The perverse, homosexuality-themed play ‘Angels in America’ contains lines like “Holy Orifice!” and “You [f—–d] this angel?” The blasphemous and vulgar play was taught in a Chicago area high school.

Americans For Truth has learned that the vulgar, homosexuality-themed play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, was chosen for study last year at a Chicago area high school.

I must ask after reading a few profane, pornographic excerpts from Angels in America — with highly artistic lines like, “Holy Orifice!” and “You [f—-d] this angel?”: what is wrong with liberals? What good comes from foisting this blasphemous garbage on students? The use of this play in the classroom borders on mental abuse — it constitutes the corruption of minors — and I suspect that educationists could only continue with this sort of malpractice if parents remain ignorant. — Peter LaBarbera 

(emphasis added below):

WARNING: Offensive sexual language, of the sort that should not be forced on impressionable students in our schools. 

By Laurie Higgins

I have just read Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes by Tony Kushner which is currently being taught in some high schools.  I am dismayed that any high school teacher would choose this highly polemical, vulgar, pro-homosexual play. It is egregiously profane and obscene with references to “fellatio” and “blowjobs,” and casual and frequent use of profane and obscene language.

I reject the anticipated caterwauling from teachers about censorship. Parents who object to this and other offensive texts are not recommending prior restraint or removal of a text from a library. Rather, they are arguing for reasonable respect for parental values and community standards of decency when selecting texts to be taught to minors in public schools. Apparently, what teachers actually mean when they squawk about censorship is that they will never take into account vulgarity, profanity, obscenity, or the deeply held beliefs of conservatives on arguably the single most divisive, contentious issue facing American society. Evidently liberal teachers will continue to promote the normalization of what many, including virtually all Muslim traditions, Orthodox Judaism, the Roman Catholic Church, and many Protestant denominations, as well as many secularists consider sexual perversion. Do faculty members, school boards, and administrations think that Muslim families want their sons and daughters discussing oral sex and homosexuality at school at all, let alone in mixed groups? Certainly, I, as a Protestant, would not want any of my children to discuss these topics in their classes.

I find it nigh unto impossible to believe that this play was chosen simply because of how critically well received it has been within the amoral, arrogant, elitist intelligentsia of American culture who purvey cultural collapse. I believe this text was chosen in order to take on the philistines who contend that traditional values deserve respect and that there should be an end to the advocacy of liberal views on sexual orientation and identity. Choosing an odiously vulgar “gay fantasia” constitutes an insult and an aggressive, arrogant challenge to conservative parents.

What a repugnant and diabolical irony it is that teachers are often prohibited from discussing, even in an intellectual (as opposed to proselytical) way, religion, but they may ask students to read and discuss “blowjobs” and homosexuality. If nothing changes, and teachers continue to ask adolescents to read and discuss texts like this, there is no reason for public school administrations to prohibit students, staff, faculty, or administrators from using obscene and profane language or discussing fellatio in the halls of higher learning.

The curious thing is that those liberal educators who with obsessive vigilance monitor public school classrooms for violations of the separation of church and state don’t seem to object to the presence of religion in Kushner’s gay fantasia. His theology touches on the nature of God, Heaven, angelology, and theodicy. I guess it’s okay to commingle the church and state as long as religion is treated in a perverse, blasphemous kind of way.
 
Laurie Higgins who works full-time in a suburban public high school writing center in the Chicago area.

Tony Kushner’s anti-Reagan, pro-homosexuality propaganda play, “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” is simply not appropriate for schools.

Even people without children or grandchildren in schools will find Laurie Higgins’ excellent arguments below compelling. Also, click HERE to read her take on “Angels in America,” which was studied in Deerfield High School, north of Chicago.– Peter LaBarbera

By Laurie Higgins

As a new school year begins, here are some of the arguments that parents may encounter when they challenge books (e.g. The Chocolate War, Fat Kid Rules the World, The Laramie Project, or Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes) for their problematic ideological messages, the nature and extent of profanity and obscenity, or the nature and extent of depictions of sexuality, followed by brief responses.

Parents who challenge a book because of language need to bear in mind that many of the parents and teachers who approve of these objectionable texts use the same obscene and profane language commonly and casually in their personal lives, even with their children, though they will not likely admit it. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that they will concede that profanity and obscenity are objectionable, for conceding that would constitute a personal indictment:

1. Parents are taking words out of context, and it is the context that justifies the language.

Response: There is no context that renders frequent and excessively obscene language acceptable in texts selected by public school teachers for minor children. In other words, the extreme nature and pervasiveness of obscenity renders the entire text unsuitable for public schools whose mission is to cultivate the best behavior in students.

2. Profane and obscene language is justified because it represents authentic adolescent language.

Response: If the author is justified in using this language to portray authentically adolescent culture and the emotional experiences of adolescents, then surely students are justified in using this language in school in order to be authentic and to express adequately and accurately their emotional truths. Teachers too should be allowed to use this language because it also represents authentic adult language and experience. In fact, society often erroneously and euphemistically refers to profanity and obscenity as “adult language.”

3. Counting numbers of swear words constitutes an immature or silly evaluative mechanism.

Response: Taking into account the extent of foul language is neither silly nor juvenile. There is a substantive difference between one incident of “f**k” and one hundred. The incessant drumbeat of obscenities desensitizes readers to their offensiveness and normalizes their use. Moreover, although adults may distinguish between literary use and endorsement, many adolescents do not.

First, the prevalence of foul language should be taken into account. Second, the nature of the obscenity or profanity should be taken into account. Third, who is using the offensive language should be taken into account. Is it the hero or the antagonist? Fourth, parents and educators should realize that books with profuse obscenity and the willingness of educators’ to teach them convey the message that there are justifiable reasons and contexts for using extremely foul language.

4. Since students mature at different rates, some students are mature enough for these texts. Parents, therefore, should decide what is appropriate for their child.

Response: Whoever makes this argument should be asked to define maturity. If they are referring to intellectual development, then it is irrelevant to the discussion in that parents who challenge texts because of language, sexuality, or pro-homosexual messages, are not doing so because they find the material intellectually inaccessible.
If educators are referring to emotional maturity, meaning that students are emotionally stable enough to read and discuss emotionally difficult material without being traumatized, that too is likely irrelevant, for few parents who object to language, sexuality, or pro-homosexual messages are concerned that their children will be emotionally traumatized.

The concern conservative parents have is with moral development. They recognize that all adolescents, including even mature high school seniors, are not yet adults. They are still constructing a moral compass. They are impressionable, malleable, and much more vulnerable to external influences than are adults whose moral compass is likely fixed and stable. For a teacher to contend that there is any 12-18 year-old whose moral compass is fully developed, mature, and fixed represents an ignorant and hubristic assertion.

Every parent should be able to send their child to school confident that their beliefs regarding decency and morality will not be challenged by educators or curricula, especially since this confidence can be secured without compromising the academic enterprise. It is even more important today in a culture in which profanity, obscenity, and sexual imagery relentlessly bombard our youth that schools stand as one of the last bastions of integrity, civility, and temperance.

5. A small minority group is trying to impose their morality or religious beliefs on the whole community.

Response: Since schools are ostensibly committed to honoring the voices of all in the community, there is no justifiable reason to ignore the concerns of even minority voices. Schools should respect the values of people of faith, especially when doing so does not compromise student learning. In addition, objections to obscenity, sexuality, or pro-homosexual messages can be either religious or secular in nature. If objections to, for example, the use of obscenity represented the imposition of religious belief, then why do virtually all school districts have policies against its use by students in school?  It is the mark of a civilized society to honor the concerns and values of people of diverse faiths and to aspire to decency.

6. There are other options for those who object to particular texts.

Response: First, opting out of reading an assigned class text results in a diminished, isolated academic experience for students. But equally important is the issue of whether taxpayers, even those who have no children in school, should be required to fund the teaching of offensive material. A text like Angels in America contributes to the debasement of an already vulgar culture, and schools should never in any way contribute to the baser aspects of culture. This does not mean that texts must avoid looking at the flaws and evil that afflict man. Rather, it means that we should choose texts that look at the presence of ignobility and evil but do so in ways that inspire, edify, chasten, and point us in the direction of truth, beauty and righteousness. Texts like Angels in America do none of this.

 7. Refusing to offer this book will lead ineluctably to the world of book-burning à la Fahrenheit 451.

Response: This is an irrational, alarmist, specious canard. There is simply no evidence that including in selection criteria the nature and extent of obscene language or sexuality, or a consideration of highly controversial political messages will result in wholesale book banning. There is, however, ample evidence, that a steadfast refusal to ever take into account these elements will result in a slippery slide down the other slope to the use of corrosively vulgar and polemical texts.

8. This book has won prestigious literary awards or has been approved by the American Library Association (ALA).

Response:  This justification begs the question: Who serves on committees that award prizes or review texts? And this argument calls for a serious, open, and honest examination of the ideological monopoly that controls academia and the elite world of the arts that for decades has engaged in censorship of conservative scholarship. To offer as justification for teaching a text the garnering of literary prizes or ALA approval without acknowledging that those who award the prizes and belong to the ALA are generally of the same ideological bent is an exercise in sophistry.

What school committees, departments, administrations, school boards, the ALA, the National Education Association (NEA), and organizations that award literary prizes desperately need is the one form of diversity about which they are least concerned and to which they are least committed: ideological diversity.

9. Kids relate to this book and, therefore, it captures and holds their interest.

Response: If this criterion has assumed a dominant place in the selection process, then teachers have abandoned their proper role as educators. Appealing to the sensibilities and appetites of adolescents should not be the goal of educators. There’s another word for capitulating to the tastes of adolescents: it is called pandering. Schools should teach those texts that students will likely not read on their own. We should teach those texts that are intellectually challenging and offer insight, wisdom, beauty, and truth. We should avoid those that are highly polemical, blasphemous, and vulgar.

10. To remove this text constitutes censorship.

Response: Parents who object to the inclusion of texts on recommended or required reading lists due to obscene language, sexuality, or highly controversial messages are not engaging in some kind of inappropriate censorship. All educators evaluate curricular materials for objectionable content, including language, sexuality, and controversial themes. The irony is that when teachers decide not to select a text due to these elements, the choice constitutes an exercise in legitimate decision-making, but when parents engage in it, they are tarred with the label of “censor.”

Furthermore, virtually no parents advocate prior restraint and only rarely are they asking for the removal of a text from a school library. Rather, parents are suggesting that it is reasonable to include the nature and extent of profanity, obscenity, and sexuality when selecting texts to be recommended and/or taught to minors in public schools.

Are those teachers, administrators, and school board members who disagree with that suggestion saying that they will never take into account the nature and extent of profanity, obscenity, and sexuality? If they are claiming that they will never take into account these elements, then parents should reconsider their fitness for teaching.

In all four years of high school English, students read approximately 28-32 books. From the dozens and dozens of texts available, it seems unlikely that any student’s education would be compromised by teachers, in the service of respect for parental values, comity, and modesty, avoiding the most controversial texts.

Laurie Higgins is a writer and public school teacher in the Chicago area.

From MassResistance.org:  

Yes, it’s already affecting the legal system. . .

We recently met with a mother who was preparing to take her local school system to court over a particular homosexual-related activity that she felt was going to affect her child in a destructive way. But when she discussed it with her lawyer (who specializes in dealing with public schools) the lawyer told her that the recent ruling by Federal Judge Mark Wolf in the David Parker case would make it difficult for her to win!

As you can imagine, the mother was shocked and very upset. But this is how important the David Parker lawsuit has become, not only here but around the country. And the national homosexual movement knows that – and is prepared to pull out all the stops to make sure that this lawsuit does not get to an appeal.

This also demonstrates that the current Parental Notification Law (Ch. 71, Sec. 32A) is now effectively useless, and a STRONG replacement is desperately needed! (Call your state reps & senators to let them know how important their support for the NEW Parents’ rights bill S321 is!)

 Ft. Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle held yet another extraordinary press conference Tuesday, in which he called on the Florida tourism officials to stop promoting homosexual bathhouses — places where men go for anonymous sex with other men — as part of their marketing to homosexuals. 

You can watch portions of Mayor Naugle’s statement on the Sun-Sentinel website (click on the main video). On the same website — go to the third video on the right: “Mayor Naugle’s latest press conference turns heated” — you can watch another video in which homosexual activist Michael Rajner of the Campaign to End AIDS begins yelling to drown out the comments of pro-family activist Janet Folger. For more on Rajner’s ugly, intolerant antics, see our story HERE.

Of course, Rajner’s was rewarded for his anti-First Amendment bullying by being given his own one-on-one web interview by the Sun-Sentinel! (Click the second video, innocuously titled, “Reaction to Mayor Naugle’s press conference.”)

Not surprisingly, the Sun-Sentinel appears to be trying to belittle Naugle’s claim that public sex and reckless, homosexual sex-club activity is a serious public health problem. However, our story, “Homosexual Male ‘Cruising’ Site Lists 13 Pages of Anonymous Sex ‘Hook-up’ Locations in Ft. Lauderdale Area Alone” — which lists two 24/7 “gay” bathhouses operating in the city — makes clear that there is a real network of organized promiscuity (WARNING: HIGHLY OFFENSIVE MATERIAL). 

The following are excerpts of the Sun-Sentinel story — which does not mention bathhouses at all:

Mayor Naugle, other speakers attack gay sex

By Brittany Wallman | Sun-Sentinel.com
7:46 PM EDT, August 21, 2007

FORT LAUDERDALE – Mayor Jim Naugle and several religious leaders held a news conference Tuesday to draw attention to what they described as the moral and health risks of gay sex.

Naugle is at the center of a political war between gays and religious conservatives that started earlier this summer when he said public bathrooms in Fort Lauderdale are plagued by gay men cruising for sex and said he uses the term “homosexual” because “most of them aren’t gay. They’re unhappy.”

At a news conference in front of City Hall on Tuesday, Naugle and other speakers called on gays to end promiscuous sex in order to stem Broward County’s HIV/AIDS crisis. Though the health department has no statistics concerning how many cases of HIV are contracted via sex in public bathrooms or parks, Naugle has tied the two issues together.

 NOTE:  David Parker (at left) will be a keynote speaker at Americans For Truth’s upcoming dinner banquet in Naperville, Illinois (outside Chicago) on Saturday, Oct. 6. His is one of the most important cases in the country, as parents’ rights to guide their children’s moral upbringing is on the line. Click HERE for more information on the AFTAH banquet. 

By Brian Camenker, MassResistance.org

In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
– George Orwell

MassResistance.org reports: 

National homosexual groups targeting children file in US First Circuit Court to stop appeal in David Parker lawsuit.

GLSEN and PFLAG, as well as GLAD all file appearance in case. Reveals nationwide importance of Parker’s court action. 

As David Parker’s lawyers prepare to appeal the ruling against his federal civil rights lawsuit against the Lexington School system, three major homosexual activist groups have officially filed their appearance in the case, and will be submitting amicus briefs as part of their effort to stop his appeal.

Read the official appearance document here:
http://www.massresistance.org/docs/parker_lawsuit/GLSEN_appearance_doc.pdf

David Parker, his wife, and another couple, the Wirthlins, are suing the Lexington, MA school system over the teaching and normalization of homosexual behavior in the elementary schools, purposefully without parents’ knowledge or consent, or ability to opt out.

Earlier this year, Federal District Court Judge Mark Wolf issued an unbelievable ruling against the Parkers which, among other things, gives schools in Massachusetts the right to teach homosexuality at will, without parents’ input, consent, or even knowledge. The Parkers are appealing.

Read Wolf’s disturbing ruling here:
http://www.massresistance.org/docs/parker_lawsuit/hearing_020707/hearing_dismissed.html

More on the Parkers’ case and events leading up to it.
http://www.massresistance.org/docs/parker/index.html

DATE CHANGE FOR AFTAH BANQUET!

 Charlene Cothran and David Parker: two heroes for truth coming to Chicago.

Folks, you won’t want to miss Americans For Truth’s first annual banquet, on Friday, Oct. 5 at 6:00 PM, outside Chicago, Illinois. This surely will be one of the most compelling and exciting evenings for defending truth in the area of homosexuality that you will ever experience!

Our dynamic speakers represent both sides of pro-family advocacy on this issue: the loving Gospel message of hope through Christ in overcoming unwanted same-sex desires — and the bold defense of truth in the public square, in this case parents’ right to protect their children from manipulative, pro-homosexual lessons in taxpayer-funded public schools. Here are the details:

WHAT: Americans For Truth Dinner Banquet: Celebrating Truth and the Freedom to Be Moral

 

WHEN: Friday, Oct. 5: Silent Auction 6:00 PM, Dinner 6:45 PM

 

WHERE: Lombard, Illinois, west of Chicago, location TBA; call AFTAH’s Banquet Coordinator at 312-315-6152 for information on room reservations for those coming from out of state. (It is easy to get cheap flights into Chicago’s O’Hare or Midway airports.)

 

WHO:  Keynote Speakers:

Charlene Cothran
Former lesbian who, after her dramatic Christian conversion, retooled her Venus Magazine from a publication for fellow “gay and lesbian” African Americans to a Christian magazine seeking to help men and women overcome homosexuality through Christ 

 

David Parker
Caring father who became a nationally known parents’ rights crusader after being arrested at his 1st-grade son’s Lexington, Mass., elementary school for insisting that he and his wife be notified before their son was exposed to any pro-homosexual teachings

ADMISSION:  $50 per person; table of ten, $500. Pay online HERE.

 

PAYMENT AND RESERVATIONS:  E-mail Americans For Truth at americansfortruth@comcast.net; or call AFTAH’s Banquet Coordinator at 312-315-6152 to reserve your seats. SEATING IS LIMITED SO DON’T DELAY.  Pay using your credit card using AFTAH’s new and improved Online Donation Page (designate “Banquet” in the comments section). Or send checks payable to “Americans For Truth” at $50/person to: AFTAH, P.O. Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522.  You may also pay by credit card by calling 312-315-6152.  

 

WHY:  At this special event, pro-family leaders will celebrate God’s power to transform men and women struggling with homosexuality; and expose the relentless attack on children’s innocence, parental rights and religious freedom by a “gay/transgender” lobby that seeks to discredit and silence the voice of faith in America.   

By Dr. Peter Jones

Published by CWIPP, Christian Witness to a Pagan Planet

In 1974, when I left the States to teach in “godless” France, the cultural revolution was a Left coast/San Fran’ phenom’, and America was still “Christian.” When I returned in 1991, I was in for culture shock, but still never imagined what lay ahead.

One man warned us. In 1978, Pastor Charles Mcllhenny recorded his experiences after his church fired a homosexual organist (When the Wicked Seize a City). Church property was repeatedly vandalized and his family almost killed by a firebomb. “Law enforcement” never found the culprits. Mcllhenny used San Francisco as a striking example of what America might become. Are we “goin’ to San Francisco?” as the 60s hit song asked?

“You guys are a [f—–g] joke! I hope there is a day like in Europe where we put a collar on you dogs and restrict your hate speech in America! You are a disgrace!”

— Letter sent by C Rooker to Americans For Truth, August 16, 2007

C Rooker also wrote Paul Edwards’ “God and Culture” blog:

“It is your idiotic assumptions that High Point [Church] was acting so called christ like. You christers area all the same. You are filled with hate and wish retarded prejudicial ideas! I hope this country follows places like Europe and puts a muzzle and collar on your hate speech in America. You have no right to continue with this line of thought!”  (C Rooker – August 16)  

…to which Paul Edwards responded:

C Rooker,

And everyone here at the God and Culture Blog feels YOUR love, as well. You obviously didn’t take the time to actually read what this church as done to express the love of Christ to this family. You are blinded by your own hate. We’re praying for you and we love you.

Paul, [God and Culture blog]