Gay School Days...Part 1
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We have a Constitution and our Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments) that
makes us free. Right? Then visit:
http://www.trimonline.org
http://www.getusout.org
http://www.thenewamerican.com
http://www.givemeliberty.org
http://nca.mybravenet.com
http://www.jbs.org
Then take a look at these sites:
http://www.dixierising.com
http://www.dixienet.org
http://www.palmetto.org
http://www.southerncaucus.org
http://www.spofga.org
http://www.southern-style.com
Subject: (Gay) School Days
(Gay) School Days
http://www.family.org/cforum/citizenmag/features/a0016607.html
What would schools look like if they were run by homosexual activists?
In California, parents are learning the answer.
PARENTAL ADVISORY: Portions of this article may be inappropriate for young
readers.
by Barbara Curtis
Marin County, just north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge, is
one of the most affluent counties in the nation, with a median home price of
$529,000. Home to U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, it's also one of the most
liberal. When Californians voted overwhelmingly for Proposition 22, placing
the state on record against same-sex "marriages," Marin was one of only four
counties to buck the tide.
Even so, Marin has its relatively conservative enclaves. Drive to the
northernmost city of Novato (population 47,000), with its lower home prices
and family-friendly atmosphere, and you'd think you were in a typical
modest-sized American town. So when Greg and Lisa sat down to dinner one
evening in late February and asked their fourth-grade son, Kenny, to tell
them about his school day, they weren't ready for what they heard.
"We had an assembly today," Kenny said. "We learned that there are all
kinds of families," including "two mommies" and "two daddies." He also
shared some of the words he'd learned for the first time that day:
homosexual, lesbian, faggot.
Kenny wasn't the only child to bring home such a report. All the
second-through fifth-graders at Pleasant Valley School had been called to an
assembly, where they learned slogans like "I'm gay and it's OK," reinforced
by various skits-like one in which Rapunzel cut her hair and ran away with
her girlfriend. The show made an impact. "Daddy, am I a lesbian?" one
third-grade girl asked. "I like girls better than boys." The group behind
the assembly bore an innocent-sounding name, Cootie Shots. But it turned out
to be an offshoot of Fringe Benefits, a theater group that gets public funds
for "tolerance of diversity" performances in high schools and middle schools
throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District. Now the group is
targeting much younger kids, because-in the words of a longtime Fringe
Benefits booster, Steven Hicks of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education
Network (GLSEN) of Los Angeles-"It is imperative to begin addressing these
issues in the elementary schools as early as possible."
Lots of parents were upset at the show and at the fact that they hadn't
been given any warning. Lots of them complained to the principal and the
superintendent, though so far to little effect. But few of them, including
Greg and Lisa, would let their real names be used for this story. In Marin
County, as one resident said, "Traditional-minded folk stay in the closet if
they don't want to be known as hate-mongers. People who don't live here just
don't know what it's like."
Marin County isn't unusual, however. The Golden State is being swept by a
lavender wave, as gay activists overrun classrooms statewide. And if parents
and churches don't mobilize fast, that wave just might sweep the country.
Coup d'etat
It's not that Californians themselves are overwhelmingly pro-homosexual.
They proved that as recently as March of last year, when Prop 22 (14 simple
words: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in
California") passed with more than 60 percent of the vote.
But homosexual activists have made substantial gains in the past two years.
They lobbied for a series of bills, mostly aimed at schools, which the
Democrat-controlled Legislature passed and Democratic Gov. Gray Davis signed
without hesitation. The new laws bar discrimination based on "sexual
orientation" not only in public schools, but in any private and religious
schools that accept state money.
They charge teachers with identifying students with tendencies toward
"hate violence," sometimes based on no more than routine verbal insults (aka
"hate motivated incidents"). They call for revised curricula to "foster
appreciation" for diversity and discourage discriminatory attitudes and
practices. They provide for K-12 access to "supplemental resources to combat
bias" including "gender or sexual orientation" and require "tolerance
programs."
In conjunction with the new laws, California's liberal Superintendent of
Public Instruction Delaine Eastin formed a 36-member advisory task force to
translate them into state Education Codes. The task force-though billing
itself as a champion of diversity-showed little diversity in its makeup. It
was stacked with gay activists and sympathizers affiliated with such
esoteric groups as Older Asian Sisters in Solidarity (OASIS) and Lavender
Youth Recreation and Information Center (LYRIC) as well as more "mainstream"
outfits like GLSEN and the National Education Association Gay and Lesbian
Caucus.
On April 11, 2001, following months of closed-door meetings, the task force
presented its recommendations in a 21-page report. Going the Legislature a
few miles more, they included:
- Surveying children to probe their attitudes about homosexuality.
- Integrating pro-homosexual and pro-transgender (yes, transgender) messages
into "all" curricula, including science, history, language arts and even
math.
- Creating new policies "to reduce [the] adverse impact of gender
segregation . . . related to locker room facilities, restrooms and dress."
- Posting "positive grade level appropriate visual images" that include "all
sexual orientations and gender identities" throughout the school.
- Using taxpayer dollars to establish Gay-Straight Alliances on campuses,
put all school personnel through extensive and "ongoing" sensitivity
training, pay for a media blitz, "provide rehabilitation to perpetrators" of
discrimination and appoint a person in each school to monitor implementation
of the new programs.
Karen Holgate, director of policy for the pro-family Capitol Resource
Institute, says it all adds up to large-scale indoctrination.
"They clearly want all of our children to accept homosexuality as a
positive, normal, healthy lifestyle, regardless of what their parents or the
Bible or their churches might say," Holgate told Citizen. "They're pitting
the school and the state against the values and beliefs of parents."
'There is no truth!' Homosexuals didn't wait for a legislative mandate to
begin pressuring schools. Efforts began in some cities several years ago. In
Novato, for example, a Diversity Advisory Committee has for several years
been working on a revised curriculum, which it submitted to the school board
in April. If the plan is approved (a vote was pending at press time), then
starting this fall, Novato elementary schoolchildren will celebrate
diversity with supplemental materials like the slick pro-homosexuality film
That's a Family (for details, see Citizen).
Local parents complain they've been blindsided. Though as state law
required they were notified that they could review the curriculum in the
weeks prior to the school board vote, only a few weeks' notice was given-and
many parents reported they went to the administration building only to be
told That's a Family had been checked out, meaning that no copies were
available for public review.
One mother-who said she wished she could give her name but "my husband is
an educator and we just can't take the risk of speaking publicly"-saw That's
a Family and found it "disturbing." She noted that it exposed young children
to everything from lesbian households to children raised by grandparents
because of parental drug abuse-but "not one was an intact heterosexual
family." She said she tried to speak with a school board member, who brushed
her aside as naive: "Well, it sounds like your child has never had a kid in
their class with two mothers."
And what's happening at the elementary level is just a prelude to what's
going on in California high schools. On April 9, Novato High students were
subjected to a survey by the Gay/Straight Alliance. The questions ranged
from "How many times a day do you hear the word 'faggot'?" and "Do you have
any gay or lesbian friends?" to "Would you attend a meeting of the
Gay/Straight Alliance?" and "What is your sexual orientation?" Neither the
purpose of the survey nor what would be done with the results were made
public.
Once again, state law notwithstanding, parents weren't notified. And by
this age, their sons and daughters weren't likely to share many details with
them.
"I didn't think of it," 17-year-old Jason told Citizen. "It wasn't that out
of the ordinary. People are always trying to push this agenda at school.
Every classroom has a poster that says 'No Room for Homophobia.' " The same
day on a different front 25 miles north, Santa Rosa High School kicked off
Holy Week with a "Week of Diversity." Parents were notified of 82 workshops
to be held Tuesday through Friday but not of Monday's raunchy kickoff
assembly, featuring a group of students from Novato's San Marin High School
who call themselves Sex 'n' Stuff. According to a substitute teacher who was
present, the group's performance included "vulgar sex scenes" and everything
from "sexual molestation, rape, unwanted pregnancy, HIV, anorexia" to "kids
being killed by drunk driving, fighting and . . .suicide."
A few dozen parents who attended workshops themselves were appalled at what
the kids were being taught-for example, that some people come out of the
womb in the wrong body, that being gay is nature's response to an
overcrowded world and that almost all of us are really "transgenders."
At one point, a workshop even made it clear what organizers' real target
was. In a skit about creating a "hate-free world," a parent reported,"Hatred
is expressed by a person who role-plays being a believer in a book (which
she reads every morning and especially on Sundays), and it is that book that
gives her the right to hate and put others down as lesser beings. She also
says the book contains the truth; other students yell out, 'There is no
truth!' Everyone knew which book she was referring to."
Yet in the eyes of at least one observer-attorney and veteran family
advocate Scott Lively, president of the Pro-Family Law Center in Citrus
Heights, Calif.-the event did have a perversely religious character.
Watching a parade of homosexual students tell their coming-out stories,
Lively noted that "the only comparable experience I've seen has been in
church settings where people have testified to how Christ changed their
lives. Only here the 'savior' was identified as the 'gay' community." Shut
up Students who read the Bible aren't the only ones facing intimidation in
schools paid for by California taxpayers.
Ask David Lapp, a physics teacher at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley.
Lapp heard grumbling from students required to attend politically slanted
assemblies staged by leftist student clubs-events where, Lapp said,
"students, some as young as 14 years old, are being, in my opinion,
indoctrinated."
After a National Organization for Women Club assembly during which teenage
girls advocated abortion rights, Lapp voiced his objections in the school
newspaper, only to be met with a student protest labeling him (among other
things) "racist." The school administration seemed to find it all rather
embarrassing, yet made no effort to shake the students from their conviction
that some groups are more deserving of tolerance than others.
Or ask moms and dads who've sought to exclude their children from
"diversity" programs-an option being presented by pro-family groups that are
distributing opt-out forms to parents across the state.
Carolyn Neff, a West Hills mother of two, heard about the opt-out forms on
a March Focus on the Family broadcast. She promptly ordered the forms for
herself, gave one to a friend and passed others on to local mothers who
asked for copies.
A few days later, Neff says, she got a call from the principal of Pomello
Drive Elementary School, who accused her of hatred, intolerance and
inflammatory remarks. The principal said she would not be allowed to speak
to other parents at the school, and when Neff cited her right to free
speech, the principal said she would have to exercise it on the sidewalk
away from the building.
"I just wanted to be the messenger," Neff says. "People can do what they
want once they have all the information." But information is dispensed
selectively in Golden State schools these days-to students, parents and
teachers. Novato's teachers are sent to Los Angeles for two days of Tools
for Tolerance training offered at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum.
Trainees experience emotionally compelling reproductions of prewar Germany
and Holocaust scenes, as well as more modern situations like sitting in a
diner listening to "hate radio," which leads to a man's murder. Just about
every group possible is represented as a victim of oppression-Jews, Muslims,
homosexuals, seniors. Yet one group is omitted: Christians, who are
portrayed not as victims but as victimizers. In one film about a man who
spent years as a neo-Nazi, the name of the church he attended during those
years was prominently displayed, as though Christianity went hand-in-hand
with his bigotry. During another presentation, a teacher described a school
district meeting on the plight of homosexual parents and alleged that
Christians had heckled the speakers. (Confronted later by someone from the
same district who'd heard a different story, the teacher admitted, "Oh, they
[the Christians] didn't really say anything, but they just sat there and
looked like they wanted to.")
Wake-up call The parental response to the pro-homosexuality campaign may be
late in coming, but there are signs that it just might develop into a
significant counter force.
"I can tell you that since the [March] Focus on the Family broadcast,
thousands of calls have been going in to the department of education,
legislators and the governor," Holgate said. "We know this because we've
been hearing from people in all those offices and from the parents, too."
Those legal opt-out forms, developed by Lively and fellow attorney Gary
Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation in Escondido, Calif., are
finding their way into circulation and being downloaded from numerous Web
sites, including that of the Capitol Resource Institute (see "Take Action").
"This form will become a standard tool for parents to protect their
children from harmful sexual matter in the California public school system,"
Lively predicted. "Every parent should have it." "We're hearing from a lot
of folk not only in California, but lately from other states, too," Holgate
said. "They're looking to adapt the form in their own states, and we're
encouraging that."
But groups like Capitol Resource aren't stopping at helping children escape
pro-homosexuality schools. They're trying to reverse the trend."Parents need
to tell their state legislators to repeal all of these laws that violate our
rights and beliefs," Holgate said. "We need to tell the people we elect, 'We
want you to pass laws that support families and their values, not undermine
them.'"
TAKE ACTION: California readers who need help resisting the homosexual
agenda should contact:
Capitol Resource Institute 1414 K St., # 200 Sacramento, CA 95814 (916)
498-1940 www.captitolresource.org
The group's Web site includes legislative updates, an analysis of the task
force report, the legal opt-out form and information on parental rights and
legal options.
Barbara Curtis is a freelance writer in Petaluma, Calif. Coming soon to
your children's school? If you don't like what's happening in California
schools, heads up: If the National Education Association has its way, it'll
soon be happening everywhere else, too. That's not quite the group's
official position yet, but it likely will be after the NEA's convention in
July, when the nation's largest teachers union will vote on a resolution to
meet the "diverse needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender students."
Among the targets of the resolution are state laws promoting abstinence. "We
teach abstinence only," complained Phyllis Sorenson, president of the NEA's
Utah chapter, to an Associated Press reporter in March. "We don't even say
the words 'gay' or 'lesbian' in this state in any context." There's little
doubt that the measure will pass. Long immersed in left-wing politics, the
NEA signaled its embrace of homosexuality when its president, Bob Chase,
appeared as keynote speaker at last year's GLSEN convention. There, Chase
declared his organization's support for a "radical pro-civil rights
agenda"-"civil rights," in liberal parlance, being a euphemism that includes
special "gay rights." The NEA is promoting an emphasis on gay issues in
teacher training and encouraging principals to use Just the Facts, a
pro-homosexuality primer. "What we're seeing in California is what large
parts of the education establishment, especially teachers unions, would like
to put in place across the country," Focus on the Family Education Analyst
Dick Carpenter said. Not all classroom teachers are happy about the trend.
An internal survey of NEA members found many concerned that the group's
backing of homosexuality represented an unwarranted move from educating
kids to controversial social activism. "The NEA has a captive audience of
children," Carpenter noted. "And it's planning to use that power to
force-feed those children the homosexual agenda." - Matt Kaufman
"... our efforts as educators must not be directed to restoring the past
order of morality but to participating in creating a new one... when it is
shed there will be a new moral order to take it's place... a counterculture
that will burst through the surface." (Roberta T. Ash; "Durkheim's Moral
Education Reconsidered: Toward the Creation of a Counterculture". In SCHOOL
REVIEW, November, 1971, p. 112)
029.23.0.0 #41 End
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary
Americans." Comrade Pres W. J. Klinton. USAToday. 11 Mar 93. Pg 2A. "You
know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to
have their fair say." Comrade Pres W. J. Klinton. 28 May 93. The Courtyard.
City Hall, Philadelphia. "I'm not going to have some reporters pawing
through our papers. We are the President." Comrade Hillary Diane Klinton.