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----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 10:15 AM
Subject: SNET: Half Truths, Homosexuality, and the National
Education Association
http://www.focusoneducation.com/teachers/news/a0001186.html
Half Truths, Homosexuality, and the National Education Association
by Dick M. Carpenter II, Ph.D.
This opinion editorial first appeared in newspapers in July, 2001.
"Mom, I'm a lesbian."
Over the past decade, increasing numbers of children have dropped this
bombshell on devastated parents. However, when one daughter recently said
this after returning from a Massachusetts school, the mother was more
perplexed than devastated-her daughter was only 9 years old.
"Well, honey, what makes you think you're a lesbian?" asked the mother.
"Today we had some people come in our class, and they told us what it means
to be gay. That's when you love someone that's like you, and you don't like
the boys. Because I love my friend, Sara, we know that we're going to get
married when we grow older. That means we're gay."
If the National Education Association (NEA) has its way, this conversation
will be replayed in millions of homes across the country. At its annual
convention during the first week of July, the world's largest teachers
union will consider a resolution promoting programs and curricula designed
to normalize homosexuality.
According to the resolution, the NEA seeks to indoctrinate PreK-12 students
with pro-gay messages by "disseminati[ng] programs and information that
include the contributions, heritage, culture and history of gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgender people." To create these programs, the NEA calls
for the "involvement of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender educators
in developing educational material used in classroom instructions."
The resolutions also support using "gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender
education employees as role models" and call for "coordination with gay,
lesbian, bisexual and transgender organizations" in inundating schools with
gay-friendly curricula and programs.
Apparently, the NEA has abandoned teachers and students in favor of the
latest in-vogue cause and in so doing show its true colors-an ultra-liberal
organization far out of the mainstream and dedicated to half-truths
dangerous to children.
To begin, while the NEA believes schools are the proper avenue for
advancing homosexual causes, the mainstream public clearly disagrees. A Phi
Delta Kappan/Gallup poll indicates that 63 percent of Americans oppose
"teaching about the gay and lesbian lifestyle as a part of the curriculum
in public schools," and only 9 percent believe it should be presented as
"an acceptable alternative lifestyle."
Worse yet, through its membership of 2.3 million public school teachers,
the NEA wields enormous clout in school districts and implements its agenda
on a captive audience of tens of millions of children. With a population of
2.6 million teachers in U.S. public schools and more than 2 million of
those NEA members, you do the math.
One only need look at recent instances in schools to see how the NEA's
resolutions would play out in classrooms.
In Marin County, Calif., all second- through fifth-graders at Pleasant
Valley School were called to an assembly put on by a local theater group.
The group taught the children slogans such as, "I'm gay and it's OK." The
skits included one in which Rapunzel cut her hair and ran away with her
girlfriend.
Montpelier, Vt., high school students were taken to an unannounced
assembly. Once there, they were presented with a panel entirely made up of
gays, lesbians, and bisexuals who talked about how happy, healthy and
productive they are.
Hayward, Calif., elementary school students were forced to hear about their
teacher's homosexual lifestyle after the teacher's homosexual partner sent
flowers to him in the class.
Finally, missing from the NEA's plans is "the rest of the story." If the
NEA wants to tell kids about this contentious issue, at least give them the
real truth.
They ought to talk about the dangerous health risks accompanying
homosexuality, including syphilis, damage to the intestinal tract and the
mother of all STDs, AIDS. In that discussion, kids should be given the
latest CDC statistics, which indicate a substantial increase of new AIDS
infections in gay adolescents and those in their early 20s. In 75 percent
of those, the disease was sexually transmitted.
The NEA should inform students how many gays feel alienated from family,
separated from God and emotionally devastated due to promiscuity.
And they should tell kids they have another option to being gay, as
demonstrated by the thousands of ex-gay men and women who left
homosexuality and now lead straight lives, many married with children.
Obviously the NEA will no more support telling students these things than
they will endorse government money for private schools. Make no mistake,
the NEA is not about protecting kids or making schools safe. It is about
scattering seeds of pro-gay ideology through the minds and hearts of
America's children.
Dr. Dick Carpenter is an Education Policy Analyst in the Department of
Legislative and Cultural Affairs at Focus on the Family
While we were sleeping, the enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat.
Matthew 13:25
Archibald Bard
ICQ 83834746
TO KEEP THE PEACE,
KEEP YOUR PIECE!
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