David Parker, ‘King and King,’ and the Battle for Our Children’s Hearts and Minds

Americans For Truth Speaker (Friday, Oct. 5) David Parker of Lexington, Massachusetts, in hand-cuffs after being arrested in 2005 at his son’s elementary school — after refusing to budge in his demand for parental rights. At right is the last page of “King & King,” a “children’s” picture book that was read to first-graders at the school. Those are the two princes kissing, the culmination of a story line in which the prince rejects princesses in favor of another man as his true love. The two princes get “married” and the caption for the “same-sex marriage” page reads: “The wedding was very special. The queen even shed a tear or two.” The principal at Esterbrook Elementary School in Lexington defended the “King & King” lesson and denied parents the right to be informed about it and to opt their kids out.

Dear Americans For Truth Reader,

There is a battle to preserve right and wrong in this country — and a campaign to teach children that “human wrongs” are actually “human rights.” David Parker, who comes to the Chicago area in a week (Friday, October 5) for Americans For Truth’s first annual banquet, is on the front lines of that battle.

David and his wife Tonia are concerned Massachusetts parents who simply didn’t want their son to be brainwashed by a politically correct education establishment that has lost its way.

We are honored and delighted to have David as one of two dynamic speakers at our Americans For Truth banquet next week — Friday, October 5 in Lombard (registration is extended until Monday; click HERE for information). If you live in the Midwest, and can drive (or even fly) in, I’d strongly encourage you to come see this man who is a hero for truth and represents all that is great about this nation.

Here’s my guarantee: your “freedom fighting” batteries will be charged for years to come by this exciting evening.

Our other featured speaker, Charlene Cothran, a former lesbian-activist-turned-Christian and founder of VENUS Magazine, is equally compelling. You won’t want to miss her God-honoring testimony of being delivered from homosexuality; click HERE to sign up by Monday using your VISA or MasterCard.

Get off the sidelines

Let’s face it: most people sit on the sidelines in this ongoing societal “war” over which values will be ascendant in our culture. David and Tonia Parker got off the sidelines. When faced with a school bureaucracy in Lexington, Mass., that asserted it had the right and duty in the nation’s only homosexual-“marriage” state to teach the acceptance of homosexuality to young elementary school children without even informing parents, they fought back. In 2005, the Parker’s five-year-old son Jacob came home with a “Diversity Book Bag,” which contained the book Who’s in a Family promoting the acceptance of “same-sex” families.

The rest is history, as David Parker was famously arrested at Jacob’s school, Esterbrook Elementary, for demanding his parental right to be informed before teachings that violate his and Tonia’s religious beliefs were foisted on their impressionable son.

The controversy grew in 2006 when the Joseph and Robin Wirthlin learned that their seven-year-old son Joey’s first-grade teacher at Esterbrook Elementary had read King & King, a homosexual romance kids book (who would think we’d ever be using those words together?), shown above, aloud to her young students without even notifying their parents.

Now the Parker’s and Wirthlin’s are plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against the Lexington, Massachusetts, Public Schools. The case is covered well by our good friends at MassResistance, who have created an online David Parker Report.

Legal “gay marriage” mandates radical lessons 

Did you know that the legalization of “same-sex marriage,” coupled with “sexual orientation” nondiscrimination laws, has been used by Massachusetts educators to boldly step up their teaching of homosexuality and transgenderism — using books like “King and King” that are designed specifically to normalize homosexual behavior to young minds? When forces in a society succeed at transforming a perversion into a “civil right,” there are far-reaching ramifications — but the effect on innocent children is the most serious.

Note this summary of this National Public Radio story about the Parker and Wirthlin case (emphasis added):

Massachusetts parents infuriated that their second graders were read King & King, a fairy tale about two gay princes, are suing the school and the teacher in federal court. The parents say schools are violating their religious freedom. But in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal, public school officials say they not only can talk about gay couples, they are required to.

Listen to the NPR story: that must be the teacher (she goes unnamed) talking excitedly about the King & King story, while outraged parent Robin Wirthlin complains about indoctrination and rightly worries about the dangers of teaching positively about homosexual romance to seven-year-old boys who still think girls have “cooties.”

And then there’s Lexington superintendent Paul Ash, who explains to the NPR reporter how Esterbrook Elementary evaded a state parental notification law that requires that Massachusetts parents be informed beforehand of any school lessons dealing with human sexuality.

NPR reports, “But school officials say a book like King and King does not require parental notification because it has no more to do with human sexuality than Sleeping Beauty, for example, or Cinderella.”

Guess what? Sleeping Beauty never touched off a parents’ rebellion.

Then Ash makes this particularly inane comment:

“There wouldn’t be any controversy if the book had a prince marrying a princess.”

Yes, normalcy, (traditional) marriage and family are not controversial — except to those who would undermine them. 

NPR reports that Superintendent Ash said he would have “thought twice” about allowing the reading of a book like King & King prior to “same-sex marriage” being legalized in Massachusetts, but now he “feels both a legal and a moral obligation to teach kids about same-sex couples, and to make sure that kids of gay families don’t feel like they’re being treated differently.” Ash continues:

“I believe my job is to honor the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and I don’t think we should allow people to say, ‘Well, I believe in equal rights but we don’t think that that [lessons like reading King & King to second-graders] ought to be taught to children.”

It’s not equal 

So there it is: Gay Law 101: homosexuality-affirming legislation forces society to treat unequal things as equal — thereby corrupting and confusing even the minds of the very young. It says a lot about pro-homosexual liberals’ caving moral foundation that they are increasingly willing to break down healthy and natural boundaries — even for grade school kids who don’t know what normal sex is yet.

Celebrate the passing of older, “anti-gay” generations as you desensitize the newer ones, distorting and exploiting noble concepts like “equal rights.” Since when did it become OK to expose very young children to homosexuality at all — much less through biased “lessons” that parrot the “gay” activist line?

The reasons we in the pro-family and pro-faith movement fight the homosexual activist agenda are all contained in David Parker’s federal lawsuit to retain his (and all parents’) right to guide their children’s moral upbringing — against pro-homosexual elitists who are turning public, and even some private, schools into pro-“gay” indoctrination zones.

Radical egalitarianism 

Remember those dismissive questions posed by “gay” polemicists during homosexual “marriage” debates: “What does MY same-sex marriage have to do with your marriage?” Well, it turns out that when you revolutionize marriage through the law, you revolutionize every public institution, including schools, touching almost everyone in some way. 

Radical egalitarianism — the hallmark of the Left — takes hold of sex and marriage, and soon we have the heavy hand of government enforcing a counterfeit “equality” that defies nature, reason, and common sense. Heterosexual marriage unites the sexes and naturally produces children — new life. Homosexual “unions” and their related sodomies are a dead end. (Yes, they can borrow from heterosexuality to mimic the family.) When the Left’s utopian vision runs smack into the real world, children become guinea pigs and caring parents like the Parker’s and the Wirthlin’s are thrust into the role of activists defending children’s innocence and the natural order of things.

Judge Wolf’s PC ruling  

Now read this from U.S. District Court Judge Mark Wolf February 23 ruling dismissing the Parkers’ and Wirthlins’ lawsuit against Lexington Public Schools (emphasis added):

It is reasonable for public educators to teach elementary school students about individuals with different sexual orientations and about individuals with different sexual orientations and about various forms of families, including those with same-sex parents, in an effort to eradicate the effects of past discrimination, to reduce the risk of future discrimination and, in the process, to reaffirm our nation’s constitutional commitment to promoting mutual respect among members of our diverse society. In addition, it is reasonable for those educators to find that teaching young children to understand and respect differences in sexual orientation will contribute to an academic environment in which students who are gay, lesbian, or the children of same-sex parents will be comfortable and, therefore, better able to learn. …

 

The Parker’s and Wirthlin’s may send their children to a private school that does not seek to foster understandings of homosexuality or same-sex marriage that conflict with their religious beliefs. They may also educate their children at home.

Translation: if you don’t like our version of “tolerance,” then leave. The Parkers and Wirthlins are appealing Wolf’s decision. We’ll get an update on the case’s progress October 5th.

Get parents out of the way 

Take a look again at the shocking “children’s” book photo above of two “princes” kissing following their “wedding.” You may not be able to find the words to describe why this is so wrong, but it is. Somewhere along the line, teachers evolved into “change agents” (another leftist term) and Judeo-Christian morality became the target of social revolutionaries.

But just having edgy lessons is not enough: to change developing, malleable minds, you need to preempt and circumvent those pesky parents. In the words of the author of Who’s in a Family:

“The whole purpose of the book was to get the subject [of same-sex parent households] out into the minds and the awareness of children before they are old enough to have been convinced that there’s another way of looking at life. . . . It would be really nice if children were not subjected to the — I don’t want to use the word ‘bigotry,’ but that’s what I want to say anyway — of their parents and older people.”  

David and Tonia Parker are fighting just for the basic right to be informed about what is being taught to their child. If Judge Wolf’s troubling ruling is not overturned, another legal precedent will be established that says public school parents need not even be informed about — much less be able to guide — the curriculum of their child’s classroom teachings that may clash with their moral beliefs.

Come out and hear David Parker describe his journey from parent to parents’ rights advocate. (Click HERE to read a speech he gave in Massachusetts in 2005.) Hear Charlene Cothran discuss how she went from “gay” activist to Christian evangelist — disproving through her life the modern homosexual canard that people can’t overcome homosexuality.

It’s easy to stand on the sidelines and bemoan America’s moral decline. It’s harder to get in the game of defending God and culture — and maybe even suffer for Jesus Christ’s sake — as David and Charlene have. I hope to see you next Friday as we listen to their courageous stories.

God bless you,

Peter LaBarbera

Americans For Truth

Click HERE for more information on the banquet and to sign up (the new RSVP deadline is Monday, Oct. 1). Click HERE to sign up using your VISA or MasterCard.