Parents Want Pro-Homosexual Children's Book Taken Off School Shelf

(AgapePress) - A North Carolina mother and father are fuming over a book their first-grade daughter recently brought home from her school library. The picture book she brought home to read is a children's story about a prince who marries his true love -- another prince.

According to an Associated Press report, the book is called King and King (Tricycle Press, 2002) and tells the story of a character named Prince Bertie who falls for a character named Prince Lee. The book ends with them marrying and sharing a kiss.

Michael Hartsell of Wilmington says he was flabbergasted when his little girl brought the book home from the library at Freeman Elementary School. He says his child is "not old enough to understand something like that," especially when the book is clearly promoting something that falls outside his and his wife's beliefs.

So the Hartsells say they are holding onto the book, at least until they get assurances from the school that it will not be circulated. However, according to AP reports, so far school officials are indicating that they have no problem with the book.

The school librarian says King and King, which is listed by the publisher as intended for readers age six and up, has been on the school's shelves since early last year. And the school principal, who views the matter as an issue of diversity, simply says what is "inappropriate" to one family may be "totally acceptable" to another.

But Mr. and Mrs. Hartsell feel the book should not be considered appropriate for first-graders by anyone. Although reluctant to make a fuss, they say they feel obliged to let other parents know about the book. Mrs. Hartsell says she has shown it to perhaps 100 people, and everyone has expressed surprise.

Some school board members are sympathetic to the Hartsells' point of view. According to StarNewsOnline.com, board member Janice Cavenaugh, who talked to the family about King and King, agrees that the book is age-inappropriate. And fellow board member Maryann Nunnally, while uncomfortable with censorship, says she would prefer to put such controversial books out of children's reach and circulate them only with parental permission.

However, Bo Dean, a leading member of Wilmington's homosexual community, has defended the school's continued circulation of the book, saying it can provide an opportunity for parents and students to talk about differences in modern society.

No doubt that idea figures among the uses that the publishers and promoters of the pro-homosexual children's book had in mind. The authors of King and King have already spawned a sequel, King and King and Family. According to the publisher's blurb, in this story "King & King soon discover that there’s no adventure more wonderful than starting a family of their own."

All the schools in the Hartsell's county have a committee for reviewing books after questions have been raised about their appropriateness. However, the Hartsells are required to file a written complaint and return the book for review. The parents say they will be filing their complaint soon.

This is from June 8, 1998 but it's worth reading.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1998/vo14no12/vo14no12_children.htm

They Want Your Children
by William Norman Grigg

Homosexuality is a chosen behavior with self-destructive consequences. Young people sometimes fall prey to it in early adolescence; the initial repugnance provoked by the vice in many cases yields to fascination and eventually results in addiction. As a result of homosexuality, promising lives are cut tragically short by disease, and health care costs are incurred that are absorbed by families and the community at large.

Every element of this description applies to smoking, a practice that, unlike homosexuality, is not condemned by the Bible as an abomination before God and has not been denounced by millennia of Western moral teaching as a dire perversion. Just as there are many people who have abandoned tobacco after adolescent experimentation or even years of regular use, there are many people who have abandoned the vice of homosexuality after dabbling with it as confused adolescents or struggling with it for years. Accordingly, the contrast between the Clinton Administration’s crusade against youth smoking and its efforts to encourage acceptance of homosexual behavior among youth is instructive.

Dangerous Double Standard

"Today, the epidemic of teen smoking is raging throughout our nation as, one by one, our children are lured by multimillion dollar marketing schemes designed to do exactly that," intoned Mr. Clinton in a March 7th radio address. "Three thousand children start to smoke every day illegally, and 1,000 of them will die sooner because of it. This is a national tragedy that every American should be honor-bound to prevent."

After enumerating the steps already taken to "educate" schoolchildren about the evils of tobacco, "reduce their access to tobacco products," and severely "restrict tobacco companies from advertising to young people," Mr. Clinton insisted that "even this is not enough to fully protect our children." He urged the public to support legislation that would dramatically raise the price of cigarettes, penalize the tobacco industry if it "keeps selling cigarettes to our children," and "restrict tobacco ads aimed at young people, so that our children can’t fall prey to the deadly threat of tobacco."

In short, the Clinton Administration, in defiance of constitutional impediments, seeks to mobilize the full regulatory and enforcement resources of the central government in a campaign to protect schoolchildren against a form of self-destructive behavior. Of course, no similar crusade has been mounted by the Administration to discourage the similarly self-destructive form of behavior called homosexuality.

For anti-tobacco zealots, the evil lure of tobacco is embodied in "Joe Camel," a commercial mascot created by R.J. Reynolds Company whose seductive appeal supposedly overpowers the resistance of suggestible youth. Teen smoking, claimed Bill Clinton recently, "has everything to do with Joe Camel." In her syndicated newspaper column, Hillary Clinton inveighed against actress Julia Roberts for chain-smoking in the popular film My Best Friend’s Wedding. "Movie stars who puff away on screen equate smoking with status, power, confidence, and glamour," pontificated Mrs. Clinton. The First Lady did not condemn the same film for featuring a homosexual character that embodied "status, power, confidence, and glamour," of course.

Thus, it is not surprising that the same Clinton Administration which has made Joe Camel a totem of evil has embraced homosexual actress Ellen DeGeneres, who has made herself a living advertisement for the normalization of her chosen perversion. DeGeneres and her "lover" Anne Heche have been welcomed at White House social events, and have been photographed with the President.

In an October 16th speech before the Hollywood Radio and Television Society, Vice President Al Gore applauded DeGeneres for using her television program to propagandize on behalf of homosexuality. When she "came out" on her program, Gore explained to a Hollywood audience, "millions of Americans were forced to look at sexual orientation in a more open light." Compounding the irony is the fact that DeGeneres, in a fit of petulant militancy, demanded that the ABC television network remove the "TV 14" rating from her program, in order to make it more accessible to impressionable children.

The Administration’s anti-tobacco rhetoric casts tobacco companies as predators who brazenly target young potential customers as a means of expanding their markets. Whether or not this charge applies to tobacco companies, it is certainly true of radical homosexual activists. Writing in The Advocate, lesbian activist Donna Minkowitz urged her comrades to "take the offensive for a change, whether the issue is promiscuity or recruiting the previously straight.... Ten percent is not enough! Recruit, recruit, recruit!"

The July 15, 1993 Washington Post reported that recruiting efforts are enjoying success. In many Washington, DC-area public schools, noted the Post, students are not only discussing "gay rights" issues in class, but also "declaring their own bisexuality or homosexuality, a step some said they were taking to be trendy or cool." Some students, in fact, "outed" themselves merely "to protect themselves from just being normal."

If evidence were to emerge that a tobacco company had targeted schoolchildren as "closeted" smokers, and had insinuated propaganda into public school classrooms to encourage them to "experiment" with tobacco, the ATF and FDA would probably mount a paramilitary raid on the company’s corporate offices and drag its executives off to jail in leg irons. Yet the Clinton Administration has energetically supported efforts to normalize homosexuality and to compel social acceptance of the vice, and those efforts are carried out in many of the same public school classrooms in which schoolchildren are catechized about the evils of smoking.

Reality Behind the Rhetoric

Early in Bill Clinton’s first term, Andrew Kopkind of The Nation magazine pointed out that "homosexuality is — by presidential directive — a positive qualification for an Administration job." Mr. Clinton retains his penchant for the pervert lobby.

Last November, Bill Clinton convened a summit on "hate crimes" at the White House, an event to which radical homosexual activists were conspicuously invited. In remarks at that event, Mr. Clinton declared, "Children have to be taught to hate. We need to make sure someone is teaching them not to do so." In the vocabulary of the left, "hatred" includes rejection of homosexuality and opposition to the political demands of the Lavender Lobby. The largest and most high-profile of the radical homosexual groups involved in the fight against "hatred" is the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which hosted President Clinton at a fundraising dinner in Washington, DC earlier this year.

A few weeks after President Clinton conferred his imprimatur on the HRC, the group co-hosted an event at the University of California-Santa Cruz entitled "Exposed!" The four-day event, which drew high school and college students, as well as educators and activists, was a festival of hard-core pornography and radical activism. Workshops included a lecture by prostitute Teresa Dulce and a performance by "pleasure activist" Annie Sprinkle which included excerpts from her X-rated videos. Another film offering at the event was entitled Blood Sisters: Leather Dykes & Sadomasochism and Daddy at the Muscle Academy.

Among the "academic" presentations at "Exposed!" was a workshop entitled "Town, Gown and Tea Rooms: The University and Public Homosexual Sex," conducted by a UC-Berkeley researcher who admitted to committing anonymous homosexual acts in campus bathrooms. A reporter for the Lambda Report who attended "Exposed!" undercover recalled that "in the audience [at the bathroom sex workshop] was Tomas Almaguer, a homosexual professor at the University of Michigan who would give the closing speech at the conference the following morning. Almaguer said he practiced ‘tearoom’ sex and defended it as a good means of ‘recruiting’ young men and women into homosexuality."

This is the repellent reality behind the Lavender Lobby’s rhetoric of "tolerance" and "inclusion." From "academic" settings such as the "Exposed!" conference radiate initiatives and measures which use the classroom as a recruiting ground.

Teaching Tools

In 1996, the National Education Association (NEA) — which was arguably the most powerful element of the Clinton coalition — adopted as part of its bylaws Resolution B-7, which deals with "Racism, Sexism, and Sexual Orientation Discrimination." The measure called for the elimination of "discrimination" against homosexuality, the imposition of policies to "increase acceptance" of "gays and lesbians," the integration of an "accurate portrayal" of homosexuals "throughout history and across the curriculum," the eradication of "subtle practices that favor the education of one student over another on the basis of … sexual orientation," and the development and implementation of "training programs on these matters."

One of the tools available to achieve the goals outlined by the NEA is a video entitled It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School, which has been screened in classrooms across the country. Set in six elementary and middle schools, the agitprop video depicts supposedly candid discussions between "enlightened" teachers and schoolchildren. The discussions follow a predictable script: Homosexuals are treated as oppressed victims; objection to the practice is scorned as bigotry; and Christianity is singled out for individualized condemnation.

"Some Christians believe if you’re gay, you’ll go to hell, so they want to torture them and stuff like that," insists a fifth grader with the enthusiastic certainty typical of misled innocence. An eighth grader recites one of the sodomite lobby’s preferred sophistries: "If kids are too young to be taught about homosexuality, then they are too young to be taught about heterosexuality." A first-grade teacher from Wisconsin insists that parents should be compelled to enroll their children in sodomite mind-laundry classes: "If parents are allowed to have their children opt out of gay and lesbian units [classes], what will happen when we teach about Dutch culture or African-American history? It scares me."

"It’s Elementary is the latest tool in a fast-growing campaign," reports Robert H. Knight of the Family Research Council. "A homosexual teachers group, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Teachers Network (GLSTN), has produced its own video, Teaching Respect for All, as part of its second annual ‘back to school’ campaign. The 50-minute video is based on the staff training program created by GLSTN for the Massachusetts Department of Education under Republican Governor William Weld."

It was under Weld that the Bay State became the trendsetter in officially sanctioned pro-homosexuality classroom indoctrination. Peter LaBarbera, publisher of the Lambda Report, observes that under Weld’s leadership, "Massachusetts became ground zero in the movement to promote homosexual-affirming education policies, and the state’s ‘educrats’ are now working with gay groups to export them to other school districts nationwide. In 1994, after Weld created his precedent-setting ‘Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth,’ Massachusetts became the first state to enact a ‘gay rights’ law for schools."

Among the innovations mandated by the Governor’s Commission, in a February 1993 report entitled Making Schools Safe for Gay and Lesbian Youth: Breaking the Silence in Schools and Families, was the requirement that "all certified teachers and educators will receive training in issues relevant to the needs and problems faced by gay and lesbian youth. Such training should be a requirement for teacher certification and school accreditation." Significantly, no exception was recommended for accredited religious and private schools. The Commission also decreed that pro-homosexual messages be "integrated into all subject areas" and the removal of "biases in existing curriculum, such as the exclusive use of opposite-sex couples in math or foreign language exercises."

Not content with compelled indoctrination of both teachers and students and the censorship of "homophobic" classroom material, the Commission dictated a set of "Anti-Harassment Policies and Guidelines." "Schools should adopt and publicize policies which prohibit anti-gay language and harassment on the part of faculty and students" and propound "clear guidelines … for dealing with anti-gay epithets and speech," decreed the Commission. The body further directed teachers and staff to take all necessary measures to eliminate "discriminatory attitudes directed against gay and lesbian people in general." The Commission also called for the creation of "Gay/Straight Student Alliances" in "every high school in the Commonwealth"; these "alliances" are essentially liaison offices with the Lavender Lobby.

Causing Them to Stumble

Newsweek for November 8, 1993 reported that in Massachusetts, "National Coming Out Day" is "an autumnal rite every bit as gala as graduation day...." In the state that contributed homosexual Congressman Barney Frank to the House of Representatives, noted Newsweek, "multiculturalism has come to embrace multisexualism." Thus "more students seem to be coming out, and they’re coming out younger. A climate of greater tolerance is making it possible for teens to explore more openly what they’ve historically sampled in secret."

One of those responsible for the expanding epidemic among Massachusetts teenagers is Karen Harbeck of the Massachusetts Governor’s Advisory Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. Speaking in June 1997 at the Second Congress on Family Law and the Rights of Children in San Francisco, Harbeck proudly outlined the gains made by the sodomite revolution: "Ten years ago, the average age of ‘coming out of the closet’ for gay men was 26; the average age for lesbians was 28. On the average, young people today are coming out of the closet at age 15.... And if you come out of the closet at age 14, 15, or 16, you’ve probably been gay or lesbian for the previous six years and had no one to talk to."

While most people would be startled by the idea of a "closeted" eight-year-old, Harbeck insists that public schools have to "liberate" such children — now designated as "Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans-sexual, or Questioning" (GLBTQ) youth — at the earliest possible age. "By seventh grade it’s too late," Harbeck insisted. "People say this is an issue mainly for high school sex education class. They’re wrong; it belongs in pre-school."

One result of the "gay youth" revolution in Massachusetts, observes LaBarbera, "has been a proliferation of horror stories, as parents get wind of one-sided, pro-homosexual ‘lessons’ or even ‘gay pride’ rallies at their child’s school, often after the fact." Typical of this trend is the case of Mike Chiusano of Beverly, Massachusetts, who in 1994 was denounced as a "homophobe" at the dinner table by his then-14-year-old daughter after she had attended four days of mandatory assemblies entitled "Homophobia Week." "When Mr. Chiusano protested to the Beverly High administrators, his family became the victim of a harassment campaign, including a phone call to his wife from one zealot who threatened, ‘We know where your daughter lives,’" recalls LaBarbera.

In March 1997, Douglas Matthews, the faculty adviser to the "gay-straight alliance" at Algonquin Regional High School, distributed a "Questionnaire about Heterosexuality" to students in a freshman history class. The questionnaire was designed to expose and rebuke "homophobic" attitudes among students. Among the questions contained in the handout was the following: "If you’ve never slept with a person of the same sex and enjoyed it, is it possible that all you need is a good gay lover?"

A similar document was distributed to students at Cupertino High School in California. Entitled "Heterosexuality: Can It be Cured?" the leaflet, distributed by the American Public Health Association Caucus of Gay and Public Health Workers, declared: "Heterosexuality is a condition characterized by a sexual attraction to members of the opposite gender. Many persons, in all cultures, at all times, have been heterosexual.... Whatever the cause of this phenomenon, we can state without doubt that there are many problems associated with heterosexuality, both for the individual and society at large." Among the "problems" listed were pregnancy and "a state of homophobia." Suggested "cures" for heterosexuality included psychotherapy and widespread sterilization of the heterosexual population.

The time is not far distant when it may be a federal offense for anyone in either the public or the private sectors to present smoking in a positive — or even neutral — context. If present trends in the classroom are any guide, the same federal government will eventually criminalize opposition of any kind to homosexuality — and American schoolchildren are being prepared for that dreadful day.
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t's Elementary
The New Gay Public Education Outreach
by Kimberly Pierce NLJ Staff Writer

How far will you go to protect the mind of your child? As a parent, do you cautiously filter what your child reads, watches and is taught? You probably even share the sentiments of Abraham Lincoln who stated, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” Should the push for indoctrination of gay propaganda within the school systems, funded in part with your tax dollars by the National Endowment for the Arts, cause your blood to boil and stir you to action?

Recently, the homosexual community unveiled It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues In School, a video intended for use within the educational establishment. The video is scheduled to air on various Public Television stations across the nation throughout this summer and fall.
The project is produced by Helen Cobenz and Debra Chasnoff, declared her lesbianism at the 1992 Oscars. (Cobenz and Chasnoff are lovers and have two little boys.) Chasnoff told a Santa Fe newspaper, “What’s clear in the film is that the younger the kids, the more open they were. If we could start doing this kind of education in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, we’d have a better education.”

Better education for whom and at what expense? Apparently, at the cost of our children’s innocence or at the loss of the parent’s right to dictate moral education. The political agenda of this video is plain and uses children to deliver the blatant propaganda.

It’s Elementary was filmed at six public and independent elementary and junior high schools across the country. The video opens with pro-family Sen. Robert Smith (R-N.H.) arguing that Congress should withhold federal funds from school districts that promote homosexuality. As you hear the senator passionately speaking, soundbites of children giving their thoughts on homosexuality are interjected, such as “homosexuals are not bad people.”

This video attempts to document how gay and lesbian education has already been introduced into the classroom, how teachers address the issue, and disparages everyone who reasonably objects.

The first classroom setting is New York Public School 87. A teacher directs her fourth grade class in a discussion of homosexuality. She states, “There are no right or wrong answers.” But with the questions she poses to the students, she leads the class to the conclusion that homosexuality is normal and natural.

In another New York City school, known as Manhattan Country School, junior high students discuss the appropriateness of teaching about homosexuality in schools. “Schools need to give us all the facts and let us decide,” an eighth grader comments. Not once in the video are “facts” discussed about how homosexuality places people at a higher risk for sexually transmitted diseases, such as AIDS.

At Luther Burbank Middle School in San Francisco, Calif., homosexuals are brought into the classrooms as guest speakers. This segment of the video proves how influential this form of education can be. Any attitudes of opposition to the teaching of homosexuality are slyly pieced between children in school and schoolyards. The clips of opposing viewpoints are only from Donahue and The Ricki Lake Show where so-called “Christians” say such things as: “God hates faggots!” A genuine Christian perspective is never given to reflect the biblical meaning of sin, forgiveness, deliverance and reconciliation.
The most disturbing portion of It’s Elementary is the last school visit to Cambridge Friends School in Mass. Annually the school celebrates Gay and Lesbian Pride Day. Everyone (teachers and students) wears pink triangle pins in support of homosexuality. The school holds an assembly where children are shown enthusiastically singing, “This Little Light of Mine.” And a male physical education teacher “comes out” to the children. Another teacher tearfully encourages the children to accept homosexuality and declares how they are “going to make the world a better place for gays and lesbians.”

The goal of It’s Elementary is to present homosexuality to very young children as healthy, natural and perfectly acceptable. Children today hold the opinions of tomorrow. The only way to alter our tomorrow is to remain abreast of the influences in our children’s life and combat erroneous beliefs. Parents are urged to contact their local PBS station to prevent this program from airing.

http://www.liberty.edu/chancellor/nlj/July1999/Gay1.htm

PBS Station Nixes It's Elementary

PBS station KETC in St. Louis, Mo., has announced it will not air It’s Elementary. “While we recognize the importance of engaging our society in discussions about respecting diversity, KETC believes that the initial efforts by the producers to show the program at education conferences, seminars and festivals was a more appropriate approach than distribution via television,” station management said. “Those venues allowed teachers and parents to make their own decisions about introducing discussions from the program into their classrooms or homes.”

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