Posted on 05/26/2004 3:10:02 AM PDT by kattracks
(CNSNews.com) - The group that created a pro-homosexual marriage curriculum for school teachers has come under attack for allegedly presenting "biased" information that seeks to "coerce" students into supporting the idea of same sex marriage.
Psychology professor Warren Throckmorton from Pennsylvania's Grove City College wants teachers to ignore the suggestions offered by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). In a 24-page report, Throckmorton outlines what he sees as inaccuracies, bias and the impracticality of the curriculum.
"Teachers are not employed by the community to indoctrinate children to an ideology or set of political beliefs," Throckmorton writes in the report. "Every lesson in this curriculum attempts to employ group or teacher pressure on students to support same-sex marriage."
The report, which Throckmorton authored along with Grove City College professor Gary Welton and student Mike Ingram, highlights nearly 20 examples in the GLSEN curriculum that they say should cause concern. CNSNews.com first reported on the curriculum in February.
Even though pro-family groups criticized GLSEN's curriculum in February, Throckmorton's Friday appearance on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor re-ignited the debate. Throckmorton had also been invited to rebut comments made by GLSEN's executive director, Kevin Jennings, during a Feb. 11 appearance on the show.
Three telephone and e-mail messages left with workers at GLSEN's New York-based headquarters weren't returned Tuesday, and the head of the GLSEN-Boston chapter, Sean J. Haley, said he didn't have time to talk about the issue.
GLSEN's communications director, Joshua Lamont, said in February that the curriculum wasn't intended to promote same-sex marriage, but rather to offer teachers a guide to help students understand the issue. GLSEN doesn't keep track of teachers who have used the guide.
"As an organization, we do not have an official stance one way or the other on the marriage issue itself," Lamont said in February. "That's because we're branded as an education organization. The reality is that it's something that's been talked about a lot, and our concern has been for educators having the resources to facilitate some sort of discussion in their classrooms about this topic."
But the curriculum, Throckmorton noted, offers teachers little information about opposition to same-sex marriage. It includes the views of only one opponent - the Roman Catholic Church - and it makes no attempt to present additional resources where students could locate any criticism.
Throckmorton reserved his harshest criticism for what he views as GLSEN's attempt to coerce students into supporting same-sex marriage on the grounds that it is a civil right. By equating same-sex marriage with the struggles of black Americans, the curriculum appears to be suggesting that students who oppose homosexual marriage are racist or oppressive, he said.
"When discussing this issue," the GLSEN curriculum suggests, "help students to move past preoccupations with the 'rightness' or 'wrongness' of same-sex coupling or homosexuality in general. Place the debate over marriage within the context of human rights, thereby expanding the dialogue beyond the realm of morality."
Throckmorton's reaction: "It is astonishing for the GLSEN curriculum to declare a student's moral beliefs as irrelevant to any issue. For students who organize their lives around a moral code, this objective is coercive."
In addition to the concerns over alleged bias and coercion, Throckmorton pointed to a handful of statements he said were inaccurate or misleading, such as claims that homosexual relationships have existed for thousands of years and that black leaders support the cause.
The curriculum also suggests, for instance, that same-sex relationships differ little from opposite-sex relationships. But Throckmorton casts doubt on that observation, citing a study showing that, on average, heterosexual marriages last nearly twice as long as some homosexual unions.
On the whole, he said, teachers should disregard the curriculum because it's impractical to implement. He suggested that teachers explain homosexual marriage as part of a current events discussion rather than spend the two to three weeks needed to apply GLSEN's curriculum.
"This curriculum clearly presents one side with no fair presentation of alternative views," Throckmorton concluded in the report. "This is no way to handle the sensitive matter of same-sex marriage or any other controversial social issue."
See Earlier Story:
Same-Sex Marriage Debate Moves Into Schools (Feb. 9, 2004)
E-mail a news tip to Robert B. Bluey.
Send a Letter to the Editor about this article.
I had a real hard time reading through the rest of the article because the first two sentence/paragraphs set up some questions I expected to be answered, but never were.
That being said, here is what bugged me ...
A group of queers, who are not an educational organization, printed up educational material and got it into the hands of educators that prompted one educator to write a report criticizing the non-educational group's data that had gotten into the hands (minds) of the educators.
Now a flury of activity (TV, reports/counter reports, etc.) has begun.
Question:
How did a non educational, group of queers get their agenda into the educational community as if it were curriculum?
Because they are queers.
Had they been clergy they would have been laughed at , derided and insulted.
Thats how.
I'm glad Throckmorton is at least attempting to stop this nonsense.
Being an educator might be a help in talking to educators. Its a cinch they won't listen to me or any other concerned parent.
Let me spell it out for you:
DNC + NEA + GLSEN = PC BS
These are college students needing "help" understanding the issue? I have pre teen grand children who understand the issue. They just don't "understand" it the same way that the queers want to promote it.
"Teachers are not employed by the community to indoctrinate children to an ideology or set of political beliefs,..."
You think these liberal idealouges will stop teaching sex,drugs, rock and roll to their children. Why would they, their parents just roll over and do nothing.
That is just the perfect formula for what is happening!
If I may? The PC BS is a WMD being used on American schoolchildren by the DNC + NEA + GLSEN.
(God bless the nuns, we always had to proof our work)
| What We Can Do To Help Defeat the "Gay" Agenda |
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| Homosexual Agenda: Categorical Index of Links (Version 1.1) |
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| Myth and Reality about Homosexuality--Sexual Orientation Section, Guide to Family Issues" |
"On February 11, 2004, Kevin Jennings, the president of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, appeared on the Fox News program “The O’Reilly Factor” to discuss what he called GLSEN’s “new” marriage curriculum for schools. He claimed it was developed in response to recent events for schools to utilize in lessons exploring the issue of same sex marriage. When asked by Bill O’Reilly if it presented both sides of the issue, Jennings answered, “Absolutely.”
The reality is that Jennings is ‘absolutely’ full of baloney. Once more, Jennings and GLSEN are not being honest. The curriculum is not at all objective but radically biased toward a pro-homosexual viewpoint. It distorts the information it provides, withholds vital additional information, and slickly manipulates student sympathies. The curriculum is also not new. We first reviewed this curriculum in 2001. It has been updated but is largely the same material.
The limitations of the GLSEN curriculum are numerous, and this material is not at all appropriate to fashion into a teaching unit for students. Titled “At Issue: Marriage,” the curriculum is problematic for these reasons:...
6. The influence on youth of legalizing same sex marriage is minimized, and opposition depicted as needlessly fearful and backward.
Lesson 4 is called “The Notion of Influence” (emphasis in original). Students are presented the text of the children’s book Daddy’s Roommate along with news accounts of a pro-family group’s attempts to remove it from a library. The news account is predictably slanted against the traditional view. Students also read a letter to a newspaper advice column in which a woman asks whether to allow her nine-year-old daughter to be the flower girl at her uncle’s same sex “wedding.” Among the questions for discussion, is the following loaded query:
“Encourage students to think carefully about the consequences of sheltering children from different people and experiences. No matter what our moral stance is on any particular issue, we all have to cohabitate in a world with others who look, think and behave differently. Are we really doing young people a service when we shield them from this inevitable diversity?”(Emphasis added)...
7. The United Nations “Declaration of Human Rights” is presented to students and falsely depicted as justifying same sex marriage because it calls for ‘dignity,’ marriage and family rights and decries ‘discrimination.’
In a brazen twisting of the intent of this 1948 document, GLSEN again tries to construct a civil right for sodomy and same sex marriage when the document never intended for such interpretations. In fact, homosexual activists have tried (so far unsuccessfully) to amend the UN Declaration to re-cast the definition of key words to cover acceptance of homosexuality.
Students are told to evaluate the actions of the Vermont legislature in light of this document in an attempt to bring the U.S. to “justice” by international standards outside our country. Yet, as indicated above, this document has not been revised to support homosexual unions. Again, students are given a meaningless exercise based on false information and even asked to violate U.S. sovereignty, yet they are shielded from very important truth about how far anal sex is from “dignity...”
10. The curriculum resource list is dominated by homosexual activist group web sites and contains no sources which support traditional values.
Among the resources provided are National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Lambda Legal Defense Fund, and Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders..."
Throckmorton's reaction: "It is astonishing for the GLSEN curriculum to declare a student's moral beliefs as irrelevant to any issue. For students who organize their lives around a moral code, this objective is coercive."
Strong statement.
I did a google search yesterday, and, sure enough, there is a GLSEN website for my city.
INTREP - SOCIOLOGY - MARRIAGE - SODOMY
Diversity bump.
A group of queers, who are not an educational organization, printed up educational material and got it into the hands of educators that prompted one educator to write a report criticizing the non-educational group's data that had gotten into the hands (minds) of the educators...
Question:
How did a non educational, group of queers get their agenda into the educational community as if it were curriculum?
GLSEN's infiltration of the public schools over the past seven years has skyrocketed. GLSEN is the crown jewel in the homosexual community's well planned and well financed campaign to indoctrinate normal children with "homosexuality is normal, too" propaganda.
GLSEN has the full support of many businesses and all the major homosexual organizations (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), Human Rights Campaign (HRC), National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), Lambda Legal, etc), the ACLU, The American Psychological Association, and the National Education Association, to name a few.
Here's some documentation (yeah it's extensive, but it's just the 'tip of the iceberg'):
An excerpt from 'Queering the Schools' with response from Kevin Jennings, Executive Director of GLSEN and the editors response to Kevin Jennings.
GLSEN and Its Influence on Children
Homosexual Agenda Escalates in Public Schools
How Homosexual Activists Are Taking Their Messages to the Public Schools
An excerpt from "Hurricane GLSEN" by Marc Fey, TownHall.com, September 28, 2003
"About the time Hurricane Isabel reached landfall on Thursday, September 18, 2003, a group of activists, educators, and junior high and senior high school students gathered in Washington, D.C. for the annual GLSEN (Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network) National Conference. Like the havoc that Isabel wrought on communities in North Carolina, GLSEN threatens to produce far greater
What I witnessed during these brief 72 hours left me with the conviction that GLSEN is a cultural hurricane that’s hitting our schools with the kind of force and devastation that may take years to fully assess. Let me try to paint the picture.
GLSEN is a self-styled pro-gay education network targeting our kids in public schools.
The danger is in how they seek to accomplish this mission. In effect, GLSEN’s objective is to cut out parents and adult leaders in the child’s life who don’t agree with the LGBT agenda. Every speaker at the national conference made this message very clear.
On Friday night founder and co-director Kevin Jennings defiantly declared, “Neither rain, nor wind, not even a hurricane will stop us from bringing justice to our schools!”
A clinic earlier that day was entitled “Strategies for Responding to Homophobic Bigotry: Everybody’s Business!” The title accurately set forth this point in their agenda-- to make the GLBT agenda everyone’s agenda, yours and mine included. And the strategy is to get to our kids.
It’s not just that they are generously funded, though they certainly are. Revenues for 2001 were $3.35 million, and this year’s conference was liberally supported by Kodak, Levi Strauss, Microsoft, and IBM whose logos were emblazoned on banners, brochures, and conference freebies. For the close to 500 people in attendance, including about 100 junior high and senior high students, the companies hoped to capture this powerful purchasing sector—gays and youth—arguably two of the most powerful buying sectors in America today.
No, GLSEN’s success comes from a carefully planned message that homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender identity issues represent the next human rights and civil rights battle, on par with Martin Luther King, Jr and other reformers great work of the last 200 years. Again, this message is targeted at our kids. Today, GLSEN sponsors about 1700 campus student clubs, called GSA’s (Gay Straight Alliances) promoting LGBT issues..."
The hurricane that GLSEN represents is hitting our schools. Unlike Isabel, this hurricane doesn’t threaten homes, businesses, and lands. Instead, this force threatens our most precious resources—our kids.
Marc Fey brings ten years of teaching experience in California public schools and seven years of pastoral ministry to his work as Education Analyst at Focus on the Family."
An excerpt from "What Does Homosexuality Have To Do With Education? An Answer" by Kevin Jennings, GLSEN Executive Director
"... Homosexuality itself has nothing to do with education, any more than biology, chemistry, algebra or any other subject does. What is important is what one can learn from the study of a given subject. A discussion of how we understand homosexuality in our culture and how this reflects our values, beliefs and world view has tremendous educational value. It is clearly a subject that matters to kids. They talk about it; they ask about it; they use phrases like “That’s so gay” routinely, so few can argue that it isn’t a subject that needs addressing (although some will, believe me!). The question is, can we use it to help students think and learn? The answer is manifestly yes...
Today, many families feel bewildered by the rapid cultural change sweeping our nation, and some have been led to believe that a “gay agenda” is, at least in part, responsible for what they see a breakdown of our society and a seemingly-bleak future for their children. They feel that if they can regain some sense of control over what goes on in their community’s schools, maybe the whole society will become a little more coherent. They often just want to feel as if things are not completely out of control. So they come out to public meetings and demand to know what homosexuality has to do with education, and demand that it be banished so that the schools can return to the basics of reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic.
Sadly these people are pawns in a game, a game wherein unscrupulous politicos manipulate their very real and legitimate concerns for short-term political gain. Those doing the manipulating cleverly fly the banner of “parental control.” They protest that they have nothing against gays––Merrimack school board members who voted for the policy in question repeatedly said they were not prejudiced and would not tolerate verbal gay-bashing in their schools––but that they only wish to make sure that parents have the final say over what their children learn. Who could be against that?
It will do no good to point out the illogic of this position. Parents have little say over the day-to-day teachings of a school, and any school where they did would quickly become an unmanageable bureaucratic nightmare. Imagine if every lesson plan had to be approved by parents before implemented––nothing would get taught at all while we attended interminable board hearings. Parental control is only invoked when a particular subset of parents wants to impose their own values on a school...
In short, we must help her understand that homosexuality is not a threat to her children, homophobia is. That is what homosexuality has do to with education. It’s about freedom of thought; it’s about the ability to use one’s mind; it’s about the right to be educated rather than trained. And we have to help people who don’t understand that to get it.
Institutionalized Heterosexism in Our Schools
GAY-STRAIGHT ALLIANCES: Here to Stay
An excerpt from "GLSEN Celebrates 2,000th Gay-Straight Alliance"
It all begins with Queering Elementary Education:
Targeting Children - How the gay movement intends to capture the next generation
"GLSEN activist and New York kindergarten teacher Jaki Williams said starting in kindergarten is a must, since children at that age are still developing their ideas about the world around them. Even at that age, she said, “the saturation process needs to begin.”
Williams, in fact, is a model teacher when it comes to this “saturation” process. She regularly initiates conversations with her children by reading to them such controversial books as Heather Has Two Mommies, Daddy’s Roommate, and One Dad, Two Dads, Browns Dads, Blue Dads. She also hosts a viewing of the video Both of My Moms’ Names Are Judy: Children of Lesbians and Gays Speak Out, produced by a San Francisco pro-homosexual advocacy group.
According to one writer for The Lambda Report, who infiltrated a 1997 GLSEN workshop, one former teacher admitted that changing the mind of a child required more than a one-time effort. She said she had to expose her children to a constant stream of homosexual words and images, because "It’s really a conditioning process."
It's Elementary: Gay and Lesbian Issues in the Classroom
Education Exchange, November/December 1998
"Often, portions of the video are shown in classrooms with children as young as kindergarten, a practice that Concerned Women for America has labeled "an aggressive new national campaign." A columnist with the New York Post characterized It's Elementary as "78-minutes of relentless propaganda to advance the acceptance of homosexuality, as distinct from tolerance."
Teaching Kindergarten Kids About 'Human Differences' and Homosexuality Isn't 'Easy' in Newton
Parent Alleges Harassment for Exposing 'Fistgate'
Fistgate to be Held Again on March 15
Read through the replies in scripter's "Homosexual Agenda: Categorical Index of Links (Revision 1.1)" thread
I love to hear people (especially FReepers) say "There is no homosexual agenda (you bigot)."
Massachusetts public school teachers convention?
hehe ! Kerry and fat teddy enjoying themselves celebrating the gay "Mass" marriages ! :^)
And GLSEN only gets involved when?
Kevin Jennings is a very scary man.
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