July 5, 2007 6:15 PM
Teaching homosexuality to kids
My plan eventually is to have a news site where I can just link to the most thought-provoking news of the day - a sorta Drudge Report without the sensational distractions - limited to items of particular concern to parents. It won't be so much commentary, just articles that speak for themselves. I'm looking for a domain name now.
Yesterday was a reminder to me of the incredible story of how our country came to be. How those brave men came together and hammered out a document which basically placed them in the position of being traitors. They were British citizens. Yet after much discussion - and the prayer invoked by Benjamin Franklin - they wrote and signed a document calling their political leader a tyrant and declaring freedom even for those who weren't willing to fight for it. They were labeled criminals and hounded and persecuted for many years for their courageous act of rebellion. We owe them all a tremendous debt of gratitude for risking the wrath of man to follow the will of God.
If they had one of those Quiz things - you know, like What Shakespeare Character Are You? - on which Revolutionary Period figure you were, I think I would be Paul Revere. My job is to sound the alarm.
Remember, I lived for 30 years in California, traditionally the cutting edge of most every trend that threatens our heritage and culture. When I left in 2002, Democrats were in control of both houses, the governorship and the courts. Which means that the far left had a big voice. The Superintendent of Education (Delaine Eastin)'s idea of setting up a committee to create a curriculum dealing with "tolerance" and "bullying" and "hate crimes" was to appoint a 33-member panel reputed to exemplify diversity but stacked with 29 (!) members of gay political organizations. High schools had gay student groups mentored by gay adults from the community. Instead of American flags in classrooms were signs - No Homophobia Here. Gay groups appeared in the high schools without notice to parents, giving kids "research questions" about whether they had indulged in specific and graphic sexual practices. Kindergarten curriculum included teaching five-year-olds that they could grow up to marry someone of either sex. (And on the abortion/parental rights side, a school nurse by law had the right to take a girl from the school grounds to a Planned Parenthood clinic for an abortion without parental consent or notification.)
Now I'm in northern Virginia, watching this pitiful, misguided agenda unfold in Montgomery County, Maryland - on the other side of the Beltway. The parents there have been fighting this for years - to the jeers and mockery of the Washington Post, whose reporters cozy up to gays and can't abide conservative parents.
Rebecca Hagelin wrote today in Teaching Homosexuality to Kids:
Quick question: Who thinks there isn't enough frank sexual information forced on today's kids? Is the bar for acceptable sexual behavior still too high? You would think so when reading a recent Washington Post article titled "A More Candid Approach to Sex-Ed."As many parents know, most sex-ed classes are already candid enough, thank you very much. The last thing we need is for anyone to spice them up or further complicate what should be a pretty simple subject. But that's what schools in Montgomery County, Md., plan to do by introducing lessons on homosexuality to eight- and 10th-graders – lessons that serve to further the radical homosexual activist agenda.
Those in eight grade, for example, may be asked to ponder their "gender identity." Is this the same thing as your actual gender, which should be, ummm, obvious by this time? No. Students are told that it's "your identification of yourself as a man or a woman, based on the gender you feel to be inside." You could be a boy trapped in a girl's body, or vice versa – or something in between, it seems. Since when did knowing one's gender get so � difficult? My goodness, isn't there enough out there to confuse our children without asking them to question whether they are really a boy or truly a girl? Have we gone mad?
Whatever your true identity, though, you can bet it is "innate," the eight-graders are told. To be certain they understand, the curriculum defines "innate" as "determined by factors present in an individual from birth." In short, gays are born, not made, so "straights" can't say homosexuality or bisexuality is wrong. (Does that apply to those who prefer bestiality or pedophilia? Just wondering �) What's needed, then, is "tolerance," which the curriculum says is "the ability to accept others' differences and allow them to be who they are without expressing disapproval." Does the same logic apply to other abnormal or harmful behaviors? Do we say, "Oh, so you're an alcoholic – good for you!" Or, "Tendencies toward kleptomania? Well, don't let me stand in your way!"? I think not.
Read Hagelin's commentary in its entirety here.
I am sick of people labeling anyone questioning the homosexual agenda in this country a homophobe. Let me say it loud and clear: a person is a person and every one should be treated with dignity. I treat every one that way and teach my children to do the same. And in all the articles I've read on gay marriage or gay adoption or pro-homosexual school curriculum, I have never read a personal attack on a particular gay person, nor on the group as a whole.
On the contrary, I find the gay community is the one that actually shreds its "enemies" and treats them as caricatures. And who are its enemies? People minding their own business conducting classes at college or celebrating mass or speaking up about the education they expect for their children in public school.
You may wonder why gay activists HATE abstinence education for our children and fight tooth and nail to keep it out of the schools. Why should they care?
The reason is that part of their agenda is that our teens should be fully sexualized and making important decisions during the most confusing years - decisions like Am I gay or straight? Am I comfortable as a male? Am I comfortable as a female?
Who's ever comfortable in their teen years? And why are they urged to "come out" immediately and then reinforced by all the adult homosexual men and women in the community in their newly-defined sexuality? And why does sexuality become the centerpiece of who they are?
Why can't our schools just teach kids what they're supposed to teach them? I think the whole idea of sex education in school is a terrible indictment of American parents, who should be teaching their children these things in the context of marriage and family - not allowing them to be brainwashed that if it feels good, do it, proclaim it at the top of your lungs (by all means, do march as a gay group in the Fourth of July parade and then wonder why people aren't thrilled with your co-opting an important day in our nation's history to tell us that Two Daddies Are Okay), and beat down the opposition with name-calling and bullying tactics.
They've certainly managed to silence many people. But I promise never to be one of them.
Another person they failed to silence was one of their own, Camille Paglia - a brilliant writer and university professor who is a proud and confident lesbian.
In an article titled It Wasn't 'Romeo and Julian' published 2/22/99 in the Wall Street Journal - not to be found on the Internet except two very disturbed responses to it from gay groups, but I still have my own yellowed newspaper clipping - she addressed the efforts of gay activists to intrude into literature and the arts (insisting for example, that Shakespeare was a homosexual) as "ethically wrong" and continued:
"Sexual orientation is fluid and ambiguous, and homosexuality has multiple causes. It certainly is not inborn, as was proclaimed by several small, flawed studies of the 1990s. The intrusion of militant gay activism into primary schools does more harm than good by encouraging adolescents to define themselves prematurely as gay, when in fact most teens are wracked by instability, insecurity and doubt.Questionable and overblown statistics about teen suicide are being rankly abused. In most cases the suicides are probably due not to homophobic persecution but to troubled family relations - which may be the source of the social maladjustment and homosexual impulses in the first place. Trumpeting gayness in adolescents short-circuits their psychological inquiry and growth. . . .
"Self-esteem" is not the purpose of education. Teachers should stop posing as therapists and do-gooders and get back to introducing the huge expanse of art, literature, history and science to American students, who desperately need cultural enrichment and intellectual development.
I couldn't agree more.
Posted in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
I agree too!
She seems to really know what she is talking about. However, I found this part interesting:
"troubled family relations... may be the source of the social maladjustment and homosexual impulses in the first place"
How can she continue in a homosexual lifestyle if she knows it is a symptom of a troubled family life or childhood?
I can't wait to read your "drudge report!" I like reading about current issues from a Christian perspective.
Have a great day from me in California too! :)
Posted by: Stacie | July 5, 2007 11:53 PM
Once again we see that those who claim to be the most "tolerant" are actually the most "intolerant". Have you heard of or read Rebecca Hagelin's book Home Invasion? It is wonderful. Looking forward to your "drudge report". I like my news w/o the modern spin!
Enjoy the day!
Posted by: ohapizgud | July 6, 2007 8:27 AM
And I thank you, Barbara, for being willing to take the heat and say what needs to be said! You go, girl!
Posted by: Holly | July 6, 2007 9:15 AM
Barbara, in all fairness, I was at the Leesburg 4th of July parade and did not see a sign about two daddies.
I did see signs that seemed to be taken directly from the Declaration of Independence ... Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness, Created Equal, Inalienable Rights, God Bless America, Happy Birthday America, and many people running for office ... but I did not see a sign about two daddies ... what parade where you referencing, assuming you were talking about a parade in Northern Virginia or was that in California?
Posted by: denuk | July 6, 2007 10:30 AM
Well, denuk, that's great news!!
Last year - at the July 4, 2006 parade Equality Loudoun marched in the parade carrying signs like I mentioned.
Afterwards David and Jonathan Weintraub & Co. plastered the Letters to the Editors pages of our local newspapers whining about how ill received they were.
A few months later I had the opportunity to speak to one of the Weintraubs after they misinterpreted my newspaper column about the starling invasion as being somehow an attack on their alternative lifestyle and wrote - yes - yet another letter to the editor in their vigilant effort to keep what they constantly perceive as the forces of anti-homosexuality at bay here in Loudoun County. Their response was so preposterous that I simply picked up the phone and called them to clarify that my article was indeed about the starling invasion as a metaphor for the intrusion of city folk into rural areas - particularly city folk who are attracted by the ambiance but then work hard to change things to their liking.
While I assured them that I do not hate homosexuals - in fact I have many homosexual friends today - I do have areas of disagreement with their political agenda (or at least the political agenda of the ones who are trying to micromanage our children's sex education).
During the course of the conversation I also had an opportunity to mention that political gays bring on a lot of the prejudice they perceive. It's not because they're homosexual. It's because they're inappropriate - as when they marched in the July 4 2006 parade simply to call attention to their homosexuality. On a day of national remembrance, this is inappropriate and of course people will be resentful, just as I am resentful when someone lets their kids make a lot noise during a performance. While I can tolerate children's noise, the theater is not the time or place for them to act like the center of the universe.
So, denuk, thanks for sharing - this brightens my day! Maybe D&J&Co heard me. My hat's off to them!
Posted by: barbara | July 6, 2007 12:20 PM
And that's why I read your blog. You keep me "in the know" now that Spunky doesn't do it anymore.
Keep up the good work!
Posted by: JoannainCa. | July 6, 2007 3:42 PM
