The Radical Agenda for Public Schools
(This is lengthy, but full of important details.)
EXTREMISTS WANT TO TRANSFORM SOCIETY
School boards and teachers unions are being overrun by political activists who think they know what’s better for kids than parents do. Obsessed with power, they are determined to transform schools, kids, and culture into their hedonistic vision of a new utopian America – very different from what the majority wants.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (“LGBT”) activists want to require the majority to move beyond tolerance to endorsement. To accomplish that end, LGBT activists have radically moved from telling us to “stay out of their bedroom” to bringing their bedroom into the classroom.
Because activists know they cannot change the hearts and minds of the populace through legislative and judicial decrees, they are focused on radically transforming society by using our children as pawns for social change – without regard to the consequences.
BY INDOCTRINATING CHILDREN
Indoctrinating impressionable school children is an easier way to transform society and change public attitudes toward homosexuality than trying to persuade adults. However, since directly promoting homosexual lifestyles to children is too controversial, LGBT activists hide their agenda behind the “safe schools” and “anti-bullying” curricula. On other campuses, however, where radicals sympathetic to the LGBT agenda have taken over school boards, the indoctrination is overt and aggressive.
Advocates of homosexuality (which include a growing number of teachers, students, administrators, teachers unions and school boards) are now permitted to promote homosexuality in a variety of ways in many school districts. Teaching materials and extra-curricular programs that imply or proclaim acceptance of homosexual behavior are becoming more and more common. These are frequently initiated through school alliances with influential homosexual advocacy groups such as GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) and PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Local resistance is suppressed by pro bono legal support from the ACLU, the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, the National Education Association’s legal defense for homosexual teachers, and other groups. Some of these groups actually work directly with students to make outrageous demands of school boards and administrations. If they meet obstacles, they are prepared to engineer a huge media circus around their efforts, and the media today is too often sympathetic.
The “queering of public schools,” as homosexual advocates call it, is now legislatively promoted in various states. California, for example, has a new state law requiring public schools to teach all K–12 students (and K means five-year-olds) “to appreciate various sexual orientations.” What the new law means in practice, warned a state assemblyman, was on display at Santa Rosa High School, where invited homosexual activists “talked about using cellophane during group sex and said that ‘clear is best because you can see what you want to lick,’” or at Hale Middle School in Los Angeles, where during an AIDS education course, “12-year-olds were subjected to graphic descriptions of anal sex and tips on how to dispose of used condoms so parents don’t find out.”
As the assemblyman noted, sex education courses throughout California public schools, influenced heavily by national sex education advocates SEICUS and Planned Parenthood, have already enthusiastically endorsed the GLSEN worldview.
Much of this is flying under the radar of parents and communities, yet this betrayal of trust has become a public health and social stability issue for virtually every community. The majority of students educated in public schools, even if raised in traditional-minded homes, are now being successfully indoctrinated with the belief that engaging in homosexual behavior is a right, and is relatively harmless.
The truth is otherwise. Homosexual behavior and the environment of the homosexual community present many problematic risks and influences, and those risks are well-documented.
LGBT POSITIONS
GLSEN and PFLAG websites and literature promote the following positions:
1. Early sexualization of children can be beneficial Virtually any consensual sexual activity, as well as exposure to graphic sexual images and material, is not only permissible, but good for children, as part of the process of discovering their sexuality.
2. “Coming out” (publically identifying oneself as homosexual) and beginning homosexual sex practices at a young age is a normal and positive experience for youth which should be encouraged by teachers and parents.
3. Bisexuality, “fluid” sexuality, and sexual experimentation is a right for all students, and all students should learn about these options. The GLSEN teachers’ manual that says that middle-schoolers “should have the freedom to explore [their] sexual orientation and find [their] own unique expression of lesbian, bisexual, gay, straight, or any combination of these.” This is a call for pansexual experimentation.
4. Meeting other “gay” and “questioning” youth, usually without parental knowledge, is a frequent theme. At these meetings minors come into contact with college-age youth and adults practicing homosexuality.
5. “Cool” adults, parents, teachers and counselors are those who encourage students to embrace homosexuality and cross-dressing. “Cool” adults also permit adult-level freedoms and let children associate with questionable teens or adults.
6. Religious beliefs that are anti-homosexual are homophobic and bigoted, which justifies misquoting them, providing hostile, one-sided anti-religion vignettes and opinions, and distributing false and misleading information about religious positions on homosexuality.
7. Homosexuality is genetic and unchangeable, and ex-homosexuals should not be allowed to tell students how they changed their sexual orientation and behavior.
LGBT SCHOOL PROGRAMS
Here are some of the specific programs LGBT activists are installing in schools across America, in an effort to use children to fundamentally transform the culture. Some of these programs are geared to elementary schools, others to middle schools and high schools:
1. Training Workshops for Educators and Community Leaders
LGBT Activists push for opportunities to present pro-homosexual propaganda to teachers and administrators through mandatory training sessions. One of the stated objectives of the training is not to overcome harassment or violence, but to overcome “heterosexism” (the favoring of heterosexuality as normal), and to equate it with other evils like racism and sexism.
Another stated objective of the training is not to keep homosexual students “safe,” but “to elevate the status of LGBT students from a protected class to a valued group” by actively affirming homosexuality. For LGBT activists “the pursuit of safety and affirmation are one and the same goal . . .”1
2. Anti-Bullying programs to create “Safe Schools” and “Safe Spaces”
Both GLSEN and PFLAG have worked hard for years to construct an acceptable front for familiarizing adolescents and children with homosexual behavior. A key part of their strategy revolves around casting homosexual-affirming programs as “safe” for homosexual and “transgender” students. Despite statistics to the contrary, to justify the “safe schools” and “safe spaces” smokescreen, they contend that our schools have large numbers of students who are (or are now perceived to be) lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered,2 and that such students are frequent victims of verbal or physical harassment or even acts of violence.
At the urging of homosexual student clubs, schools across the U.S. have also created “safe” rooms for homosexual or sexually confused students, as if they might not be safe from “hate” and “intolerance” elsewhere in the school. In these rooms, identified by inverted pink triangles, students can discuss same-sex attraction or anxiety about sexual orientation with teachers or counselors, who promise a nonjudgmental and sympathetic hearing. Students who drop by for private discussion about their sexual confusion will often be referred – without parental knowledge – to local chapters of gay and lesbian organizations. If “queer theorists” are correct, that homosexuality is a free choice, then parents might be forgiven for thinking such advocacy a kind of recruitment.
California has school counseling programs, called “Project Ten” programs, which are pro-homosexual. They frequently have homosexual counselors who attempt to discuss gender feelings with confused students. They basically say, “Welcome to the homosexual community. Welcome to being one of us.” Project Ten, and similar programs, also provide informational literature. Most parents would be appalled if they read this literature. It encourages these students to masturbate with other men, and to go express themselves sexually with pornography.
As for bullying, the real problem is not anti-gay prejudice, but the overall breakdown of school discipline. No child should have to put up with verbal or physical intimidation at school. Making schools safer, however, does not require importing a broader LGBT agenda that offends the values of many students and parents. If there is unkind name-calling or even worse, schools already have policies to deal with these problems. All types of kids face harassment – short kids, tall kids, fat kids, ugly kids, nerdy kids, etc. – not just homosexual kids. But LGBT activists want to selectively focus ONLY on homosexual bullying – as a way of manipulating the problem of unkindness into a solution that affirms homosexuality. They are fabricating an issue and claiming victim status to gain power.
3. Homosexual Student Clubs
A more important task for LGBT activists is forming homosexual student clubs called “gay-straight alliances” (GSA’s) which they claim is a way to provide a “safe space” for “gay,” “questioning,” and “straight ally” youth to “discuss sexual orientation and gender identity issues.”3 GLSEN claims to have organized over 4,000 of such student clubs throughout America.
GSA’s often take on roles that go far beyond insuring safety and a place to talk. For example, the GLSEN article on “20 Ways Your GSA Can Rock the World!” includes: getting pro-homosexual books in the school library; protesting examples of “heterosexism” (such as “gender specific” bathrooms); participating in gay “pride” marches; and “outreach to middle schools.”4 The Massachusetts Department of Education has even given taxpayer money to GSA’s to subsidize pro-gay political activism and social events.5
Many parents are concerned that GSA’s encourage children who are unsure of themselves, to experiment sexually or to prematurely identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual. Homosexual clubs tend to dispense misinformation about homosexuality and embrace the idea that cross-dressing or even sex change surgery is a valid option for teens. Transgendered rights include the right to define one’s own gender; to use whichever bathroom or shower one wants; or attend whichever gym class or be on whatever gendered sports team one wishes. To not see a distorted reality as these individuals see it will be, again, “discrimination.”
Parents are also concerned that these clubs and their increasingly empowered gay students will be a force for division and disruption of the school environment.
4. Encourage “Coming Out”
LGBT activists encourage both teachers and students to publically identify their sexual identity and their choice of gender. They also suggest that teachers promote kids publicly identifying themselves as homosexual. This has a tendency to lock kids into gender and sexual experimentation they may not have otherwise selected, or might otherwise have outgrown.
5. LGBT School Events
To raise an entire new generation of young people who will have an unquestioning acceptance of pro-homosexual dogma, however, requires activities that will reach the entire student body.
These usually begin with special assemblies or one-day or one-time events. For example, when a school in Massachusetts celebrated “To B GLAD Day,” parents were not told that it stood for “Transgender, Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Day,” and would feature workshops about “Life Outside the Gender Norm,” “Being Gay in the Professional World,” and “fighting homophobia.”6
GLSEN also promotes a one-day event each year they call the “Day of Silence, which they describe as a day when defenders of homosexuality “take a day-long vow of silence to . . . protest . . . discrimination and harassment.”7 This is an unjustified disruption of the educational process, whereby students refuse to speak, and in some cases whereby teachers refuse to give their normal lectures.8
Another approach has been to ride the coattails of “multiculturalism” by promoting “LGBT History Month” among other “celebrations of culture and heritage.”9 Pro-homosexual activists in schools trumpet their unverified claims that “there are countless . . . artists, philosophers, inventors, even world leaders” who were also gay.10 (One pair of gay activists has pointed out: “Famous historical figures are… in no position to deny [their homosexuality] and sue for libel.”11)
Perhaps the most notorious one-day event was GLSEN’s annual conference in Massachusetts in 2000—now commonly known as the “Fistgate” conference. This event, attended by young people at least as young as 14, made it clear that the homosexual agenda in schools is about sex, and not just “safety.” Margot E. Abels, a state employee, opened one workshop by saying, “We think that sex is central to every single one of us and particularly queer youth.” In another seminar (described as “for youth only”) Abels described the sadomasochistic homosexual practice known as “fisting,” saying, “Fisting often gets a bad rap. It usually isn’t about the pain, not that we’re putting that down . . . [It’s] to put you into an exploratory mode.”12
Less graphic, but perhaps even more startling, are the scattered reports of schools actually promoting special days for students to cross-dress (that is, for boys to dress like girls, and girls to dress like boys). Such events, for instance, have been scheduled in Spurger, Texas,13 in a middle school in Bedford, Massachusetts,14 and in an elementary school in Carrier Mills, Illinois. Protests led to cancellation of the first two events.
6. LGBT Curricula and Lessons Plans for Grades K-12
One of the major goals of GLSEN and similar groups is to reform public school curricula and teaching, so that Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (“LGBT”) themes are always central and always presented in the approved light. The truly breathtaking sweep of the LGBT education agenda is described by GLSEN: “Educators need to integrate LGBT issues throughout the curriculum—not just in classes such as health education, but in disciplines such as English, History, Art and Science.”15 A workshop at GLSEN’s annual conference in Chicago in 2000 complained that “most LGBT curricula are in English, history and health” and sought ways of introducing its agenda into math and science classes, as well. (As an example of how to queer geometry, GLSEN recommends using gay symbols such as the pink triangle to study shapes.)
In support of their endeavor to have every course in every public school focus on LGBT issues, GLSEN provides free curricula and lesson plans for facilitating classroom discussion and engaging students in homosexual subjects.
Here is how GLSEN instructs teachers on “How to make your Curriculum Inclusive:”
“There are many ways to include positive representations of LGBT people, history and events in your curriculum. Here are a few suggestions: 1. Include LGBT history. Raise the visibility of LGBT people and communities by providing students with concrete examples of LGBT people in history and LGBT-related historical events. 2. Include diverse families. Whenever possible, include examples of diverse families, including same-sex couples and LGBT parents, whenever referencing families in the classroom. 3. Use LGBT-inclusive literature. Using LGBT inclusive literature will help create a welcoming space for LGBT students… Be sure to use books that feature positive and diverse representations of LGBT characters. 4. Celebrate LGBT events. Celebrating LGBT events can help LGBT students feel included in the school. Promote LGBT events throughout the school as you would any other cultural celebration. Celebrate LGBT History Month in October or LGBT Pride Month in June by displaying signs, alerting students and recognizing the struggles, contributions and victories of the LGBT community.”
Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this activist assault on our schools is that they are determined to bring their pro-homosexual propaganda to the children even in the lowest grades –beginning in kindergarten. This agenda is depicted clearly – and slickly – in a film for adults called “It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School.” It features a school wide “Lesbian and Gay Pride Day,” as well as a “Gay Pride Assembly.” It highlights the achievements of purported homosexuals “from Michelangelo to Melissa Etheridge”16 – ”leading the young students,” as one critic said, “to the false assumption that being gay can’t be bad because of the good things gay people have done.”17 GLSEN even provides lesson plans for the promotion of cross-dressing in elementary school classes. A school resource book containing such lesson plans, “Cootie Shots: Theatrical Inoculations Against Bigotry for Kids, Parents, and Teachers,” has already been used in second-grade classrooms in California. A children’s play in the book18 features a little boy singing of the exhilaration of striding about “In Mommy’s High Heels,” in angry defiance of the criticism of his intolerant peers. While such activists usually express great sensitivity to the harm done by insulting or violent words, they apparently aren’t bothered by a cross-dressing boy singing: “. . . [L]et them jump and jeer and whirl. They are the swine, I am the pearl. . . .19 Let them laugh, let them scream. They’ll all be beheaded when I’m queen.”20
It is never too early to begin stamping out heterosexism. A 2002 GLSEN conference in Boston held a seminar on “Gender in the Early Childhood Classroom” that examined ways of setting “the tone for nontraditional gender role play” for preschoolers. To help get the LGBT message across to younger children, teachers can turn to an array of educational products, many of them available from GLSEN.
7. Required LGBT Reading Lists and LGBT Books for School Libraries
Pro-homosexual activists also try to fill school libraries and required reading lists with books that not only present homosexuals in a positive light, but describe homosexual acts being committed by young people in explicit terms.
Some of the most explicit homosexual material has shown up in classrooms. An Ohio teacher encouraged her freshman students to read Entries From a Hot Pink Notebook, a teen coming-out story that includes a graphic depiction of sex between two 14-year-old boys. In Newton, Massachusetts, a public school teacher assigned his 15-year-old students The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a farrago of sexual confusion, featuring an episode of bestiality as one of its highlights.
Out of curiosity to see exactly what kind of books GLSEN thinks students should be reading in school, Scott Baker, co-founder of Breitbart.tv and co-host of The B-Cast, and his team read eleven books at random from the over 100 titles on GLSEN’s grades 7-12 list. “What we discovered shocked us. We were unprepared for what we encountered. Book after book after book contained stories and anecdotes that weren’t merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured explicit descriptions of sex acts between pre-schoolers, stories that seemed to promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships, stories of public masturbation, anal sex in restrooms, affairs between students and teachers, five-year-olds playing sex games, semen flying through the air. One memoir even praised becoming a prostitute as a way to increase one’s self-esteem. Criminal, underage sexual contact between adults and minors is a frequent, casual theme in these materials. Above all, the books seemed to have less to do with promoting tolerance than with an unabashed attempt to indoctrinate students into a hyper-sexualized worldview.” (source: http://maggiesnotebook.blogspot.com/2009/12/kevin-jennings-porn-reading-list-for.html )
On April 13, 2010, the Alameda, California School Board adopted a new reading list for elementary grades :
For listings of additional LGBT books and resources, consult GLSEN’s web site at www.glsen.org.
8. Teacher “Advocates” for LGBT Students
LGBT activists also ask teachers to be “Advocates” for LGBT students in order to promote change within their respective schools. GLSEN’s Advocate Kit urges teachers to do the following: 1. Assess your school’s climate, policies and practices to make sure they are LGBT inclusive; 2. Support creation of homosexual clubs; 3. Wear rainbow buttons and wristbands; 4. Include positive representations of homosexuals in curriculums and cover LGBT materials in all courses;
9. Read LGBT themed/inclusive books in class
1. Post quotes from famous homosexual icons and information about LGBT History Month in classrooms; 2. Distribute the GLSEN guide to school staff at meetings, post the guide in teacher lounges and put it in the mailboxes of all staff members; 3. Work with the school principal to obtain training for staff on “the school experiences of LGBT students and anti-LGBT bullying and harassment”; 4. Conduct surveys of students, staff and parents on their experiences with biased language, harassment and assault; 5. Implement a gender-neutral dress code; 6. Encourage gender-neutral and/or private bathrooms and changing areas; 7. Conduct proms, homecoming and athletic events that “allow for gender-neutral alternatives to “King” and “Queen”; 8. Plan Valentine’s Day celebrations “inclusive of LGBT and non-coupled students”; 9. Push for library resources and displays that are “inclusive of LGBT people, history and issues”; 10. Work with school officials to ensure Internet filters aren’t blocking access to websites with “LGBT-related information, such as research, historical facts or supportive services for LGBT youth”; and 11. Display signs notifying students of LGBT Pride Month, as you might for Black History Month or Women’s History Month.
10. Student “Allies” for LGBT Students
LGBT activists are also asking students to be “Allies” for homosexual students. They want fellow students to speak out and stand up for homosexual students and their homosexuality. As GLSEN points out in their website: “Allies have been involved in almost all movements for social change, and allies can make a significant contribution to the LGBT rights movement….. Homophobia and transphobia can be used to stigmatize, silence and, on occasion, target people who are perceived as LGBT, but are not.” GLSEN then encourages students and teachers to “Wear a visible, supportive button or wristband or even a simple rainbow bracelet. These will let students know that you are a supportive ally without saying a word.”
11. LGBT-Inclusive School Policies and Practices
GLSEN claims that “homophobia, transphobia, and heterosexism can manifest themselves in school policies and practices, creating an unwelcoming, unsafe and hostile environment for LGBT students. Policies and practices that exclude LGBT students, or force them to conform to what is considered by others as “normal” can alienate LGBT students from the school community.” To prevent that, GLSEN demands that school policies and practices be made LGBT-inclusive. Here are their directions, from their website:
POLICIES AND PROCEDURES: 1. Create and enforce non-discrimination and anti-bullying/harassment policies that explicitly protect LGBT students; 2. Use school forms and applications that are inclusive of all identities and family structures; and 3. Principals should make an “ongoing PA announcement”—once a week, the manual says—telling students about confidential support programs for LGBT students.
COURSE CONTENT: 1. Require health and sexuality education that is inclusive of all sexual orientations and gender identities; 2. Create curriculum that regularly includes information about LGBT people, history and
events; and 3. Develop library resources and displays that are inclusive of LGBT people, history and issues.
SPORTS ACTIVITIES: 1. Work with school coaches, and physical education teachers to combat anti-LGBT language among students and staff; and 2. Make sure athletic teams and events are safe for and inclusive of LGBT students.
CO-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES: 1. Create homosexual student clubs (GSA’s); and 2.Create school publications that cover LGBT people and issues.
SCHOOL EVENTS AND CELEBRATIONS: 1. Work to ensure that school events are inclusive of same-gender and gender-non-conforming couples; 2. Require school dances and proms to be safe for and inclusive of LGBT students, allowing student’s guest/date to be of any gender; 3. Require proms, homecoming and athletic events allow for gender-neutral alternatives to “King” and “Queen”; 4. Make sure Valentine’s Day celebrations are inclusive of LGBT and non-coupled students; and 5. Observe Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in ways that affirm all family structure.
SCHOOL UNIFORMS AND DRESS CODES. Ensure that school uniforms or dress codes are gender-neutral. School uniforms and dress codes that require students to wear clothing deemed appropriate for their gender can restrict students’ gender identity and gender expression, resulting in students feeling uncomfortable or unwelcome in their own school community.
BATHROOMS AND DRESSING AREAS. Provide gender-neutral and/or private bathrooms and changing areas.
SCHOOL LIBRARIES. Work with school librarians to include LGBT-themed literature in the school library collection.
INTERNET FILTERS. Work with school administrators to ensure that the Internet filters are not blocking students from finding information about the LGBT community. Internet filters are often used in schools to block materials harmful to students, such as violent or pornographic sites, but they sometimes can LGBT information.”
WHY ALL OF THIS IS HARMFUL
All of this is not without great harm. Here are just a few examples:
1. It Damages the Development of Children
• It exposes kids in kindergarten through 5th grade to themes they are too young to understand.
• It robs children of their innocence.
• It sexualizes kids at very early ages, before they are old enough to understand the consequences of sexual activity.
• It creates an unhealthy view of sex and intimacy.
• It warps moral development.
• It creates anxiety.
• It confuses their gender development.
• It damages self esteem by not affirming a child’s maleness and femaleness.
• It damages their social interactions and normal maturation.
2. It Damages Parent’s Rights
After the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, Robb and Robin Wirthlin were shocked to find that their second grader’s teacher was reading aloud to the class a book called King & King, about two princes who marry each other and ends with the princes kissing each other. The Wirthlin’s complained to their school, but to no avail. In fact the school refused to permit the Wirthlin’s son to “opt out” of pro-same-sex marriage lessons in the future. The Wirthlins joined other parents in a lawsuit in Massachusetts to try to stop the indoctrination of their children about homosexuality in their elementary school. They lost. On appeal, the Court of Appeals lectured the parents on “diversity” and ruled that parents cannot prohibit schools from promoting homosexuality – and that parents can NOT opt their children out of such instruction – because “Massachusetts has recognized same-sex marriage under its state constitution” and the state’s schools have the right to “educate their students regarding that recognition.” The U.S. Supreme Court just turned down their appeal. Here is a short video of the Parker’s story: (http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1815825713).
The United States Senate is expected to take up the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. It takes away the parents’ rights to rear their child and gives it to the government. The government becomes the caretaker and the guardian, and the parent becomes the babysitter. If the contract is enforced, the government would have the right to intercede or supersede if officials believe the parents are doing something that is not in the best interest of the child. An example of his comes from Germany, where the government has passed laws that ban parents from homeschooling their children.
Refusing to let parents know about and approve controversial material that is being taught to their children, particularly when it is clearly sexual in nature, and refusing to allow parents to opt their kids out of participating, violates and damages parent’s rights. Removing parents from their rightful parental responsibility for the development of their children marginalizes parents and the family.
3. It Damages Parent-Child Relationships
Too many educators think they know better than parents what is best for their children. They are indoctrinating kids to accept and adopt LGBT lifestyles, starting in kindergarten. They are also teaching kids that their parents and grandparents are bigots if they do not accept the radical redefinition of sex, marriage and family.
The schools’ endorsement of all this quickly undermines parents’ authority in an extraordinarily sensitive area. While the parents try to teach one thing at home, the school presents the opposite view. Those parents who have a better way to handle their child’s difficulties will find their efforts thwarted.
Usurping the role of parents damages the parent-child relationship and destroys the credibility and authority of parents. Our children are being systematically manipulated by authority figures to be intolerant of the values being taught at home.
4. It Damages Education
Supplanting academic education with political propaganda is ruining public education. Schools now spend so much time indoctrinating children that they hardly have any time left to teach academics. US education continues to decline in comparison with other developed countries. California, for example, at the forefront of LGBT training, rates among the three worst states in the nation in academics.
5. It Damages Children’s Trust & Respect for Authority
Homosexual indoctrination, aimed at very young students, is “manipulative.” It abuses the authority and trust that teachers have as role models and authority figures in the classroom. Children will eventually realize what their teachers have been trying to foist upon them, and will come to resent them. That will negatively impact the students’ respect for authority and for others, including homosexuals.
6. It Stigmatizes the Normal & Normalizes the Deviant
Homosexual activists are teaching children that heterosexuality is old-fashioned, and that heterosexuals are intolerant and bigoted. They are teaching children that moral values are no longer relevant, and that all types of sexual expression are of equal dignity and value. By eliminating ethical and moral distinctions, it stigmatizes the normal and normalizes what has for centuries been deemed deviant.
7. It Damages Children’s Respect for Religion and Traditional Values
Traditional religions that disapprove of homosexuality are being regularly and soundly trashed. Children are not allowed to express or even hold to the teachings of their religious parents. This violates the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment. Children with Christian, Jewish or Islamic values are labeled bigoted and wrong. The intolerance coming out of the adult pro-homosexual lobby is being taught in schools, and a mindset of animosity is being created among young children. Homosexual student clubs help fuel the stigmatizing of religion and traditional values and foster division and divisiveness. These kids are told that “homophobia” must be eliminated, and that they have the moral right to silence any disagreement.
8. It Damages the Free Exercise of Religion
When homosexual rights are expanded, freedom of religion is threatened as citizens are coerced to act against conscience and belief. Extremist views on the separation of church and state threaten religious freedom by intimidating those with religious points of view from having a voice in the public square. Newly alleged human rights by homosexuals further jeopardize religious freedom.
As homosexuality gains increasing protected and preferential status, state authorities will require church practices to ignore gender and sexual orientation differences. Opposition to homosexuality will become “invidious discrimination,” “irrational,” or “motivated by hate.” Religious bodies retaining such “discriminatory beliefs” will be subject to a wide range of legal penalties precisely because their policies reflect those beliefs. It is no answer to say that personal freedom of belief is preserved if one cannot act on those beliefs. For religious people, faith is far more than an internal mental exercise – it is an overarching guide for proper living in private, group, and public life.
9. It Damages Freedom of Speech
Democracy requires the free expression of ideas and beliefs. Homosexual activists have the ear and the heart of the arts, entertainment, the current administration, public schools, colleges, and the media. The tolerant majority is now typically disenfranchised by the minority from the same rights to be heard.
Lawsuits and legislation, ostensibly in favor of human rights, have led to tighter restrictions on religious “expression”, and even raises the specter of speech monitors. This begins to put everyone’s free speech rights in jeopardy, as shown by the following examples:
Parochial schools: In England, a Catholic school has been prohibited from firing an openly homosexual headmaster, and parochial schools there are forbidden by law to teach that homosexuality is a sin.
Ministers: Pastors in Sweden were prosecuted for speaking out publicly about same-sex marriage based on their reading of biblical scripture. In Canada, one of 6 countries that have legalized same-sex marriage, A Catholic bishop in Calgary was the target of complaints filed with the Human Rights Commission because he issued a pastoral letter that urged Catholics to oppose same-sex marriage. (“Calgary bishop defiant about same-sex marriage,” Canadian Press, Mar.31, 2005.) And the Alberta Human Rights Commission recently took the draconian step of issuing a ruling forbidding a Christian pastor to make “disparaging” remarks about homosexuality — or even to repeat Biblical condemnations — for the rest of his life, thus prohibiting him from teaching his church’s doctrine about marriage. (“Government to Pastor: Renounce your faith!” WorldNet Daily, June 9, 2008.) A Human Rights Commission complaint was also filed against a Catholic priest for quoting from the bible, the Catholic Catechism, and papal encyclicals. (“Priest investigated for quoting Bible,” WorldNet Daily, June 5, 2008.)
Retail employees: An employee at the Brookstone store in Boston Logan Airport was fired because he expressed his belief that homosexuality was wrong after repeated comments by a manager in support of same-sex marriage. In Massachusetts, the state anti-discrimination law provides special protection for homosexuals which in silencing any opposition. (OneNewsNow, 11/9/2009.)
Democracy requires the rational exchange of ideas. It further corrupts the political process to have the left “dehumanize dissent” by dismissing traditional positions as the product of “bigotry”, “mean-spiritedness”, or “mental dysfunction.” If you brand a person as evil or mentally disturbed, you can ignore what he has to say. This practice is commonplace: If you don’t accept homosexuality as morally equivalent to heterosexuality, you are a “homophobe” – a hateful “bigot”. If you believe that God created men and women different, with differing natural roles in the family and society, you are “sexist”. If you believe that sex should be reserved for marriage, you are “puritanical”, “abnormal” or “undesirable”. If parents do not rejoice when their children commit themselves to a reproductive dead end, they are “evil” and “bigoted.” A postulated but unproven genetic disposition toward homosexuality is supposed to be embraced and accepted by everyone as “perfectly natural” – but the far stronger and almost universal genetic disposition toward having children and grandchild is to be suppressed, kept to oneself, and treated as a mental illness. If you’re unhappy that your son wants to marry a boy, then you are “sick”, “dangerous,” a “homophobe”, and “filled with hate.”
When homosexuals stick the hate label on anyone who criticizes the new secularism, who believes homosexuality is an immoral or abnormal practice, or on anyone who objects to same-sex marriage, then they have effectively silenced them and engineered a monopoly of the dialogue for their own point of view – and dismantled the political process. When the term “homophobic” is used to describe anyone who believes that heterosexuality and traditional man/woman marriage should remain Western society’s ideals, it is quite simply a contemporary form of McCarthyism, and evidences that they have no argument to rebut others.
10. It Damages Civil Rights
By posing as a part of the civil rights movement, homosexual activists have succeeded in attaching their message to the message of human rights and tolerance. Yet these activists allow no other points of view, and differing opinions are labeled as hateful. Denying parent’s the ability to express alternative points of view, and dismissing their views as “bigoted”, “hateful”, “homophobic” and “heterocentric” denies parents their civil rights.
The civil rights issue actually runs in favor of the estimated 96% of the population who are not homosexual. Having LGBT activists homosexualize their children will trample upon their civil rights. For the first time in our history, America is faced with a powerful movement that defines its alleged “rights” in terms of the deprivation of the fundamental rights of others. As a result, the homosexual movement is depriving other Americans of civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
11. It Damages Traditional Values & Creates a Culture of Hedonism
What is taking place today is far more serious than the traditional grab for political power. It is a political battle for the supremacy of competing values. “Woodstock” values vs. the Judeo-Christian Western civilization. The critical change has come in the attitudes of our elites. An anti-Western counterculture has completed its long march through America’s institutions, capturing the arts, entertainment, politics, public schools, colleges, the media, and even many churches. What our leaders once believed to be symptoms of social decline, many now celebrate has harbingers of a freer, better society. What was once decried as decadence is now embraced as progress. Traditional values are not only being displaced, but are being portrayed as medieval and wicked. Like any fighting faith, this militant anti-West ideology does not seek compromise with older faiths. It wants nothing less than extermination. It wants a new morality and a new history to replace the old, and the old to be seen as hateful and reactionary. The unrelenting, and even violent crusade to equate homosexuality with heterosexuality, under the guise of equal dignity, is part of a larger radical agenda – to eliminate the idea of morality.
The values of our children are the leading indicators of our future as a culture. Our children must be taught moral restraint. We cannot allow our schools to promote uncontrolled self- gratification. It will irreparably damage our children and our country.
12. It Damages Trust in Government
When schools and courts usurp the role of parents, and when they foster the tyranny of the minority, they inject cynicism and bitterness into America’s body politic. The parental response consists of quietly withdrawing allegiance from the society that is attacking their children and the family.
Already most parents regard schools – an institution of the state that most directly touches our children – as the enemy. We perceive that schools are being legally obligated to brainwash our children to despise the values that keep civilization alive. Why would parents continue to trust the government enough to let it have authority over our children? The people will simply stop regarding the authority of the government as having any legitimacy.
So either civilized people will succeed in establishing a government that protects children and the family; or civilized people will withdraw their allegiance from a government that won’t protect them; or the politically correct barbarians will have complete victory over children and the family – and lacking the strong family structure on which civilization depends, our civilization will collapse or fade away.
Depriving us of any democratic voice in these sweeping changes may not lead to revolution or even resistance. But it will be just as deadly if it leads to despair. For in a crisis, few citizens will protect or sustain the elite that treated the things we valued – our children, rights of parents, and our right to self-government – with such contempt.
Footnotes:
1. “Beyond the Safety Zone,” Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, October 1, 2000.
2. Defined as “people who do not identify with the gender roles assigned to them by society based on their biological sex,” encompassing “all those who choose not to conform to society’s often stereotypical notions of gender expression, including transsexuals, cross-dressers, two-spirit people, and drag queens and kings.” Nicolette Siragusa, “The Language of Gender: A Discussion and Vocabulary List for Educators on Gender Identity,” Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, p. 4, s.v. “Transgender” (online at http://www.glsen.org/binary-data/GLSEN_ARTICLES/pdf_file/1013.pdf).
3. “Frequently Asked Questions,” Gay-Straight Alliance Network (online at http://www.gsanetwork.org/faq.html).
4. “Twenty Ways Your GSA Can Rock The World!” Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.
5. “A Little Money Goes a Long Way,” Gay/Straight Alliances: A Student Guide (Boston: Massachusetts Department of Education, July 15, 1995).
6. E-mail from Brian Camenker, December 3, 2001; on file with author.
7. “GLSEN and Students Across the Country Gear Up for the Tenth National Day of Silence,” February 7, 2006. Online at: http://www.glsen.org.
8. Patty Maher, “‘Day of Silence’ Questioned: Principal plans to discuss teachers’ participation in gay rights event,” Ann Arbor News, April 24, 2004.
9. Scott Hirschfeld, “Wanting More Than Heroes and Holidays,” Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, March 5.
10. “Celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) History Month,” Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network, October 30, 2001.
11. Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the ‘90s (New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 188.
12. Brian Camenker and Scott Whiteman, “Kids Get Graphic Instruction in Homosexual Sex: State sponsored conference featured detailed sexual material,” Massachusetts News, May 2000. Actual excerpts of the tape of the “Fistgate” conference are also available on Sexualization of Children: The Homosexual Agenda in Massachusetts Schools In their own words (Wellesley, MA: Massachusetts News, 2000), audiotape.
13. “Homosexuality Worries Get School To End Cross-Dressing Day,” Associated Press, November 17, 2004.
14. “Bedford Middle School Planned Cross-Dressing Day for April 13!” MassResistance, April 14, 2005; online at http://massresistance.blogspot.com.
15. “Ten Things Educators Can Do . . . : Ten Action Points to Ensure Respect for All is Taught in Your School,” Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, January 1, 2002.
16. “It’s Elementary Viewing Guide: Synopsis of the Film,” (San Francisco: Women’s Educational Media); online at http://www.womedia.org/elem/synopsis.html
17. Karen Jo Gounard, “It’s Elementary: It’s Slick, It’s Alarming,” Family Friendly Libraries, p. 2 (online at http://www.fflibraries.org/Education_Docs/ELEM99.htm,
18.Norma Bowles and Mark E. Rosenthal, editors, Cootie Shots: Theatrical Inoculations Against Bigotry for Children, Parents and Teachers (New York: TCG Books, 2001)
19. Linda Frye Burnham, “Shards, Circles, Jails, Journeys and Cootie Shots: Four New Books,” Community Arts Network Reading Room (online at http://www.communityarts.net).
20. “Fox Special Report with Brit Hume,” Fox News Network, Transcript # 021803cb.254, February 18, 2002 (Online. Nexis.).
