Recall that GLSEN activist and school “social worker” Laura Perkins seized upon a “teachable moment” to enlighten third graders about gender confusion, without parental knowledge or consent…

Then have a look at her “Social Skills” recommended reading list:

laura-perkins-social-skills-book-list.htm

Oliver Button Is A Sissy
De Paola, Tomie
K-3
A boy is teased by other boys because he takes dance classes, and doesn’t participate in boyish activities. His classmates change their attitudes about him when they see what a good dancer he is. Great for discussions about gender issues, assumptions, and changing one’s feelings about someone.

Bailey the Big Bully
Boyd, Lizi
1-2
A boy stands up to a bully, and then includes the bully in games with friends, setting clear limits regarding behavior that will not be tolerated. Good for discussing ways of making friends, handling bullies, helping others change behavior, being inclusive.

Asha’s Mums
Elwin, Rosamund and Pulse, Michele
K-3
A girl with lesbian mothers is told by her teacher and a classmate that “You can’t have two mums.” Great for leading into discussion of fairness, respect, and the importance of understanding differences.

Zinnia and Dot
Ernst, Lisa Campbell
K-2
A conflict resolution story about two battling hens, who initially have a lot of trouble sharing, but end up raising a chick together. A two-mom story.

Saturday is Pattyday
Newman, Leslie
n/a
About a child adjusting to the breakup of his lesbian parents.

Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree
Miller, William
2-4
A girl looses her mother but refuses to loose her dreams or to be restricted by other peoples’ expectations. Themes included are the oral tradition in African American life. A good book about gender issues as well as about coping with loss, and the importance of a mother-daughter relationship.

Daddy’s Roommate
Willhoite, Michael
K-3
Good! Fun and upbeat, a boy tells about his gay fathers‘ relationship.

My Two Uncles
Vigna, Judith
3-4
A girl tells about her gay uncle and his partner. The story includes family tensions because the grandparents have a hard time accepting the relationship but at the end of the story are closer to accepting it than they were in the beginning.

Who’s in a Family?
Skutch, Robert
K-1
About different kinds of families, and it does include gay families.

The following is merely an excerpt from Nightmare at Franklin, by Tom Mountain, published Nov 8, 2006, by Newton Tab; we encourage you to continue reading the full story…

Emer O’Shea knew something was wrong the minute she picked up her daughter from Franklin Elementary School. The third-grader was normally very perky upon seeing her mother and new baby sister, but this time she glanced at her mother without indicating what was wrong, except to say that the school’s social worker had visited the class. But Emer soon heard from another parent about what had happened in her daughter’s class that day, and she was both stunned and mortified. The next day her young daughter finally opened up with a question that would baffle most parents of an 8-year-old child, “Mommy, is it possible for a man to have an operation to become a woman?”

Transgenders and transvestites. These were the topics that a staff member at Franklin School in West Newton chose to teach to a class of third-grade children. The school’s social worker described to the children that some men like to dress up as women, and yes, some men even have operations to change into women.

The opportunity for this “teachable moment” – the kind that Superintendent Jeff Young likes to portray as merely responding to some child’s “random questioning” – occurred when the social worker was describing various families outside of the traditional mommy-and-daddy norm and showed the class a picture of a woman with two children, asking what they saw in the picture. A child then raised his hand to tell her (are you sitting sit down for this?) that he thought the picture was of a man who had a sex change operation and was now a woman. Apparently, the child’s own father was undergoing such an operation (which he/she has since completed).

The social worker then elaborated on this “teachable moment.” But this wasn’t just any social worker employed by the Newton Public Schools. This was Laura Perkins, former board member of GLSEN, the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network; or rather, “Laura Perkins, MSW, Franklin School and the Newton Early Childhood Program,” according to the GLSEN Boston Conference, where she hosted a seminar in which the “Rationale for integrating GLBT (Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender) issues in the early elementary years will be presented” and “classroom lessons demonstrated.” (See 5C.)

As a result of this particular “classroom lesson,” Emer’s daughter was petrified. For an 8-year-old accustomed to a child’s world of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, the little girl had nightmares, and explained to her mother she was scared that her baby sister could turn into a boy.

So Emer did what any normal responsible parent would do – she demanded an explanation from the principal, Cynthia Marchand (617-559-9500). She and several other parents from this class met with the principal who, according to Emer, responded defensively and fully backed her staff member.

Emer then went to Superintendent’s Young’s office with her concerns. She handed Mr. Young a written description of what happened, whereupon the superintendent promised to respond to her soon. He didn’t. So after three weeks, she called to make an appointment. As Emer described it, Mr. Young remarked that the Parental Consent Law didn’t apply to this situation because, he claimed, the topic of discussion was not planned for. He concluded that it was really just “a teachable moment.”

Continue reading at TownOnline…

Excerpted from Gay History Month in City Schools Seen Part of Trend, by Susan Brinkmann, published Nov 6, 2006, by The Catholic Standard and Times:

…For the first time, this year ninth-grade students will read a collection of short stories titled, “Am I Blue?” which is about people who have been affected by the coming-out experiences of youth…

Until two parent groups hired Liberty Counsel lawyers to stop it, a Maryland school district curriculum was about to teach 8th- and 10th-graders that Jesus condoned homosexuality because He never mentioned it by name, that Christians often use the Bible to justify hatred and that being homosexual is similar to being left-handed.

Some of the fuel behind the movement is coming from what many believe is an overly cozy alliance between the National Education Association (NEA) and gay activist organizations, such as the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), the nation’s leading pro-homosexuality education group.

“GLSEN is very closely aligned with the Gay-Lesbian caucus inside the NEA,” said Jeralee Smith, a California school teacher and the outgoing chair of the NEA’s Ex-Gay Educators Caucus.

“When the NEA’s Gay Lesbian Caucus started, I’m sure they wanted to see a gay president in charge of the NEA,” Smith said. “Well, that happened when Bob Chase became president. Chase was outed as a gay man by the Washington Blade around the end of his term as NEA president.

“It was during Bob Chase’s presidency that the Sexual Orientation Task Force was initiated, giving a whole arm of NEA leadership to gay- lesbian -bisexual -transgender (GLBT) causes,” Smith said. “In 2002, a 60-page document detailing NEA’s support of GLBT causes was adopted by the NEA executive committee, and handed to NEA delegates as a report which, technically, didn’t even require a vote.”

Since that time, pro-homosexuality curricula have been steadily creeping into schools across the country, says Regina Griggs, executive director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX).

“Programs like this are in all 50 states, and probably in every major county in the country,” Griggs said…

What if a student later becomes ill, after having been encouraged to embrace the lifestyle by a school program that deliberately withheld information about the risks? Could the student sue?

“I was recently contacted by somebody who, because of one-sided information being provided by doctors, went through a sex-change operation. His mental issues just got worse, and he now realizes this isn’t the choice anyone should make. He wants to sue because he wasn’t provided with full information.”

In the meantime, Lindevaldsen said,

“This is all politics. It’s all politics in the courts and it’s all politics in the schools. And the pawns are our children.”

Excerpted from Court Halts N.C. School District Policy Used to Prohibit Student from Distributing “Day of Truth” Cards, published Nov 2, 2006, by Alliance Defense Fund:

A federal judge today issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Sampson County Board of Education and Midway High School officials from enforcing two policies used to prohibit a student from distributing “Day of Truth” message cards to other students. Officials prohibited the student, represented by attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund, from distributing the cards outside of class time during the event April 27 and suspended him from school.

“Christian students are entitled to the same First Amendment rights as other students. No student should be suspended for exercising those rights,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman. “The court’s ruling today prohibits the school district, while the case moves forward, from censoring a student flyer simply because it has religious content.”

“It’s clearly unconstitutional when students participating in the Day of Silence, which supports the homosexual agenda, observe their event by distributing flyers and so forth, but a student with an opposite perspective is prevented from communicating it during non-instructional time,” Cortman added.

Continue reading at Alliance Defense Fund…

Excerpted from Youth Summit Promotes Gay-Straight School Clubs, by Tracy Dell’Angela, published October 22, 2006, in Chicago Tribune:

…[High school senior Leroy] Kirk, 17, attended the Youth Leadership Summit on Saturday looking for advice on how to make a gay-tolerance club work at his South Lawndale neighborhood school [Farragut, pictured at right].

…The Summit, at the Youth Pride Center on 637 S. Dearborn St., was attended by more than 50 students from the Chicago area. It was sponsored by Creating Safe Schools for Illinois, a group formerly affiliated with the national Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

The workshops offered ideas for students launching gay-tolerant school groups and trying to expand existing ones. These ideas included surveys about homophobia, movie nights, social networking Web sites and “queer dances and yearbooks.”

The organizers say the summit is a chance for student advocates to share successes and struggles.

Acire Roche, youth program coordinator for Safe Schools, said her goal is to reach out to schools that have never considered forming a Gay Straight Alliance. In the past, the organization waited for students or teachers to initiate a club at a school, and the group would act as an advocate…

Roche said she hopes to expand the group’s focus beyond Chicago. She e-mails and calls school administrators to ask how they address issues of diversity for gay and lesbian youth.

“Some schools would say, `We don’t have any gay kids here,'” she said. `And I would say, `Why don’t you have a support group, just in case you do?'”

Continue reading in Chicago Tribune…

Excerpted from North PC Agenda Intact, by Tom Mountain, published Oct 4 ,2006, by Newton Tab:

…The issue of homosexuality has been the primary focus of the On-Campus Enrichment Program [at Newton North] for at least the past several years… There is no logical reason why the school chooses to focus on this topic. North is like any other high school in the state in that there is not, and never has been, a significant number of students claiming to be gay. And the North administration knows that.

It’s reasonable to speculate that there are probably more gay staff at North than there are gay students, with a handful of that staff pushing this agenda on the entire school population.

At Newton North there are no less than five days devoted to all things gay.

• To Be GLAD Day (Transgender, Bisexual, Gay Lesbian Awareness Day). This is an ongoing North tradition where the school brings in such eminent lecturers as a coach who boasted to the students that he fell in love with his sister’s husband (Jerry Springer calling?), and then there’s the former male North student who decided to become a woman, and of course, those enlightening never before revealed tidbits such as… “famous homosexuals/bisexuals” (Eleanor Roosevelt), and those “famous gender benders” Joan of Arc and – I kid you not – Bugs Bunny.

• World AIDS Day. This disease is a major problem in the gay community, many Newton educators are gay, therefore it is a major part of the Enrichment Program at North. Past lecturer’s included a man who claimed he got AIDS as an altar boy when he was raped by a Catholic priest … in 1977, well before the onset of AIDS in America. This lecture also served a dual purpose of bashing the Catholic Church among a large group of teenagers, many of whom were Catholic.

• The Day of Silence. Students are actively encouraged to stay silent all day, even to their teachers, in order to highlight the oppression of gays. The number of students participating in this is unknown, but noticeable at the school, since the role of these students and their faculty advisors is to get noticed. And lest they be ignored by too many people there is a follow-up day called…

• The Day of Action. Here these same students and their faculty advisers try to preach to whoever will listen about how awful society is towards gays like them. They generally have the run of the school that day, since anyone who dares to tell them to sit down and shut up would likely be suspended.

• Human Rights Day. This, like the No Place for Hate campaign, focuses primarily on the oppression of gays. For reasons of diversity, they may also delve into the oppression of Palestinians or Guantanomo Bay prisoners, maybe even Sudanese refugees in Darfur, especially if they can document the oppression of gay Sudanese.

Continue reading at Newton Tab…

Exodus Youth offers an excellent resource for young people (as well as for parents, Bible class teachers, and youth ministers) entitled “Truth & Tolerance: A Student’s Guide to Understanding Homosexuality.” The 20 page booklet is available FREE in pdf form HERE.

Read Peter LaBarbera’s remarks about “Gay” History month in public schools HERE.

The following is excerpted from Gay History Month Sparks District Debate, by Susan Snyder, published Sept 28, 2006, in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

…Gay and Lesbian History Month was added for the first time this year in an effort to be more inclusive and follow a long-standing district policy requiring equity for all races and minority groups, said Cecilia Cummings, the district’s senior vice president for communications and community relations. It is one of four special history months noted, along with Hispanic Heritage in September, African American in February, and Asian Pacific American in May.

Cummings said the district was not planning to roll out any districtwide curriculum or hold celebrations to coincide with the month, although individual schools with gay-straight alliances may have observances. The uproar in response to the calendar addition was not unexpected.

“We knew that this would be controversial,” Cummings said. “When you deal with diversity, there are some hot-button issues that emerge.”

…Cummings said that about 200,000 calendars had been sent … The publication is paid for by the district.

Continue reading in The Philadelphia Inquirer…