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Are these the values that will draw voters to the GOP?
WARNING: Crude language, inappropriate for children
TAKE ACTION: 1) e-mail this video to your elected Republican officials at the national (202-224-3121; www.congress.org), state and local level and urge them to reject the Log Cabin’s radical homosexual agenda (which includes joining with other “gay” groups in trying to use the courts to overturn California’s pro-traditional-marriage Prop 8 vote). 2) call or write Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele at chairman@gop.com or 202-863-8700; 2) Call or write Nettelhorst Elementary’s principal, Cindy Wulbert, at Cw1411@gmail.com or (773) 534-5810.
Pastor Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, Washington, is speaking out strongly against the pro-homosexual “Day of Silence” on Friday, April 25. A growing coalition of pro-family groups is calling for parents to keep their children home from school on that day.
TAKE ACTION: First, check the two Mission America lists to see if your local schools are participating in the Day of Silence. The best way to ascertain whether YOUR children’s school is promoting or enabling DOS is to call the school and ask this question: “Are you allowing students to go silent in the classroom on the upcoming pro-homosexual “Day of Silence” (Friday, April 25)? (Some schools say they are NOT endorsing D.O.S., yet still allow students to not participate in class — which disrupts the learning process.) If the school administrator answers “yes” (or cannot say “no”), then yank your child out of the school on April 25th to protest their capitulation to homosexual activism. Of course, many committed Christians, and groups like Exodus Mandate, would advise you to pull them out of the public schools for good.
NOTE: Please notify AFTAH at americansfortruth@comcast.net with information about the response of your local school authorities to your DOS inquiries, and to tell us if you are pulling your children out of school on April 25th. Thank you!
By Peter LaBarbera
Folks, the politicization of America’s schools — both public and private — in favor of the the proud homosexuality (and now transsexuality) agenda is a crisis that continues to spiral downward. There was a time — back in the days when “Gay Power” was more a dream slogan for sexual radicals than the liberal establishment reality it is today — when homosexual activists disavowed any interest in our nation’s schools or recruiting youth. (Meanwhile, they had yet to kick out NAMBLA — the North American Man/Boy Love Association — from their coalition; in fact, the notorious pederasty group once marched in big-city “Gay Pride” parades.)
Fast-forward to today: homosexual activists and their liberal allies are all over the schools — even grade schools. In that respect, they are not unlike other nefarious ideological movements in their utilitarian misuse of schools to sway young minds. The result is that today’s young people are more pro-homosexual yet more pro-life at the same time — a curious mix and one that testifies to the effectiveness of pro-homosexuality marketing tactics. (Pop culture and media elites have decided that the “gay” debate is settled and we lost.)
In my experience, many of today’s teenagers and twenty-somethings are profoundly ignorant of the larger homosexual activist agenda, and even Christian youth are severely truth-challenged on this issue (to which the poll-driven church movement responds by scolding the larger Church for being too “anti-homosexual”).
New law ‘mainstreams sexual deviance among children’
Feb 7, 2008
Contact: E. Ray Moore, Jr., Chaplain (Lt. Col.) USAR Ret, Director of Exodus Mandate or Dr. Bruce Shortt, 803-714-1744. California Exodus contacts: www.Californiaexodus.org, press@californiaexodus.org
COLUMBIA, South Carolina, Feb. 7 /Christian Newswire/ — California Governor Schwarzenegger signed legislation mandating that public school children be indoctrinated to accept as normal the homosexual lifestyle and other forms of sexual deviancy. In the wake of the failed effort to obtain a referendum to repeal this legislation, a broad coalition of Christian grassroots organizations have endorsed the Campaign for Children and Families’ call for California families and churches to rescue their children from California’s public schools.
Children who love the Harry Potter series character Dumbledore now may be less inclined to oppose homosexuality, or see it as an important moral issue. Of course, the media had a field day with the “news.” Here, Michael Gambon plays the beloved character in ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.’
Q: How does Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s announcement that her beloved Dumbledore character is ‘gay’ fit in with a larger strategy to normalize homosexual behavior in the culture — even to children — through manipulative associations?
Laurie Higgins’ Answer: In case you haven’t heard, J.K. Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter series, just announced before a large audience of fans at Carnegie Hall that one of the most beloved characters in the book,Dumbledore, is homosexual. Now some perhaps many of the children who love this character will feel ambivalent about regarding homosexuality as deeply sinful. Young children, adolescents, and even many adults fall victim to the specious syllogistic reasoning that goes something like 1. Kindness is good, 2. Homosexuals are kind, 3. Therefore, homosexuality is good. It is clearly a faulty syllogism, and yet it’s wildly successful.
The “gay” manifesto After the Ball written in 1989 describes a number of strategies to be used to transform cultural views of homosexuality, one of which is “conversion” (how very darkly ironic). The authors Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen write that “In Conversion, we mimic the natural process of stereotype learning, with the following effect: we take the bigot’s good feelings about all-right guys, and attach them to the label ‘gay,’ either weakening or, eventually, replacing his bad feelings toward the label and the prior stereotype.” Whether Rowling is aware of this process or not, she is employing it.
This is one of the most significant problems with repeated exposure to positive portrayals of homosexuals in films, television show, plays, novels, textbooks, and speakers. Unsophisticated thinkers come to believe that somehow good behaviors or traits are inherently exculpatory in regard to others. But we should no more say that the sin of homosexuality is effaced by a homosexual’s compassion, generosity, or good humor than we would say that a polygamist’s sin is effaced by his compassion, generosity, or good humor.
The movement is afoot to include positive portrayals of homosexuals and the transgendered in all textbooks from kindergarten on up. I have no objections to textbooks including the important invention or discovery of a homosexual or transgender person so long as their homosexuality or transgenderism is not mentioned. To mention it suggests that somehow their deviant sexual impulses are connected or relevant to their discovery, invention, or contribution to learning. And supporters of subversive sexuality know this. They know that associating the deviant sexual orientation or identity with something positive will irrationally transform society’s perception of the deviant sexuality. Concerned citizens must strenuously oppose the identification of the sexual orientation or sexual identity of figures discussed in textbooks.
Another problematic way by which cultural values are being transformed is through the exposure to the stories of suffering shared by homosexuals and those who experience the psychological disorder of transgenderism. It is not uncommon in public high schools for LGBT (lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) students to share their stories of suffering with their peers. The result is that children, teens, and even adults who, of course, do not want to increase the suffering of others, retreat from making moral judgments. In so doing, they fail to make the critical distinction between suffering that results from harassment or abuse, and discomfort that results from an encounter with reasonable judgments about morality.
Parents and concerned taxpayers must be aware of and oppose these kinds of manipulative stratagems.
Laurie Higgins works full-time in a suburban public high school writing center in the Chicago area.
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.
ROCKVILLE, Maryland – Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) sent a letter clarifying the law Monday to school board officials in Montgomery County, Maryland because some teachers and principals have engaged in viewpoint discrimination and censorship against Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX), with whom they don’t agree.
“School officials do not have the right to engage in censorship of viewpoints they don’t like,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman. “The board has a policy permitting the distribution of literature by outside organizations and community groups, and it is unconstitutional then for district employees to single out certain organizations for censorship.”
When PFOX distributed its flyers to students, a teacher from Thomas S. Wootten High School and co-sponsor of that school’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) club accused PFOX of being “like the KKK but only in the form of religion.” Using his school issued email account, the teacher wrote to PFOX: “STAY OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS AND LEAVE OUR CHILDREN ALONE!” Another teacher from Winston Churchill High School vowed that he “and many of [his] colleagues” would “fight further intrusions of your group into our public schools.” Some school personnel went as far as to place PFOX’s name on trash cans in the main lobby of the school and incited students to throw out PFOX’s fliers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, whose decisions are binding on school districts in Maryland, held on two different occasions that community organizations have a First Amendment right to have schools distribute information to students without content- and viewpoint-based discrimination….
Hunter College professor Kenneth Sherrill says police arrests of men having homosexual sex in Atlanta’s public restrooms is a “perversion” — not the vile acts themselves.
Atlanta police, looking for luggage thieves, stumbled upon men engaging in homosexual sex acts in airport public restrooms. A sad and pathetic story of men’s lives out of control. “The new restroom dragnet has led to the arrests of more than 30 people in three months for indecent exposure and public sex acts at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport,” AP reports.
Now look at how “gay” activist and Hunter College professor Kenneth Sherill responds in the AP story (below). Sherrill criticizes — not the men committing degrading acts in public places — but the police, calling the undercover arrests in the airport restrooms a “perversion of rational law enforcement activities.” Several observations:
Various homosexually-oriented websites publicize locations — across the nation and the world –where men can engage in anonymous homosexual acts with other men in public restrooms, highway rest stops, parks, etc.
Many of these men do not identify as “gay”; they have wives or girlfriends who know nothing of their secret double life — women whose lives are put in potentially life-threatening danger by their spouse’s high-risk homosexual adulteries;
Children visit these same public restrooms and parks — how many have walked in on men engaging in perverse acts? Also, we’ve received many reports over the years of used condoms being left behind in “public sex” spots such as parks; can’t the authorities keep these known locations clean of public perversion?
Some leading homosexual activists and groups actually defend “public sex” — even as a “right” of sorts. In 1998 in Pittsburgh, I was kicked out of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s annual “Creating Change” conference — as I was sitting in the audience listening to a panel led by the webmaster for the leading homosexual “cruising for sex” website. Imagine: the second most powerful homosexual group in America — one that lays claim to the mantle of the noble “civil rights” movement — endorsing public perversions of this sort.
Kenneth Sherrill’s disgraceful comments show once again how out of touch left-wing intellectuals are with the average citizen, and how selfish homosexual activists put their interests above the common good. Only a radical “gay” professor (Sherrill has also done work for the Task Force) could manage to take a story about men getting busted for committing vile sex acts with other men in public bathrooms — and say that the police action to catch these men is a “perversion”! Sort of makes you wonder what Professor Sherrill is teaching the youngsters in his care. — Peter LaBarbera
Arrests Up in Atlanta Airport Restrooms Restroom Patrols of Atlanta Airport Meant to Stop Baggage Theft Result in Indecency Arrests
By DANIEL YEE
ATLANTA Apr 12, 2007 (AP)— At the world’s busiest airport, plainclothes officers patrolling public restrooms in search of luggage thieves have instead uncovered a rash of other, more sordid crimes.
Airport restrooms apparently have become such popular meeting places for men looking for sexual trysts with other men that they have been suggested several times as meeting places in personal ads on the Web site Craigslist.
“Hey … I’m stuck at the airport from 5 p.m. and I’m looking for a good time …,” one ad reads. In another, the person posting says he is stuck at the airport for three hours in the evening and is looking for “discreet, quick action.”
The new patrols were started to stop theft, not catch people in sex acts, police officials say.
Officers started monitoring the restrooms after figuring out that thieves were pulling bags off baggage-claim carousels and taking them into toilet stalls to comb through them.
“We’re trying to provide a safe environment for everyone at the airport,” said Officer Joseph Villafane, a police spokesman. “We’re not out to get all that it’s just we encounter it.”
Among those arrested is Ed Wall, the board chairman of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. An officer said he saw Wall having oral sex with another man. Wall, who has temporarily stepped down from his post, has maintained his innocence. A court date has not been set.
The other court cases are pending.
James Cates, a clinical psychologist, said airport indecency arrests usually involve people getting caught performing sexual acts. He said it illustrates compulsive behavior known as exhibitionism.
“They’re not a lot different from any compulsion … it’s just that this kind of behavior can be offensive to people and can be traumatizing,” said Cates, who counsels and performs psychological testing on sex offenders and people with sexual disorders. “They’ve got to have the thrill and as they keep not getting caught or reported, the thrill gets less and less. It has to become more risky and daring to keep the thrill up.”
Still, some say the airport police should have better things to do than stake out restrooms.
“Police have far better things to do with their time than to arrest people for this,” said Kenneth Sherrill, professor at Hunter College of The City University of New York. “Being ‘sex police’ in bathrooms strikes me as a perversion of rational law enforcement activities.”
Atlanta’s is not the only airport to have had restroom-related arrests. Former Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry was ordered to pay $35,000 in damages to a custodian who said he shoved her and exposed himself to her in a bathroom at Baltimore-Washington International Airport in 2000. A year later, a county judge in Michigan was arrested at Detroit Metro Airport for allegedly exposing himself to an undercover officer, although a district attorney decided not to prosecute.
The Atlanta airport police efforts may be working, as new personal ads have on Craigslist have warned people to be careful.
“Do NOT do anything at the airport,” one posting from March 29 reads. “If you want to hook up, do it outside the airport! Have fun but be smart about it. It’s not worth going to jail for the night and having your face put on the news.”
Every year, the radical group GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network), of Massachusetts “Fistgate” notoriety, promotes a propaganda exercise in schools called the “Day of Silence,” to engender sympathy toward GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) lifestyles. Many schools now officially back this disruptive, pro-homosexual event — so we’re calling on parents to pull their children out of school that day (Wed., April 18 this year). Parents can use the day to educate their children about the homosexual activist movement and other harmful social agendas, or to pray for people and students caught up in the homosexual lifestyle.
Or, students can just read a good book at home. Time spent doing that would be far preferable to indulging in GLSEN’s pro-homosexuality groupthink. Our schools have become PC propaganda centers, and it’s way past time for parents to take a stand. Promoting unhealthy, changeable and immoral behaviors like homosexuality and bisexuality — especially to vulnerable teens (even middle schoolers!) — lacks compassion. Here is a list of schools likely to be participating in the “Day of Silence”: http://www.missionamerica.com/agenda.php?articlenum=66. — Peter LaBarbera
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact NotOurKids.com Media Coordinator – Irene Bennett (203) 926-6960
WASHINGTON, March 27 / — A national pro-family coalition, www.NotOurKids.com, is calling upon parents to keep their children home from school on April 18 — to avoid GLSEN’s homosexual “Day of Silence,” in which students and some supportive faculty intentionally remain silent throughout the school day to protest alleged oppression of homosexuals.
“Day of Silence” (DOS) is an annual event promoted by GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, and is scheduled for Wednesday, April 18 this year. (Some schools observe DOS a few days earlier or later than the official date.) In 2006, over 4,000 junior highs, high schools, and colleges participated in DOS, according to GLSEN.
Many school district superintendents, principals, and faculty members also endorse, promote or allow DOS — subjecting traditional students to pro-“gay” activism that violates their religious beliefs and right to a non-politicized education. To find out what schools are likely participating in this year’s DOS, please visit: http://www.missionamerica.com/agenda.php?articlenum=66.
According to GLSEN, on last year’s Day of Silence, over 500,000 students nationwide were confronted with mute homosexual peers and “allies” wearing stickers and passing out cards, which stated (in part):
“… My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by harassment, prejudice, and discrimination. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward fighting these injustices. Think about the voices you are not hearing today. What are you going to do to end the silence?”
www.NotOurKids.com is a coalition of pro-family groups who object to the disruptive political hijacking of America’s classrooms by pro-homosexual advocates. www.NotOurKids.com educates parents, teachers and America about the deceptive agenda behind GLSEN’s Day of Silence. The coalition seeks to protect America’s youth from being pressured to approve of homosexual, bisexual, or “transgender” behavior.
“Teenagers deserve an opportunity to study English, history, math, and science — without being subjected to pro-homosexual proselytizing sanctioned by school authorities. Students shouldn’t be forced to self-censor or adopt beliefs contrary to those of their parents and places of worship,” said Linda Harvey of Mission America, a coalition member. “Even the strongest of our junior high and high school children are not equipped to serve as frontline soldiers in this culture war.”
For a complete list of the coalition’s sponsoring groups, please visit www.NotOurKids.com.
Children who love the Harry Potter series character Dumbledore now may be less inclined to oppose homosexuality, or see it as an important moral issue. Of course, the 
Hunter College professor Kenneth Sherrill says police arrests of men having homosexual sex in Atlanta’s public restrooms is a “perversion” — not the vile acts themselves.
