Charlene Cothran addresses Americans For Truth banquet Friday.

Folks, the homo-fascists over at the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network are cheering Miller Brewing Company for sponsoring the recent San Francisco perversion-fest known as the “Folsom Street Fair.” At the same time, they engaged in a (failed) grassroots lobbying campaign to cancel Americans For Truth’s reservation with the Embassy Suites Hotel in Lombard, Illinois — where we held a very successful banquet Friday, Oct. 5.

So let’s review the GLN’s position:

• Nudity-filled, sex-in-the-streets Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, where men masturbated themselves and other men in public, and whipped and spanked one another for the crowds, where Christianity-mocking “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” drag-queen “nuns” welcomed attendees: GOOD EVENT, WORTHY OF SUPPORT, KUDOS TO MILLER BEER! 
• Peaceful Americans For Truth banquet attended mostly by Christians; our first speaker, Charlene Cothran, described how God took her out of her past life as a homosexual activist, and how she now has the peace of Christ and wants to help others find it; our second speaker, David Parker, described his legal campaign to have public schools inform parents before their young children are exposed to pro-homosexuality-themed books and curricula: HATEFUL, EVIL EVENT, MUST BE PROTESTED; SHOULD BE BARRED FROM HOTEL!

We hope you get a sense of the folly of homosexual activist “tolerance” and the irrationality and hatred of the Left in general. Perhaps if we publicly embraced nudity and perversion like Folsom, GLN would have called off its protest of our event. Anyway, here’s GLN’s and Schwartz’s September 28 e-mail letter commending Miller Beer for financing the sick San Francisco Folsom Street Festival (emphasis added):

“Thanks for Backing Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco” 

 

Julian Green
Miller Lite Beer
 
Dear Sir:
 
It has come to my attention that your company is under attack for sponsoring the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco.  The attack is emanating from such outfits as the Catholic League and Americans for Truth.  The Catholic League has as one of its directors, the laughable Alan Keyes, who embarrassed Illinois Republicans when he lost by the widest margin of any Illinois senatorial election.  Americans for Truth is a gang of far-right bigots who attack gays by saying we all ought to change into straight people through Jesus, and who would deny us equal civil rights.  Both groups portray themselves as victims as they go about preaching hate and discrimination.
 
The Catholic League and Americans for Truth want to impose one standard of behavior on everyone, a standard divined from ancient texts and a mythical “natural law, a standard that denies women control over their bodies and gay people the rights due to all citizens.
 
Please ignore these strident voices of intolerance and bigotry.
 
BOB SCHWARTZ
Gay Liberation Network, Chicago

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.

“The leaders of America’s anti-gay industry are directly responsible for the continuing surge in hate violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. … The right went into demonic, anti-gay hyperdrive following the Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas decision in July of 2003. Since then, church pews have been awash in ugly, anti-gay rhetoric and fear-mongering. … The literal blood of thousands of gay people physically wounded by hatred during 2004 is on the hands of Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Tony Perkins and so many others who spew hate for partisan gain and personal enrichment.”
–Statement from Matt Foreman, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, April 26, 2005, blaming “anti-gay crime” on “America’s anti-gay industry”

Dear Readers,

The preposterous and astonishingly bigoted rant above by Matt Foreman, head of the second largest homosexual organization in America, illustrates the dangerous potential of pro-homosexual, pro-transsexual “hate crimes” legislation, S. 1105, which reportedly could come up for a vote before the U.S. Senate TODAY.

TAKE ACTION : Call your U.S. Senators today at 202-224-3121, or write then via www.congress.org. Urge them to oppose the Kennedy-Smith-Reid Hate Crimes Bill, S. 1105. Pass this message on to your friends and contact list.

A strengthened federal “Hate crimes” law — which would include transsexuals (perceived “gender identity”) for the first time in federal law — would provide a powerful foundation for politically-motivated, pro-homosexual prosecutors to go after people of faith, based on their alleged “anti-gay” speech.

Foreman is lying about the link between Christians and violent, despicable crimes, just as the homosexual lobby is lying about the supposedly pressing need for this legislation (see below). The last thing America needs is to put the power of the federal government behind a system of law that creates a politically correct hierarchy of victims — in a country where homosexual victims already receive far more media attention than religious victims like Mary Stachowicz.

S 1105 would also spend YOUR tax dollars on biased “anti-hate” programs that invariably discriminate against faith-based opposition to homosexuality.

No need for this bill

A thorough report on S 1105 by the Traditional Values Coalition states that S. 1105 “makes the following fraudulent and ridiculous claims in [its] Findings:

• Homosexuals are fleeing across state lines to avoid persecution;
• Perpetrators are crossing state lines to commit crimes against them;
   
• Homosexuals are so persecuted they have trouble purchasing goods and services or finding employment. [now that’s a whopper–Editor]
   
• These false claims about homosexuals fleeing across state lines are being used as a hook to justify federal involvement in local law enforcement through the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution.
   
• No Epidemic Of Hate Crimes Exists! S. 1105 falsely claims in The Findings, without any evidence, that “the incidence of violence motivated by the actual or perceived race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or disability of the victim poses a serious national problem.”
   
• FBI statistics from 2005 (the latest available) reveal that there is no national epidemic of hate against minority groups or against homosexuals:
   
• According to the FBI, in 2005 there were only 5,190 hate crimes directed against all persons. Of this figure, only 1,171 were sexual orientation bias crimes. Out of this 1,171:
   
• 301 were listed as “intimidation.”
   
• 333 were listed as “simple assault.”
   
• 177 were listed as aggravated assault! There was one forcible rape and no murders based on sexual orientation in 2005.
   
• 1 forcible rape; 30 robberies; 10 burglaries; 27 larceny-theft; 2 motor vehicle theft; 1 arson; 275 damage/vandalism; 3 other; 5 crimes against society.
   
• Nationwide there were 862,947 aggravated assaults against all persons. (Source: FBI Crime in the United States 2005, Aggravated Assault)
• Out of 862,947 cases of aggravated assault, only 177 were motivated by sexual orientation bias. This is 0.000205 percent of all aggravated assaults in 2005.
   
• In a nation of 300 million, this is no epidemic of hate against homosexuals that needs federal involvement in local law enforcement. (Source: Tables 2 and 4, FBI Hate Crime Stats, 2005)

My good friend Bob Knight lays out the basic problems with expanded, pro-homosexual federal “hate crimes”, arguing that legislation like S. 1105:

• violates the concept of equal protection under the law by designating special classes of victims, who get a higher level of government protection than others victimized by similar crimes.
• politicizes criminal law, leading to pressure on police and prosecutors to devote more of their limited resources to some cases, at the expense of other crime victims’ cases.
• vastly expands the power and jurisdiction of the federal government to intervene in local law enforcement matters, once a crime is called a “hate crime.”
• has a chilling effect on free speech by making unpopular ideas a basis for harsher treatment in criminal proceedings. More than half of the so-called “hate crimes” in the last U.S. Justice Department report were categorized as “intimidation” or “simple assault,” which do not necessarily involve anything more than words.2 In terms of the proposed national hate crimes bill, this makes name-calling literally a federal case.
• confuses law enforcers, because the definition of what constitutes a “hate crime” is clear in some instances but unclear in others. This burdens prosecutors and opens up endless opportunities for defense attorneys to invoke technicalities.
• is not necessary. There is no evidence to substantiate the claim that “hate crime” victims are receiving less justice than other crime victims.

The last thing America needs is to expand federal power unnecessarily while creating the foundation for dubious federal “rights” based on homosexuality and gender confusion. Read the full TVC report on S. 1105 HERE. And call your Senators today at 202-224-3121, or e-mail them at http://www.congress.org/.

This “hate crimes” bill has already passed the House, so if it passes the Senate, we will be urging President Bush to wield his presidential veto: call the White House comment line at 202-456-1111 or use the Contact Page on the presidential website.

Thank you for standing up for truth and freedom.

Sincerely,

Peter LaBarbera

Americans For Truth

Folks, you hear a lot of bad news these days, but here’s some very good news: men and women are leaving homosexuality and living a life in line with God’s moral precepts — not in rebellion against them. Click this “700 Club” link to watch a wonderful video segment about how God drew Charlene Cothran OUT of the homosexual activist movement. Cothran, who went from “gay” activist to Christian evangelist, will be speaking at Americans For Truth’s banquet on Friday, October 5, in Lombard, Illinois, outside Chicago. See below or click HERE for more details and how to sign up online.

I hope you can come hear Charlene on Oct. 5, and Massachusetts father David Parker, who is battling the dangerous homosexual pressure campaign to indoctrinate young schoolchildren in pro-homosexuality viewpoints — without their parents’ knowledge. This banquet will educate you with not one but two of the most compelling speakers in the world on the homosexual issue — and I promise that it will energize you in the fight for truth for the coming year. In the process, you will be supporting AFTAH’s mission of answering the lies of the “GLBT” (that’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender) movement, with information that the Political Correct media will not give you.

How to Sign Up for the Oct. 5 Banquet

Seats are filling up, so sign up today. You can do so using a VISA or MasterCard on our new Online Donations page HERE, or send a check for $50/seat (table of 10 for $500) to:

Americans For Truth
ATTN: Banquet Coordinator
P.O. Box 5522
Naperville, IL 60567-5522

You can also sign up using Paypal or your American Express or Discover card HERE. Call 312-315-6152 to place a credit order by phone or get more information.

One more thing: please consider buying a ticket for your pastor or priest to come to the banquet, and make arrangements for your teenage children, grandchildren, or their friends, to come. Many pastors are ignorant about these matters, or too timid to discuss them effectively from the pulpit. And so many young people these days are believing the lie that people are “born gay,” and that’s “who they are.” But in the case of Charlene, “being gay” is who she WAS.

Homosexuality is a changeable behavior, not a “proud,” inborn identity. Young people need to see real, live men and women who have overcome same-sex desires — to strengthen their faith in God, and help them to share this heartwarming truth with their peers.

So bring a teenager or college student to this banquet on Friday, October 5 to help inoculate them against pro-homosexual professors in college and against a pop culture that celebrates sexual experimentation and denigrates Biblical morality.

Watch this video about Charlene Cothran. Note how God turned her “pride” into shame: her transformation began when she felt ashamed at a “gay pride” event for African Americans, in Chicago! At the end of the video you can watch Pat Robertson’s heartfelt prayer for people caught up in homosexual sin. I don’t see any “hate” in this man who so many liberals love to … hate. Nope, instead I see the love of Christ for people who are going down the wrong road of homosexuality. In fact, none of the people of faith I know “hates” homosexuals; we simply disagree with them and want them to know the that same indescribable joy that lights up Charlene’s face, as you can watch on the video!

Charlene tells me that part of her new life is meeting all the pro-family leaders like Pat Robertson — people she once despised as a homosexual activist — and learning that they are kind-hearted folk who just believe the Bible and sincerely want men and women to find freedom through Jesus Christ.

It is a privilege to welcome Charlene back to Chicago, and this time without that sense of shame! I hope you can join me in hearing her God-glorifying testimony of COMING OUT … from homosexuality. See below or sign up online HERE, or CLICK THIS LINK for more information on the Oct. 5 banquet.

God bless you,

Peter LaBarbera

Americans For Truth

“Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.  Let all that you do be done in love.”  (1 Corinthians 16:13-14)

How to Sign Up for the Oct. 5 Banquet

Use your VISA or MasterCard on our new Online Donations page HERE, or send a check for $50/seat (table of 10 for $500) to:

Americans For Truth
ATTN: Banquet Coordinator
P.O. Box 5522
Naperville, IL 60567-5522

You can also sign up using Paypal or your American Express or Discover card HERE. Call 312-315-6152 to place a credit order by phone or get more information.

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.

Richard John Neuhaus, writing in the journal First Things (Feb. 2004), on Tony Kushner’s play, Angels in America:
 
“The theater world is abuzz with the effort to mainstream Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The show was wildly acclaimed on the Great Gay Way that Broadway has become. It is titteringly asked whether dumb, plodding, pious, bourgeois, so very ordinary America is ready for this scintillating inversion of its old certitudes and fixed creeds, in the half-hope that the answer is in the negative, thus providing further proof of the genius and, yes, the courage of Mr. Kushner and, by extension, of the herd of independent minds who join in his contempt for our repressive society that would, don’t you know, jail him if it could. Mr. Kushner has also written a little book, Save Your Democratic Soul!: Rants, Screeds, and Other Public Utterances. Civil discourse is not his shtick. His agent says that in his many campus appearances Mr. Kushner “prefers to speak to progressive audiences open to change.” But of course. Because old certitudes are no longer certain and fixed creeds no longer so fixed, people who cannot help but know better nervously applaud the assault on what they used to call their convictions, thus appeasing the great god Progress who might otherwise be displeased. Their nervous approval is offered in the hope of avoiding the terrible judgment of the priesthood of comic inversion that they are too witless to join in the fun of trashing what, to their embarrassment, they know they believe. They are keenly aware that their every response is ruthlessly scrutinized by the queer eye for the straight guy. Their laughter is forced, however, for, try as they might, they cannot quite rid themselves of the suspicion that they are being watched also by those large and awful and unsmiling faces from beyond.”

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!)