku Klux Klan wanted to meet during non-school hours in an empty classroom, the way other community groups were allowed to do by the school board. But it was prevented from doing so by the school board under pressure from the Office for Civil Rights, which argued that the Klan’s presence would constitute racial discrimination in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the school board and OCR had violated the Klan’s First Amendment rights. (Liberal OCR bureaucrats have sometimes wrongly suggested that far less offensive speech than Klan activity can violate Title VI. In 1994, the Education Department’s Judith Winston refused to take a position on whether criticism of affirmative action constituted racial harassment when questioned by Stuart Taylor of the Legal Times, despite the fact that courts have held that criticism of affirmative action policies is not racial harassment, but rather is protected by the First Amendment and the anti-retaliation provisions of federal civil-rights laws).

The Education Department’s letter is a serious threat to free speech and academic freedom, and an egregious display of administrative overreaching that shows disregard for the federal courts and the legal limits on its own jurisdiction.

The poorly written, poorly thought-out, partisan “comprehensive sex ed” legislation concocted by State Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago) should be roundly rejected. SB 1619, otherwise known by its obfuscatory title, “Personal Responsibility Education Act,” is yet another attempt by legislator-ideologues to use public money to normalize sexual immorality and perversion by inculcating children and teens with subjectivist, relativist assumptions about sexuality.
SB 1619 requires the following:

Provides that each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades 6 through 12 shall include instruction on both abstinence and contraception for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS (instead of instruction on the prevention, transmission, and spread of AIDS). Removes a provision that requires all public elementary, junior high, and senior high school classes that teach sex education and discuss sexual intercourse to emphasize that abstinence is the expected norm. Provides that all public elementary, junior high, and senior high school classes that teach sex education and discuss sexual intercourse shall satisfy specified criteria (instead of all sex education courses that discuss sexual intercourse shall satisfy specified criteria); makes changes to that criteria….Provides that the State Board of Education shall make available resource materials for educating children regarding sex education and may take into consideration the curriculum on this subject developed by other states, as well as any other curricular materials suggested by education experts and other groups that work on sex education issues. Provides that materials may include without limitation model sex education curriculums and sexual health education programs…. Provides that the Comprehensive Health Education Program shall include the educational area of evidence-based and medically accurate information regarding sexual abstinence (instead of the area of sexual abstinence until marriage).

The term “comprehensive sex ed” is a euphemism intended to convey positive connotations of wholeness and completeness. But as usual with sophistry, it is a deceit. The truth is comprehensive sex ed is incomprehensive, distorted and propelled by a subversive sexual ethic. Comprehensive sex educators seek to tell kids everything possible about sex except of course anything that challenges their subjectivist, relativist presuppositions and libertine social and political goals.

Below are a few of the “medically accurate” notions that comprehensive sexperts from the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) think our children need to know. All of the following bulleted points are direct quotes from the “Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education,” which is the bible of the comprehensive sex ed movement. Unless, conservatives create a firestorm of opposition, this is what’s coming to Illinois public schools:

Boys and Girls Ages 5-8

• Human beings can love people of the same gender and people of another gender.
• Some people are homosexual, which means they can be attracted to and fall in love with someone of the same gender.
• Homosexual men and women are also known as gay men and lesbians.
• Two people may decide to marry or make a lifetime commitment to each other because they love each other and want to share their lives with each other.
• Many people live in lifetime committed relationships, even though they may not be legally married.
• Two people of the same gender can live in loving, lifetime committed relationships.
• Touching and rubbing one’s own genitals to feel good is called masturbation.
• Some boys and girls masturbate and others do not.
• Masturbation should be done in a private place.
• Girls and boys have many similarities and a few differences.
• Some people may expect or demand that boys and girls behave in certain ways, but this is beginning to change.
• Vaginal intercourse – when a penis is placed inside a vagina – is the most common way for a sperm and egg to join.
• Values are strong feelings or beliefs about important issues.

Ages 9-12

• Sexual orientation refers to a person’s physical and/or romantic attraction to an individual of the same and/or different gender.
• Some people are bisexual, which means they can be attracted to and fall in love with people of the same or another gender.
• People of all sexual orientations can have relationships that are equally fulfilling.
• Gender identity refers to a person’s internal sense of being male, female, or a combination of these.
• Transgender is also used as a general term to describe many different identities that exist such as “transsexual,” “drag king,” “drag queen,” “crossdresser,” “genderqueer,” “shapeshifter,” “bigendered,” and “androgyne.”
• All societies and cultures have transgender individuals.
• Some cultures around the world recognize and have special roles for transgender individuals.
• Children may have a mother, a mother and a father, two mothers, two fathers, or any other combination of adults who love and care for them.
• Boys and girls receive messages about how they should behave from their families, friends, the
  media, and society.
• The belief that all people of the same gender should behave the same way is called a stereotype.
• People often expect girls and boys to behave stereotypically.
• People are sometimes discriminated against because of biological sex, appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity, family, and living arrangements.
• Discrimination can lead to lower self-esteem, unequal opportunities, and physical and emotional
  problems.
• Discrimination has negative consequences for the individual, family, community, and society.
• A woman faced with an unintended pregnancy can carry the pregnancy to term and raise the baby, place the baby for adoption, or have an abortion to end the pregnancy.

Ages 12-15

• Most people have masturbated at some time in their lives.
• Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual people come from all countries, cultures, races, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, and religions.
• People do not choose their sexual orientation.
• Many scientific theories have concluded that sexual orientation cannot be changed by therapy or medicine.
• Some people’s gender identity differs from their biological sex. “Transgender” describes people whose internal sense of gender (gender identity) doesn’t match what society expects of them based on their genitals and chromosomes (biological sex).
• Accepting gender role stereotypes can limit a person’s life.
• People’s lives are enriched when they understand and celebrate diversity.
• Many people experience sexual and erotic thoughts called fantasies.
• Fantasies are one type of sexual expression.
• The right of a woman to have a legal abortion is guaranteed by the Supreme Court, although there are restrictions in some states.
• Values should be freely chosen after the alternatives and their consequences are evaluated.
• No one has the right to impose their values on others.

Ages 15-18

• Masturbation may be an important part of a couple’s sexual relationship.
• Being sexual with another person does not mean that masturbation must or should stop.
• Some sexual behaviors shared by partners include kissing; touching; talking; caressing; massaging; and oral, vaginal, or anal intercourse.
• Abstinence means voluntarily choosing not to engage in certain behaviors.
• Sexual abstinence means not engaging in any sexual behavior that can result in a pregnancy or STD, including HIV.
• People may have different ideas about what constitutes abstinence, from no sexual contact of any kind including kissing, to only abstaining from sexual intercourse, and all points in-between.
• Sexual partners should discuss what they mean by abstinence.
• Young teenagers are not mature enough for a sexual relationship that includes intercourse.
• Many adults believe school-age teenagers should not have sexual intercourse.
• There are many ways to give and receive sexual pleasure without having intercourse.
• Sexual orientation is determined by a combination of a person’s attractions, fantasies, and sexual behaviors.*
• Respecting the diversity of values and beliefs of other people is important.
• Some people use erotic photographs, movies, art, literature, or the Internet to enhance their sexual fantasies when alone or with a partner.
• A person whose religious or cultural teachings prohibit contraception may have to decide between those teachings, the risk of unintended pregnancy or STDs/HIV, and his/her decision to have vaginal, oral, or anal intercourse.
• Emergency contraception (the “morning after pill”) is not a method of abortion.
• Gender role stereotypes are harmful to both men and women.
• A growing number of congregations openly welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

This sexual act, that is, SB 1619, also includes the following bit of tricksy rhetoric from the tricksy Senator Steans:

“Medically accurate” means verified or supported by the weight of research conducted in compliance with accepted scientific methods and published in peer-reviewed journals, where applicable, or comprising information that leading professional organizations and agencies with relevant expertise in the field have recognized as accurate, objective, and complete.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes or Antonin Scalia to deduce from this piece of sophistry where some mischief may derive.

• What does the phrase “where applicable” mean? Is it possible that there will be different standards used to evaluate abstinence curricula than comprehensive sex ed curricula? Might our comprehensive sex ed devotees demand that proposed abstinence-based curricula be supported by the weight of research published in peer-reviewed journals, while the same evaluative standards will be deemed not applicable when it comes to comprehensive sex ed curricula?
• Are the peers who are doing the reviewing biased in favor of the comprehensive sex ed ideology?
• Who decides which “leading professional organizations and agencies” will be used? Who determines what constitutes “relevant expertise” for determining accuracy, objectivity, and completeness? Clearly Siecus’ refusal to use the correct term “Gender Identity Disorder,” preferring instead the euphemism “transgender,” is evidence that Siecus is neither accurate nor objective.

In case our more obtuse legislators haven’t noticed, typical comprehensive sex ed curricula, like the one from Siecus, are dripping with subjectivity.

SB 1619 defines important terms, but guess which one is conveniently omitted: “abstinence.” Such a glaring omission should embarrass Steans, but nothing like a little intellectual sloppiness can embarrass or stand in the way of liberal dogmatists bent on shaping other people’s kids into their philosophical image using other people’s money.

Some questions for Senator Steans:

• What does “abstinence” mean in the castrated context of her bill? If with the stroke of a pen Steans severs abstinence from marriage, what does abstinence mean? Abstain for how long? Abstain for a month, a semester, a year? Abstain until when? Until age 16, 17, 18? Abstain until teens are “ready”? How is readiness measured? Abstain until teens are in a committed relationship? How is commitment determined? Abstain until they’re in love?
• Abstain from what? From just vaginal intercourse or all erotic interactions. Does abstinence include abstaining from sodomy, oral sex, mutual masturbation, bestiality, and paraphilias?

For those who are unfamiliar with Steans, her district includes the homosexual neighborhood colloquially referred to as “Boys Town.” She has sponsored legislation to legalize same-sex “marriage,” to provide domestic benefits to homosexual partners, to legalize homosexual civil unions, and to permit those who electively amputate healthy parts of their sexual anatomy to change their gender on their drivers’ licenses. Clearly, Steans has an unholy mission to transform the social, political, and legal landscape of Illinois, and her presumptuous scheme now includes Illinois children.

Some may wonder why the obsession with jettisoning the words “until marriage” from the Illinois law. There are two reasons: 1. Sexual subversives see no inherent value or meaning in reserving sexual activity for marriage and want to promote their desacralized, diminished view of sex to the next generation. 2. The panties of sexual subversives are all in a bunch because homosexuals can’t marry in Illinois. If our laws and sex ed curricula communicate that people should not have sex until marriage, then ipso facto, homosexuals should not have sex. There are certain ideas that our diversity disciples just won’t tolerate.

Illinoisans should oppose this bill like their kids’ lives depend on it.

* The extreme leftwing organization SIECUS explains that “sexual orientaion is determined by a combination of a person’s attractions, fantasies, and sexual behaviors.” Imagine permitting any other group constituted by attractions, fantasies, and behaviors–sexual or otherwise–to be established as a legally protected class. What fatuous thinking.

Supporters for abstinence-based education are applauding a new report that sexual activity among teens is decreasing.

Nearly 70 percent of boys (68%) and girls (67%), ages 15-17, have never had sexual intercourse, according to a survey (2006-2008) released last week by the National Center for Health Statistics. In addition, 53 percent of boys and 58 percent of girls in the same age bracket have never had any type of sexual contact — up from 46 percent of boys and 49 percent of girls in 2002. The new study also shows that more young adults are choosing abstinence.

“It looks like truth is beginning to win the day when it comes to teens and sex,” responds ,Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association. “…I think [they] are beginning to learn that they need more than latex to protect themselves and they’re choosing to wait — [that’s] very good news.” And that data, she argues, renders “null and void” the typical claims by anti-abstinence advocacy groups that abstinence is unrealistic.

She tells OneNewsNow while trends are encouraging, she remains concerned. “…With Congress zeroing out all funds for community-based abstinence education programs, per the president’s request, I think we have to ask the question: who is supporting young people and these good decisions?” she wonders.

“With 170 programs around the country no longer able to provide the skills and the encouragement to those young people, it’s definitely time for us to take this data and make some policy corrections.”

Benefit being lost
Toward that end, young people from across America are meeting today with House and Senate members on Capital Hill, sharing how abstinence education has made a difference in their lives and urging lawmakers to reinstate federal funding for abstinence education. Huber contends that members of Congress are sending the wrong message to students by not giving federal priority to abstinence education.

“Are we encouraging them to engage in behaviors that are going to help them now and later? Or are we sending them messages that are detrimental on a number of different levels?” she asks. “…Right now we are using our federal dollars and our federal priorities in ways that are not helpful to them and, in fact, [are] counterproductive and harmful.”

The students are on Capitol Hill to make their message personal, says the abstinence advocate. “Here in Washington it can often become just a bantering of talking points over policy initiatives,” Huber acknowledges. “…What gets lost is the benefit of this program for young people. So they can put a real face and a real life story behind the need to change the priorities in the arena of sex education as a nation.”

She says while Congress is looking to tighten its fiscal belt, an investment in abstinence education could reap great economic, social, and personal rewards.

SENATE BILL WOULD REQUIRE PUBLIC SCHOOLS TO CHOOSE INAPPPROPRIATE CONDOM- TRAINING SEX ED PROGRAMS AND OUTLAW ABSTINENCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS

SENATE BILL 1619, sponsored by State Senator Heather A. Steans (D-Chicago), is a legislative proposal that would create a so-called “Personal Responsibility Education Program Act.” This bill is scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Public Health Committee at the State Capitol in Springfield on Tuesday, March 8th at 1:00pm.

Background

SB 1619 mandates that all elementary and secondary public schools that offer sex education or sexual health education programs must choose only programs from a list of curricula approved by the Illinois Department of Human Services. The affect of this would be to shut out all abstinence education programs that focus on abstaining from sex until marriage and that stress character-building. Abstinence education programs aimed at older age-groups have research-based and well-documented information on what sexually transmitted diseases are and how they are contracted as well as teen STD statistics.

The only approved curricula would be so-called “comprehensive sex education” programs which include condom-training, teaching “tolerance”(i.e. approval) of homosexual lifestyles; various ways of sexual self-gratification; condom usage; information on how to be close to a person without having intercourse, including “body massage, bathing together, masturbation, sensuous feeding, fantasizing, watching erotic movies, and reading erotic books and magazines [from Focus on Kids – ages 9-15].” Another program for adolescents, “Be Proud Be Responsible,” states, “Go to the store together. Buy lots of different brands and colors [of condoms]. Plan a special day when you can experiment. Just talking about how you’ll use all of those condoms can be a turn on” (80). [Emphasis added.]

SB 1619 states that approved curricula must be “medically accurate and developmentally and age appropriate.” It also states that “medically accurate” means “verified or supported by the weight of research conducted in compliance with accepted scientific methods and published in peer-reviewed journals…or comprising information that leading professional organizations [like Planned Parenthood’s Alan Guttmacher Institute]….” Despite the fact that abstinence education programs are both medically accurate and supported by sound research, the pro-comprehensive sex ed proponents reject them for ideological reasons, and it is their voices that the Department of Human Services will hear.

Additionally, the so-called “peer-reviewed journals” refuse to publish articles that provide evidence that abstinence education is more effective than “comprehensive sex ed,” so there will be no peer-review reviewed journal articles to support abstinence programs. The system is rigged to keep abstinence programs off the list of possible choices even though they are more effective in stopping and/or preventing sexual activity in young people than comprehensive sex ed programs.

Recently, the U.S. Center for Disease Control reported that abstinence is on the rise, saying that “in 2006-2008, 29 percent of women and 27 percent of men ages 15 to 24 reported not having any sexual contact compared with 22 percent in 2002.” This only reinforces the claim that students can keep commitments to sexual purity.

SB 1619 also states that program “instruction must be free from bias in accordance with the Illinois Human Rights Act.” Thus, the approved programs will be those that focus on “tolerance,” that is, approval, of homosexuality — one of the bases for a protected class in the Illinois Human Rights Act.

The bill also removes “until marriage” in the requirement that all sex education courses teach “abstinence until marriage.” There are two purposes behind this change. First, since homosexuals in Illinois cannot marry, some argue that teaching abstinence until marriage is “discriminatory” and in violation of the Illinois Human Rights Act.

Second, by leaving in just the word “abstinence,” the law allows for teaching that abstinence need only be maintained until some other criterion is met (e.g., until “the second date,” or until “he says he cares about you”). Because of their biases, SB 1619 proponents want to eliminate the long-standing and explicit commitment of the State of Illinois to “abstinence until marriage.”

**WARNING — Graphic and Disturbing Content**

By now you’ve likely heard about Northwestern University professor, Dr. J. Michael Bailey’s invitation to “members of Chicago’s fetish community,” including an exhibitionist, to “educate” undergraduate students on the finer points of fetishism and sex toys.

With over one hundred students in attendance, the 25-year old female exhibitionist disrobed below her waist, thus enabling her 45-year-old fiance to insert into her a mechanical sex device and stimulate her to orgasm.

On WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, the exhibitionist, her fiance, and one of the lecturers from Weird Chicago Tours explained that when they arrived at Bailey’s class “a film was playing. It was a very graphic representation of a woman masturbating…. There was a woman’s vagina, probably ten feet tall on the screen. There was moaning. It would be porno, basically.” They shared that they had talked with Bailey about “doing a demonstration to show that the g-spot orgasm is actually real.”

One wonders how the United States flourished as a nation with so many young people having graduated from college without such an illuminating “education.”

Bailey’s chicanery likely won’t surprise Northwestern’s administration: apparently, Bailey’s been providing porn to students under the guise of “education” for years. Alice D. Dreger offers the following description of another sexcapade that Bailey offered his students, this time involving a male-to-female “transsexual” whose birth name was Chuck Kieltyka but who now goes by “Anjelica.”:

Kieltyka also arranged with Bailey opportunities to present to students in his Human Sexuality class herself, her history, and her understanding of transsexuality. She says her ”lectures were an opportunity to do ‘outreach’; to educate AND entertain” As in the case of other guest speakers, these presentations took place after the regular class session and were optional but heavily attended; between 1994 and 2003, a total of several thousand Northwestern University students saw Kieltyka’s annual appearances; In these presentations, held in a large auditorium to accommodate the class size, Kieltyka showed and explained a series of still images using overhead projection….Kieltyka also presented a short video compilation she had made….

No doubt to the surprise of Bailey’s students, that video compilation actually begins with a pornographic segment Kieltyka had made for herself pre-SRS. In it, as Donna Summer sings ”Love to Love You Baby” in the background, Chuck appears as a nude woman through use of prosthetics, including false breasts, a glued-on vulva (with his penis glued up inside his body), a female mask, and a platinum blonde wig.

The woman whom Chuck appears as masturbates through simulated finger-clitoral stimulation and through the use of a dildo attached to the floor; she straddles the dildo and thrusts up and down so that it looks as if the dildo is going in and out of her vagina. (It was actually going in and out of Chuck’s anus.) Kieltyka overlaid an audio clip from a porn video in this segment to provide the sound of a woman reaching orgasm. Immediately after this segment, the compilation cuts to a postop scene of Anjelica standing topless in a bikini bottom and moccasins, looking radiant and being dramatically bathed in a Rushing water fall. She brushes back her long dark hair with her hand and motions to two nearby women unknown to her to also take off their tops. They decline.

Bailey had this to say about his recent decision to allow a live sex show: “My decision to say ‘yes’ reflected my inability to come up with a legitimate reason why students should not be able to watch such a demonstration.” Any adult who is “unable” to come up with a legitimate reason not to host a live sex show for students is a moral ignoramus and unfit for teaching.

Bailey describes his students as “open-minded grown ups rather than fragile children.” Does Bailey seriously think that opposition to live sex shows in class grows out of the notion that college students are “fragile children”? Is he really that intellectually bankrupt? Or is this further evidence of his moral bankruptcy? Without making an explicit assertion, he is trying to divert attention from his corrupt and execrable decision by hinting that opposition derives from overprotective or puritanical impulses.

Most people believe “grown-ups” are distinguished from children in part by their maturity and wisdom. Bailey demonstrates the maturity and wisdom of an adolescent. Only someone lost in spiritual darkness, as Bailey clearly is, could defend this.

In his explanation as to why he proceeded with this controversial event, Bailey said he “was not in a mood to surrender to sex negativity and fear.” Apparently, he feels no obligation to provide evidence for his suggestion that opposition to public acts of perversion — in a classroom — is motivated by “sex negativity and fear.” A good argument could be made that it is “sex positivity” that drives opposition to live sex shows. Wisdom and respect for the sanctity of sexuality dictate that, among many things, sex acts are private acts.

Four questions pop into my fragile, fearful, sex-negative mind:

• What kind of perverse ideas did Bailey weave into classroom lectures and discussions?
• Does he bear any moral culpability for undermining the moral development of the young people whose parents paid thousands of dollars for a Northwestern education?
• Does he bear any moral culpability if this live sex show contributes in even a small way to a current or future porn addiction in one of his students?
• Is Bailey complicit in the exploitation, degradation,and objectification of the obviously troubled young woman who demonstrated this act in front of scores of strangers?

Bailey reports that “‘student feedback was uniformly positive.'” No surprise there. The burnished legacy of Alfred Kinsey and his cultural progeny, the sexual revolutionaries of the 60’s, burns bright at Northwestern University. The “Northwestern University independent student newspaper,”North by Northwestern, has included some articles that surely must warm the cockles of Bailey’s darkened heart. For example, there is the articlein the March 11 edition that offers suggestions for “eco-friendly fu**ing,” which include “showering together” and using natural lubricants.

And then there was the 2009 article that suggests students have sex to de-stress during finals week. The author of that article was kind enough to include a link to a porn website that provides diagrams of and instructions for a variety of sexual positions.

But that’s not all from one of our most esteemed academic institutions. There’s also SHAPE, which is, according to their website, a “student organization affiliated with Northwestern University Health Service that provides education, organizes events, and generates dialogue about sexual health and sexual assault. SHAPE’s mission is to increase students’ comfort surrounding sexuality, encouraging them to learn and adopt sexually healthy behaviors and to recognize and address unhealthy and dangerous behaviors and attitudes regarding sexuality.”

SHAPE members have contributed a sex column that appears in the North by Northwestern. In it, they have offered tips for having sex during menstruation; tips on how to make intercourse for virgins comfortable; explanations of bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism; help for college-induced decreased libido; descriptions of orgasms; instructions on how to prolong ejaculation, whether to swallow semen, and how to make dorm rooms more conducive to sex.

An initial feckless statement from the vice president for University Relations (no pun intended), Alan Cubbage, appeared to defend Bailey:

Northwestern University faculty members engage in teaching and research on a wide variety of topics, some of them controversial and at the leading edge of their respective disciplines….The University supports the efforts of its faculty to further the advancement of knowledge.

But perhaps wiser heads will prevail. On Thursday, Northwestern President Morton Schapiro issued this statement:

I have recently learned of the after-class activity associated with Prof. Michael Bailey’s Human Sexuality class, and I am troubled and disappointed by what occurred.

Although the incident took place in an after-class session that students were not required to attend and students were advised in advance, several times, of the explicit nature of the activity, I feel it represented extremely poor judgment on the part of our faculty member. I simply do not believe this was appropriate, necessary or in keeping with Northwestern University’s academic mission.

Northwestern faculty members engage in teaching and research on a wide variety of topics, some of them controversial. That is the nature of a university. However, in this instance, I have directed that we investigate fully the specifics of this incident, and also clarify what constitutes appropriate pedagogy, both in this instance and in the future.

Many members of the Northwestern community are disturbed by what took place on our campus. So am I.

Our nation’s best and brightest deserve better. They deserve an academic experience worthy of Northwestern’s motto: Quaecumque Sunt Vera, which comes from the New Testament and means “Whatsoever things are true.” Paul wrote in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

Northwestern should recommit to their motto, and dump Bailey.

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s (GLSEN) problematic annual exploitation of public schools through the Day of Silence takes place on April 15, 2011. In light of how successful GLSEN and every other homosexuality-affirming organization and blogger have been in exploiting recent tragic teen suicides, it is even more imperative that conservatives take a stand against the use of public education to normalize homosexuality.

A national coalition of conservative leaders and organizations are again sponsoring the Day of Silence Walkout. We are asking parents to find out if their children’s schools are permitting students and/or teachers to refuse to speak in class during the Day of Silence. If they will be permitting student or teacher silence during instructional time, we are urging parents to call their children out of school to protest the use of the classroom for the purpose of promoting controversial moral and political views.

Other than the Day of Silence Walkout, there are virtually no organized public efforts designed to tell school administrators, board members, and faculty that many parents do not want their children exposed to homosexuality-affirming activities, resources, or events. We are hoping and praying that parents and guardians across the country will participate in the Day of Silence Walkout which is sponsored by a national coalition of pro-family organizations and leaders.

Over the past few years, the number of homosexuality-affirming events that take place in public schools has increased, at least in part because of the ignorance, cowardice, and acquiescence of conservative parents. In addition to the Day of Silence, we now have No Name-Calling Week sponsored by GLSEN; Ally Week sponsored by GLSEN; Spirit Day sponsored by Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD); National Coming Out Day sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC); and the Transgender Day of Remembrance sponsored by the HRC.

Ten states have now passed “enumerated” anti-bullying policies, which require that schools specifically address homosexuality, bisexuality, and “transgenderism” in their anti-bullying policies and programs.

And if that’s not enough, both a House and Senate version of the Safe Schools Improvement Act have been proposed which, if passed, would prohibit schools from receiving funding to combat drugs and violence unless they also address homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder (or what schools euphemistically refer to as “transgenderism”) in their anti-bullying policies and programs.

The ultimate goal of all homosexuality-affirming organizations is not to end bullying. The ultimate goal is either the eradication of the belief that homosexual acts are immoral or the creation of a social and legal climate that make it impossible for conservative beliefs to be expressed. Homosexual activists and their ideological allies exploit legitimate anti-bullying sentiment to implement programs and institutionalize events like the Day of Silence in order to transform the moral beliefs of the nation’s youth.

If we don’t actively oppose the presence of homosexuality-affirming activities, programs, and resources, they will very soon appear in every elementary school in the country. Homosexual activists and their allies understand that it’s easier to capture the hearts and minds of 16-year-olds than 26-year-olds and easier still to capture the hearts and minds of 6-year-olds.

Far too few parents are aware that some school boards and courts have decided that when homosexuality-affirming resources are embedded in anti-bullying curricula or activities, parents have no right to be notified ahead of time and no right to opt out. In most places, however, parents still have the legal right to oppose in word and deed the exploitation of government schools for the purposes of undermining parental values and advancing unproven moral, political, and philosophical beliefs. And parents will always retain the moral right to do so.

If we hope to limit the damage done to individuals, society, speech rights, parental rights, and religious liberty, we must act with courage now. If we don’t, we cede a vital battlefield on which the Left will be able to train and multiply new generations of homosexuality-affirming disciples using public funds. Because of our fear and inertia, we will bequeath to our children and grandchildren a corrosive educational environment, diminished rights, and unthinkable cultural oppression. In addition, we will teach our children by example to be cowardly conformists.

From experience, we have learned that public school administrations respond to only three things:

• Bad PR
• A huge community outcry, which rarely happens because courageous conservatives who are willing to suffer for truth are tragically few
• Loss of funds.

The Day of Silence Walkout will result in at least the loss of funds. Every student absence costs schools between $30-80 per day.

How evil do the ideas to which our children are exposed have to become and how young the children to whom these evil ideas are presented before the conservative community will say “No more.” The Day of Silence is not centrally about ending bullying. It’s centrally about eradicating true beliefs about homosexuality.

The Bible repeatedly warns that Christians will be persecuted, mocked, reviled, scorned, and hated for the cause of Christ’s Kingdom. When will we demonstrate our willingness to endure such suffering for Christ, our children, our freedom, and truth?

A dog barks when his master is attacked.
I would be a coward if I saw that God’s truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.
~John Calvin

Read more: Click HERE to get more details about the Walkout.

Support IFI’s Division of School Advocacy!

Would you prayerfully consider pledging a monthly gift of $25 or more to support this important division of IFI? A promise of this kind will help us form a strategic plan that budgetary constraints often makes impossible. You can become a Sustaining Member with automatic monthly deductions from your checking account or credit card. Click HERE to access the Sustaining Member form.

If a monthly pledge is not feasible at this time, perhaps you could send a one-time, tax-deductible gift. Click HERE to donate today!

If you believe in the mission and purpose of Illinois Family Institute, please send your most generous contribution today. IFI is supported by voluntary donations from individuals like you across the state of Illinois.

Donations to IFI are tax-deductible.

Efforts to exploit public education in the service of normalizing deviant sexuality grow ever more outrageous and dangerous. Illinoisans ignore the legislative mischief taking place in other states at their own peril.

The latest legislative monstrosity has reared its ugly head in — where else — California. SB 48, which was introduced by openly homosexual California State Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), is an insult to the most foundational principles of education, religious liberty, and parental rights.

If passed, this legislation will prohibit — that is, censor — any and all “instruction,” “activities,” “textbooks, or other instructional materials” in public schools that contain “any matter reflecting adversely upon persons…on the basis of sexual orientation.”

But it gets worse. While censoring everything that challenges the unproven ontological, moral, and political assumptions of Senator Leno and his ideological co-conspirators, this law would also require that “instruction in social sciences shall include a study of the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans.” Leno seeks to censor all resources that suggest homosexual acts are not moral, while mandating positive portrayals of homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder. Think the “Ministry of Truth” in Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

Since the entire homosexuality-mainstreaming movement is built on the specious comparison of homosexuality to race, someone should demand that Leno provide justification for that analogy. The truth is that homosexuality is not like race. Race or skin color is 100 percent heritable and is not constituted by volitional acts. Instead, homosexuality is analogous to other conditions defined by subjective experiences of desire and volitional acts, like adult consensual incest, polyamory, or promiscuity.

Is Leno prepared to apply the principles embedded in his bill consistently? Those who experience, for example, selfish, vain, greedy, gluttonous, deceitful, promiscuous, incestuous, masochistic, gossipy, philandering, or polyamorous impulses and engage in behaviors impelled by such impulses have also contributed to society. Should teachers be required to identify those proclivities while teaching about the contributions of such people? And should schools censor all resources and activities that adversely portray those proclivities?

Substituting for homosexuality another condition equally irrelevant to achievement and equally morally questionable brings into sharper relief the dubious nature of Leno’s proposed legislation. I would agree that if a cross-dresser has contributed something to the world that is universally accepted as both positive and important, then it would be appropriate to educate students about the contribution. His cross-dressing, however, would be irrelevant.

So why do homosexuals and their ideological allies insist that the sexual proclivities of cultural contributors be taught rather than just their contributions? The reason for their insistence is that they desperately want to associate achievement with homosexuality in an attempt to change the moral views of naïve students. Associate homosexuality with something positive like creativity, intelligence, compassion, or self-sacrifice, and eventually the good feelings society has for creativity, intelligence, compassion, or self- sacrifice will be (irrationally) transferred to homosexuality or cross-dressing. The process could be described as innocence by association.

It’s really not the failure to teach about the achievements of homosexuals that bothers homosexual activists. It’s teaching about their achievements without identifying their sexual proclivities that bothers homosexual activists — sexual proclivities, by the way, that many consider immoral.

Homosexuals are not a category of humans in the same sense that racial minorities are a category of humans. Homosexuality is a sin disposition — not a morally neutral condition like skin color. When homosexuals have contributed something of value to society, those contributions should be noted. Their sexual predilections, however, are worthy of neither honor nor mention.

On his website, Leno says, “We can’t simultaneously tell youth that it’s OK to be yourself and live an honest, open life when we aren’t even teaching students about historical LGBT figures or the LGBT equal rights movement.” The idea that it’s “OK” to engage in homosexual behavior is a moral belief, not a fact. And no government employee has the right to teach moral claims as facts — particularly revolutionary moral claims on which there is no societal consensus. How incredibly presumptuous of Leno to suggest that public school teachers should be teaching students that it’s “OK” to live a homosexual life.

Leno, operating as if the comparison of homosexuality to race is valid and proven, then implicitly compares the Civil Rights Movement to the efforts to mainstream deviant sexual behavior, arguing that the history of the “LGBT equal rights movement” should be taught in schools. But, as I’ve already argued, homosexuality is more akin to polyamory. Now imagine a legislator arguing that the history of the “polyamory equal rights movement” must be taught in public schools. It’s unlikely that such a legislator would long retain his elected office.

Leno further asserts that “negative stereotypes of LGBT people…leads to increased bullying of young people.” Someone needs to ask Leno if he thinks the belief that homosexual practice is immoral is a “negative stereotype.” If he believes that it is, he should be asked what his proof is that this belief, which is held by Orthodox Jews, Protestants, and Catholics, has resulted in “increased bullying of young people.”

No one has an obligation to accept the unproven ontological and moral assumptions of Mark Leno and his ideological allies. No one has an obligation to accept the unproven, non-factual assumption that homosexuality is equivalent to race or that homosexual behavior is moral. And schools have no right to implicitly or explicitly teach either.

How can an educational institution possibly foster diversity, honor all voices, cultivate critical thinking, advance intellectual exploration, and challenge assumptions on this most controversial cultural issue if liberal assumptions on the nature and morality of volitional homosexual practice are mandated and all dissenting views are censored?

No parent who claims to be a follower of Christ can permit their children to be taught that homosexual acts and cross-dressing are moral or positive.

No teacher who claims to be a follower of Christ can ever teach children implicitly or explicitly that homosexual behavior or cross-dressing is moral, normative, or good. Christian parents can never be an accessory to the promulgation of the idea that homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder are positively contributing forces within the lives of individuals or within a society.

No taxpayer who claims to be a follower of Christ should remain silent as a bill that will require the use of their taxes to normalize homosexuality and undermine liberty moves forward.

And all who value the free exchange of ideas and the development of critical thinking skills, or who fear censorship, indoctrination, and Big Brother should vigorously oppose this legislation.

Don’t be naïve, Illinoisans, and don’t let California’s geographic distance lull you into a state of complacency: this kind of legislation is coming to every state.

Support IFI’s Division of School Advocacy!

Would you prayerfully consider pledging a monthly gift of $25 or more to support this important division of IFI? A promise of this kind will help us form a strategic plan that budgetary constraints often makes impossible. You can become a Sustaining Member with automatic monthly deductions from your checking account or credit card. Click HERE to access the Sustaining Member form.

If a monthly pledge is not feasible at this time, perhaps you could send a one-time, tax-deductible gift. Click HERE to donate today!

If you believe in the mission and purpose of Illinois Family Institute, please send your most generous contribution today. IFI is supported by voluntary donations from individuals like you across the state of Illinois.

Donations to IFI are tax-deductible.

By Julie Schmidt

Recently Illinois Senator Ed Maloney (D) introduced SB136 which would require “the parents or legal guardians of children attending non-public schools, a defined term, or private or parochial schools to annually register their children with the State Board of Education, in conformance with procedures prescribed by the State Board of Education.”

Basically homeschoolers and anyone else who has deemed the public education system a failure would have to register their children with the State, since apparently Senator Maloney believes “that since the State was responsible for the education of our children, the State should know who was being homeschooled,” according to Pastor James McDonald who met with the Senator along with several homeschooling advocates.

I hate to burst the Senator’s progressive utopian bubble, but as Pastor McDonald points out “in the eyes of most home educators, the responsibility to ensure our children receive a competent education belonged to parents, not the State.” I don’t think registering children, like licensing a dog, was exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he envisioned public education.

Jefferson trusted the people closest to the issue to care most for the outcomes. Regarding education he stated in a letter to Joseph Cabell, “But if it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the Governor and Council, the commissioners of the literary fund, or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience.”

Hardly a resounding endorsement of the power of the State, which he was extremely wary of, when he stated in the same letter, “What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate.” Or even the Illinois Senate.

Jefferson also believed that education was-brace yourself progressives-voluntary. He stated, “It is better to tolerate that rare instance of a parent’s refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings by a forcible transportation and education of the infant against the will of his father.” So I will give you a moment to consider how he would have viewed compulsory registration. “Appalled” would be kind.

Laurie Higgins of Illinois Family Institute (IFI) applies the “board of education” to our illustrious politicians’ posteriors when she said, “Serious thought should be given to the proper role and limits of our state and federal governments. If the vast majority of home schooling families are educating their children well, IFI doesn’t believe that it is appropriate to penalize them in order to solve the problem of the failures or inadequacies of a minority of home schooling families.”

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