Homeschool News & Views

Issue 68, May 4, 2008

From Homeschool Helpers

In association with Pass It On Ministries

By Dan L. White

The Day Silence passed rather silently.

The Day of Silence is a national day of homosexual promotion in the public schools, where students are allowed to refuse to fully participate in classes without being held accountable. In some cases, teachers even refuse to speak on that day, but still draw their day’s pay.

The American Family Association and the conservative group Concerned Women for America called for a boycott on that day of any public school which endorsed the DOS. They picked that idea up from a church pastor near Seattle, Washington, Ken Hutcherson. His daughter attends public school there. He said he was not going to allow her to go to school on the day that the school was allowing the homosexual promotion Day of Silence.

At that school, 495 students of a total of 1410 did not attend on Friday, April 25^th, the DOS. Hutcherson and about a hundred others gathered outside the school that day for prayer and singing. There they were harassed by a group of homosexual supporters, to try to prevent the Christians from having freedom of assembly. The Day of Silence people beat drums and yelled, to try to drown out anything Hutcherson was saying, to try to prevent him from having freedom of speech. They held up a sign encouraging people to hit the pastor in the head with rocks, to try to prevent him from having a head.

Those homosexual supporters were doing all that to fight hate.

Parents had complained to the school board that during previous Days of Silence at the school, the school had forced students to participate and had harassed students who did not want to join in. Even teachers at the school had refused to speak, robbing the students of a teacher for that day. This year a couple hundred students who were going to participate in DOS were given training by the school. The school said it did that to ensure student safety and protect the learning environment. Of course, because of the DOS which the school allowed and supported, there was no learning environment.

Beyond that example in Washington, it does not seem that the DOS school boycott caused much of a stir around the country. If it did, then that was not well covered by the media, because there does not seem to have been much in the news about the nationwide one day school boycott.

We have stated that a one day boycott does no lasting good at all. The whole problem is government monopolistic control of education. We have one power controlling the education of 90% of America’s youth. That power is left wing and anti-Christian and they are making America left wing and anti-Christian. America needs freedom of education.

Freedom of the press is to ensure that the government will not be able to control the minds of the people by controlling the information they receive. Freedom of religion is to ensure that the government will not be able to control the minds of the people by controlling their churches. But without freedom of education, the government is able to control the minds of the people by educating them to be what the government bureaucrats want them to be.

If we don’t get freedom of education, we will lose our other freedoms. Witness what happened at the school in Washington. A hundred Christians showed up outside the school. The left wing tried to take away their freedom of assembly and freedom of speech and threatened them with physical attack. That is the left wing approach.

The homosexual Day of Silence has spawned some other days in reaction.

The annual Day of Truth, which came three days after the Day of Silence, was, according to its website, “established to counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda and express an opposing viewpoint from a Christian perspective.” Christian public school students are encouraged to wear T-shirts and pass out cards. This year marked the fourth for the Day of Truth with an estimated 7,000 participants, and the thirteenth Day of Silence, estimated 500,000 participants.

There was also another response called the Golden Rule Pledge. This says it is for “straight Christian and conservative students [who] are conflicted about [the DOS.] They do not affirm homosexual behavior but they also loathe disrespect, harrassment or violence toward any one, including their GLBT peers.” They urge Christian students to act in accordance with the golden rule, to treat others as you wish to be treated.

Again, with these responses, the basic problem remains. The public schools are one of the great driving forces for homosexuality in America. If they maintain their monopoly status, we will be as Sodom.

As we said before, we would like to see the Day of Silence become Speak Up for Christian Education Day. That is the one time of the year when public school parents are most riled up about all the garbage they put up with in the public schools. That is the one day of the year when Christian education alternatives can be most effectively promoted.

We did not come up with Speak Up for Christian Education Day until a week before April 25. Locally there was a tempest over the DOS, so we put out information as we could about a Christian Education Day event we were holding and listed a couple of web sites for parents who wanted information. We had very little lead time to do anything, so we had no personal responses to the event, but most parents would get their first information from the internet, anyway. We contacted several Christian educators and schools in this area, to encourage them to do promotion activity on that day. We also talked with the American Family Association. They were positive on the concept, and perhaps they will help push the promotion for next year.

AFA has had a couple of polls on their site recently about the public school monopoly. One asked -- if you could afford private school, Christian school or homeschool, would you do it? The response was about 80% positive. The other poll asked -- Would it be beneficial or detrimental to public education in your state if a school voucher were initiated there? About 80% said they thought vouchers would be beneficial to public education.

Note that public education is not the same as the public school system.

Those are very large positive responses toward freedom of education. Of course, those people who go to the AFA web site are not typical of the average American today, but still that is a very positive response by those AFA type conservatives. We have wished before that such influential organizations as AFA and Focus on the Family would call for freedom of education in America, while we still have an America. Perhaps they are moving in that direction.

However, the position of these poll questions is that we could really do something if conditions were perfect. If I could afford it or if I had vouchers, then I could teach Christ to my children. The truth is that no Christian parent can afford not to. The choice today is clear: homosexual education in the public schools, or Christian education somewhere else. I’ll conduct another poll right here: which does God favor?