Posted on 08/17/2005 1:16:17 PM PDT by Albion Wilde
The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) has been busy for 10 years ... creating gay student groups at hundreds of high schools and passing laws or regulations that limit or eliminate harassment aimed at homosexuals....The organization has also used part of its $4.3 million budget to promote a reading list for students as young as those in kindergarten....
At the high school level, some of this indoctrination might be excused on the grounds that students are old enough to make personal choices and maybe some of them can define terms like "sexuality" and "gender."
No such excuse can be made for this kind of social indoctrination at the elementary level.
The very idea that GLSEN and other groups are busy offering "educational resources" or training programs to elementary school teachers in order to create a more "affirming environment" for gay students is appalling....
(Excerpt) Read more at denverpost.com ...
Fat kids and dumb kids are also picked on. The natural tendency is to bully the weak and look up to the strong.
There is an equally important element to this problem that is not encountered so much via judicial activity.
Academia is developing institutional regulations and required curriculum completely in the absence of effective control by elected representatives. Local school boards themselves are becoming rubber stamps for curriculum mandates they see themselves as largely unable to judge.
Like in Rhode Island, state law was adopted that has the curriculum for "social worker" defined by the professional association of social workers in the state. That professional association set up curriculum standards that require incoming students to adopt socialist beliefs about the professional values required of social workers. The state legislature is clueless. A recent case being looked into at FIRE involves a Rhode Island college student who was academically penalized by his school for refusing to lobby the state legislature for a policy he did not believe in. He is being told by his professors that unless he adopts their beliefs he will not get his degree - because his beliefs are contrary to the "professional values" in the required curriculum. Yea, like welfare is better than workfare. Not.
The Marxists are taking the same sort of blind routes at every level of our education industry.
What I am thinking is that Blue counties pay money to GLSEN which then uses it in its POLITICAL efforts in outher counties.
This way GLSEN's seminar income is defunded nationally.
Here's an exhaustive list of information compiled by FReeper Scripter:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1026551/posts
Amen. Oh - BTW - they also use the `coalition-building' acronym GLBT, meaning, I guess, "gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgendered" (YUK!). I propose reordering the acronym to `GBLT'.
That way, these people can be referred to collectively as
"GIBLETS"
Progressive eduction has been taking over the schools since the 1920s.
"The Marxists are taking the same sort of blind routes at every level of our education industry."
A very important post, Wuli, thank you. While we conservatives are growing comfortable with our Republican president and 55 seats in the Senate, we should all be afraid, very afraid, of what has happened in academia. That includes the American Psychiatric Association (APA), in which a self-appointed committee of gay doctors decided, based on their politics and not on science, to recommend removing homosexuality from its list of disorders. Their subsequent diktats about gay marriage have been incorporated as sacred in many Leftist agitations ever since.
We just can't afford to continue sitting on our hands while our educational establishment is going down (you should excuse the expression) in flames.
There should be not teaching of homosexuality at any level in school, and there should be no sex education in kindergarten of any type, period. What sickos and what dumb a**es the left is to condone such behavior.
I guess I'm not 100% clear what exactly is being taught, and where:
1) Grade-schoolers, or jr. high/high-schoolers? Is there any public school system in the US where homosexuality is addressed in grade school classes? Not "Heather Has Two Mommies," but actually as part of a class?
2) The barest info (i.e. gays exist, don't be mean to 'em) OR discussion of homosexual practices OR full-on demonstrations, or what? And n't mean one-off stupidities like that conference in Massatoosis a couple years ago, I mean public school curricula that teach this stuff. What's out there, and where?
I find it difficult to present any cogent argument that teenagers, who are being prepared to go out into the world, should not at least be made aware of the existence of homosexuality and be taught that while many people find homosexuality abhorrent, there's no room in school for physical or verbal assaults upon fellow students who are homosexual or perceived to be (which is sometimes the case in schools - a kid isn't "out," and indeed may not be homosexual, but is labelled as such and targetted for predation by other students.
Grade schoolers are a different matter; not only is it inappropriate to teach sexuality to, say, kindergartners, but it's a diversion from the things that are really far more necessary in a primary school curriculum.
SW
"Fat kids and dumb kids are also picked on. The natural tendency is to bully the weak and look up to the strong."
You are right, and it's deplorable. Schools do little or nothing about it -- that would be too judgmental, or worse, moral!
One of the favorite taunts of schoolyard bullies has always been, "gay!" I believe that this ganging-up behavior on kids is a prime source of the self-doubt that may lead to homosexuality. It probably has biological roots in the behavior of dominant males competing for females, and even dominant females competing for males, and it stinks.
Kids need to be loved and inoculated against this kind of baiting at school. Fathers and mothers who have effeminate sons or tomboy daughters need to constantly affirm to them that their interests and their gender are two different things, and that God made them their gender for a reason -- and to celebrate the opportunities it brings.
"What I am thinking is that Blue counties pay money to GLSEN which then uses it in its POLITICAL efforts in outher counties. "
This is the problem with all these activist groups, including ACLU -- they are carpetbaggers with national or even special-interest funding from wealthy anarchists who then blow into a locality that is weak. They use their deep pockets to sue and overrun the will of the locals, then trumpet their "success!" on their web site and at big-ticket fundraisers. It's criminal.
Citizens have to work twice as hard and fight determinedly. But they can do it. Citizen Magazine, published by Focus on the Family about political issues, often runs stories of individuals or small groups who have taken on the liberal establishment and won. Here's the link: http://www.family.org/cforum/
"What sickos and what dumb a**es the left is to condone such behavior."
It's not just the Leftists. It's all the traditionalists who sit home and think someone else should concern themselves with what is being taught in our schools. Get involved, FReepers!
Agreed, it took off with the scopes trial. However, it has taken generations to strip it down. Like I said, I think it escalated starting in 1992.
I heard someone say on talk radio last week. If you put a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump back out.
But, put a frog in cold water, and turn up the heat. He doesn't realize it until he is cooked.
We have been cooking for years. It is up to us to heal our burns before we become well done.
"I guess I'm not 100% clear what exactly is being taught, and where:"
I can't give you a state-by-state rundown. But my research over the past ten years reveals the intents and goals of the GSLEN organization -- that much of their large budget, is directed at teaching children about gay sex and its mechanics, not just its existence. It is also directed at teaching the "normalization" of gay behavior, not just tolerance. They have succeeded to a greater degree in some states, such as California, than others, but the point is that their pressure tactics will continue to press for more information and younger children continually. Their goal is not just information, but indoctrination.
You point is small potatoes, long passed and seldom employed by Marxists as either basis or grounds for trying to demand and enforce acceptance as opposed to tolerance.
This is worse than cigarette smoking.
Time to go "cook" dinner. I have to run. Keep in touch Albion. Thanks
"I guess I'm not 100% clear what exactly is being taught, and where"
Here is GLSEN's state-by-state report:
http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/library/record/1687.html
Some of it has to do with unsupervised play. The more it is organized, the more adults have control, the less bullying goes on. Left alone, kids tend to developed Hobbsean societies.
My point about conservative complacency is that while we have a slim lead in government, Leftists have overtaken the schools, the universities, the APA, the AMA, and the news media.
We need to push back at the local level about our school curricula and our judges.
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