Homeschool News & Views

Issue 31, July 20, 2007

From Homschool Helpers

In association with Pass It On Ministries

Greetings. This is Dan White with Homeschool News & Views.

In California, the legislature passed a bill that would forbid all classes, books, and teachers from any instruction that “reflects or promotes bias against” homosexual behavior. All school materials and all school activities would have to portray homosexuality positively. Beginning with kindergarten, the government schools would teach children about homosexual practices, and would be indoctrinated to accept those practices as being moral and good.

The bill passed the California Senate on a strictly party line vote. The Democrats voted for the bill, the Republicans voted against the bill. No Republicans spoke out against the bill in debate.

This bill is a strengthened version of a bill that passed in California last year, and which was vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bill now awaits his signature or veto.

The bill was authored by a lesbian, and redefined gender. Previously the California education code defined gender as the biological condition of being male or female. That seems to make sense, doesn’t it? You’re a he or a she, depending on whether or not you are a he or a she. The California liberals redefine what is a he or a she, saying that a person’s sex can include a person’s gender identity and dress, regardless of his or her assigned sex at birth. That means you can change your sex by the day, if you wish. One day you’re a he, the next day you’re a she. One day you go to the he restrooms and locker rooms, the next day you go to the she restrooms and locker rooms.

A speaker for the Capitol Resource Institute, a California pro-family group, said that "SB 777 is designed to transform our public schools into institutions that disregard all notions of the traditional family unit. This reverse discrimination is an outright attack on the religious and moral beliefs of California citizens."

"Parents are angry at the Democrats for passing this school sexual indoctrination bill and frustrated that Republicans did little to fight it," said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, another California-based pro-family organization. "We call on Arnold Schwarzenegger to pledge that he will respect parents, protect children, and veto this bad bill, just like he did last year."

He said that the parents are angry at the Democrats and angry at the Republicans. Let me say with some certainty that God is angry at the parents for putting their young children in such a mess. God never intended for institutions to raise children. The fifth commandment does not say, “Honor your godless socialist institution.”

"The notion of forcing children to support controversial sexual lifestyles is shocking and appalling to millions of fathers and mothers," Thomasson went on. "Parents don't want their children taught to become homosexual or bisexual or to wonder whether they need a sex-change operation. SB 777 will shatter the academic purpose of education by turning every government school into a sexual indoctrination center."

But that is the purpose of the socialist educational institution. The shaping of society by the left wing educational elite has been going on for decades. Homosexuality is just the next step. Any parent who supports the government schools is helping them to fulfill their purpose.

Under the California bill, teachers do not need parental permission to teach homosexuality to their students. School districts must comply with the new standards or else they will be controlled directly by the California Department of Education.

So much for local control. Why have local school boards, anyway? They have no real say so in running their schools. It is ironic that the US Revolution against England began when the English Parliament lowered the price of tea, then stuck a tiny tax on it. The colonists would have been paying less for tea than before the tax was levied, but they would not stand for that. Because it was a tax which had been levied on them without their consent, they threw the tea in Boston Harbor. So here is a California bureaucracy saying that all government schools in California have to teach sodomy or they will take control of the local schools. That makes that tax on tea look pretty small.

According to Capitol Resource Institute, the Los Angeles Unified School District has already implemented the policies in this bill. That is, they are already teaching homosexuality to their students, and parents there have no choice in the morals their children are taught. CRI said, "In that district, boys who perceive themselves as girls may enter the girls' locker room and restroom. . . This astonishing policy will be expanded to every school in the state if SB 777 becomes law."

In this situation, the governor will probably veto this bill, as he did the similar bill last year. But the reality is that these deeply committed left wingers will continue to push their religious campaign in every way possible into the government schools, which they control. They are doing this through the courts and the legislative process. Further, the educational bureaucracy is itself left wing. As in the case of the Los Angeles schools, many times the local schools will be in front of the laws and the court rulings, because they consider it their moral duty to teach homosexuality.

All of this reinforces the premise that the government should never be in the business of educating its citizens, any more than a government should have government newspapers or government churches. All of those are a certain road to tyranny, and with the public schools we are on that road.

All the way on the other side of the country, on the other coast, in Maryland, the Montgomery County school board just reinstituted its policy of teaching homosexuality and free sex. They put in that policy a couple of years ago, and they were sued to prevent it, and that suit prevailed. Not to be deterred in their religious crusade, they have now come back again with a new policy, basically daring the parents and conservative groups to sue them again.

It’s interesting the way those suits work out. If parents sue the school board, then the parents have to pay for their side of the suit. But since the school board is itself paid for by the parents’ taxes, the parents also in effect have to pay for the legal costs of the side they are suing. Since the legal costs of the school board are paid by the taxpayers, they can keep coming up with these anti-family policies with no end. And they do.

This sex curriculum in Maryland promotes homosexuality and free sex. It includes graphic demonstrations of condom use, as if anybody with half a brain couldn’t figure that out for themselves. What they are really doing is promoting free sex among youth, because that’s the only time that condoms are needed among youth.

There in Montgomery County, a Christian organization was distributing flyers within the schools. This material is Christian, and speaks out against homosexuality and sexual sin. They are being vigorously opposed by some of the faculty of the schools there, who are trying hard to keep the Christian group from distributing literature at the schools. The schools have historically allowed non-profit groups to give out literature in the schools, but their teachers are fighting the distribution of this Christian literature.

One teacher wrote, “Stay out of our schools and leave our children alone! [Your group] is like the KKK but only in the form of religion.”

You will notice the technique that is used there. They accuse the Christians of being Fascists, and not allowing freedom. And what are they themselves doing? They are trying to totally prohibit any differing views. The left wingers do that constantly and continually.

Employees at one school in that district wrote the name of the Christian group which is passing out literature on the trash cans at the school. That’s a subtle hint to the students to throw the Christian lit in the trash cans.

Nationally, in May the U.S. House of Representatives passed a federal hate crimes bill that added the hate crime categories of sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability to the original list of race, religion, color or national origin. This liberal bill also made it easier for the federal government to get involved in hate crime investigations. So it would not just be local law enforcement involved in such cases, but the federal government.

The House bill and the Senate version are now both being reviewed by the Senate. The White House has threatened to veto the bill if it makes it to the president’s desk, explaining that state and local criminal laws have already addressed hate crimes featured in the bills. It does seem that the Democrats will pass the bill, and that President Bush will have to veto it to keep it from becoming law. However, as in California and Maryland, the religious crusaders of the left wing will keep bringing it back.

“The Hate Crimes Act will be the first step to criminalize our rights as Christians to believe that some behaviors are sinful,” Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family Action, said. “Pastors preaching from Scripture on homosexuality could be threatened with persecution and prosecution.”

In Oakland, California, the ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a decision of Oakland city administrators to exclude pro-family material as hate speech.

A group of Christian women who were employees of the city of Oakland requested permission to distribute some flyers through the city’s email system, in which they stated that the “natural family” is the foundation of society. City administrators had allowed homosexual employees to use the email system to promote homosexual events, they refused to let the Christian women send their material supporting the natural family. They said the Christian flyers were homophobic and disruptive and said that it created a hostile environment. The flyers were removed from the municipal bulletin board and the women were warned that if they did anything like that, again, they would be disciplined and possibly fired.

Now the women who did this were blacks, themselves part of what is legally considered a minority, and it might be said that they were being deprived of equal rights under the law. But because they were Christian, I guess that trumped their minority status. The city said that the women were trying to create a hostile environment, but what the city did was create a hostile environment for these Christians.

So the ninth Court of Appeals upheld that decision by the city of Oakland, where their employees can send out homosexual material, but may not send out Christian material. That circuit court is renowned for being ultra-liberal, and they have had more decisions reversed than any other court, but they still sit there, making radical rulings, and if they are not appealed then they stand as law.

I have said that the Christian family is under attack today from three main areas, economic, educational, and media. Someone has suggested that we can add a fourth area of attack, the government. It would seem that is becoming more and more the case. The courts are repeatedly siding with the anti-Christian forces. We see in California how the liberals try to use the power of government to force their religious beliefs onto everyone. And with the crimes bill, the liberals are trying to do that nationally.

The liberals ability to do this has been limited by conservatives having equal political power, and their radical laws have been vetoed by Governor Schwarznegger and President Bush. Are we looking forward to a time in the near future when the legislative branches and the executive branches will both be controlled by the liberals, along with most of the judiciary? At this point, with the country apparently at the end of a business cycle and mired in a difficult military involvement, it would certainly seem so.

Parents still have the freedom to withdraw their children from this left wing government indoctrination. If the parents do not use this freedom now, then in a generation we will lose basically all our religious freedom. The next generation of pro-homosexuals will see to that.

We heard about a local church here in the Ozarks where the pastor preached that Christians must get their children out of these left wing controlled schools. Several members, including the assistant pastor, left that church after that message. That is as it should be. There is a clear line being drawn in the country. Are you for sodomy or are you against it? This line is being drawn at places of work, in Christian or anti-Christian education, and in churches. Everybody has to get on one side or the other. There is no middle ground. Those people who try to stand in the middle just don’t know where the line is.