This article first appeared on the Illinos Family Institute’s website:

Intolerant “Progressive” Educators

10/30/2008 7:36:00 AM
By Laurie Higgins, DSA Director -Illinois Family Institute

“Propaganda Is To Democracy What A Bludgeon Is To A Totalitarian State.”
~Noam Chomsky

An alumnus of District 113, an affluent school district on the North Shore of Chicago, recently informed Illinois Family Institute that once again public money is being used to fund activities that articulate only one side of the cultural debate on homosexuality.

It’s fascinating to see our “progressive” public educators — our foes of conformity; devotees of diversity; teachers of tolerance; defenders of dissent; spurners of censorship — in action. And they are busy little beavers when it comes to propaganda. When it comes to the sacred cow of homosexuality, the “progressive” educators among us are intolerant, conformist censors, deeply committed to using public funds in the service of eliminating intellectual diversity and silencing dissent from their subversive dogma.

Students in District 113 cannot make it through their freshman year without being exposed to resources that affirm controversial, unproven, and bleakly deterministic theories on the nature and morality of homosexuality. And yet they make it through the entire four years of high school without ever being exposed to a single resource or activity that affirms or articulates conservative views.

For example, every year students from the gay and straight alliance pay a visit to all the mandatory Freshman Advisory classes to “share their stories” with freshmen. These presentations are intended to generate sympathy for what many consider to be immoral, volitional behavior. The students who self-identify as homosexual never share with freshmen the fact that there is no research proving that homosexuality is biologically determined. Nor do they share with freshmen that “queer” theorists believe that homosexuality is not biologically determined.

In 2006 at Deerfield High School, the Freshman Advisory curriculum included the whimsical “Terminology Match-Up” game wherein freshmen were given either cards with terms or cards with definitions, and then asked to “mill about and find their matches.”

The terms included the following: cross dressers; down low, which refers to married men having homosexual sex on the side; genderqueer; homophobia (complete with Freud’s idea about repressed homosexuality); MSM, which means men having sex with men; transphobia; pansexual; androgyny, and sex reassignment surgery.

The good news is the Freshman Advisory curriculum has been revised. The bad news is the administration placed all curricular and “supplementary” resources on a password-protected computer portal for which no parent or community member may have the password. When asked to make it accessible to all, the administration said that parents may make an appointment with the principal to come to her office to view resources. Of course, the beauty of having all resources on a secret password-protected portal is that documents can be added or dumped at a moment’s notice. Oh, if only we had an Orphan Annie decoder badge.

Both of District 113’s high schools, Deerfield and Highland Park, have taught the egregiously obscene, blasphemous, pro-gay screed entitled Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes by homosexual playwright Tony Kushner.

The Pulitzer prize-winning play revolves around two couples: married Mormon couple Harper and Joe whose marriage is disintegrating in large measure due to Joe’s repressed homosexuality, which he eventually acts upon: and a homosexual couple, Louis and Prior.
Louis leaves Prior when he finds out Prior has AIDS, and then has a month-long affair with Harper’s husband Joe.

There’s also Roy Cohn, the unscrupulous, foul-mouthed, closeted, Jewish, Republican lawyer, who dies of AIDS; the black, homosexual, ex-drag queen nurse with the heart of gold, Belize; and the Angel with “eight vaginae” whose visits prompt sexual arousal and orgasm. The play is replete with references to orgasms, fellatio, semen, ejaculation, and f******. It includes the line “Suck my ****, Mother Theresa.” The teacher who taught this artistic masterpiece was also able to arrange a conference call between all of his students and the homosexual playwright Tony Kushner.

The historically inaccurate pro-homosexual play The Laramie Project has been taught for several years in English classes at Deerfield High School; the spring 2008 play at DHS was The Laramie Project; and the theater teacher arranged to have one of the original cast members, a lesbian, come to DHS to speak to students.

A U.S. History teacher taught a pro-homosexual essay entitled “American Things” by none other than the inestimable and ubiquitous Tony Kushner.

Another social studies teacher had her students read an article from the pinnacle of scholarly erudition, People Magazine, that was sympathetic to transgender teens.

Surely, you say, the librarians in such prestigious academic institutions would recoil at the very idea of censorship, but as of a year ago at Deerfield High School, though the library subscribes to the homosexual periodical The Advocate, and though it has over sixty books that espouse liberal views of homosexuality, it had nary a single book from a conservative perspective on homosexuality-zero, zilch, zippo.

The administration, leaving no stone unturned, offers pro-homosexual propaganda to staff and faculty through professional development activities like the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network’s film That’s a Family and Peggy McIntosh’s “Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity” (SEED) seminars-all of which are paid for by the public.

The alumnus mentioned at the start of this commentary informed IFI that this year Highland Park High School is performing both the pro-gay musical Rent and the pro-gay play The Laramie Project.

I have yet to find one piece of literature, one essay, one fine arts production, one speaker, one professional growth opportunity, one panel discussion, one newspaper article, one seminar or workshop, or one book in the library that embodies or articulates conservative views on homosexuality. What’s even more disturbing, and it should be disturbing to all who value the free exchange of ideas, is that District 113 is not alone.

Many, probably most, public schools suffer from the subversive efforts of activists whose intolerance, whose demands for ideological conformity, whose utter disregard for intellectual diversity, whose unfettered use of censorship, and whose palpable distaste for dissent threaten the legitimacy of public education and transform it into indoctrination and political advocacy.

Exactly how do schools purport to teach critical thinking in the absence of ideas?

Below is an excellent column by Joel Belz, founder of WORLD magazine, answering some of the current Christian gibberish critical of believers who fight for Truth in the public square. (Click HERE for the full column in WORLD.) While we’re at it, here are 20 more good reasons why Christians (or anyone) should never feel guilty about a single-minded focus in countering the homosexual/transsexual activist and pro-abortion lobbies:

1. Human Rights Campaign (largest pro-homosexual PAC);
2. National Gay and Lesbian Task Force;
3. Lambda Legal;
4. NARAL Pro-Choice American (formerly National Abortion Rights Action League, which cruelly defends even later-term abortions).
5. GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation;
6. GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network);
7. NOW (they manage to promote both lesbianism and abortion-on-demand);
8. MTV (obnoxious in its one-sided promotion of homosexuality, bisexuality, etc.);
9. Soulforce and other Bible-twisting, “queer theology”-promoting groups;
10. Radical, reason-challenged, pro-homosexual websites like young Jeremy Hooper’s Good As You blog, Wayne (“Anything But Straight”) Besen’s ‘ex-gay’-hating Truth Wins Out, and lesbian Pam (“Jeebus”) Spaulding’s Pam’s House Blend;
11. National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association;
12. EMILY’s List (a pro-abortion PAC)
13. Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (working to open up the military to homosexuals);
14. ACLU’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project;
15. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.)
16. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
17. Tim Gill (homosexual money-man)
18. Pro-homosexual activist groups like Equality Illinois fighting in all 50 states for radical legislation that undermines marriage;
19. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
20. PFLAG (Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians & Gays), a radical pro-homosexual group.

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Belz writes for WORLD:

Stop Apologizing!
It’s not always wrong to be a “single-issue” advocate

It’s become an increasingly frequent reminder to us evangelical Christians not to let our cultural identity be framed by “single issues.”

It was a reminder implicitly included in the “Evangelical Manifesto,” a document whose basic content we at WORLD have applauded but whose political direction I questioned in our last issue. Why are the Manifesto’s backers so ready to join the cultural left in suggesting a guilt trip for those evangelicals who have been preoccupied with the evils of abortion and same-sex marriage?

And if some argue that the rising generation of younger evangelicals is a bit embarrassed by what they think is an out-of-balance focus by their elders, and thinks it’s time to get equally exercised over issues like racism, economic justice, and the environment—well, if that’s the case with our twentysomethings and our teenagers, then maybe we need to go to work and do a better job of explaining to them why we’ve put the emphasis where we have for the last generation and why we believe that it’s time not to lower our voices.

Evangelicals shouldn’t be embarrassed to say boldly and clearly: Abortion and same-sex marriage are uniquely heinous sins. They rattle the foundations of a civilized society. They take a culture in a dreadful direction. We haven’t been wrong to say so. We aren’t fanatics.

Click HERE to read Belz’ entire column in WORLD

This may be the most important political article you read this election year. Even homosexual journalists like this reporter for the “gay” magazine The Advocate are weary of the secretive nature of the Gill Action Fund and its plan to use out-of-state homosexual donors’ money strategically to knock out pro-family state legislators across the country. If this were a “Christian Right” group stealthily using Christian millionaires’ money to displace liberal, pro-homosexual politicians, the mainstream media would be all over it.

We’ll have much more to say about the Gill Action Fund and this article, but note that the man Gill chose to run his operation is Patrick Guerriero, former executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a group working to make the GOP more homosexuality-friendly. Log Cabin operatives like to call themselves “conservative,” but their national ex-leader has been busy for the last three years running a stealth campaign to take out mostly pro-family, conservative Republican state legislators in places like Iowa, Pennsylvania and New York. More evidence that the GOP’s “Big Tent” policy of simultaneously trying to appease both its grassroots base of millions upon millions of pro-family Republicans — and a tiny special interest group of homosexual activist Republicans whose loyalty is first to their own “gay agenda” — is an exercise in futility. — Peter LaBarbera

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Here are the first three paragraph’s of the Advocate piece “The Gay Goodfellas” (emphasis added):

The Gay Goodfellas

Inside the Gill Action Fund, the most effective pro-gay political weapon you never heard of

By Kerry Eleveld, The Advocate, June 19, 2008

Patrick Guerriero and Bill Smith of the Gill Action Fund [photo of founder Tim Gill at left] have a problem. Guerriero, former leader of the Log Cabin Republicans and onetime candidate for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, and Smith, a political consultant and former employee of Karl Rove, want LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered] people to understand their strategy for winning equal rights — a targeted approach to developing what they call “fair-minded majorities” in state legislatures across the country. During the 2006 election, the first cycle in which the organization set its sights on state legislative races, control of 13 state chambers switched hands. Ten were Democratic takeovers — chambers that are now more likely to make gay-friendly decisions.

Smith and Guerriero want to get that story out, yes, but they don’t want Gill Action to be a centerpiece of the article, nor do they want any of its internal or external machinations to be revealed. No focusing on Gill Action’s founder, Tim Gill, a self-made millionaire who by all accounts is exceedingly modest and usually ducks the press at all costs. No naming any of the state legislators the organization helped to elect in 2006, lest those candidates find themselves in the cross hairs of the Christian right in the next election. They won’t disclose the states they worked in during the last election cycle, and in terms of 2008, they’re willing to discuss only two states in which they will be active: Florida, where Gill Action will be playing defense against a constitutional marriage amendment; and Massachusetts, where they will be helping to reelect Democratic and Republican legislators who had voted to protect the state’s same-sex marriage law. And although I can talk to one of their donors, I can’t name that person in print. Any breach of confidentiality there might scare off future donors or, perhaps worse, let the opposition know where Gill will strike next.

Essentially, Guerriero and Smith want to turn their face to the sunlight ever so briefly, then retreat to the shadowy world of politics to work in virtual anonymity — developing a hit list of the community’s worst enemies, identifying our best friends, and doing whatever has to be done to get the next hate-crimes bill passed or constitutional amendment killed at the state level.

Click here to read the entire Advocate article: “The Gay Goodfellas: Inside the Gill Action Fund, the most effective pro-gay political weapon you never heard of.”