Kristen McQueary of the Southtown Star newspaper has the dubious honor of being the first journalist of whom I’m aware to mischaracterize a position of mine through rhetorical manipulation.

The offense occurs in this statement by McQueary: “[Higgins] went on to say that no human being is perfect and that an extramarital affair, for example, would be an OK offense for a schools [sic] CEO, as long as the person repented their wrongdoing — much as she believes Huberman should.”

What she neglected to say was that she asked me the question: “Well, what would you say if Mayor Daley appointed someone who had had an extra-marital affair?”

I responded that if this person came forward publicly and affirmed extramarital affairs as morally legitimate and shared with the public his intention to maintain an extramarital relationship, I would be equally concerned and find him equally unsuitable for the position.

If, however, he expressed his view that his conduct was immoral and repented of it, his failing should not disqualify him from the position. In other words, it is not personal failings but public affirmation of immorality as morality that renders Huberman unsuitable for the position of premier educational leader in Chicago.

I would never say or imply, nor do I believe, that extramarital affairs are “OK offenses” for anyone.

McQueary dismisses my comparison of homosexuality to polyamory with a wave of her patronizing pen: “Higgins compared homosexuality to the sexual trysts of polyamoury, the practice of having more than one intimate relationship, even though Huberman implied he is in a committed relationship.” In a follow up phone conversation with McQueary, I asked how polyamory was different from homosexuality. She told me that she would not answer the question.

McQueary might want to do a little more research. Many polyamorists believe that their emotional and sexual attraction to more than one person simultaneously is a sexual orientation — not merely a practice. And some, perhaps many, are in committed relationships. In fact, Mormons who have multiple wives would be more accurately described as polyamorists than polygamists in that they are not legally married.

McQueary implicitly expresses the tired, unproven, and profoundly destructive argument that of all the wide variety of sexual behaviors emerging from the fertile and dissolute minds of humans, from bestiality to “man-boy love” to consensual incest to polyamory to homosexuality, the only one that is not merely a practice, the only one that constitutes an immutable identity that all must approve, affirm, and celebrate is homosexuality. And these philosophical propositions about the nature and morality of homosexuality are foisted on all of society with no proof.

McQueary finds it “repugnant when social conservatives waste valuable time and resources fastened to the bedposts of others, all under the banner of ‘family values.'” She omitted another part of our discussion that would have been relevant here. She asked me why I spend so much time writing about this issue. I explained that I spend so much writing about this issue because public educators are spending so much public time and public money trying to transform the views of students on the nature and morality of homosexuality which is decidedly not the proper purview of public educators.

I explained that public schools engage in pervasive, near-absolute censorship of conservative scholarship and thinking on homosexuality which violates fundamental pedagogical principles. I offered her examples of ways in which unproven, controversial theories on the nature and morality of homosexuality are advanced in public schools. But I guess time and space constraints prevented her from including those quotes.

McQueary is “dumfounded by those who associate homosexuality with sexual deviance,” which is another way of saying that she believes homosexuality is not deviant. That, of course, is a moral claim for which she, and public educators who share that view and promote it with public money, never provide any evidence or justification. They simply declaim that homosexuality is not deviant and anyone who has arrived at a different moral conclusion is a “hater.” No discussion — just arrogant, dictatorial fiat.

When will conservatives demand that those who make this radical, subversive moral claim provide evidence for it? For example, on what basis do liberals determine what constitutes moral behavior? Are they devotees of John Stuart Mills’ utilitarianism? Are they members of the homosexuality-affirming Metropolitan Community Church? Do they believe in radical subjective relativism? Do they believe that homosexual conduct is biologically determined? If so, where’s their evidence? And how do they reconcile that unproven claim with “Queer Theory” that holds that sexual orientation is neither inherent nor immutable? Do they believe that any and all behavior that emerges from biologically influenced impulses is automatically moral? Are they willing to apply that principle consistently to all volitional behavior?

Ms. McQueary recommends that Illinois Family Institute: “should be sizing up Huberman over the measurements that really matter: his ability to improve one of the most troubled school systems in the nation.” The problem is that accepting the view that public affirmation of homosexuality doesn’t matter requires prior assent to the proposition that homosexual acts are moral acts.

I agree with the sentiment behind McQueary’s weary sigh over the “utter uselessness” of discussions with someone blind to reality and truth. I disagree with her, however, about which view of homosexuality embodies blindness.

Four days after the Chicago Board of Education confirmed Mayor Richard Daley’s choice of Ron Huberman as the next Chicago Public Schools CEO last month, it was revealed in a Sun-Times story that the new schools chief was gay and has had a live-in partner for the past four years.

The news set off a firestorm in some circles. Illinois Family Institute’s Division of School Advocacy Director Laurie Higgins blasted the school board for confirming Huberman’s appointment:

“Whereas in many professions one’s views on sexuality and one’s sexual conduct would be irrelevant, in the field of education it is highly relevant,” Higgins, a former teacher herself, wrote in the group’s weekly newsletter.

“As educators continually affirm to themselves and the public, they teach the ‘whole child.’ In fact, that is one of the serious problems in public education: public educators increasingly arrogate to themselves areas of life that are decidedly not their business.

“First, Huberman will be called upon to superintend issues related to how homosexuality is addressed in Chicago public schools,” Higgins wrote. “Second, Huberman serves as a public role model. His open, unapologetic, unrepentant appropriation and affirmation of sexual deviance as morally defensible and central to his identity vitiates any legitimacy as premier educational leader in Chicago that his admirable qualities may have otherwise conferred on him.”

Pretty strong words about the situation, no doubt, but words that express the feelings of a number of religious parents whose children attend Chicago Public Schools.

In reality, the school board had little choice but to approve his selection. With Illinois’ anti-discrimination employment laws, Huberman’s sexuality — be it heterosexual, homosexual, transgender or bisexual — cannot be a factor in hiring.

Indeed, Huberman would have been a tough choice to reject for two reasons: He was the mayor’s choice and, second, he’s been granted special legal protections because he identifies himself as sexually attracted to other men.

So, where does this leave parents who are concerned about the role models set before their children? How about those parents who do not want homosexuality to be extolled in the classroom? How about those taxpayers who have no choice but to forcibly subsidize the board’s hiring decisions with their property tax dollars?

There are few choices for dissatisfied Chicago parents. Either move to another school district, find an alternate means of education for their children, or get over their concerns, accept homosexuality as normal and admit to themselves they are abnormal for thinking anything different.

In financially difficult times, few families have excess budget dollars to take their kids out of public schools or to move to a different district. Yet every family should have options when it comes to their kids’ futures.

One way is to establish more charter schools. Charter schools are public schools working under independent agreements with their local school boards and funded with taxpayer dollars. Chicago Heights School District 170, for example, is considering a special charter school uniquely designed to meet the needs of foster and adopted children. No other charter schools exist in the southern Cook County, where student test scores indicate a growing number being educationally left behind.

As parents and taxpayers become more and more discontented with what their local public schools are offering, the more outcry there is for charter schools. However, public school officials resist allowing competition in their districts, and rebut it by saying charter schools drain their already-strained budgets.

Not so, a 2007 study by the nonpartisan, Chicago-based Civics Federation found. Three active Chicago charter schools relieved their host districts of 1.3 percent to 3 percent of their student population while taking only 0.9 percent to 2.4 percent of their host districts’ operating budgets.

How can that be? Alternative public schools are often allowed to renegotiate state requirements and union agreements, thus, at least in the beginning, charter schools are freed from normal labor demands, making their operating costs much less expensive.

Charter school popularity is increasing, and already this year state Sen. Dan Cronin (R-Elmhurst) introduced legislation removing the limit on the number of charter schools allowed in Illinois.
fA member of the Senate Education Committee, Cronin also led introducing education tax credits for families paying private or religious school tuition. This year, he wants to double the state education tax credit from $500 to $1,000 per year.

School choice advocates say the debate about education alternatives is long overdue, and they’re absolutely right. Parents should be assured their children are being readied for bright futures with a love for learning and a grasp of basic survival skills. Taxpayers should be confident their property tax dollars are being well spent educating their community’s children.

The debate over schools, children and funding has been focused too long on how many education dollars are available and whether or not they are evenly distributed. Perhaps this moral controversy over CPS leadership will finally turn the discussion to what matters most.

It’s by far more important how and upon what our education dollars are spent. And that includes the salaries of controversial administrators.

                                                                                
Fran Eaton is a south suburban resident, a conservative activist in state and national politics and an online journalist. She can be reached HERE.

This week Illinoisans were greeted with the news that the new CEO of Chicago Public Schools, Ron Huberman, self-identifies as homosexual. Mayor Richard Daley’s choice as head of the third largest school district in the nation, one that serves more than 400,000 students, has revealed both his ignorance about and involvement with sexual perversion.

This is exactly what students who already suffer from significant disadvantages don’t need: a leader, and therefore role model, who affirms sexual deviance and who in his personal life volitionally engages in immoral conduct.

What a terrible example he sets, particularly for young men. I’m sure that Huberman possesses many admirable traits, but his sexual conduct is not one of them. There are no perfect people, and therefore there can be no perfect leaders, but possessing flaws and affirming immorality are two entirely different things.

It’s one thing to make mistakes or to engage in immoral acts-both of which every person does every day. It’s quite another thing to fail to make proper distinctions between what constitutes right and wrong or moral and immoral behavior. Someone who asserts that immoral behavior is moral is neither a good leader nor a proper role model for anyone let alone impressionable children.

Whereas in many professions one’s views on sexuality and one’s sexual conduct would be irrelevant, in the field of education it is highly relevant. As educators continually affirm to themselves and the public, they teach the “whole child.” In fact, that is one of the serious problems in public education: public educators increasingly arrogate to themselves areas of life that are decidedly not their business.

First, Huberman will be called upon to superintend issues related to how homosexuality is addressed in Chicago public schools. Second, Huberman serves as a public role model. His open, unapologetic, unrepentant appropriation and affirmation of sexual deviance as morally defensible and central to his identity vitiates any legitimacy as premier educational leader in Chicago that his admirable qualities may have otherwise conferred on him.

How will Huberman respond to the proposal for a high school that affirms homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors if it’s resubmitted later this year? How will he respond to a proposal for a school that embodies the very same controversial, unproven, and destructive theories on the nature and morality of homosexuality that he holds?

Chicago’s children deserve far better. They deserve a leader who demonstrates discernment, wisdom, and integrity in one of life’s most profound aspects: sexuality.

Read more: Mayor’s “pet” and new CPS CEO is gay IllinoisReview.com

“To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men.”
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)

In a piece I wrote early last October, entitled “Pro-Homosexual Advocates Seek the Hearts and Minds of Our Little Ones,” I wrote that “It’s a good idea to check in every once and again with the mischievous goings on in the U.K. to see what our future holds if we don’t awaken from our moral slumber.” I wrote about the No Outsider’s Project that was being marketed to elementary schools in the U.K.

Their website explained that “The project is exploring ways of challenging homophobic discrimination through the positive use of stories, drama and the visual arts, as well as through revisions to school policies and practices and the development of guidance on challenging homophobia at primary level,” and that the project developers were “recruiting teachers to the project NOW!”

Well, they got the teachers they so frenetically sought, and this is what they taught in their govern-funded seminar series entitled “Queering the Body; Queering Primary Education.” Please wade through the obtuse jargon to get at the perverted and subversive ideas the jargon is intended to conceal:

The team is concerned to interrogate the desexualisation of children’s and teachers’ bodies, the negation of pleasure and desire in educational contexts and the tendency to shy away from discussion of (sexual) bodily activity in No Outsiders project work. The danger of accusations of the corruption of innocent children, particularly in the context of the world-wide media attention the project has received, has led team members to make repeated claims that this project is not about sex or desire – and that it is therefore not about bodies. Yet, at a very significant level, that is exactly what it is about and to deny this may have significant negative implications for children and young people.

Through ongoing debate and exploration during the project, members of the project team have challenged the pervasive images of romantic love and life-long monogamy portrayed by the lesbian and gay characters in the children’s books used in project schools; have questioned the denial and/or repression of their own sexual identities, pleasures, desires and investments. . . and have challenged each other to go beyond imagined possibilities into queer practice. In addition, the team has explored the multi-layered ways . . . in which such performativity might be interrupted/disrupted in order both to queer the norm and normalise the queer.

The seminar continues this process, aiming to trouble us – and the seminar participants – out of our comfort zones and to question the taken-for-granted of the supposedly sexless, bodiless (except for running noses, leaking bladders and untied shoelaces) and desire-less primary classroom.

• What sorts of border work (Thorne, 1993) do children and teachers engage in as they work (consciously or subconsciously) to maintain the heterosexual matrix. …
• How might we create primary classrooms where gender-queer bodies and queer sexualities (for children and teachers) are affirmed and celebrated?
• What would it take to teach queerly? How would teachers’ and children’s bodies be implicated in this? What sorts of subversions and reversals might it entail?
• At what cost do we deny children’s and teachers’ sexuality? What do we lose if desire and pleasure are banned from the classroom? . . .
• [W]ho might be harmed by an insistence on fluidity and non-unitary identities?
• What is the place of the research team members’ own bodies, desires and pleasures in this research?

And here are some of the titles of the lectures offered at the seminar:

• “Childhood and Pleasure: sexuality, the body and the primary classroom”
• “Subversion and the carnivalesque: breaking rules in the queer classroom”
• “Queer spaces, queer places: locating ideas and bodies in anti-heteronormative education”
• “From the park to the pulpit: the body, sex, religion and children”
• And the keynote speaker, Professor Susan Talburt* from our very own Georgia State University, spoke on “Queering the body; queering primary education: new imaginaries and new realities.”

I hope IFI readers understand the threat to First Amendment speech and religious rights; to parental rights and values; to truth; to respect for the authority of Scripture; and to the health and well-being of both individuals and society that the pro-homosexual juggernaut poses.

Those who hold conservative or traditional values must stop merely tsk-tsking the corruption of our culture that is being facilitated by our money through public education. Cowering in our homes and churches complaining about the presence of pro-perversion advocacy in our schools is indefensible. In huge numbers, with conviction and courage, we must speak out against this child abuse. And we must be willing to endure the inevitable hostile response. Do not through your silence become complicit in this evil.

Organizations like IFI cannot accomplish this task alone. We need courageous truth-telling church leaders, fathers, mothers, teachers, civic leaders, and students to come alongside us. Become equipped: learn what the future holds if we continue in our acquiescence; learn how to respond to the specious secular arguments used to normalize deviance; and stop avoiding difficult conversations with friends, neighbors, colleagues, teacher, school administrators, and school board members.

If you don’t feel equipped, please contact Illinois Family Institute. We will come to Sunday school classes, small groups, church leader groups, youth groups, college groups, and educator groups to help equip you to join this bracing cultural battle.

Please don’t bequeath a legacy of diminished rights and even greater cultural oppression to your children and your children’s children.

*Here are some of the topics of interest to Professor Talburt who was solicited to teach teachers how to “queer” elementary students:

She is the Director of the Women’s Studies Institute and Associate Professor of Educational Policy Studies. She teaches Feminist Methodologies, Poststructural and Feminist Theories, and Youth and Sexualities. Her research interests are Feminist and queer theories; faculty and student lives; and youth and sexualities.

For those interested in contacting her, her email address is stalburt@gsu.edu

Georgia State University President Mark P. Becker, telephone: 404-413-1300.

It was recently announced that the Universityof Idahohas reversed its decision to allow co-ed dorm rooms. As reported on WorldNetDaily, Bryan Fischer of Idaho Values Alliance has commended University of Idaho President Steven Daley Laursen for the administration’s decision to abandon the “wrongheaded and poorly thought-through plan.”

Apparently, Laursen’s epiphany regarding the wrongheadedness of this plan occurred after the Idaho Values Alliance posted an article about the co-ed dorm proposal that ultimately “reached state lawmakers.” What this reveals is that political engagement works.

Unlike the University of Idaho, the University of Chicago is determined to move forward with its own wrongheaded scheme to permit co-ed dorm rooms. Initial reports consistently held that co-ed dorm rooms would be available only to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, but a recent Collegiate Times article revealed that this option “will also be available to first-year students, but on an individual basis.”

Sheeplike, administrators at the U. of C. are following the lead of other colleges and universities that have over the years changed their view of the relationship between colleges and their students. A mere fifty years ago, college administrations served in loco parentis; now they serve as hook-up facilitators.

In the decision to allow male and female students to co-habit without parental permission, university administrators reveal a number of their dubious underlying presuppositions:

• Sex differences are irrelevant.
• Modesty is irrelevant.
• Parental values, beliefs, and rights are irrelevant.
• Premarital sex is not their concern.
• Potential increased risk of sexual assault is not their concern.
• Likely increase in sexual activity is not their concern.
• Potential increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancies are not their concerns.

No one who is even minimally conscious today could be naïve or hopeful enough to think that single-sex dorm rooms will prevent unmarried college students from engaging in sexual activity. Nonetheless, cultural institutions have both the capacity and responsibility to convey important, culture-shaping messages through their policies.

Our esteemed institutions of higher learning first abandoned sex-segregated dorms; then they abandoned sex-segregated floors; now they’re abandoning sex-segregated dorm rooms. Some schools even have co-ed bathrooms. These changes facilitate the deracination of a proper and true understanding of sex differences and sex roles and constitute yet one more step in the slow, cultural death march that threatens the psychological, physical, moral, and spiritual health of our children and the health of society-a march that must be opposed.

Parents: do not financially support any institution that facilitates cultural corrosion through its policies and practices. Do not allow prestige and the promise of future financial reward seduce you into sacrificing moral principles.

The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) has announced that in addition to the Day of Silence, it is sponsoring another day during which it encourages young impressionable and confused students to celebrate disordered thinking and immoral behavior. TransAction! Day will be held on Friday, Feb. 27, 2009. Clearly, GLSEN sees public education as its personal playground for propagandizing the nation’s children.

GLSEN jubilantly declares that:

“This is a day for education and celebration of transgender and gender non-conforming people and experiences. A day to begin having dialogues about gender and to advocate for inclusive schools for all regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. TransAction! encourages students to organize a workshop, panel discussion, or similar forum about gender, gender identity gender roles, and the broader transgender umbrella.”

Gender Identity Disorder (GID) is a psychological disorder in which people “feel discontent” with their biological sex. They wish they had been born the opposite sex. Despite what an increasingly ignorant society contends, those who suffer from this disorder are not actually, objectively the sex that they wish they were. Amputating healthy parts of their sexual anatomy, taking hormones, and cross-dressing does nothing other than create a perverse illusion that they are the sex they wish they were. Amputations, hormones, and cross-dressing are not the proper ways to treat this disorder. Those who suffer from GID deserve compassion and treatment — not affirmation, confirmation, celebration, or accommodation.

Public affirmation of this psychological disorder and its concomitant deviant behavior is making ever more troubling inroads into American society. Increasing numbers of communities are passing “transgender” laws that allow cross-dressers to use the bathrooms and dressing rooms of the sex with which they identify. That is, cross-dressing women are permitted to use men’s restrooms, and cross-dressing men are permitted to use women’s restrooms. For a glimpse into our future, read these excerpts from The Transgender Law Center’s “Peeing in Peace” document:

Most people have become used to using public bathrooms only with other people who have the same birth-assigned gender. The thought of carrying out one’s bodily functions in the same facility as the “opposite sex” makes many people feel embarrassed and uncomfortable. However, considering that the current bathroom situation does not adequately provide for the safety of many people including transgender people, women and children, embarrassment should be considered secondary. Change is often uncomfortable, even when it is for the better, but if bathrooms are going to be made safe for all people, minor discomfort is a small price to pay. . . .

In San Francisco and Oakland, it is clear that you have a right to use the bathroom that corresponds to your gender identity (for instance, if you are male-to-female, you have the right to use the women’s bathroom). You have this right because local laws in each city either clearly address the bathroom issue or some city agency has already decided what a general non-discrimination law means in that city.Of course, if you do not identify as male or female, this still doesn’t really solve your problem. . . .

“Men’s” and “women’s” bathrooms encourage people to use stereotypes about who a “man” is and who a “woman” is in deciding if they are in the right bathroom. Because of this, many people have stereotypical expectations about who will be sharing the bathroom with them. When they encounter someone who doesn’t fit that stereotype, they sometimes get confused, angry, or afraid. For that reason, it is best to be prepared for some kind of reaction from others if your gender expression does not perfectly fit pre-existing stereotypes. . . .

Strategy #1: Learn the Gender Code

Gender stereotypes are heightened in the bathroom. Therefore, sometimes the easiest way to use the bathroom is to understand these gender stereotypes, even if you find them uncomfortable or problematic. Here is some information that might help you get by until we can create safer restrooms. (Please keep in mind that this information is necessarily stereotypical and that we are including it here not because it is the way things should be, but because it is the way things currently are.):

The women’s room:
The women’s bathroom is a social space. People tend to have conversations between stalls, at the sinks, and while in line. People in the women’s room often bring in children of all genders in order to help them. It is generally a friendly place (for those who “belong”) where people are not afraid to look at each other and smile or chat. In this bathroom, folks tend to wait in line along the walls of the bathroom, away from the stalls. Often people will spend time at the sink or mirror.

The men’s room:
This is not a social space. Nobody talks or makes eye contact with anyone else. People don’t stand next to each other at urinals unless they are all filled. Usually folks in the men’s room stand in line in the middle of the bathroom. If you need a stall and there are none, pretend you just came in to wash your hands. Don’t feel out of place for using a stall. People who use the men’s room sit down sometimes too and will use a stall whether or not the urinals are full. If you need to sit down to pee and are worried that someone will notice, try using a can lid or medicine spoon to stand. You can also try one of the various stand-to-pee devices, such as the Mango product or the DJ Knows Dick Pissin’ Passin’ Packer, available at stores and online. . . .

Multi-Stall Gender-Neutral Bathrooms
Even more helpful than gender-neutral single-stall bathrooms is gender-neutral multi-stall bathrooms. Without a doubt, this would be a big change in public bathroom culture in the U.S. It is a change whose time has come, though. By eliminating the whole idea that one bathroom is for men and one is for women, we would be able to get rid of the stereotypical expectations that cause so much trouble. No one would feel like they were in the wrong bathroom or that they could make someone else feel unwelcome simply because that person did not look the right way. Parents could keep an eye on their children and people who need assistance using the bathroom would be able to get that assistance from any family member or attendant.

Most existing bathrooms would not need significant physical alterations. Urinals could be made more private by being placed inside a stall. And as new buildings are being constructed, the demand for gender-neutral bathrooms could also result in small changes to increase privacy. For instance, stall doors could be built taller and extend closer to the ground. Locks on stall doors could be made stronger and more functional.

Of course, the big hurdle with this idea is convincing building owners, employers, school administrators and elected officials that it is a workable idea. . . . the only real hurdle is people’s issues about men and women using the same bathroom at the same time.

Since this is the inaugural year for TransAction! Day, it will likely be a non-event in most schools, except for some schools in the lost states of California and Massachusetts. But parents must be vigilant. It is much easier to keep these deviant celebrations and political actions out of schools than to uproot entrenched events.

Exploiting government schools for political purposes is the very reason for GLSEN’s existence. We who hold traditional beliefs about sexuality must get over ourselves — and by that I mean our ignorance, apathy, self-consciousness, and fear — in order to oppose the malevolence that is devouring our children and our society. And we must do this even if opposition results in hostility and persecution.

Written by Gene Edward Veith

Want to know how to win the culture war? Watch The Laramie Project, a textbook, in dramatic form, of how homosexuals use emotionalism and the media to sway public opinion.

Christians have a lot to learn from homosexuals about how to wage a culture war.

Religious and cultural conservatives have concentrated on political activism – electing conservatives to positions of power, passing laws and exerting pressure on politicians – with some success. In the meantime, the gay-rights lobby has, in only a few years, turned around the culture’s attitude toward homosexuality in a way that is nothing short of revolutionary. Homosexuality has gone from being considered a vice and a psychological disorder to being considered just as legitimate as heterosexuality, with special rights and status. Attitudes have changed from disapproval to tolerance to acceptance.

Christians and other cultural conservatives are right to oppose attempts to privilege sexual immorality with all of their energy. But as the homosexual movement has proven, politics does not lead culture; culture leads politics.

Gay activists have prepared the way for their power plays with a monumental act of persuasion – through the arts, the media, the intellectual establishment and the pop culture. Though the majority of Americans still have an instinctive disapproval of homosexual behavior, they feel guilty about it. As “homophobia” replaces homosexuality as the immoral vice and the shameful psychological disorder, a complete moral inversion has taken place. A vice has been turned into a virtue, and – just as importantly – a virtue (standing for sexual morality) has been turned into a vice.

A case study of how homosexuals have manipulated public opinion is the play The Laramie Project, a powerful drama based on the brutal murder of a homosexual man. The play was a Broadway hit, traveled to regional theaters and is now a popular production for high schools, where it’s used to promote “diversity,” “tolerance” and “hate-crimes” legislation-laws that increase the penalty when a crime is motivated by discrimination.

The play is a classic example of “agit-prop,” the use of a work of art for “agitation” and “propaganda,” as developed by the old-school Marxists. Christians need to understand how this kind of work operates, so as not to be duped by its manipulations.

A Brutal Crime

Matthew Shepard was a 21-year-old, openly homosexual student at the University of Wyoming. On Oct. 6, 1998, he got picked up in a Laramie bar by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, construction workers who had been in and out of trouble with the law. According to some accounts, they pretended to be gay. According to others, Matthew made a pass at them. There is evidence, though, that they had made a practice of robbing weaker folks. Driving away in their pickup truck, they took Matthew out into the country where they beat him mercilessly and hung him on a fence. After 18 hours in a snowstorm, he was found unconscious and taken to a hospital, where he died five days later.

McKinney and Henderson were tried and convicted for murder. Shepard’s family refused to press for the death penalty, and the killers are currently serving life sentences.

A month after Shepard’s death, 10 members of a New York theatrical company, the Tectonic Theater Project, came to Laramie (population 27,204) and recorded interviews with 200 members of the community, including Shepard’s friends and acquaintances. Director Moises Kaufman edited the transcripts, combined them with excerpts of courtroom testimony, news accounts and sound bites and formed them into the play.

Instead of presenting what happened to Shepard in a straightforward narrative, the play portrays some 70 townspeople – cab drivers, cops, college professors, hospital workers, ministers – talking about the crime, homosexuality and their community. Shepard is never depicted, but his character emerges from what these people say about him, as do the grisly details of the murder. The play is not just about the Shepard killing but about the ordinary folks of Laramie, Wyo. – and thus, America – and the extent to which their “hate” contributed to the mindset that led to his murder.

The dramatic genre of tragedy works, as Aristotle pointed out, by depicting terrible human suffering in such a way that it creates in the audience an overwhelming feeling of compassion, “a catharsis of pity and fear.” The Laramie Project piles on the heart-rending details. For example, it reports that when he was found, Shepard’s face was covered with blood, except for where his tears had washed it away.

The play does more than evoke compassion, though. It also demonizes the other side, not just the murderers but those who “hate” – and, by association, those who oppose homosexual behavior.

The real villain of The Laramie Project is the Rev. Fred Phelps, an anti-gay crusader from Kansas who preaches that “God hates fags,” an actual person who occasionally shows up at performances of the play, yelling at the “faggots” and holding up signs condemning them to Hell.

The play recounts an actual event, when a screaming Phelps tried to disrupt Matthew Shepard’s funeral. Townspeople drown him out by singing “Amazing Grace.” Later, Phelps tries to disrupt the trial of one of Matthew’s murderers, preaching about how the Bible speaks more about God’s hate than about God’s love. Activists, dressed in white angel costumes, surround this minister of hatred.

It is perfectly clear that the activists are on the side of the angels and that Phelps is on the side of the devil. The angels point out another dimension of the play that makes it extremely powerful and persuasive. It is explicitly religious.

A New Christ

One high point of the play is the soliloquy of the emergency-room physician on duty when Shepard was brought in. Earlier that night, the doctor had treated one of his killers, Aaron McKinney, who got in a fight after he brutalized Shepard.

“They were just kids,” the doctor says. “I took care of both of them … of both their bodies … and for a brief moment I wondered if this is how God feels when he looks down at us. How we are all his kids … Our bodies, our souls. And I felt a great deal of compassion, for both of them.”

Religious references abound. The views of different ministers are presented, with those critical of homosexuality in the name of the Bible coming off badly, while those who are more tolerant come across as true moral authorities. Matthew is said to have not been alone after all, that God was with him.

More than that, the story itself is a re-enactment of the most powerful religious drama of all. An innocent victim is killed at the hands of sinful men. He dies because of – and for – the sins of the world. And, somehow, his death is redemptive.

The victim in The Laramie Project is a Christ-figure, as Matthew is portrayed in the play and as reinforced in the very details of the real-life case: His name evokes the Good Shepherd. The manner of his death-hung on a fence-evokes the Crucifixion.

No wonder The Laramie Project spurs such a powerful reaction in its audiences. It is irrefutable. A work of art is not just a matter of asserting facts, proving ideas and setting forth propositions. A work of art creates feelings in its audience. It does treat ideas and propositions, but it does so, not by arguing, but by establishing a framework that provokes a response.

Any human being – and certainly a Christian – will feel empathy and compassion for Matthew Shepard, both as he is portrayed in the play and as the real-life victim of a cruel murder.

This evocation of compassion is completely appropriate for such a horrific crime. Nonetheless, it can short-circuit moral reflection on lifestyle choices. For example, one would think that the AIDS epidemic would be powerful evidence that homosexual behavior is not a good idea. And yet, making the public feel sorry for those plagued by this disease (as Shepard was) has made people more sympathetic to the homosexual cause.

Compassion also can warp the process of forming public policy. Accompanying The Laramie Project, particularly when it is performed by schools, are study guides and lesson plans about “hate crimes.” The performances often are followed by panel discussions and actor talk-backs on “Is Hate a Crime?” The Matthew Shepard Foundation, started by his mother, is devoted to the implementation of legislation against hate crimes.

The fact is, nearly all murders are motivated, on some level, by hate. And the law doesn’t attempt to distinguish between one kind of murderous hate and another. It punishes actions, not internal thoughts or feelings. Trying to punish thoughts is extraordinarily dangerous. It’s difficult enough to prove that a murder was premeditated. How might the Shepard jury have decided that hatred of homosexuals was the killers’ only or primary motive? Might the whole thing have been the result of drunken rage directed at a physically vulnerable stranger, or a warped display of machismo or pathological self-hatred? Such speculation could ultimately be applied to religious expression if public officials decide that opposition to homosexuality motivates criminal activity.

Already in Sweden, laws have been passed that, in effect, make it a crime to express disapproval of homosexual behavior. Even churches are not allowed to teach publicly that homosexuality is immoral.

The point is, The Laramie Project conjures up valid emotions of compassion and outrage, but then associates them with completely separate issues of morality, political agendas and ideology. It is possible to want Shepard’s killers to be harshly punished without believing in hate-crimes legislation. Shepard’s killers surely deserve the death penalty. But it is not possible to make that punishment more severe.

An Evangelical Response

Ironically, Christians and cultural conservatives often play right into the propagandists’ hands. They come across like Phelps, thereby confirming the distorted and demonized image of Christians created by the play. The public sees the critics of the homosexual agenda as “haters,” and therefore, they are rejected automatically and their arguments never get heard.

Christians would do well to recover the biblical understanding both of sin and salvation. Human beings are under the curse of the Fall. We are in bondage to the world, the flesh and the devil. We cannot simply choose to be good. The doctrine of original sin means that sin is, in effect, genetic. But this does not mean it is excusable. Underneath homosexuality and the equally damnable sins heterosexuals can fall into, underneath murder and crime, underneath hatred and every tragedy, including what happened to Matthew Shepard, is the same intractable reality of our sinful condition.

The solution to this bondage is not laws (though laws are necessary to keep our outward behavior from the worst things it is capable of) or good intentions or willpower, but the Cross of Jesus Christ, who bore the sins of the world, took the punishment sinners deserve and imputes to those sinners His own righteousness.

This is the Gospel. The only thing that can change the human heart and all of its bad behavior is faith in Jesus Christ. The culture, by and large, believes that Christianity is just a matter of “being good.” The cultural stereotypes formed by the propaganda present Christianity as just another brand of moralism. There is little awareness that Christianity is a religion specifically for sinners, that it is really all about grace, forgiveness and the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ for our justification.

Homosexuals need Christ. Whether He will change their sexual orientation or help them remain celibate or keep forgiving them when they fall, their only hope – exactly as it is for heterosexual sinners – is in the Gospel.

The spiritual condition that is far more dangerous than homosexuality is self-righteousness. In another irony, this is something the Phelpses of the world and the gay lobby have in common. Christian legalists can be complacent in their own righteousness, shutting out their own need for Christ’s forgiveness and alienating the culture by their harshness and hypocrisies. In the meantime, the gay lobby is cultivating a self-righteousness of its own, insisting on its goodness, that homosexuality is not wrong at all. Both need to repent, to confess their sins, so Christ can set them free.

This is how Christians need to present themselves and their faith. This will counter the legalistic stereotypes of the propagandists and will project genuine compassion for those trapped in the snares of homosexuality. While pursuing not propaganda but truth and while fighting the legal and political battles, Christians need to communicate their message in a way that is at least as persuasive, effective and culturally savvy as what the homosexuals have been doing.

Gene Edward Veith is cultural editor of World magazine and author of Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture.

This article appeared in the October 2003 issue of Citizen magazine. 

John Biver – ChampionNews.net

A few of the headlines on the Drudge Report this morning involve an international discussion over the relative strength of the U.S. and Russia after the events of the past year, Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, and this one:

“Iran orders Muslims to defend Palestinians.”

While Champion News encourages clear thinking people to stay informed and remain concerned about world events, we’d also like to see more Americans give a damn about things closer to home as well – like our local public/government-run schools.

Forget the propaganda you’re constantly subjected to through the mainstream media or school district newsletters: those schools are still failing to live up to the state constitutional mandate of being efficient and of high quality. Our schools are still more expensive than they need to be and still under-performing academically – yes, even in the suburbs.

Speaking of the media, another headline this morning involves the financial woes of Chicago’s two big newspapers. Maybe if they covered the real news regarding the state’s schools (let alone the state’s finances) people would still look to them for news and information.

School board elections are coming up April 7, 2009, and the filing period is between January 20th and the 26th. Click here for the details.

The good news is that there are already some good people serving on school boards. I use the word “some” on purpose. Those who are genuinely committed to change are greatly out-numbered by those defending the failed status quo. The vast majority of the people who run for school boards fall into the anti-reform camp:

* They’re a retired teacher.
* They’re married to a teacher.
* They’re a teacher in another district.
* They’re affiliated with a teachers union.
* They’re doing business with government schools.
* They’re the type who believes what they read in the newspaper about how wonderful the public schools are.

We’ve commented on the problems of education often on this website (see examples here), but have also provided links to the organizations around the country who are attempting to bring true reform (see here and here). The national school reform movement is alive and well – the only thing missing is enough people running for public office to force the implementation of all the proven reforms.

One school board member who is setting an example of what’s possible is Chris Jenner from Cary District 26. We’ve posted a few pieces by Mr. Jenner:

Thoughts from an independent-minded school board member
Education association conference costs and bang for the buck
Public schools should be about learning: Vote no on SB2288
HB750: Another year older and deeper in malarkey
Illinois schools are NOT poorly funded
Chris Jenner’s Education Bill Digest, March 2007

Earlier this month Chris sent us an update on a couple of new policies adopted by his board:

“Last night our board adopted not one, but two good government policies I’ve been working through the appropriate channels for months.

The first is an addition to our policy 2:250, “Access to District’s Public Records”. We added a section called “Voluntary Transparency.” It was inspired by a publication from Michigan’s Education Action Group called “The Reform Agenda: Four ideas for better Michigan schools” – http://www.educationactiongroup.org/documents/MichiganReformAgenda_000.pdf.

The verbiage of the addition is:

Voluntary Transparency

It is the intent of the Board that District operations will be transparent to the greatest extent possible. The District’s public records shall be made available on the District website for at least one (1) year from their creation date or Board approval, whichever is later. District public records requiring Board approval shall be placed on the website within 7 days of Board approval, subject to applicable privacy laws.

To give future boards flexibility, we included Exhibit 2:250-E, which lists the records to be posted “including, not limited to.” The list was also inspired by the EAG piece. Verbiage in the exhibit is: The records to be made available under the Voluntary Transparency section of Policy 2:250 include, but are not limited to:

– Current District budget, and minimally past 3 years’ budgets;
– Meeting minutes, including all Board actions and votes, and meeting agendas;
– Names of elected officials and contact information, including email addresses;
– Names of administrative officials and contact information, including email addresses;
– Name of the District’s FOIA compliance contact, and FOIA procedures;
– Information about any organizations or associations supported by District funds that perform political lobbying or advocacy, including the organization names, the amount expended on each, and each organization’s or association’s legislative agenda;
– A list of all vendors the District does over $5,000 in business annually with, and the budgeted and actual amounts expended on each vendor;

– Copies of audits (including Audited Financial Reports) and compliance reports;
– The District’s checkbook register.

The other good government policy our board adopted last night was an addition to our policy 4:60 – “Purchases and Contracts.” I shamelessly stole verbiage from Palatine D-15, which passed a very similar policy in August, 2008 – http://www.ccsd15.net/AboutDistrict15/BoardOfEducation/PDF/BOE_Manual_2008-9-25.pdf
– go to policy 4:55.

The revision to 4:60 adopted last night has an added section entitled, “Procurement of Items That May be Exempt from the Formal School Code Bid Process.” And it’s pretty much what it says. It’s mainly to ensure we can’t fall into long term cozy relationships with law firms, accountants, auditors, bond people, etc. that are automatically continued year after year. If you take a gander at our 4:60, also note the section on Vendor Conflict of Interest (i.e. pay-to-play is against policy in D-26), which we adopted in 2006.

Both were approved unanimously. I hope many other districts get similar policies passed.

I expect that the transparency policy will take a few months to be implemented and that the procurement of exempt items policy will take effect as contracts expire. A small win that I hope contributes to freedom, choice, and prosperity.”

Here are the links to the district’s policies on their website:

http://www.cary26.org/documents/Policy2250revNov08-2.pdf
http://www.cary26.org/documents/Policy0460.pdf.

Chris followed up with this note:

“One thing our law firm pointed out is that we still require bids for purchases at the old level, even though I think state law raised the bar from $10,000 to $25,000. It was like them saying why aren’t you being as sleazy as the law allows? The main partner in our law firm is school board secretary (formerly board president) in her district.”

That last note gives an example not only of Chris Jenner’s sense of humor, but also just one small example of how the school system is one big happy family. If it weren’t for elections, reform would never even have a chance.

We’re going to keep saying it on this website: if you want to see “change you can believe in,” forget the Obama Administration. Get involved yourself. Run for office. The time to circulate petitions for school board is now.

John Biver is the Editor of Champion News.

by Phyllis Schlafly – Eagle Forum

Why did 18-to-29-year-old evangelicals vote for Barack Obama despite his apostasy on the fundamental moral issues of abortion and same-sex unions? They voted 32 percent for Obama, twice the percentage of that demographic group who voted for John Kerry in 2004.

Many of these young people identify “social justice” as the reason that led them to relegate the prime moral issues of life and marriage to the back burner. But the term “social justice” does not define a moral cause; it is leftwing jargon to overturn those who have economic and political power.

What caused young evangelicals, the children of the so-called “religious right,” to change their moral imperatives so dramatically? Most likely it’s the attitudes and decision-making they learned in the public schools, which 89 percent of U.S. students attend.

The public schools took a major left turn in the 1960s when Humanist John Dewey and the teachers he trained at Columbia Teachers College began their put-down of objective truth and authoritative notions of good and evil. In the 1970s, Sidney Simon‘s best-seller “Values Clarification” taught students to cast off their parents’ values and make their own choices, often aided by Kinsey-trained sexperts determined to change our sexual mores.

By the 1980s, many radical anti-war activists of the 1960s had become tenured college professors, so teachers colleges and public schools opened their doors to “social justice” teaching. Among these ’60s radicals was Weather Undergrounder William Ayers, who escaped prosecution only because of government misconduct in collecting evidence against him, and then emerged as a Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Ayers developed quite a following as he taught resentment against America. In 2008 he was elected by his peers as vice president for curriculum studies of the American Education Research Association, the nation’s largest organization of education professors and researchers.

In 1983, Humanist Magazine featured an article that boasted: “The battle for mankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom.” William Ayers put it this way: “Education is the motor-force of revolution.”

Ayers became a leading advocate of “social justice” teaching, i.e., getting students to believe that they are victims of an unjust, oppressive and racist America. Community organizers can then use these young people to vote and otherwise to carry out Ayers’ “revolution.”

Ayers has been on a decades-long mission to transform education into anti-American indoctrination and to get young people to demand government control of the economy, politics and culture. We see the result in the 2008 post-election surveys: seven out of every ten voters between the ages of 18 and 29 now favor expanding the role of government, and agree that the government should do more to solve the nation’s problems. It’s obvious which party and which candidates will get their vote.

Ayers worked closely with Barack Obama in the 1990s when Obama headed the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which gave $160 million in grants to so-called school-reform projects. Ayers and Obama guided some of this Annenberg money to community organizers such as ACORN.

The National Association of Scholars reports that use of the term “social justice” is today understood to mean “the advocacy of more egalitarian access to income through state-sponsored redistribution.” That is academic verbiage for Barack Obama’s assertion that he wants to “spread the wealth around.”

“Rethinking Schools” is a Milwaukee-based organization that publishes instructional materials to assist teachers how to “weave social justice issues throughout the curriculum.” Lessons include “Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers” and “Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching About Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word.”

Howard Zinn, author of the anti-American “People’s History of the United States,” urges educators to prioritize “social justice” education over political neutrality. In a 1998 interview, he said “quiet revolution” to move us toward “democratic socialism” was his goal in writing “People’s History.”

The thinking of teachers is further molded at expensive conferences, financed by billing the taxpayers. The National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) sponsors seminars with titles such as “Our Work as Social Justice Educators,” “Teaching for Social Justice in Elementary Schools,” “Dismantling White Privilege and Supporting Anti-Racist Education in our Classrooms and Schools,” and “Creating Change Agents Who Teach for Social Justice.”

This “social justice” curriculum results in a heavy cost in time not spent on the basics. Young Americans who are exposed to Ayers’ radical leftwing ideas generally have little background information to help them evaluate bias and errors.

Barack Obama’s selection for Secretary of Education is his crony Arne Duncan, who most recently made news by recommending the creation of a Chicago Social Justice High School-Pride Campus, where half the students would be homosexuals and the other half straight. Somehow that school was canceled just about the time that Obama announced Duncan’s appointment.

Further reading:

* Education — http://capwiz.com/eagleforum/utr/1/HERXJOAYYA/NBJNJOAYYI/2743285516

* “Social Justice” — http://capwiz.com/eagleforum/utr/1/HERXJOAYYA/LRKYJOAYYJ/2743285516

by Pete Chagnon

Critics of America’s public school system have launched a new effort highlighting the need for Christians to exit the system.

The initiative — dubbed The Call to Dunkirk (video link) — was launched by Dr. Bruce Shortt, author of The Harsh Truth About Public Schools; Rev. Voddie Baucham, author of Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk with God; and the founder and director of the Exodus Mandate Project, retired U.S. Army Chaplain Lt. Col. E. Ray Moore.

Moore explains the proposal. “The Call to Dunkirk is a special emergency effort to try to get other ministries, churches, pastors, and the major Christian right and pro-family movement to join with us and the other K-12 home-school ministries in rescuing the children from the public schools during the year 2009,” he says.

Although Christians have fought other aspects of the culture war such as homosexual “marriage,” Moore contends they are losing the fight when it comes to the education of their children.

“The real target of the liberals and the left has always been the children. And we can see in California where the conservatives won Proposition 8 — the vote [was] 52 to 48 [percent] — but…when Proposition 22 was voted on [in March 2000], they had a 61-percent margin of victory. So the culture is turning against Christianity and against the pro-family movement primarily because we’ve allowed our children to be educated in their schools,” he adds. “They’re converting our children; we’re not converting them.”

The Call to Dunkirk gets its name from the historical WWII event when the Allied forces of England and France were run out of Europe, but ordinary citizens rallied to their aid and used their own boats to help more than 300,000 soldiers escape safely in order to return again on D-Day. 

Below is an email sent to Illinois Family Institute on Dec. 22, 2008. I am posting it here, followed by my response because the writer expresses increasingly common sentiments and deeply troubling, fallacious ideas that any of us who hope to influence the culture in positive ways must be prepared to address:

If you really cared about family, you would help the gay and lesbian people have families. Gay children are disowned by their families, run away, or commit suicide because of the intolerance fostered by groups like yours. You think you do good, but you hurt people for a living. Shame on you. You will be judged by a God who will wonder why you felt the need to attack people you hardly know and do not even care to understand. I am praying for your whole sick group.

My response:

Dear Mr. H.,

I fully expect to be judged by God, and that’s why I try to live according to His revealed will, which is unequivocally clear on His view of volitional homosexual acts.

I don’t know what your justification or evidence is for the claim that I attack people I hardly know. I have never through my writing or in personal interactions attacked either people I hardly know or complete strangers. I have, however, been verbally assaulted by complete strangers on more than one occasion simply because I express different views on what constitutes moral sexual behavior.

Believing homosexual conduct is not moral conduct is not equivalent to hatred. In fact, if it is true that homosexual conduct is objectively wrong, then saying so is an act of compassion.

My beliefs regarding homosexual conduct do not in any way diminish my recognition that all people are created in the image and likeness of God. My beliefs do not diminish the love I feel for those who self-identify as homosexual, or my respect for their admirable qualities, or the delight I take in their company. I recognize that we all sin and fall short of the glory of God-including me.

I believe as you clearly do that we should treat all people with compassion and respect but that cannot possibly mean remaining silent as the media, public education, and myriad other cultural institutions promote lies as truth. To remain silent in the face of such error would constitute an act of unconscionable cruelty and dereliction of responsibility.

I assume that you, like me, hold moral precepts. I assume that there are behaviors, sexual and otherwise, that you consider immoral. I also assume and hope that you do not hate, attack, or treat with disrespect those who believe differently and engage in behaviors you believe are immoral. Stating your moral precepts does not constitute an attack on people. Stating that, for example, promiscuity, selfishness, greed, or aggressiveness is immoral does not constitute an attack on promiscuous, selfish, greedy, or aggressive individuals.

You stated that my words hurt people, implying that my words are therefore illegitimate. If by hurt, you mean that some people are uncomfortable with my words, I agree. If you mean by hurt, that some people “feel bad” when they read my words, I agree. But the moral legitimacy of speech is not determined by the subjective response of the hearer. Rather, the moral legitimacy of speech is determined by its truth and the manner in which it’s delivered. If your implicit claim were true, which is that no one should make statements of moral conviction if those statements hurt the feelings of someone listening, then no one could make any moral claims. In fact, the moral claims you made in your email would be equally wrong in that they hurt me.

But I firmly believe that my statements about the immorality of volitional homosexual acts are true, and therefore expressing them is a morally legitimate activity.

By the way, I have a very special place in my heart for teens, and I am angry and saddened that our culture, including our public schools, relentlessly promotes lies to confused, troubled teens that hurt them spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, and physically-and doing it with my money.

One final note: I would argue that it’s those people who persist in spreading the lie that Christians hate homosexuals who are fostering intolerance and incivility. And since tolerance does not mean approval, disapproval does not mean intolerance.

Sincerely,

Laurie Higgins
Director of the Division of School Advocacy
Illinois Family Institute

Below is an email I received regarding my criticism of the production of Macbeth that I attended last Friday night, followed by my response which I hope is helpful to others who may be confused by the same issues the writer addressed:

Your evaluation of Macbeth made me chuckle. I am going to see the production tonight. My daughter, who works at the theatre, has seen it and was quite impressed with the production. I will reserve my comments to you until after I have seen it. However, I must be upfront and tell you I have little, if any, respect for your organization, so, naturally, your opinion is of no importance. However, I did want to share with you this funny (sad?) anecdote. One parent that came into the theatre worried about the sexual overtones of the show was quite accepting of the violence. No problem there! We can maim people, carry guns, annihilate anyone with whom we disagree, but show people having sex???? Blasphemy!! What a mixed-up set of values . . .

My response:

Dear Ms. F.,

I’m curious why you would bother to write, since you have little, if any, respect for Illinois Family Institute and find our opinions of no importance. Despite your evident disdain for my opinions, I will try to respond thoughtfully to your concerns.

First, I don’t understand what you found amusing either in my evaluation of the play or in the concerns of the parent who was worried about the performances’ sexual “overtones.” An overtone is “a subtle or elusive quality or implication.” There was nothing remotely subtle in the sexuality depicted in Friday night’s performance. If the sexuality had been either subtle or implied, I would not have objected.

Your analogy between depictions of violence and actual nudity seems weak to me. Even an analogy between depictions of violence and depictions of sex acts seems flawed. Many people, perhaps most, believe that sexual acts (and excretory acts) though perfectly normal are intimate, private acts that are not for public consumption. Violence is quite different. Violence is sometimes necessary and justifiable. And though violent acts are always unpleasant and often abhorrent or repugnant, they are not thought of as private, intimate acts.

Violent acts may be moral or immoral depending on the context, just as sexual acts may be moral or immoral depending on the context. But sexual acts are always intended to be private acts. And for many, actual nudity is appropriate in only very limited contexts. Neither I, nor my husband, nor my son wish to see the kind of nudity we saw Friday night. Nor does my father who was planning on attending. Nor do my daughters. This desire grows not out of prudery (one of my daughters is an intensive care nurse who is exposed to naked bodies every day). It grows out of a profound respect for the human body and a recognition of its intimate, inextricable connection to our spiritual natures.

Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s creative staff is free to produce any kind of production they choose, but it only seems fair and respectful of the diverse population that supports CST to provide full and explicit communication of potentially offensive content by the time tickets go on sale. We purchased ours in August.

In writing about the play, I was not trying to change the views of those who have no respect for me and no objections to public nudity or depictions of sex acts. I was trying to provide information to our readers, most of whom tend to share IFI’s values, that Chicago Shakespeare Theater had not provided, so that they could make an informed decision about whether they wanted to attend this performance.

Sincerely,

Laurie Higgins

Director of the Division of School Advocacy
Illinois Family Institute

The National Center for Education Statistics, which is part of the Department of Education estimates that homeschooling grew 36 percent between 2003 and 2007. “Homeschoolers can now be found in all walks of life,” said Michael Smith, HSLDA President.

The NCES estimates 1.5 million homeschooled children, or 2.9 percent of the school age population in 2007. This is a significant increase from 1.1 million in 2003, or 2.2 percent of the school aged population.

The NCES survey also considered the reasons parents are turning to homeschooling. Parents continued to cite the negative peer influences of public school, the desire to provide religious or moral instruction as well as concern about the academic quality of public school as their reasons for homeschooling.

The greatest change from 2003 was an 11 point increase in the desire to provide religious and moral instruction which went from 72% in 2003 to 83 percent in 2007. Concerns about the school environment, however, remained the top reason with 88 percent.

“Homeschooling is a mainstream educational alternative. It will continue to flourish as parents and children continue to experience the social and academic benefits of a home based education,” said Smith.

Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is a 25 year old, 85,000 member non-profit organization and the preeminent national association advocating the legal right of parents to homeschool their children.

The nation’s first “gay”-affirming middle school has just been approved right here in the Midwest. On Dec. 16, 2008, the Milwaukee Board of Education approved a “gay-friendly” school for 11, 12, 13 and 14-year-olds.

According to U.S. News and World Report, “At a meeting two weeks ago, a subcommittee of Milwaukee’s Board of Education unanimously approved the Alliance School’s proposal to serve sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. The proposal gained unanimous approval from the full board by default when the item was not pulled for further discussion or a vote at last night’s meeting. . . . Marty Lexmond, the director of school innovation for Milwaukee Public Schools, said the need for a gay-friendly middle school is even greater today because adolescents are publicly identifying their sexuality as early as middle school.”

Yet more public money will now be used to affirm theories about the nature and morality of homosexuality that are controversial, unproven, flawed, and harmful, first, to very young, sexually confused adolescents and, second, to society.

Homosexual desire and conduct are not immutable, intrinsic human attributes. And volitional homosexual conduct is not moral conduct. The beliefs that homosexuality is intrinsic, immutable, and moral are unproven, hypothetical, and dangerous philosophical theories that public school administrators have no business affirming and no business using public money to affirm.

And taxpayers, parents, civic leaders, and church leaders have no business remaining silent in the face of this educational malpractice and misuse of public money.

This new school is the cancerous fruit of ignorance, silence, and cowardice. If churches do not assume the responsibility to teach their congregations how to understand the specious secular arguments effectively used to normalize homosexuality, we will continue to lose ground to the pro-homosexual forces that are hugely influential in public schools.

I have said this before, but it bears repeating: When public schools violate their own ethical and pedagogical obligations to intellectual inquiry and when public money is used to promote ideas that hurt children psychologically, physically, intellectually, and spiritually, all of us are called to respond. Do not accept the lie being promulgated by activists in public schools: Facilitating children and teens in their psychological and moral disorders is not a sign of compassion, but rather a supremely unloving, unconscionable act for which we will be held ultimately accountable.

Adolescents who struggle with same-sex attraction deserve our love, our compassion-and truth. It is a worthy and important goal to rid society and schools of bullying, name-calling, and ridicule. But we must not pursue this critical goal by illegitimate means. We must not attempt to eliminate cruelty by affirming that which is physically harmful and soul-destroying.

Where were Milwaukee church leaders during discussions on this misbegotten proposal? If public school administrators, teachers, and school board members were to propose a school that affirms unproven, arguable, destructive theories on other sexual behaviors, like pornography use, adult consensual incest or polyamory, would pastors remain similarly detached? Would they remain comfortably ensconced within their sanctuaries while the children under their watch were being fed destructive lies? If not, then why do they respond so differently-or rather so indifferently-when their children are fed destructive lies in public schools. What is taking place in virtually all public schools is a scandal and moral outrage of such astonishing proportions that I’m dumbfounded by the silence of the church.

I reiterate here something I wrote earlier this year:

At different times in history, the enemy chooses different scriptural truths to attack with ferocity, and the church must respond accordingly. During the middle part of the 20th Century, Martin Luther King Jr., following in the footsteps of his namesake, confessed Christ boldly as the church faced, not an assault on sexuality, but an assault on the inherent dignity and equality of all men. But the truths he spoke in “Letter From Birmingham Jail” resonate today as we face yet another assault on truth:

I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. . . . too many . . . have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows. . . . I have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? . . .

I have heard many ministers say: “Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.” And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, non-biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

In deep disappointment, I have wept over the laxity of the church. . . . I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators”‘ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide, and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

I have no illusions; this work is difficult. But God is on His throne and calls us to carry His Cross: “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).

Does the American church today delight in weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties? I would argue that on the topic of homosexuality, except for a distinguished few, the answer is no: neither church leaders nor their followers delight in suffering for Christ. They flee from it with all due haste.

Obama searched the nation for the best candidate to serve as Secretary of Education, and, lo and behold, he found just the person right here in Illinois: Arne Duncan, current CEO of the Chicago Public School system.

To be fair, Duncan has earned praises from some quarters for his support of charter schools, his willingness to close failing schools, his support for greater student accountability, and his promotion of merit pay for teachers. Even conservative educational policy expert, Chester Finn, president of the non-profit Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, is pleased with Duncan’s appointment.

That said, however, Duncan also recommended approval of the proposed Chicago Social Justice High School-Pride Campus that was committed to affirming, and therefore normalizing, homosexuality. This publicly subsidized high school, which the proposal designers have promised to reintroduce next year, would have had homosexuality-affirming curricula.

Duncan’s approval of this highly controversial proposal was foolish, irresponsible, unethical, and pedagogically unsound. His recommendation necessarily required that Duncan arrive at conclusions regarding the nature and morality of homosexuality and then required that the taxes of hard-working Illinois taxpayers subsidize the promotion of views that many believe hurt teens and undermine marriage, the family, and the public good.

If Duncan takes this Cabinet position, taxpayers all over the country need to pay close attention to the decisions coming out of the Department of Education and vigorously respond if Duncan decides to use his platform and power to enact policies that further undermine the legitimacy of public education.

And Illinoisans need to pay close attention to Mayor Richard Daley’s appointment of the next CEO of Chicago Public Schools — he or she could be even worse.