Deerfield Superintendent Calls Student Confidentiality Agreements “A Mistake”

Excerpted from School Tells Kids to Hide Pro-“Gay” Propaganda from Parents, published Mar 13, 2007, by Concerned Women for America:

In a shocking and brazen act of governmental abuse of parental rights, Deerfield High School (DHS) in Deerfield, Illinois, has required fourteen-year-old freshmen to attend a “Straight Gay Alliance Network” (GSA) panel discussion led by “gay” and “lesbian” upperclassmen during a “freshman advisory” class which secretively featured inappropriate discussions of a sexual nature in promotion of high-risk homosexual behaviors.

Not only has DHS required that its young and impressionable freshmen be exposed to radical homosexual propaganda, the school has further required that students sign a “confidentiality agreement” promising not to tell anyone — including their own parents — about the discussion.

Matt Barber, Policy Director for Cultural Issues with Concerned Women for America (CWA), said of the scandal:

“This is unbelievable. It’s not enough that students at Deerfield High are being exposed to improper and offensive material relative to unhealthy and high-risk homosexual behaviors, but they’ve essentially been told by teachers to lie to their parents about it.

“This goes to the heart of the homosexual agenda. The professional propagandists in the ‘gay-rights’ lobby know the method all too well. If you can maintain control of undeveloped and impressionable youth and spoon-feed them misinformation, lies and half-truths about dangerous, disordered and extremely risky behaviors, then you can control the future and ensure that those behaviors are not only fully accepted, but celebrated. That’s what homosexual activists from GSA are attempting to do, and that’s what DHS is clearly up to as well.”

Dr. George Fornero, superintendent of DHS’ Dist. 113, told CWA that the district “made a mistake” by requiring children to sign the confidentiality agreement and that it would be entirely aboveboard and honest with parents in the future. However, as Barber noted, the damage has already been done: “Until DHS and other government schools across the country are made to stop promoting the homosexual agenda, kids will continue to be exposed to — and encouraged to participate in — a lifestyle that places them at high risk for life-threatening disease, depression and spiritual despair,” said Barber.

Remarkably, even after the school district’s surreptitious actions were exposed, parents were nonetheless told that they were not welcome to sit in on the “freshman advisory” and were not permitted to have access to materials used in compiling its activist curriculum.