Posted on 06/23/2012 5:07:37 AM PDT by rhema
Aaron Sweeney is a youth minister in Illinois.
I can’t remember the last time my town’s been in the national news—in fact, maybe there hasn’t really been another time. I guess that’s why what’s going on now has taken so many of us by surprise.
I’m the youth minister at a church in Erie, Illinois—a town of about 1,500 people that represents a mixture of local business owners, farmers, teachers and factory workers and others.
We’ve never experienced anything like this—where for the last several weeks our town has been the target of a national pressure campaign launched by gay activists and liberal media. People in our town have been called insulting names by angry bloggers. They’ve gotten phone calls to their home and hate emails from people who don’t even live here.
So what was our town’s big crime—the one that suddenly put us on the map for hate speech and CNN coverage?
Well—we just dared to say no.
No, that is, to GLSEN’s (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) materials coming into to our pre-kindergarten through fourth grade elementary school. (Read more about that here. And our local school board had the courage to listen to the concerns of the majority of parents, voting 5-2 to reject the materials. (I got involved in this whole thing after a bunch of parents started contacting me about what was happening.)
Why did our town take this stance?
Well, I guess the short answer is we’re still one of those communities left in the US of A that dares to admit we want to teach our kids good old-fashioned, love-thy-neighbor kind of character lessons and moral values—not the sexualized, politically correct version of identity-group politics for kindergartners pushed by some left-wing organization in New York.
And I guess there’s a lot of folks in our town who still believe in the truth and love of what God’s Word has to say about marriage and sexuality—and they’re willing to speak up for their religious freedoms to pass those principles along to their children.
Problem is, it seems GLSEN wasn’t too happy about that. Because now the New York-based activist group with funding from corporations like PespiCo and Wells Fargo is still applying public pressure to try to force our board to change its vote. Even though our board has repeatedly made it clear it’s not going to.
In fact, if you go to GLSEN’s Web site , you can see that our small town is currently the subject of their front page Web banner. They also created a Change.org petition aimed at our school board.
So I’ve been asking myself why a well-funded, big-time outfit like GLSEN would find it worthwhile to use pressure-tactics against a 200-student elementary school in a rural area. And the best answer I’ve come up with so far is that they don’t like the precedent of anyone—even parents in smalltown America—saying no to them. I guess they really do think they know better than the majority of people raising their kids and elected community leaders.
But that’s ok. I think our town can handle the heat. Because we’re backed by something stronger—an unshakable passionate love for our children and our God and one another.
I hope this will encourage thousands of other parents, including many of you reading this, that it’s so important to be connected to the details of your children’s lives and what they are being taught in schools. You don’t have to be afraid. You’re not alone. You can speak up—and make a difference. Even when you live in smalltown America.
i’d like to move into the community who can stiff arms the people who flip off the portraits of President Reagan on a visit to the WH.
Faggies are less than two percent of the population.
Why are faggies so powerful?
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
Spendable income, out of proportion representation in the media.
A male trying to mate with the anal canal of another male is insane. A female trying to mate with another female with a rubber appliance is insane. Adults trying to mate with children are insane. It’s like your Uncle Bill sitting at your dinner table trying to eat by sticking a breadstick in his ear and then telling you that’s his lifestyle. It may be, but it’s still insane behavior.
Only those paying property taxes should be allowed to vote for those spending those property taxes.
Those receiving benefits from the taxpayer due to their lack of income should not be able to vote in elections for offices that make funding and budget decisions that impact those benefits.
Government employees should not be eligible to vote in elections for any office that makes funding and budget decisions that impact that employment.
Someone needs to make there metrics - “we cowed 5 towns this year” or is in training to take on a bigger city.
I’m not a renter, but when I was, I still paid property taxes.
Outside link didn’t connect for me. My question is, if their community is so small, how did GLSEN find out about this to begin with? Somebody ratted them out. Perhaps it was one of the two board members who voted for the materials.
Nope - you are adopting the socialist mentality wherein a guy paying his rent with a welfare check is also paying property tax.
Renters pay rent to the landlord. The landlord is the only party responsible for the tax being paid. The renter does not lose anything if the tax is not paid.
Beg your pardon - I did not intend to be inflammatory. Here is what I should have said:
I see your point somehwat, but disagree. I won’t adopt the socialist mentality wherein a guy paying his rent with a welfare check is also paying property tax.
Renters pay rent to the landlord. The landlord is the only party responsible for the tax being paid. The renter does not lose anything if the tax is not paid.
Satan desperately wants them to win and asserts his influence accordingly.
Just one more way this country has gone down the tubes in the last 40 or so years.
I don’t know the makeup of the school board here, but, in general, the ABSOLUTE DUMBEST thing a parent can do is vote for a (public) SCHOOL TEACHER to be on that board (or retired teacher). You might as well not have a school board if you do that.
Silly homos. There is no "ban." Banning implies that materials were prohibitied, or those that were formerly used were removed from use. Your curriculum was simply never adopted for use in the first place. The English language is fine as it is, please stop torturing it.
I didn’t pay my rent with a welfare check, I don’t personally know anyone who does.
I’m sure, however, that the $200 per month the landlord was paying the local government had an effect on my cost.
Surely you aren’t arguing the the landlord simply ‘ate’ that $200 each month are you?
Oh, I didn’t say anything about your source of rent funds.
You made the argument that you pay property tax because you pay rent.
And I noted that welfare recipients who use taxpayer funds to pay rent would also - under your argument - be considered tax payers. But it would torture common sense to see them as taxpayers.
I also did not deny that landlords who pay property taxes take that into consideration when they charge rent.
But that is changing the subject.
You are not a property “taxpayer” if you bear no penalty for failure to pay property taxes (which is the case for renters) - whereas the landlord loses title to his real estate if he does not pay the property taxes.
In other words, renters have no skin in the property tax game - other than as beneficiaries of services paid for by property taxes collected directly from landlords under penalty of law.
Neither do welfare recipients.
It’s a very basic concept. Representation without taxation is just about as sinister as taxation without representation.
In my schema, market forces would drive people like yourself to select landlords who voted for officials who would spend tax funds wisely to ensure his property maintained its value. That is how your interests would be served.
Other wise we have people with no skin in the game demanding “free” stuff from government.
In other words, you want to punish hardworking people such as our family who decided to rent until we found the house we wanted to buy by treating us the same as welfare recipients?
And my youngest, who isn’t married (yet) and so has decided to rent until he and his girlfriend decide to marry (and then move in together), presumably to a house they will buy should also be punished for his wise decision to wait to buy?
Did I read that right?
I appreciate your goal, but the solution is unfair to tens of millions of people very deserving the of the vote.
It is no punishment I seek.
It is simply that only taxpayers should be allowed to vote for those deciding how much tax to collect and how the collected taxes are spent.
Its common sense and utterly fair - and it incentivizes property ownership.
In fact, it is exactly how it works in quasi-governmental groups such as homeowners associations - and boy does it effective at eliminating wasteful spending.
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