Are you concerned about the number of sexualised images our children are being exposed to in the media, and by the advertising, marketing and clothing industries? Are you concerned about:

• How children are portrayed in advertising - i.e. What they wear, how they're posed?
• The images children are exposed to in their environment - i.e. Billboards, magazines, internet, TV?
• The toys, dolls, gadgets children play with?
• Exposure to adult sexual images that a child is not developmentally ready to absorb?
• Have you felt powerless to make a difference? You are not alone!

There is a groundswell of people all over Australia who are also concerned. This includes experts in the field of child development.

Kids free 2b Kids and Young Media Australia are committed to children developing to their full potential - without exposure to sexualized imagery before they are developmentally ready to process it.

This website (http://www.kf2bk.com/) tells you:

• What we want to do.
• What you can do to make your voice count.
• What the research says.
• What the current regulations are.
• How to make a complaint.
The above website is continually updated. Parent and Educational resources will be available soon.

Affirmative Action and Gay Marriage
Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, November 05, 2008

The politically clever way to get special privileges is to call them "rights"-- especially "equal rights."

Some local election campaigns in various states are using that tactic this year, trying to get special privileges through affirmative action quotas or through demands that the definition of marriage be changed to suit homosexuals.

Equality of rights does not mean equality of results. I can have all the equal treatment in the world on a golf course and I will not finish within shouting distance of Tiger Woods.

When arbitrary numerical "goals" or "quotas" under affirmative action are not met, the burden of proof is put on the employer to prove that he did not discriminate against minorities or women. No burden of proof whatever is put on the advocates of "goals" or "quotas" to show that people would be equally represented in jobs, colleges or anywhere else in the absence of discrimination.

Tons of evidence from countries around the world, and over centuries of history, show that statistical disparities are the rule, not the exception-- even in situations where discrimination is virtually impossible.

Anonymously graded tests do not show the same results from one group to another. In many countries there are minorities who completely outperform members of the majority population, whether in education, in the economy or in sports, even when there is no way that they can discriminate against the majority.

Putting the burden of proof on everybody except yourself is a slick political ploy. The time is long overdue for the voting public to see through it.

Another fraud on the ballot this year is gay "marriage."

Marriage has existed for centuries and, until recent times, it has always meant a union between a man and a woman. Over those centuries, a vast array of laws has grown up, all based on circumstances that arise in unions between a man and a woman.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that law has not been based on logic but on experience. To apply a mountain of laws based specifically on experience with relations between a man and a woman to a different relationship where sex differences are not involved would be like applying the rules of baseball to football.

The argument that current marriage laws "discriminate" against homosexuals confuses discrimination against people with making distinctions among different kinds of behavior.

All laws distinguish among different kinds of behavior. What other purpose does law have?

While people may be treated the same, all their behaviors are not. Laws that forbid bicycles from being ridden on freeways obviously have a different effect on people who have bicycles but no cars.

But this is not discrimination against a person. The cyclist who gets into a car is just as free to drive on the freeway as anybody else.

The question is not whether gays should be permitted to marry. Many gays have already married people of the opposite sex. Conversely, heterosexuals who might want to marry someone of the same sex in order to make some point will be forbidden to do so, just as gays are.

The real issue is whether marriage should be redefined-- and, if for gays, why not for polygamists? Why not for pedophiles?

Despite heavy television advertising in California for "gay marriage," showing blacks being set upon by police dogs during civil right marches, and implying that homosexuals face the same discrimination today, the analogy is completely false.

Blacks had to sit in the back of the bus because they were black. They were doing exactly what white people were doing-- riding a bus. That is what made it racial discrimination.

Marriage is not a right but a set of legal obligations imposed because the government has a vested interest in unions that, among other things, have the potential to produce children, which is to say, the future population of the nation.

Gays were on their strongest ground when they said that what they did was nobody else's business. Now they are asserting a right to other people's approval, which is wholly different.

None of us has a right to other people's approval.

Excerpt from "THE CULTURE WAR 2001-2002" (entire article is on "Obama Changes" page)

E.U. FORCES HOMOSEXUALITY ON ROMANIA. On 20 December '01 the BBC reported that "human rights campaigners in Romania were celebrating their victory in getting a Ceausescu-era law which criminalized homosexual practices scrapped." The law, article 200 of the Romanian penal code, was repealed "under fierce pressure from the European Union." The E.U. made abolishing the statute a precondition for the country's pending membership in the European superstate.

Romania has historically banned homosexual behavior, and public attitudes among Romanians toward sodomy are decidedly negative. In 2000, a nationwide survey found close to 90% of Romanians would not want to live next door to a homosexual.

"We need healthy young people in mind and body, like any civilized country, and we must try to protect them from contamination by such serious sinners," said a spokesman for the Romanian Orthodox Church. When asked about the E.U.'s role in coercing Romania to jettison its anti-homosexual laws, the spokesman replied: "We want to join the European Union, not Sodom and Gomorrah."

"GAY DAYS" AT SANTA ROSA HIGH. Anti-homosexual activist, attorney Scott Lively, gets a glimpse into "the brave new world of sexual diversity in California schools." What is especially worrying is that this kind of degeneracy is not confined to "off-the-wall" California, but is spreading like a cancer throughout  America. Even worse, this metastasizing process is being aided and abetted by U. S. politicians, educators, and, yes, even prominent and not-so-prominent religious leaders. The only hope is that the American people -- who have so far shown themselves to be little more than lemmings -- finally wake up and take back their nation, their culture, and their children.

GRAMSCI AND THE U.S. BODY POLITIC. Who is Antonio Gramsci? You'd better learn!!! Why the interest in Gramsci? This study gives a short bio and a quick glance into the mind of a diabolical genius whose theories are being used to convert America (and the rest of the Western world) into a class warfare arena where the dominant Helleno-Christian culture is methodically being marginalized. Understanding Gramsci, "you will understand the 'peculiar' and 'weird' theories that are in vogue today."

GRAMSCI: A  METHOD TO THE MADNESS. Behind the many maddening attacks on the West's popular Helleno-Christian culture is Italian Communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci's strategy for achieving the total state. Gramsci (1891-1937), described as "...the most significant Marxist thinker since Lenin," diverged from purist Marxist theory by insisting that, given food in his belly and a marginal existence, the average worker would never bestir himself  to revolt. No, said Gramsci, it is through the undermining and domination of their institutions that the masses must be guided into the anthill. Destroy their faith in religion, undermine the educational process, erode the strength of the family, take control of the means of communication, and you will soon reduce individualistic humanity into an amorphous, easy to subjugate, mass of aggressive consumers and docile citizens. Then, and only then, can the process of remaking society into the New World Order of a Marxist/Socialist "paradise" begin. One need not have a degree in Political Science, nor the brains of a genius, to see that his planned "March Through the Institutions," in order to "capture the culture" is working.

GRAMSCI'S GRAND PLAN for gaining "cultural hegemony" over our Helleno-Christian civilization is explained in this article by philosopher, theologian, writer, and researcher, Fr. James Thornton. Antonio Gramsci--"the most significant Marxist thinker since Lenin"-- broke ranks with traditional Marxist theory by stressing that the domination over the institutions of culture is of far greater importance than class or economic considerations. When one looks at the sorry state of our Western Culture, and considers how our once inviolate institutions have fallen into disarray, one can appreciate the diabolical genius of Gramsci's strategy.

GRAMSCI-ISMS 

"It will be necessary to replace Latin and Greek as the fulcrum of the formative school, and they will be replaced. But it will not be easy to deploy the new subject or subjects in a didactic form which gives equivalent results in terms of education and general personality-formation from early childhood to the threshold of the adult choice of career. For in this period what is learnt, or the greater part of it, must be -- or appear to the pupils to be -- disinterested, i.e. not have immediate or too immediate practical purposes. It must be formative, while being "instructive" -- in other words rich in concrete facts." (No abstracts, you see, just "concrete facts" needed by the consumer-worker drone of the future.) Selections From the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (SPN). Int'l Publ. 1999. p 39f.

"QUEER SEX" was the title of a school workshop conducted by Massachusetts state health and education employees in March of 2000. The program was part of the annual conference of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network-Boston (GLSEN-Boston). At this event, attended by students as young as 14 and their "teachers," any misconception about how homosexual militants are "simply fighting intolerance" was immediately dispelled. As an example, pederasty was promoted in a video narrated by a 7th-grade girl who unwittingly promoted the lie that man-boy love was an accepted practice among the ancient Greeks. After the video, an adult assured the attendees that "there is nothing wrong with an adult approaching adolescents for sex." (For the truth about Greece, read a short introduction to "Homosexuality in ancient Greece" before linking to the article.) What follows is a small sampling from across America of similar initiatives by homosexual activists pursuing an increasingly open and defiant program to recruit children into their "lifestyle," and who are being aided and abetted by the American Establishment in their goal.

 In the rural Rio Bravo-Greeley Union School District in California, parents of 15 students seeking to transfer their children out of the classroom of a militant "gay" teacher were denied the right to do so by a decree issued by the state. The students complained that the teacher "rubbed" their backs, and placed his arms around them when they would ask questions in class.
 
 Parents across the U.S. are incensed over the wide-spread showing of a lesbian-produced film titled It's Elementary: Talking about Gay Issues in School. The video, which is being shown to children from 1st grade through middle school, is all about teachers giving pro-homosexual instruction in the classroom.
 
 According to GLSEN, as of January 2000 more than 600 gay and lesbian student clubs meet regularly in schools throughout America; up from fewer than 100 in 1998. Some school boards tried to withhold their approval for these clubs, but backed down when threatened with law suits. So far, and to our knowledge, only one school board has succeeded in thwarting such activity, but it did so at a high cost to other students: it abandoned all extracurricular clubs rather than yield, but this is the exception.
 
 Four Portland, Oregon, public school teachers protested in Sept. of 1999 that their school district's "Sexual Diversity Committee" was promoting homosexuality by insisting on books promoting the "gay" lifestyle be used in the classroom, and by rejecting books presenting Christian or other contrary points of view. The teachers charge that they have been aggressively "harassed" ever since.
 
 A transsexual high school teacher was dismissed for discussing "sex-identity" issues, and for openly and graphically discussing his own sex-change operation in class. He sued and received a $150,000. settlement from the school board.
 
 In the "Mathematics" section of the Project Organizing Handbook, a widely-circulated teachers' aid, the following "math" story-problem was recommended: "If 10,000 people marched in the Gay Pride March in 1990 and 25,000 in 1992, what was the average increase? The Handbook openly -- and, it seems, without fear of opposition from the pusillanimous denizens of "the home of the brave" -- recommends that teachers insert "The use of gay/lesbian specific situations in explaining mathematical procedures."
 
 At a 1998 GLSEN-Boston conference, New York kindergarten teacher Jaki Williams said that teaching 5-year-olds about homosexuality is important because children at that age are "just developing their super-ego" and "that's where the saturation process needs to begin." [ Saturation!!? Of 5-year old kids? This is Bejing-style indoctrination, pure and simple.]
 
 In the January 1999 issue of Young Children, authors B .J. Cahill and R. Theilheimer offer this "politically correct" advice on how teachers should respond to the question from 5-year-old Tommy about whether he can marry his best friend, Sam, when they grow up: "Tommy and Sam can choose to live together when they grow up. There are men who prefer to make a family with another man instead of with a woman. And they love each other just like other families. They can even have a wedding if they want."
 
In Jacksonville, Florida, parents of high-school students objected to the pornographic and scatological filth called "poetry" written by that blatantly homosexual sodomite, the late and unlamented Allen Ginsberg, being assigned to their children in an English class. In September of 2001 they got the full (and usual) treatment: They were made to feel stupid and uncouth by the diploma-mill hoodlums of the school's English Department, who assured them that what this America-hating, piece of shit had written was worth learning. Ginsberg  loved to brag "I sleep with young boys" at every opportunity given him by the naive and stupidly "open-minded" and "tolerant" Americans his kind are hell-bent on destroying. He was obsessed with his anus, and wrote all about the many uses he'd put it to through the years. He also fantasized in his poetry about having sex with his mother, and wrote about her bowel movements in graphic detail. This man is to literature what the stuff that sticks to the heels of your shoes when you walk through a dog kennel is to your brand new wall-to-wall carpeting. Yet his pornographic scribbling is being taught in high schools and universities throughout America today. Of course, the parents in Florida ultimately had to yield to the "experts" who insisted that Ginsberg  had "greatly influenced the development of modern American poetry," and deserved to be taught to their young.

Although this blurb is zeroed in on what's going on in the schools of America concerning homosexuality, the same nihilistic message of death is being huckstered to the citizens of that once great land by their media, their politicians, and their corporate "captains of commerce and industry." Even the majority of their churches have not been able to withstand the conspiratorial onslaught against the Helleno-Christian values that created America and made her the bastion of liberty and decency she was until not so very long ago. Those who still believe, even at this late date, that all of this is simply the way things are naturally developing are either incredibly naive, or, as we say in Greece, hiding behind their finger.

To give us a hint as to what such people described above have in mind for America's children, take a glance at the revealing vision of the future made by the Boston-based Gay Community News in its February 1987 issue: "We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. ... Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us."

Abstinence Education Is Still a Good Idea
Mona Charen
Wednesday, September 03, 2008

No sooner was Bristol Palin's pregnancy disclosed than many in the liberal commentariat began to beat abstinence education (which Sarah Palin favors) about the head and shoulders. A blogger on the Daily Kos asked, "If Sarah Palin still supports abstinence-only sex education for public schools, after this experience with her daughter, what does that say about her judgment as a policy maker?" Ronnie Polaneczky of the Philadelphia Daily News titled her column "Bristol Palin: Proof that abstinence-only education doesn't work."

Rubbish. The experience of one individual tells us exactly nothing about the wisdom of any public policy. For what it's worth, it seems Ms. Palin may indeed have received traditional (i.e. contraceptive instruction) sex ed in her public school. But in any case, we do not know (and speaking for myself, do not wish to know) anything about the particulars of her pregnancy. It may be that she and her boyfriend used contraceptives diligently and the contraceptives failed. Certainly, this much is undeniable: More girls get pregnant by thoroughly following the recommendations of birth control advocates than do girls who strictly adhere to an abstinence program.

About 20 years ago a Washington Post reporter named Leon Dash made a great contribution to the debate over contraceptives in schools with his book "When Children Want Children." He studied the lives of inner city black families in the District of Columbia. At the time, the conventional wisdom was that many teenagers were having babies because they lacked knowledge of or access to birth control products. Dash interviewed the pregnant girls and they set him straight. They told him (and I paraphrase from memory) "Mr. Dash, we know all about birth control. And we can get them at the supermarket. But we want these babies."

The cheerleaders for contraceptives often overlook that reality in their eagerness to place condoms in the hands of teenagers. They also overlook this sorry fact of life: Teenagers are terrible contraceptors. Though 98 percent of sexually active teens report using at least one method of birth control, 8.4 percent got pregnant in 2000. Fully 25 percent of sexually active teens contract an STD each year. Some of these diseases, like genital herpes and AIDS, are incurable. Others can lead to infertility.

There are other realities that birth control advocates overlook as well. Many teenaged girls do not choose to have sex because their raging hormones overwhelm their good judgment. Many do so because the whole culture, very much including the schools, seems to be pushing them into it. Here is a letter from a reader: "I wish it had been taught or even talked about in my high school ... In 1977 I didn't want to have sex (but) you were considered sort of frigid or not grown up if you didn't go along with what everyone else was doing ... I needed something, anything to point to as a good reason not to (other than my parents) "

According to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly 30 percent of sexually active teens said they felt pressured into having sex. Ten percent reported having been physically forced to have sex.

There are studies all over the map on the question of whether abstinence-only education works or not. The Best Friends Foundation program boasts impressive statistics over 15 years for keeping teen girls away from sex, drugs, and alcohol. A study using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found a strong correlation between abstinence and school success (even controlling for factors like family structure, wealth, and race).

Over the past two decades, as more and more school systems have implemented abstinence programs, the rate of teen pregnancy has declined. The number of high school students who say they are virgins has increased, and the abortion rate has dropped. Is all of this good news due to abstinence-only programs? It's a complex subject and the evidence remains inconclusive. And clearly any school abstinence message is practically drowned out by the vulgar and licentious culture all around us. Still, we may be slowly climbing out of the hole we've dug for ourselves. The last thing we should be doing is declaring abstinence education a failure.

Teen Sex? Please Do! - Planned Parenthood
Matt Barber
Monday, September 01, 2008

Planned Parenthood, the billion dollar corporate abortion mill, has taken indecency to a whole new level and is using your taxpayer dollars to do so.  The organization, which is responsible for the abortion deaths of tens of millions of people, was founded in 1916 by admitted white-supremacist Margret Sanger, with the lofty goal of, as Sanger put it, eliminating “the ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.”  Lest there be any doubt as to whom, exactly, Sanger was referring to, she also wrote: “We do not want the word to go out that we (Planned Parenthood) want to exterminate the Negro population.” 

Sorry, Maggie.  Word’s out. 

Although Planned Parenthood’s primary mission is detestable beyond words and remains unchanged still today, its secondary goal, if left in a vacuum, is not so sinister.  That is, of course, to make lots and lots of money. 

But here’s what is sinister.  In order to make lots and lots of money, Planned Parenthood, just like any other “service provider,” needs lots and lots of customers, and the best way to get those customers is to promote the very behaviors which create them.  Specifically, to manipulate kids – under the guise of so-called “comprehensive sex education” – to engage in promiscuous, casual sex as soon and as often as possible.  It’s simple supply and demand.  Planned Parenthood encourages the behaviors which create the demand and then dutifully offers its deadly supply.       

To that end, Planned Parenthood has created a new promotional Web site that targets youth.  It’s called “Take Care Down There” (www.takecaredownthere.org).  It features short, near pornographic “public service” video vignettes which, among other things, promote casual sex, immodesty, homosexuality and even group sex.

For example, in perfect keeping with its demonstrably racist, loosey-goosey sexual tradition, one of the Planned Parenthood videos depicts what appears to be a teenage African-American male relegated to performing oral sex – in public – on a white teenage male.  Another white male (a creepy adult authority figure who seems just a little too interested) walks up and begins giving instructions.  The white teenager then says, “I didn’t even spew.” 

In another vignette, a teenage girl appears to drop her pants – again in public – exposing her privates in front of two other girls and the same African-American male.  She then asks them, “Do you see anything down there?” referencing potential evidence of sexually transmitted disease.  Of course, based on her cavalier sexual attitude and tart immodesty (or is that immodest tart?) the odds strongly favor the likelihood that she does, in fact, have something “down there.”  

So why does Planned Parenthood’s latest vulgar foray into the corruption of America’s youth concern you?  Simple – you’re paying for it.  Consider the following information compiled by Liberty Counsel: 

Planned Parenthood has been receiving federal funding under the Title X Family Planning Program, enacted in 1970 as Title X of the Public Health Services Act.  Section 1008 of the Act, as amended, stipulates that “None of the funds appropriated under this title shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning,” yet Planned Parenthood is nevertheless receiving funds under this federal program. 

During the 2006-2007 fiscal year, Planned Parenthood received a total of $336.7 million from government grants and contracts (that’s your taxpayer dollars).  In 2008, $300 million was given to family planning clinics, under the Title X program.  These funds were used to service over five million people, a third of which received “care” from a Planned Parenthood clinic. 

On October 27, 2007, a coalition of leaders from dozens of conservative groups, including Liberty Counsel, Concerned Women for America, Focus on the Family, the American Family Association and more, signed a joint letter calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood, after revelations of the abortion giant’s alleged systematic violation of Kansas state law came to light.  Senator David Vitter (R-LA) and Representative Mike Pence (R-IN) have both introduced legislation that would prevent Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers from receiving taxpayer dollars in the future. 

While commenting on Planned Parenthood’s latest abuse of taxpayer dollars, Attorney Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, stated, “Planned Parenthood has now given the federal government yet another reason to stop funding this racist, eugenic, and immoral organization.

“Why should hardworking Americans pay to support Planned Parenthood’s profiteering sex agenda, that encourages teenage sex on the one hand and then profits by aborting the consequences of such promiscuity on the other hand? Planned Parenthood’s Web site is offensive and, frankly, shocks the conscience. It is insane that we allow our tax dollars to fund such an irresponsible and destructive organization. We must stop funding Planned Parenthood and we must stop now!”

True, indeed.  Beyond its stated mission to cleanse the world of “human beings who never should have been born at all,” Planned Parenthood’s primary purpose is to promote promiscuity among youth in order to line its pockets, plain and simple.  There’s a clear conflict of interest here.  When kids engage in risky sexual behaviors, Planned Parenthood wins.  Why else would it be promoting casual sex, homosexuality and group sex? 

It’s like the tobacco industry showing kids how fun and exciting it is to smoke cigarettes, and then telling them, with a wink, “But always smoke safely.”  We wouldn’t allow Joe Camel access to our kids on the taxpayer dime; neither should we give Margret “The Reaper” Sanger and her Planned Parenthood brood such taxpayer-funded access.

What's behind today's epidemic of teacher-student sex?
By David Kupelian
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49389

Editor's note: The following article, originally published in the March 2006 edition of Whistleblower magazine, was selected for top honors in the 2006 Amy Foundation Writing Awards program.

It was a bizarre and emotional courtroom scene, but one occurring with disturbing frequency these days. A popular middle school teacher, 43-year-old Pamela Diehl-Moore, had tearfully pleaded guilty to having sex with a child – a 13-year-old male student who had just completed 7th grade – and now stood before a Hackensack, N.J., judge awaiting sentencing.

And what would that sentence be? Considering all the intense media coverage of male sexual predators victimizing female children, one might expect a stiff prison term, accompanied by a withering rebuke.

But when New Jersey Superior Court Judge Bruce A. Gaeta opened his mouth, the words that came out did not express criticism of the teacher, nor acknowledge any damage she had done to her victim.

"I really don't see the harm that was done here," the judge proclaimed, "and certainly society doesn't need to be worried. I do not believe she is a sexual predator. It's just something between two people that clicked beyond the teacher-student relationship."

"Clicked"? With a 13-year-old?

"Maybe it was a way for him, once this happened, to satisfy his sexual needs," the judge added. "People mature at different rates." Gee thanks, Judge.

According to court transcripts, Gaeta summed up his shocking judicial leniency this way: "I don't see anything here that shows this young man has been psychologically damaged by her actions. And don't forget, this was mutual consent. Now certainly under the law, he is too young to legally consent, but that's what the law says. Some of the legislators should remember when they were that age. Maybe these ages have to be changed a little bit."

Translation: The 43-year-old teacher didn't really do anything wrong in having sex with a schoolboy, the kid wanted it, statutory rape laws are unrealistic and the age of consent should be lowered.

Oh, the sentence? Five years probation – no jail time.

In yet another recent court case, U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten in Kansas also questioned whether sex with kids was really bad.

"Where is the clear, credible evidence that underage sex is always injurious? If you tell me because it is illegal, I reject that," Marten said, according to the Associated Press.

Although most judges don't publicly sing the praises of statutory rape like these two – indeed, Judge Gaeta later came under the scrutiny of a judicial fitness review board – many regular Americans apparently agree with them. A lot of us just don't seem to think there's much of a problem when female teachers have sex with their male students.

"What is the deal lately with hot female teachers seducing their 13- to 16-year-old students?!" asked one blogger expressing the prevalent "what's-the-problem?" attitude: "I think the woman is getting off on the social taboo factor more than anything else. At least, that's what the expert psychologists say. I just wish I had a teacher stupid enough and bored enough in my grade school to make my pubescent dreams come true. If it wasn't illegal and there were no jilted husbands, it's almost a victimless crime."

And Bob Shoop, a Kansas State University education professor and expert witness in 30 court cases involving sexual abuse in schools, summed it up for the Associated Press this way: "I think our society sort of says to the boy: 'Congratulations, that's great. Everybody fantasizes about having a sexual relationship with an older woman.'"

As for the perpetrators themselves, often they just think they're expressing love.

One of the most famous cases of a teacher-student sexual relationship is that of Mary Kay Letourneau, who, unlike Diehl-Moore, served seven years in prison for the statutory rape – or "child rape" as it is called in Washington – of a 13-year-old boy at the school where she taught. Four months after her 1997 arrest, Letourneau – 34 at the time and married with four children – gave birth to a daughter fathered by the boy, Vili Fualaau. Pleading guilty, she was sentenced to 89 months in prison, but her term was suspended except for six months in jail – and the requirement that she stay away from Vili after her release.

But no sooner was she let out – early, for good behavior – than Letourneau was discovered in a car with Fualaau and re-arrested. Incensed, the judge sent her straight to prison to serve out the rest of her seven-and-a-half year sentence.

While Letourneau was behind bars, however, in March 1998 prison officials discovered that she was pregnant with another child by Fualaau. The next year, she and the boy co-authored a book – released in France, but not the U.S. – titled "Un Seul Crime, L'amour" ("Only One Crime, Love") – for which her attorney reportedly brokered Letourneau a $200,000 advance – and 2000 saw the release of her movie, "All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story." She was also divorced from her husband Steve.

When Letourneau was finally paroled on Aug. 4, 2004, Fualaau, then 21, successfully petitioned the court to lift its no-contact order and the couple was married May 20, 2005 – with high-dollar tabloid TV cameras rolling.

The wedding invitations read: "Please join Mary and Vili for their special day. They hope to make this the best wedding experience for you. A luxurious touring bus will whisk you away to their wedding destination. Food and refreshments will be available for your bus ride. Please respect the need for privacy and know that pictures from the wedding will be available for the guests at a later date."

In other words, leave your cameras at home, because we're cashing in on our controversial wedding by selling exclusive video rights for a lot of money.

The 200 to 300 wedding guests reportedly went through identity checks and metal detectors, and signed secrecy and release-of-privacy statements due to the TV videotaping. The couple's two daughters were the flower girls.

"Entertainment Tonight" and "The Insider" had exclusive rights to the wedding, with Seattle's KING 5 News reporting the couple would earn around $750,000 for their wedding footage.

Today the couple, along with their two daughters, reportedly live off the high six-figure paycheck they received for selling their wedding video and reside in a beachfront home in a Seattle suburb.

'Just being rebellious'

Sensational news stories of school teachers like Letourneau preying on students become a little more understandable when you realize the 1960s' sexual revolution has advanced to the point that sex and school seem to go together these days.

In November, the Washington Post interviewed high school students in and around the nation's capital:

Two students were discovered recently having sex in an Anne Arundel County high school gym. Four students at Col. Zadok Magruder High in Rockville were arrested in June after performing sex acts in the school parking lot. A boy and a girl at Springbrook High in Silver Spring were caught "touching inappropriately" in a school bathroom. Last year, three teenage boys at Mount Hebron High in Howard County were arrested after a student accused them of sexually assaulting her in a school restroom, but charges were dropped after the boys said the sex was consensual and the girl recanted.

"Students would have intercourse on the stairwells, locked classrooms, in the locker rooms," said Ihsan Musawwir, 18, a recent graduate of Dunbar Senior High School in the District. "It was embarrassing for me to walk in on it."

Jessica Miller, 19, who graduated in June from T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, said that for some students there, sex on campus is a popular fantasy – and sometimes a reality – particularly in the auditorium.

"It's so big, it's so dark," Miller said. "There's a lot more places to find privacy – behind the stage and on the catwalk."

But what's the appeal? "Just being rebellious," she said. "Coming back to class and saying, 'Ooh, guess what I just did? I just had sex in the auditorium.' "

Cpl. Michael Rudinski, president of the Maryland Association of School Resource Officers, said teenagers do whatever they think their peers are doing, whether they are or not. "The thing about young people is when they see things in the mass media and they think it's going on, they start doing it."

Worse than Catholic clergy sex scandal?

In today's sexually permissive school environment, just how prevalent is the teacher-student sex problem?

Get ready for a shock. According to a major 2004 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education – the most in-depth investigation to date – nearly 10 percent of U.S. public school students have been targeted with unwanted sexual attention by school employees.

Titled "Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature," the report says the mistreatment of students ranges from sexual comments to rape. In fact, says the study's author Charol Shakeshaft, professor of educational administration at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., the scope of the school-sex problem appears to far exceed the clergy-abuse scandal that has recently rocked the Roman Catholic Church.

Comparing the incidence of sexual misconduct in schools with the Catholic Church scandal, Shakeshaft notes that a recent study by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops concluded 10,667 young people were sexually mistreated by priests between 1950 and 2002.

In contrast, she extrapolates from a national survey conducted for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation in 2000 that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000.

The figures suggest "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests," said Shakeshaft, according to Education Week.

Indeed, more than 4.5 million students are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade, says the report.

The National Education Association disputes Shakshaft's conclusion, Education Week said, calling it "a misuse of the data to imply that public schools and the Catholic Church have experienced the same level of abuse cases."

"I take great umbrage at that suggestion," said NEA spokeswoman Kathleen Lyons. "That just seems like someone is reaching conclusions based on half the data that's needed."

Shakeshaft acknowledged many factors could alter the analysis, including undercounting of youth abused by priests, but she argued this provides impetus for better research.

"Educator sexual misconduct is woefully understudied," Shakeshaft says in her report. "We have scant data on incidence and even less on descriptions of predators and targets. There are many questions that call for answers."

Grooming

Like all sexual predators, says Shakeshaft, "sexual abusers in schools use various strategies to trap students. They lie to them, isolate them, make them feel complicit, and manipulate them into sexual contact. Often teachers target vulnerable or marginal students who are grateful for the attention."

The report draws a clear distinction between true pedophiles – that is, adults who target pre-pubescent children – and those who criminally seduce pubescent but underage youngsters. "The abusers of children younger than seventh grade have different patterns than those who abuse older children," she says, making a disturbing but familiar point about pedophiles' modus operandi:

The educators who target elementary school children are often professionally accomplished and even celebrated. Particularly compared to their non-abusing counterparts, they hold a disproportionate number of awards. It is common to find that educators who have been sexually abusing children are also the same educators who display on their walls a community “Excellence in Teaching” award or a “Teacher of the Year” certificate. This popularity confounds district officials and community members and prompts them to ignore allegations on the belief that “outstanding teachers” cannot be abusers. Many educators who abuse work at being recognized as good professionals in order to be able to sexually abuse children. For them, being a good educator is the path to children, especially those who abuse elementary and younger middle school students.
In contrast, she notes:

At the late middle and high school level, educator abusers may or may not be outstanding practitioners. At this level, the initial acts are somewhat less premeditated and planned and more often opportunistic, a result of bad judgment or a misplaced sense of privilege.
Shakeshaft gives a chilling description of the various techniques of "grooming" – a practice common to virtually all child molesters. Grooming, she explains, is a process whereby …

an abuser selects a student, gives the student attention and rewards, provides the student with support and understanding, all the while slowly increasing the amount of touch or other sexual behavior. The purpose of grooming is to test the child’s ability to maintain secrecy, to desensitize the child through progressive sexual behaviors, to provide the child with experiences that are valuable and that the child won’t want to lose, to learn information that will discredit the child, and to gain approval from parents.
Grooming allows the abuser to test the student’s silence at each step. It also serves to implicate the student, resulting in children believing that they are responsible for their own abuse because “I never said stop.”

Grooming often takes place in the context of providing a child with extras like additional help learning a musical instrument, advisement on a science project, or opportunities for camping and outdoor activity. These opportunities not only create a special relationship with students, they are also ones for which parents are usually appreciative.

Most sexual molesters work very hard to keep their victims from telling others. This is not as hard for the perpetrator to accomplish as it may seem. For one thing, children who are sexually abused by teachers often don't recognize what is happening as abuse. "In many cases," says the report, "they are told that what is happening is love. Many abusers of children at all ages couch what they are doing to the children as love, both romantic and parental."

Other techniques for keeping children quiet, says Shakeshaft, are "intimidation and threats (if you tell, I’ll fail you)," "exploiting the power structure (if you tell, no one will believe you)" and "manipulating the child’s affections (if you tell, I’ll get in trouble; if you tell, I won’t be able to be your friend anymore)." Since kids typically get something out of the relationship – everything from attention and gifts to physical pleasure and a feeling of belonging – they can easily be made to feel responsible, something offenders use to their advantage.

But what happens when, despite the powerful manipulation of their minds and feelings by the sexual predator, children actually do go to authorities?

In many cases, says the federally funded report, they are just not believed: "Because of the power differential, the reputation difference between the educator and the child, or the mindset that children are untruthful, many reports by children are ignored or given minimal attention."

Several studies estimate that only about 6 percent of all children report sexual abuse by an adult to someone who can do something about it. Indeed, fear of not being believed is the No. 1 reason kids don't report their sexual victimization at the hands of adults.

Shakeshaft cites the case of one teacher, Kenneth DeLuca, who was convicted of sexually abusing 13 students between the ages of 10 and 18 over a period of 21 years. Although nearly all of the students reported the abuse at the time it was occurring, school officials ignored the accusations. "Overwhelmingly, the girls experienced a disastrous response when they told about DeLuca’s behavior," said the report. "Many were disbelieved, some were told to leave schools, parents were allegedly threatened with lawsuits."

Even more shocking, Shakeshaft's report documents that offending teachers have frequently gotten off virtually scot-free even when their sexual misdeed are exposed to school administrators.

In one study of 225 cases of teacher sex abuse in New York, although all the accused had admitted to sexually abusing a student, not one was reported to the police and only 1 percent lost their license to teach.

A 2003 study reports that 159 Washington state coaches were "reprimanded, warned, or let go in the past decade because of sexual misconduct" – and yet, "at least 98 of them continued coaching or teaching afterward.”

A 2004 study reports that many school districts make confidential agreements with abusers, essentially trading a positive recommendation for a resignation. In one case, a Seattle educator named Luke Markishtum "had two decades of complaints of sex with students and providing alcohol and marijuana to students prior to his arrest for smuggling six tons of marijuana into the state. The district paid Markishtum the remainder of his salary that year, agreed to keep the record secret, and gave him an additional $69,000."
'Lucky day'

Recently, there has been a seeming explosion in a special type of teacher sexual abuse – female teachers having sex with underage teenage boys, who as a rule are willing participants in the sex.

"Generally the male doesn't feel victimized," said Steven B. Blum, a consulting psychologist to a sex offender program in Nebraska. "A lot of teenage boys would see that as their lucky day," he told the Los Angeles Times.

Lucky day? What about the next day, and the next year and beyond? Experts say sexually victimized boys experience later difficulty in developing age-appropriate relationships and gravitate toward pornography and one-night stands. They are also more likely as adults to suffer depression, anxiety and drug addiction.

The 16-year-old victim of Margaret De Barraicua, a 30-year-old California teacher who pleaded guilty to four counts of statutory rape, did not consider it his "lucky day."

"I'm not the same boy," the boy said in a letter read in court in Sacramento. "At school I became the center of attention. Everyone knew my name." But the boy was so traumatized, his mother wrote in a letter read in court, that "his hair is falling out."

And the father of a Colorado boy molested by Silvia Johnson – who held drug-alcohol-and-sex parties at her home with teenaged schoolboys to be "cool" – told the court the 40-year-old woman "took away my best friend, my hunting buddy. I can't have him back now. He is gone."

Many theories and factors are advanced to explain the major upsurge in illegal teacher-student sexual relationships, including:

Two-breadwinner families mean children have more unsupervised time to be preyed upon.

Cell-phone technology, text messaging and e-mail afford opportunities for teachers and students to communicate privately that didn't exist a generation ago.

The explosion of hardcore pornography, especially online, has resulted in the exposure of children to graphic sexual images to a far greater degree than at any time in history.
But overshadowing virtually all explanations for adult-child sex is the simple fact that the perpetrators – and in the case of female offenders having sex with underage boys, the victims as well – often don't think there is anything wrong with what they are doing.

Essentially, the rationale is: Consensual sex doesn't kill, injure or rob anyone, so where's the victim? Why is "love" (remember Letourneau's book, "Only One Crime, Love") even a crime at all?

How did we get to the point that so many of us – including even some of our judges – just don't see anything wrong with adults having "consensual" sex with children?

To truly answer that question, we're going to have to venture beyond the boundaries of conventional journalism – beyond the presentation of facts, examples, studies, statistics, theories and comments from experts. Journalism can do an excellent job of describing the symptoms of this problem – but can never arrive at its cause, or cure.

Are you ready for a ride into new territory?

Awakening

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." – C.S. Lewis

In "Prince Caspian," C.S. Lewis's second "Narnia" book (currently being made into a feature film following the roaring success of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," set for release in December 2007), the story unfolds in a latter-day, secular time, much like our own today.

In that story's "modern" era, most, though definitely not all, of the people had forgotten about the magic, miracles and mirth that were everpresent during Narnia's golden age, forgotten about the existence of the talking animals, indeed forgotten about Aslan the king himself.

The contemporary elite came to regard the beliefs and loyalties that once had been the very heartbeat of Narnian existence as nothing more than pernicious fables clung to by their ignorant, superstitious ancestors. Even the mention of the sacred things of the past was now forbidden by the murderous usurper, King Miraz, since merely speaking of such powerful truths posed a grave threat to his rule.

That is America today. In what was once the finest and most robust expression of Western Judeo-Christian civilization and the core values underlying it, most of us, too, have forgotten.

Forgotten the founding spiritual and moral values of our nation and culture.

Forgotten the simple, intuitive understanding of right and wrong that we grasped effortlessly when we were innocent children, but which we were later intimidated or seduced into doubting – and abandoning.

Forgotten the core truth about man's condition – that he is in reality a "fallen" being, "born in sin," and that his sexual urges must be channeled into marriage.

Freeze. Notice how, for many readers, that last sentence made you wince, if not recoil in horror. "Fallen being"? "Born in sin"? Man, where's this guy coming from? Does he really believe that ancient religious mumbo jumbo?

That, my friends, is exactly the "forgetfulness" of self-evident "truth we all once knew" that I'm talking about.

This basic truth that human beings are fallen and corruptible – a reality not only spelled out in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, but also clearly evident from observing everyday life – this truth about man's condition which is at the very core of our legal system and the very reason for limited government ("Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely") – is now embarrassing to us.

For most people alive today, this Christian worldview, which animated Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims and the founding fathers in the profoundest possible way, is just a fairy tale, an embarrassing anachronism, perhaps even "the source of most of humankind's strife and war."

We're living in latter-day Narnia, where we mock and deny the "old truths" that, unknown to us, still form the very substance of everything valuable we possess today.

Very simply, we've forgotten what we as human beings actually are, and why we have been put here on this beautiful blue globe we call earth. We've forgotten that we're here to serve a much higher purpose than just fulfilling our own desires.

We've become like Martians who, arriving on Earth for the first time encounter a Ford Mustang convertible. Not having any idea what it is or its maker's intended use, the Martians mistakenly conclude it must be a hot tub and proceed to fill it with water and bathe in it. And then – when you come along and tell them they're ruining this valuable car by their misuse of it, they become angry and accuse you of attempting to deny them their rightful pleasure.

What does this have to do with sex? Without the understanding of our spiritual origin and destiny – of who we are and what purpose our maker intended for us – we can't possibly understand sex and its intended role in our lives. Instead, all we have driving us are the desires, physical and emotional "needs," cravings and compulsions we find welling up from within us.

Sometimes these desires are normal, the kind of sexual attraction to the opposite gender God ordained, leading to bonding and marriage and children. But for some of us, our sexual cravings are rooted in trauma – that is, generated from our emotional reactions to the cruelty, confusion and seduction we've experienced along the path of life. Remember, pain causes us to seek the relief of pleasure.

For example, let's take Mary Kay Letourneau's sexual attraction to a 13-year-old boy. What could have caused it?

Do you suppose it could have anything to do with the fact that her husband Steve was a serial cheater? Or that her father, ultraconservative U.S. Congressman John Schmitz, was exposed for having a secret affair with a former student? Do you think a young girl's deep resentment over both a hypocritical and cheating father, and later on, over an angry, cheating, betraying husband, could possibly give rise to a forbidden attraction? An attraction based not only on sex, but also on her being worshiped and idolized by a young, relatively innocent, non-threatening male (after years of betrayal by "adult" males). No doubt all this was intoxicating to Mary Kay. Intoxicating and toxic.

In a world with a little more understanding and real love in it, a person like Mary Kay could perhaps be helped. But in our secular, mechanistic world, there is precious little real understanding of what makes people "tick" and thus not much help for troubled people like this.

Yet, an even more important factor in this sexual-predator epidemic is the fact that "right" and "wrong" just aren't real to most of us any more. Even if Letourneau was attracted sexually to a child, for whatever reasons, it's still wrong to have sex with a 13-year-old. And knowing something is wrong is enough reason not to do it – even if part of us wants to.

After all, most people have strong drives and urges. Even normal, red-blooded men, loyal to their wives and children, have powerful sexual drives that, if followed down the rabbit hole without regard to right and wrong, could easily turn them into adulterers.

The problem is, having turned our backs on Judeo-Christian morality and the inner conscience that testifies to it, many of us rely on emotional feelings alone to guide our way through life.

So, if childhood problems cause us to grow up feeling uncomfortable as a man (or a woman), instead of looking within for understanding and healing, we undergo barbaric sex-change operations and "hormone therapy" and pretend we're the opposite gender for the rest of our lives.

If we feel badly about having an unintended child growing inside us, instead of looking for a moral and life-affirming solution, we kill the child.

If we feel sexually attracted to the same gender, we convince ourselves this uprush of inner feeling – rooted in something-gone-wrong in our formative years – is actually genetic, or God-ordained, or the expression of who we "really" are. And then we spend our lives trying to satisfy these inner cravings in the vain hope of finding completion and ultimate happiness.

Of course, choosing what's moral, principled and self-sacrificial over our selfish or unreasonable feelings – that is, preferring something noble and higher over something ignoble and lower – implies there is a God, the source of the higher, as well as evil, the source of the lower.

But according to today's secular, de facto atheistic worldview, there is no good or evil, no heaven or hell. Rather, we're all regarded as just highly evolved animals. But if that's true, there is just no logical reason adults shouldn't be able to have sex with children or whatever else they please.

To illustrate the difference between humans and animals, let me mention that my children raise goats as a hobby. They have a male goat to breed with the various females. Although the buck is just a few months old, it readily mates with the various females – old, young, big, small, it doesn’t matter. They come into heat, and he does his job. Everything's as it should be.

Now, if that is all humans are – animals – then we too should all be able to walk around having sex with anyone we want, just like goats. In fact, why can't we go around naked – like goats? Can you imagine what would happen if we all went to work, school and supermarket stark naked?

Some people, wrongly believing mankind's universal embarrassment over their private parts (yes, "universal" – even in darkest Africa the natives wear loin-cloths) represents an unhealthy shame toward their own bodies, embrace nudity as a philosophy and lifestyle. But they have misinterpreted the embarrassment and abandoned a core truth, namely: The fact that humans have embarrassment over sex and need to keep themselves covered all the time is not some repressive Victorian hang-up over sex. Rather, it is evidence – a very important and powerful clue, and one we better interpret correctly – that our sexual nature somehow is tied in with our – gasp! – fallen "animal" nature.

You see, the truth is, we're not just animals, like goats. We have two natures – an animal nature that eats and procreates, and a spiritual, eternal soul that survives this life.

If we were only animals, then this article would be over and all the concerns expressed earlier about sexual predators would be wrongheaded, the prosecutions unjust, the incarcerations cruel, the stigma undeserved. If we are only animals, there is simply nothing at all wrong with 43-year-old teachers having sex with their 13-year-old students, as long as it is "consensual."

Moreover, if we are just animals, then all consensual sexual activity – any place, any time, any type – is fine, just like with my children's goats.

In that case, of course, when we die we just get buried in the ground and that's the end of us. No afterlife, no soul or consciousness surviving the dissolution of our bodies, no ultimate standard of right and wrong, and no ultimate accountability before the Creator for the way we’ve lived our lives. Just a nice meal for worms.

Is that what you believe? Many people do. That’s what ex-Beatle John Lennon was preaching in his New Age anthem: "Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky."

For many, this all-consuming obsession with denying God, Judeo-Christian values and our own immortal souls centers around one thing only. Do you know what it is? Do you know what most of the hostility we see toward Christianity in today's culture is actually based on? It's not because following Jesus Christ means we must love one another, feed the poor or comfort the sick. After all, no one is threatened by those things. Rather, at the root of so much loathing toward Christianity and the Bible is what they have to say about sex.

The Old Testament book of Leviticus, for instance, is full of detailed laws and prohibitions regarding sexuality and sexual behavior. Why is this so? What on earth did sexual behavior have to do with God setting the House of Israel apart from the rest of the pagan world so it could be worthy of His special blessing and destiny?

"Why can't we all just be nice to each other," you might wonder, "and have as much sex as we want, with whomever we want, whenever and however we want, as long as it's consensual? And why can’t we call that good, righteous and loving?"

Very simply, how do we know sex outside of marriage – whether it be adultery or premarital sex or homosexuality or teachers seducing kids – is wrong, a sin before God and an offense to our fellow human beings?

For one thing, God has provided some major clues for us, the obvious implications of which we somehow manage to ignore – just like the elephant in the parlor.

For some, the most persuasive clues are in the Bible. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament are unequivocal and total in their condemnation of homosexual sex, of fornication (a term rarely used any more), of adultery. Jesus raises the bar the highest when He says: "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart (Matthew 5:27-28 KJV)."

But the Bible is not the only clue. As I tell my kids, biblical truths are reflected in everyday life. So, stealing and murder and lying aren’t wrong just because the Bible says so. Rather, the Bible says stealing and murder and lying are wrong because they are wrong. They were always wrong – and the Bible testifies to that timeless Truth that predates the Bible itself. (Remember, in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob's time there was no Bible.)

Thus, the wrongness of sexual immorality should also be as self-evident as the wrongness of stealing or murder.

What? You say you can see that stealing, lying and murder are wrong because they result in victims, but you can't see that premarital or homosexual sex is wrong because you can't see the victim?

Let's look at a few more clues.

Here's a stunningly obvious one: Sex has the potential to produce offspring. And since the evidence is irrefutable that children need both a father and a mother, as well as a stable, long-term, loving home life, this one clue alone leads inexorably to the conclusion that sex is meant only for a committed heterosexual marriage.

Another clue: A ghoulish smorgasbord of sexually transmitted diseases – many incurable, like AIDS, herpes and human papilloma virus (thought to be one of the main causes of cervical cancer), as well as hepatitis, syphilis, Chlamydia, gonorrhea and a host of others – is a pretty darn good indicator that we weren't meant to have wanton, rampant sex.

Still another clue: Millions of dead babies – over a million a year just in the U.S. Recent news reports document that in Zimbabwe dead babies clog up the sewers in the capital of Harare, so many are flushed down toilets and dumped in drains. Getting pregnant when we don't want children tempts us to kill our offspring.

Let's stop for a minute and ask: Just how obvious do clues need to be before we figure out the message? Horrible plagues and millions of unwanted babies seem like pretty good indicators that God didn't intend for us to use our bodies the way many of us do. And yet, in our cleverness we find ways to circumvent these divine roadblocks by way of artificial birth control, abortion, alternative sexual acts and so on. But we're still just making an absurd end-run around God and His obvious restrictions on sex.

Another way we know extramarital sex is wrong is simply because it's pure selfishness and self-gratification. In marriage, there is commitment, sacrifice, self-control, personal growth, mutual respect. In non-married sex there is nothing but use – using the other person in an attempt to fulfill ourselves. Without commitment, there cannot be love. Sorry, the truth hurts.

The Bible admonishes us mortals to choose sides, between life and death, between good and evil. Most often, that choice takes the form of choosing to side with our higher nature against our own lower nature. Satanism and other worldviews based on deception and seduction have always taught the opposite: Side with your lower nature against your higher nature, a conflict Satanists (and yes, they exist) blame on a vengeful, capricious and cruel God ("Why did he create us with all these powerful urges and drives, only to forbid their expression?")

In our culture today – like latter-day Narnia – the prevailing mindset is, increasingly, to mock and demonize those who rebuke our growing infatuation with our lower nature.

At the center of this struggle is sex – one of the greatest mysteries of life. If we never understand sex, we never understand life. For many of us, unfortunately, our understanding has been hijacked by the 1960s cultural and sexual revolution, which was based on lies.

Yes, lies. The sexual revolution glorified the destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization and the morality at its core. Like all revolutions, it seemed sweet at the time. Do you remember?

It seemed so promising, so genuine, so liberating. Boomers will remember 1967's "Summer of Love" in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. A hundred thousand young "flower people" flocked to the West Coast mecca of the hippie revolution. Scott McKenzie sang, "If you're going to San Francisco, Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. If you're going to San Francisco, You're gonna meet some gentle people there." Free love and expanded consciousness (with the help of marijuana and LSD) would save our nation from the ravages of war and the greedy materialism that led to conflict. It was beautiful, otherworldly – or so it seemed.

But somehow, just a few short years later, the flowers had faded and Haight-Ashbury was transformed into a scene of crazed, meth-addicted hippies with human degradation and venereal disease and crime everywhere. Already, the toxicity of the '60s revolution was becoming apparent. Today, that cancer has metastasized throughout our culture to the point that children have sex in the school auditorium.

Funny thing about lie-based revolutions. They all turn out bad. Communist revolutions promise freedom and equality, but deliver despotism and misery and death. In the exact same way, the sexual liberation movement, which offered freedom, equality, self-fulfillment and pleasure, has just about destroyed America.

So, where do we go from here? Quo vadis?

If we just go along with whatever compulsions and drives we see rising up in us, and wallow in them, and justify them, and condemn anybody who says otherwise, we're living as animals, not humans.

And believe me, that's not truly living. Unless, of course, you're a goat.

Who's next? Polyandrous pedophiles?
By Tristan Emmanuel
Thursday, October 11, 2007
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58084

There's another example of liberal double-dealing in the U.S. presidential campaign. This time, it's on the issue of exposing young children to the "reality" of gay relationships.

There was a Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire late last month, and Allison King, a reporter for the New England Cable News, asked the candidates if they would be comfortable having second-graders learn about the realities of "gay love."

In case you missed it, her question was phrased like this:

"The issues surrounding gay rights have been hotly debated here in New England. For example, last year some parents of second-graders in Lexington, Massachusetts, were outraged to learn their children's teacher had read a story about same-sex marriage, about a prince who marries another prince.

"Same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts but most of you oppose it. Would you be comfortable having this story read to your children as part of their school curriculum?"

A sentimental question like this, designed to make homosexuality look mainstream and normal, can only get sentimental responses.

Which is exactly what she got.

John Edwards said that as a fair-minded father he really believes that children need "to understand everything about the difficulties that gay and lesbian couples are faced with every day."

Hilary Clinton chimed in about hate, and said the only way to defeat hate is to teach diversity and respect.

Barack Obama was the most resolute, insisting that one of the things he wants "to communicate to [his] children is not to be afraid of people who are different."

Like I said, sentimental responses to an equally sentimental question.

But neither the question nor the answers accurately reflect today's culture, which is why I would have preferred more candor on everyone's part.

First, we need to put this in context. Since the 1960s, not only has the traditional configuration of a one-man one-woman union fallen by the wayside, the numeric configuration of any two people committing to each other until death do us part has as well. In other words, if two people of the opposite sex constitute an antiquated relationship, so does the idea of any two people making a long term commitment to be a couple.

Obviously, everybody knows that heterosexual unions have suffered tremendously from the effects of the so-called sexual revolution. The ideas of free love, free sex and no commitment have had devastating consequences on the idea of monogamy.

Census Canada recently published new figures showing that traditional marriage has been in rapid decline since the mid '90s. Not surprisingly, the mainstream Canadian media took great delight in reporting that statistic. However, the same media didn't report that "gay marriages" were equally in decline, at least since they were legalized in 2003. Considering all the hype we heard before the move to change the law – hype about "gays wanting to get married" – it's interesting that the decline in the number of those "marriages" didn't also become headline news in Canada. But it's not surprising.

The point is that the '60s generation talked about free love and no commitment; our post-modern world is living that idea to the hilt. People just don't believe in living in committed monogamous relationships – and the biggest culprits in that regard are homosexuals.

The basic premise of the second-grader story – about a prince falling madly in love with another prince, and the two of them dashing off into the sunset to live happily ever after in their little country castle with a white picket fence – is about as likely a scenario as Hillary Clinton crossing the floor to become a pro-life Republican.

Monogamous homosexual relationships, for the most part, exist only in the world of partisan propaganda, not in empirical reality.

If Ms. King really wanted to be honest with the presidential candidates, and if teaching tolerance, understanding and respect for "diversity" was really at the core of her question, she should have asked it differently.

Maybe something like: "Would you feel comfortable telling second-graders about the love lives of men and boys?"

Because if Edwards thinks that conventional gay couples – the two-people kind of couples – are having a tough time of it out there, just imagine how difficult it must be for pedophiles and the kids that love them. Or what about John, Jerry, Frank, Tom and Mike – their little "household of five"? Aren't polyandrous groups finding it tough out there, too?

And as to Obama's concern about teaching children not to be afraid of different people, why not get into some really "different" stuff? Maybe the love lives of men and their sheep, and women and their horses? Heck, why not necrophilia too, just for good measure?

Now, you and I both know that liberals are going to balk at this; they'll insist that I've taken things too far. But I'm only trying to force some consistency here, some acknowledgement of the reality of where our culture has gone. And if you think this is extreme, just wait. It won't be long before all of these different "orientations" will be screaming for their rights and access to your children, too.

Personally, I'm getting sick and tired of listening to the lamestream media incessantly talk about how the times are changing while repeating, at every opportunity, the lie that homosexual unions are really nothing more than a mirror image of traditionally straight marriages.

Of course, the cynical side of me understands exactly what they're up to with this "gay-friendly literature" in second grade. This isn't about tolerance, love, or understanding at all. It's raw politics. It's about votes. The homosexual lobby in the U.S. has lost the first round of battles to enshrine "gay marriage," but if they get the kids, they'll have the future wrapped up.

Related special offers:
"Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World"

Father faces trial over school's 'pro-gay' book
Arrested after objecting to kindergartner's reading material
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45594

David Parker, parent of kindergartner, stands before Judge Robert McKenna in Concord District Court April 28 after spending the night in jail (Photo: Article 8 Alliance)

A Massachusetts man faces a court trial over a dispute about the teaching of homosexuality in his son's kindergarten class.

David Parker, of Lexington, spent a night in jail and was charged with criminal trespassing after refusing to leave a scheduled meeting with school officials April 27, unless they gave him the option of pulling his child out of certain classes.

Parker says the officials had indicated they would agree to a notification policy then suddenly refused. He insists he has done nothing wrong and is willing to contest the charge rather than plea-bargain.

At a hearing Tuesday, Parker's trial date was set for Sept. 21.

The Lexington School Board contends Parker deliberately set out to be arrested and make national headlines.

Parker's attorney, Jeffrey Denner, rejected that claim as supporters picketed outside the courthouse.

David Parker's son brought home the book 'Who's in a Family?' in school's 'Diversity Book Bag'

"That is simply untrue. I don't speak for the school, but that is simply untrue," he said. "He was invited to come in, he came in, there was a dialogue going back and forth, there were faxes sent back and forth, from the school to the school committee. His intent was absolutely not to be arrested. His intent was to establish a dialogue to protect his own children and other children as well."

The dispute began last spring when Parker's then-5-year-old son brought home a book to be shared with his parents titled, "Who's in a Family?" The optional reading material, which came in a "Diversity Book Bag," depicted at least two households led by homosexual partners.

"There's a larger issue here locally and nationally and internationally about the role of family and what kind of encroachments government can make into children's and people's lives," Denner told reporters.

The illustrated book, according to the local non-profit group Article 8 Alliance, says, "A family can be made up in many different ways" and includes this text:

"Laura and Kyle live with their two moms, Joyce and Emily, and a poodle named Daisy. It takes all four of them to give Daisy her bath."
Another illustrated page says:

"Robin's family is made up of her dad, Clifford, her dad's partner, Henry, and Robin's cat, Sassy. Clifford and Henry take turns making dinner for their family."
Article 8, an opponent of the state's same-sex marriage law, says the book "uses subtle but powerful emotions to normalize homosexual relationships in the minds of the young children."

A backer of the Lexington School District, Laura Tully, argued, according to WCVB-TV in Boston, "A 5-year-old who is coming to the classroom with two moms deserves to be in a classroom that includes books that show his family."

Denner said he is negotiating with school officials to prevent the trial, but he also indicated that Parker likely will file a civil suit in federal court by this fall against the town of Lexington, the school system and its officials.

Homosexuality in Your Child’s School
by Peter Sprigg

Despite decades of activism and media propaganda promoting acceptance and celebration of homosexuality, and numerous political and judicial victories for the pro-homosexual movement, a clear majority of Americans still believe that homosexual behavior is “morally wrong.” Indoctrinating impressionable school children is an easier way of changing public attitudes toward homosexuality than persuading adults. However, since directly promoting acceptance of homosexuality or of sexual activity by students would be controversial, pro-homosexual activists routinely deny or downplay those aspects of their agenda. Instead, they begin with the school policy proposals that are likely, politically, to win the most agreement. The first issue raised by the advocates of homosexuality is invariably the same—“safety.”

“Safe Schools”

Pro-homosexual activists contend that our schools have large numbers of students who are (or are perceived to be) “gay,” lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered,  (“GLBT” or “LGBT” for short) and that such students are frequent victims of verbal or physical harassment or even acts of violence. The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), for example, reports that 90% of the “LGBT” youth they surveyed in 2005 have experienced at least verbal harassment at school (albeit not always for their sexual orientation). They also point to reports that gay youths are more likely to commit suicide than their straight peers, and claim that this is a result of harassment and discrimination as well. They argue, therefore, that “LGBT” youth should be singled out for specific protection under school disciplinary codes.

Yet there is evidence that harassment of “gay” teens may neither be as frequent, as severe, nor as disproportionate, as some pro-homosexual rhetoric would suggest. GLSEN fails to note, for example, that a survey by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) showed that 83% of all girls and 79% of all boys report experiencing physical intimidation or sexual harassment at school.4 Even GLSEN’s survey reported that students are more often bullied, called names, or harassed because of “the way they look or their body size” than because

of their sexual orientation.5 Of the “gay” teens surveyed by GLSEN, 79% reported that they had not “been called names, teased, bullied, or hurt at school” in the past year because of their sexual orientation, 6 while 92% had never experienced “physical assault” for that reason.

Reports of “gay” teen suicides also appear to have been exaggerated. One study by a pro-homosexual researcher found, “Gay and lesbian teenagers are only slightly more likely than heterosexual kids to attempt suicide,” according to USA Today. And the author of Suicide in America, Dr. Herbert Hendin, reportedly “found no evidence that social discrimination was a major factor behind the suicide attempts of the homosexual students he studied.”

No student should ever be the victim of unprovoked violence or be subjected to taunting or the use of vulgar epithets—whether for their sexual orientation or for any other reason. But if all forms of harassment are wrong, then all forms of harassment— without distinction—should be banned.

“Anti-Discrimination” Codes

Pro-homosexual activists also promote policies that forbid “discrimination” against students or teachers on the basis of “sexual orientation.”

However, singling out “sexual orientation” for special protection (along with the usual categories of “race, color, national origin, sex, and disability”) is illogical. The latter qualities are usually inborn, involuntary, immutable, and innocuous—none of which is true of homosexual behavior, despite the claims of its advocates.

Nevertheless, pro-homosexual activists believe that homosexuals should be permitted not only to teach, but to proclaim their sexual preference openly. One California school district adopted a policy to “in- sure that gay youth and staff can come out” and that “teachers can provide positive images of gay people in the classroom . . .”

One of the poster children for “anti-discrimination” policies is Wendy Weaver, a homosexual teacher from Salem, Utah. She was fired from her position as a school volleyball coach after admitting her lesbianism, but later won reinstatement.

Apparently, the thought that some of the teenage girls on the volleyball team might feel uncomfortable about sharing the locker room with an adult coach who could see them as objects of sexual attraction did not carry sufficient weight.

The supposed “right” of teachers to be “out” about their sexual orientation even extends to “transgendered” staff—and costs taxpayer money—as well. Eastchester High School in New York was treated to the spectacle of a male teacher taking a year off—with pay—for sex-change surgery, and then returning to the same school to teach as a “woman,” going by the name RandeyMichelle Gordon. (Gordon later went on leave again—supported by state disability benefits). Lily McBeth, a 71- year-old man who recently became a “woman,” was similarly re-hired as a substitute teacher—by a New Jersey elementary school. One mother said “she thought McBeth would confuse her sons because McBeth had already taught them when she was male”—but such concerns were discounted by the school board.

Teacher Training

Activists also lobby for opportunities to present pro-homosexual propaganda to teachers and administrators through mandatory training sessions. Exploring the GLSEN website, however, one finds the principal evils they seek to overcome are not harassment or violence, but “homophobia” and “heterosexism.”  “Homophobia” is a term that stigmatizes those with traditional values by implying that they (not homosexuals) are the ones with a mental illness (even though recent research has concluded that “homophobia” in this clinical sense actually does not exist.)

“Heterosexism”—the belief “that heterosexuality and a binary gender structure are the norm”—is now classified with “ideological systems that deny, denigrate, and stigmatize people”16 as something to be “undone.”

The outline that represents GLSEN’s “basic approach” to school staff training indicates that nothing less than complete “support” for homosexuality is the goal (the outline includes a specific scale of attitudes and makes clear that “tolerance” and “acceptance” are unacceptably weak stances to adopt).17 Its goal is not just to keep homosexual students “safe,” but “to elevate the status of LGBT students from a protected class to a valued group” by actively affirming homosexuality, because for GLSEN, “The pursuit of safety and affirmation are one and the same goal . . .”

“Gay-Straight Alliances”

A more important task for pro-homosexual activists— indoctrinating the children themselves—usually begins with formation of a student club called a “gay-straight alliance” (GSA). GSA’s are often said to promote “safety” and give gay, “questioning,” and “straight ally” youth a forum to “discuss sexual orientation and gender identity issues.”

However—as with other pro-homosexual school policies—GSA’s often take on roles that go far beyond insuring safety and a place to talk. For example, GLSEN’s article on “20 Ways Your GSA Can Rock the World!” includes: getting pro-homosexual books in the school library; protesting examples of “heterosexism” (such as “gender specific” bathrooms); participating in gay “pride” marches; and “outreach to middle schools.” The Massachusetts Department of Education has even given taxpayer money to GSA’s to subsidize pro-gay political activism and social events.

Some are concerned that GSA’s will encourage young people who are unsure of themselves to experiment sexually or to prematurely identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual. The Boston Globe, for instance, reported on a high school junior named Rachel, who says she had some questions about her sexuality when she joined [her] school’s gaystraight alliance . . . A crush on a girlfriend made Rachel “more and more sure I wasn’t completely straight.” Now Rachel, who has a boyfriend, considers herself bisexual. “ . . . I don’t think I would have been as comfortable if I hadn’t been in the GSA,” she said.22

Student Indoctrination: Special Events

To raise an entire new generation of young people who will have an unquestioning acceptance of prohomosexual dogma, however, requires activities that will reach the entire student body. These usually begin with special assemblies or one-day or one-time events. For example, when a school in Massachusetts celebrated “To B GLAD Day,” parents were not told that it stood for “Transgender, Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Day,” and would feature workshops about “Life Outside the Gender Norm,” “Being Gay in the Professional World,” and “fighting homophobia.”

GLSEN annually promotes a one-day event they call the “Day of Silence, which they describe as a day when defenders of homosexuality “take a daylong vow of silence to . . . protest . . . discrimination and harassment.”24 This disruption of the educational process, whereby students who are normally called upon in class refuse to speak and, in some cases, even teachers themselves refuse to give their normal lectures, has been questioned in some school districts,25 but tolerated in others. Another approach has been to ride the coattails of “multiculturalism” by including “LGBT History Month” among other “celebrations of culture and heritage.” Pro-homosexual activists in schools trumpet their claims that “there are countless . . . artists, philosophers, inventors, even world leaders” who were gay. (One pair of gay activists has pointed out: “Famous historical figures are . . . in no position to deny [their homosexuality] and sue for libel.”)

In North Carolina, parents were shocked to learn that the North Carolina Governor’s School, an elite state-funded summer program attended by their son, had featured a seminar on “The New Gay Teenager” that encouraged students to question their own sexuality and biblical teaching against homosexuality.29 One of the leaders of the seminar, Susan Wiseman (a 27-year-old high school teacher and lesbian) was later suspended without pay after being accused of sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old student at her school.

Perhaps the most notorious one-day event was GLSEN’s annual conference in Massachusetts in 2000—now commonly known as the “Fistgate” conference. This event, attended by young people at least as young as 14, made it clear that the homosexual agenda in schools is about sex, not just “safety.” Margot E. Abels, a state employee, opened one workshop by saying, “We think that sex is central to every single one of us and particularly queer youth.”

In another seminar (described as “for youth only”) Abels described the sadomasochistic homosexual practice known as “fisting,” saying, Fisting often gets a bad rap. It usually isn’t about the pain, not that we’re putting that down . . . [It’s] to put you into an exploratory mode.

Astonishingly, the lessons of the “Fistgate” scandal seem to have been quickly forgotten. In 2005, GLSEN rented space in Brookline (Mass.) High School for a Saturday conference open to students as young as middle school. Among the materials distributed was a pamphlet, titled Little Black Book V 2.0 Queer in the 21st Century. It included a section on the STD risks of eight different sex acts described in the crudest detail. When the presence of the pamphlet was first reported, Sean Haley of GLSEN declared, “The allegations are simply lies. . . . No such material . . . [was] ever present.” But a day later, Fenway Community Health admitted that they had “accidentally” left copies of the pamphlet on their display table.

Less graphic, but perhaps even more startling, are the scattered reports of schools actually promoting special days for students to cross-dress (that is, for boys to dress like girls and girls to dress like boys). Such events, for instance, have been scheduled in Spurger, Texas, in a middle school in Bedford, Massachusetts,36 and in an elementary school in Carrier Mills, Illinois. Protests led to cancellation of the first two events. Although school staff may claim this is just “something silly for the kids to do,” Peter LaBarbera of the Illinois Family Institute pointed out that “the last thing we need is for schools to promote more confusion about the sexes and gender roles.”

Student Indoctrination: In Every Classroom

The truly breathtaking sweep of the gay education agenda is described by GLSEN: Educators need to integrate LGBT issues throughout the curriculum — not just in classes such as health education, but in disciplines such as English, History, Art and Science.

Pro-homosexual activists also try to fill school libraries and required reading lists with books that not only present homosexuals in a positive light, but describe homosexual acts being committed by young people in explicit terms.

One such book, assigned to a high school class in Massachusetts, is written from the perspective of a teenager, who describes “his friend’s first homosexual experience, a kid who got so drunk that he had sex with a dog, and a girl and boy who have sex on a golf course.”

Another book, recommended by California’s “Gay- Straight Alliance Network,” features a section on “positive first sexual experiences” by “lesbian and gay young people;” but the encounters described— including one-night stands—would hardly constitute “positive . . . sexual experiences” in the minds of most American parents.

Unfortunately, It’s Elementary Too

Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this activist assault on our schools is that they are determined to bring their pro-homosexual propaganda to the children even in the lowest grades—beginning in kindergarten.

This agenda is depicted clearly—and slickly—in a film for adults called It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School. It features a schoolwide “Lesbian and Gay Pride Day,” as well as a “Gay Pride Assembly.” It highlights the achievements of purported homosexuals “from Michelangelo to Melissa Etheridge” — “leading the young students,” as one critic said, “to the false assumption that being gay can’t be bad because of the good things gay people have done.”

Chasnoff has since produced another film, That’s a Family, which encourages schools “to be inclusive of all kinds of families” (such as “gay and lesbian- headed households”). This film is presented as protecting the self-esteem of students whose adult caretakers have non-traditional lifestyles. (Of course, similar respect should be granted to children whose parents are alcoholics, drug dealers, or criminals—but it’s not necessary to be affirming of the choices made by the adults in their lives.) Pro-homosexual activists in elementary schools are also using a theatre presentation and book called Cootie Shots.44 While such activists usually express great sensitivity to the harm done by insulting or violent words, they apparently aren’t bothered by songs like “In Mommy’s High Heels,” which includes a cross-dressing boy singing:

. . . [L]et them jump and jeer and whirl
They are the swine, I am the pearl. . . .
Let them laugh, let them scream,
They’ll all be beheaded when I’m queen.”

As with older youth, the pro-homosexual message is also pushed in a burgeoning crop of books directed at children, ranging literally from A (Amy Asks a Question: Grandma, What’s a Lesbian?) to Z (Zack’s Story: Growing up with same-sex parents).

Same-Sex “Marriage” and the Schools

The impact of same-sex “marriage,” legalized in Massachusetts in 2004 by a court order, has reached the public schools as well. In September 2004, National Public Radio featured an interview with Deb Allen, a lesbian who teaches eighth-grade sex education in Brookline, Mass. Her lessons include descriptions of homosexual sex, given “thoroughly and explicitly with a chart.” Allen reports she will ask her students, “Can a woman and a woman have vaginal intercourse, and they will all say no. And I’ll say, ‘Hold it. Of course, they can. They can use a sex toy.’” If challenged, Allen says, she will respond, “Give me a break. It’s legal now.”

Pro-Homosexual “Discrimination”

While pro-homosexual activists are usually the first to complain about alleged instances of “discrimination,” the truth is that in many cases, it is people who hold more traditional views about homosexuality who become victims of discrimination. For example:

• Debra Loveless of St. Louis was removed by a security guard from a pro-homosexual assembly at her daughter’s school.

• A Christian student club at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan was excluded from a panel discussion on “Religion and Homosexuality,” and a club member’s speech to an assembly on “what diversity means to me” was censored, during the school’s “Diversity Week.”

• In a similar case, school officials at Viroqua High School in Viroqua, Wisconsin chose to cancel a scheduled “Diversity Day” rather than allow the viewpoints of Christians and former homosexuals to be included.

• In the state of Washington, student Lucas Schrader was denied re-enrollment in a public charter school that he had attended for three years. The reason? His father had “expressed concerns about the wisdom of having a homosexual teacher assigned to teach sex education to sixth graders.”52

• The parents of a kindergarten student in Lexington, Massachusetts were upset when their son came home from school with a book featuring same-sex couples. When David Parker, the child’s father, met with the principal to demand assurances that the school would notify him and allow his child to opt out of discussions of homosexuality in the classroom (as required by state law), he was instead arrested for trespassing and spent a night in jail—“stripped of my shoes, my belt, my wedding ring, and my parental rights,” as he later put it. Six months later, the criminal charges against Parker were dropped—but the superintendent continued to bar Parker from all school property.

• Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of discrimination in favor of homosexuality in schools is New York City’s creation in 2003 of Harvey Milk High School, a deluxe public school specifically “to meet the needs of [GLBT] and questioning youth.” Any notion that Harvey Milk High was boosting the life skills of its students was seriously damaged by the arrest of five “transgendered” students—boys who posed as female prostitutes, then pretended to be undercover police officers in order to extort money from their customers.

What Can Be Done?

We have seen how an agenda that enters the schools supposedly on the basis of keeping children safe is used in fact to promote the celebration of homosexual behavior and the silencing of any opposition. Is there any way that this relentless onslaught can be stopped?

First, it is important not to lose hope. Although the incidents described in this publication have occurred in all parts of the country and even in conservative communities, the pro-homosexual agenda has by no means been implemented in every school or district. A survey taken by the pro-homosexual group Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) in 2004 found even the most common pro-homosexual policy in schools—a harassment/ non-discrimination policy that includes “gay, lesbian or bisexual students”—in only 41% of the schools surveyed. The most extreme policy advocated by PFLAG—school counseling services offering “transgender resources” to help boys become girls and vice versa—was present in only 1% of schools.58

Parents Speaking Out

Just having the courage to speak out can make a difference. Parents Michael and Tonya Hartsell of Wilmington, North Carolina were shocked when their daughter Olivia—a first-grader—brought home from her school library the book King and King. It tells the story of a prince in need of a mate who rejects dozens of princesses before finally choosing to “marry” another prince. After a week of national media attention, Freeman Elementary School agreed to place the book under lock and key and make it available only to teachers and parents.

Some pro-family groups have now begun using special pro-homosexual events as an opportunity to share a dissenting view and truthful information about homosexuality. Several years ago, Mission America, a pro-family group based in Ohio, began responding to GLSEN’s “Day of Silence,” taking advantage of the “silence” of normally outspoken pro-homosexual activists by declaring the same day a “Truth Without Interruption Day.” More recently, the Alliance Defense Fund, a pro-family legal advocacy group, has adapted this idea by declaring the day after the “Day of Silence” to be a “Day of Truth” (information is available at www. dayoftruth.org).

Opposing “Gay-Straight Alliances”

Because they realize that it is often the first wedge to insert a pro-homosexual agenda in their schools, many parents and other citizens have tried to block the formation of “gay-straight alliances.” However, pro-homosexual activists have sometimes defended their right to form such groups by claiming rights under the Equal Access Act—a federal law that was, ironically, designed primarily to secure the rights of students to form Christian clubs at public schools. The Equal Access Act makes it unlawful for schools to bar student groups from meeting “on the basis of the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meetings.”

However, if a club that affirms homosexuality is allowed, then students who oppose homosexuality have the same “equal access” rights. At Eisenhower High School in Lawton, Oklahoma, one parent concerned about the push for a GSA at his son’s school responded with a proposal to form an “exgay” club—promoting the view that homosexuals can change their sexual orientation. Eventually, the student government itself voted down the idea of forming a GSA.

Another approach has been to bar the formation of all clubs not related to the curriculum. The school district in White County, Georgia adopted this approach. Meanwhile, both houses of the Georgia legislature passed bills early in 2006 that would require parental permission for participation in any school club. This could effectively deter many students from participating, or at least insure that their parents are aware of this activity. A student who founded and heads a GSA in one Georgia high school said, “[I]f [my mom] knew I was running this club, she would take me out.”

When a Texas school district was sued for preventing an off-campus “gay” youth group from meeting at Lubbock High School, the school successfully invoked certain exceptions to the Equal Access Act. The group’s plan to discuss “safe sex” was deemed “interference” with the district’s “abstinence-only” sex education curriculum. On its website were links to other sites that a federal judge declared “1) lewd, 2) indecent, and 3) obscene,” and therefore “detrimental to the physical, mental, and emotional well-being” of students.

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) has prepared a useful, ten-step guide on “How to Respond to a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) Club at your school,” which is available on their website at www.pfox.org.

Defining “Discrimination”

In the Westminster School District in Orange County, California, trustees balked at adopting a policy “that gives boys who consider themselves girls and girls who regard themselves as boys the right to pursue discrimination complaints.” In response, a state official threatened to withhold state aid that constitutes a significant part of the district’s budget. In the end, the board adopted its own definition of “gender” which the state grudgingly conceded “technically complies with state law”—but clarifies that the “perception of the alleged victim is not relevant to the determination of ‘gender.’”

Case Studies:  Boyd County, Kentucky

Those challenging the pro-homosexual agenda in schools, however, should be prepared for a long battle. The experience of several communities across the country makes that clear.

For example, in Boyd County, Kentucky, teachers, parents, and students have been battling the formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance since at least 2002. When threats from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) resulted in approval of a GSA at Boyd County High School, nearly half of the school’s students boycotted classes in protest. When the school board attempted to ban all noncurricular clubs, the ACLU went to court, and in February 2004, the board agreed to allow the GSA to meet, and to hold “anti-harassment workshops” for both staff and students.The people of Boyd County again voted with their feet, with about a third of students not showing up for the training. In February 2006, a federal judge rejected the idea that parents should be allowed to opt their children out of the sessions.

However, the ACLU’s victories in court to this point may be hollow ones. By the time they settled their original case in February 2004, attendance at the GSA had dwindled from 19 at its first meeting in November 2002 to just three to five biweekly; by the following November, the group had disbanded altogether and its faculty adviser had transferred to another school.

San Leandro, California

San Leandro, California is another community that has seen years of contention and dueling lawsuits. In 1997, parents sued San Leandro High School English teacher Karl Debro for promoting a “gay agenda” in class. The lawsuit failed, but district officials reprimanded Debro and limited classroom discussion of “controversial issues.” Debro responded in 1999 with a lawsuit of his own—and in August 2002 received a settlement from the school district of over $1 million. The settlement, however, went beyond protecting Debro’s “freedom of speech.” It also required the school board to “hold staff and student training on diversity and non-discrimination” —thus imposing a “gay agenda” on the San Leandro schools, just as Debro had been accused of doing five years earlier.

In January 2006, teachers at San Leandro High School were forced (some against their will) to post posters declaring their classrooms a “safe space” for homosexual youth. But no posters declare that the classrooms are a “safe space” for students who are overweight or dress differently, nor for Black, Latino, freshman, disabled, Arab and Asian students— even though a 2002 survey at the school had found that they, too, are often victims of “harassment.”

“I’ll See You in Court”

Unfortunately, going to court may sometimes be the only option for parents or students who object to—or even want to respond to—pro-homosexual activism in the schools.

There may be a number of other grounds on which schools could be held legally liable for damages for teaching about homosexuality to children. In addition to parental rights issues, they include:

• Endangering the physical health of a child

• Endangering the mental health of a child

• Contributing to the delinquency of a child

• Unconstitutional restraint of First Amendment rights through restrictive student speech or anti-harassment codes.

More information is available in a publication available from Citizens for Community Values (CCV) of Cincinnati, Ohio entitled The Legal Liability Associated with Homosexuality Education in Public Schools.

The Christian student excluded from a “Diversity Week” panel on “Religion and Homosexuality” in an Ann Arbor, Michigan high school won an award of $102,738 in legal fees82 from a federal judge who lamented “the ironic, and unfortunate, paradox of a public high school celebrating ‘diversity’ by refusing to permit the presentation to students of an ‘unwelcomed’ viewpoint on the topic of homosexuality and religion, while actively promoting the competing view.”

Parents have successfully sued regarding prohomosexual curriculum changes as well. In Montgomery County, Maryland, the Board of Education adopted a revised sex education curriculum in November 2004 that included for the first time a detailed—and highly slanted— discussion of sexual orientation