DriveThru – Get What You Need

Too many politicians these days treat their voters like jilted lovers.

During the campaign, they’re more than happy to court them and tell them what they want to hear. But once they’re elected to office and things are cushy and there’s power to be wielded—the average voters find themselves treated like an annoyance, something only to be dealt with when absolutely necessary.

That appears to be the mindset of some liberal politicians in New Hampshire.

After hearing a loud outcry from voters who didn’t want a politicized bullying bill to be used as a tool to promote homosexuality to public school children, the legislators changed the wording in the bill. Thankfully, there is no longer a mandate in the bill forcing every single public school in New Hampshire to teach about things like “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

But now the liberals who changed their vote are actually complaining that they were “bullied” into it by voters.

“In a telephone interview Friday, Rep. Burke cried as she describe feeling ‘intimidated’ into believing opponents would defeat the anti-bullying bill if she didn’t vote to remove the controversial language,” reported the New Hampshire Union Leader in the Sunday, Feb. 14 edition (not available online).

“I think we’re being bullied by a small group,” said Rep. Charles Yeaton, D-Epsom, who voted against changing the wording, told the paper.

Wait a minute. Being “bullied” is now defined as having to listen to what your voters think ? Isn’t the whole idea of elections to keep representatives accountable to the people who put them in office?  I guess we can now expect to see “elected official” added to the long and growing list of specially protected classes

This pitiful response also brings to mind what we’ve heard at the national level—when certain Democratic leaders actually accused the Tea Parties of being Nazis and militias and indicated that they needed police protection against them.

 Anything—to avoid the voters.

The battle’s not over yet, but there are signs that New Hampshire legislators are finally starting to hear the voices of concerned citizens—who are fed up with having their parental rights robbed in the public schools.

This week members of the New Hampshire House Education Committee appeared poised to vote for a bill that would have resulted in the promotion of homosexuality and transgenderism in the classroom.

This was being done under the cover of a so-called “anti-bullying” measure that, if passed, would force all local school districts to add special protections for things like “sexual orientation” and “gender identity and expression”—and also would go so far as to stipulate that all schools promote these themes in their curriculum.

But New Hampshire citizens sent a loud, resounding message, which boiled down to: NO YOU DON’T. NOT IN MY KID’S CLASS.

Responding to a call to action from the pro-family group Cornerstone Policy Research, they flooded committee members with emails. As a result, during a subcommittee vote, legislators unexpectedly changed course—voting instead for blanket language providing protection to all students against bullying for any reason.

This is a more fair and reasonable approach to the problem of bullying because it provides equal protection to all kids–without allowing the issue to be hijacked by gay activist groups who use it as a tool to sexualize and politicize classrooms.  

But this is only one step in the battle. The new language must still be approved by the full Education Committee (as early as next week). And a liberal legislator is already threatening to insert the objectionable language back into the bill when it comes before the New Hampshire House.

We’ll keep you updated–and you can keep making your voice heard! Because it does make a difference.

If you live in New Hampshire, promotion of homosexuality and transgenderism could be coming to a classroom near you.

 That’s because liberal legislators and gay activists in New Hampshire are dead set on pushing through a state law that calls for school districts to include those themes in curricula.

 And yet again, this is being done in the name of “safety” and preventing bullying.

Not only does this proposed legislation, H.B. 1523, mandate that all school districts insert the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity and expression” into their bullying policies, but it also calls for schools to  integrate those policies  into curriculum.

So in one fell swoop the state legislators plan to give themselves the power to micromanage school discipline policies and lesson plans.

While we agree that bullying is a serious concern and should be strongly prohibited in schools, we believe this can be done without sexualizing and politicizing the entire school environment.

 That’s why Kevin Smith, Executive Director of Cornerstone Policy Research, offered the New Hampshire House Education Committee alternative wording that would have provided blanket protection against bullying to every child. He argued that all children should be equally protected against bullying for any reason—“regardless of whether they are gay, straight, overweight, etc.”

But to no avail. The Education Committed ignored his suggestions and others like it. Over the next two weeks, starting this Thursday, members of the Committee will begin voting on the issue. So stay tuned.

New Hampshire is just one of several states that have come under pressure recently to pass pro-gay provisions making it easier for homosexual activist groups to get their messages into schools and circumvent parental notification requirements.

To learn more about pro-gay bullying policies and what you can do to protect your schools, check out this fact sheet.

Yesterday, The Denver Post brought to my attention yet another piece of legislation pending in the U.S.  House that gay activists could use as a political tool to force their will upon schools nationwide:

It’s called the Student Nondiscrimination Act, and it was proposed this week by U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colorado).

That sounds nice, doesn’t it? I mean, who would be against preventing discrimination?  But this bill is more sinister than it sounds.  

If passed, it would use federal mandates to micromanage local school policy all the way down to the elementary level. It would do this by mandating that every public school in the nation enforce special protections for pro-gay categories like “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

Why is that a problem?

 First of all, it would open our schools up to a new wave of expensive lawsuits, at a time when they are already burdened by unprecedented litigation.

The proposed legislation calls for noncompliers to not only be liable for providing “compensatory damages” and in danger of losing grants, but also to be written up in a report that is filed with a U.S. House committee. The term draconian might be an understatement in this case.

And it’s unclear exactly how “discrimination” will be defined, which is concerning–especially in light of recent cases involving attempts to censor Christian student groups for having values deemed to conflict with pro-gay “nondiscrimination” policies.

Secondly, the bill would give gay activists the leverage they need to force their agenda—against parents’ will—into public schools, again, all the way down to the kindergarten level. And you don’t have to take my word for it. Just consider recent history.

If this legislation doesn’t make it through, supporters have a backup waiting in the wings that’s equally threatening to local control. It’s called the Safe Schools Improvement Act.

Both bills are heavily supported by the largest gay-activist groups in the nation, including the Human Rights Campaign and GLSEN (the organization created by “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings.)

As I explained to the The Denver Post, bullying is a serious problem that should be addressed (at the local level), but you can do so without sexualizing and politicizing the entire school environment. The emphasis should be on the wrong actions of the bullies, not on their “perceived” motivations.

This week, kids in public schools across the land are participating in yet another event sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). But this time the event in question—No Name-Calling Week—is aimed primarily at elementary and middle school kids.

While No Name-Calling Week does have some laudable goals, such as “eliminating harmful name-calling,” unfortunately, the event also emphasizes the usual homosexuality indoctrination that has made GLSEN infamous. 

The truth is, you don’t have to sexualize the school environment to teach kids to respect one another. One program that does an excellent job of doing that without capitulating to a political agenda is Rachel’s Challenge.

Rachel’s Challenge is a character-based program for K-12 students that teaches students to relate to one another with kindness and compassion. It is based on the life of Rachel Scott, the first victim in the Columbine school shootings. So if your public school is struggling with how to address this issue, this might be a good option.

Meanwhile, if you’ve discovered that your child’s school is celebrating GLSEN’s No Name-Calling Week, you can learn facts about the actual reading materials and lesson plans in our “Indoctrination by Any Other Name” commentary.

Some of you may recall hearing about the plight of parents in Alameda, California, who were told their elementary-age kids have to receive pro-gay lessons provided by the public school district—even if those lessons violate their families’ most deeply held religious convictions.

The parents fought back with a lawsuit, asking the court to make the school district honor their requests to opt children out of the controversial teaching.

But this week, the parents got bad news: Judge Frank Roesch of the Superior Court of California in Alameda County denied their request, giving schools carte blanche to indoctrinate kids against their parents’ wishes.

The logic? The judge determined that “any opt out right” is “outweighed by the policies against discrimination and harassment of students from LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender] families.” 

Translation: State laws and school provisions citing special protections for homosexual characteristics automatically trump parental rights and religious freedoms. (Next step for the parents is to appeal the decision with the help of Pacific Justice Institute.)

Parents, please take note. This represents the latest tactics being used by gay activist groups to undermine your rights. And this specific Alameda case offers some lessons that are worth paying attention to:

1) Gay activists are aggressively pushing so-called anti-bullying or anti-harassment policies for schools that contain specific references to things like “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” Once passed, they use these policies as legal teeth to enforce things like pro-gay curricula for six- and seven-year-olds.

2) Homosexuality teaching is being couched within “tolerance” and “bullying” lessons as a way to skirt parental rights.  Many state and local opt-out policies have wording that can be construed to only apply to subjects like health or sex education. Therefore, gay activists push schools to categorize homosexuality teaching under more general topics like “tolerance,” “bullying prevention” or “family diversity”—and then argue that opt-out provisions do not apply to these topics.

That’s exactly what happened in Alameda. The judge bought the gay-activist and liberal school-attorney arguments—and decided that opt-out provisions in the state education code only apply to subjects formally categorized as “health” instruction. And therefore, he found that parents don’t have the right to opt their kids out of so-called tolerance lessons.

3) When it comes to battles between pro-gay “nondiscrimination” laws and religious freedoms—religious freedoms are increasingly losing out. And this in turn, is creating alarming disrespect for religious viewpoints in public schools. In this case, for instance, attorneys for the Alameda school district felt free to vilify religious parents—listing as evidence against them that “they believe homosexuality is a sin” and accusing them of trying to “avoid having their children be taught respect.” 

This simply isn’t true. People of  faith consider respect for others to be a core tenet of their religious teachings.  And they believe respect  is based on the fact that all people “are created equal” by God.  Respect should not be twisted into an excuse to indoctrinate young children into homosexual  and "transgender" activism.

As part of its new “ThinkB4YouSpeak” campaign, GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) is encouraging educators to display print ads that discourage kids from using the insulting phrase, “that’s so gay.”

While I completely agree that this and other demeaning phrases are wrong and should never be used, I am amazed at GLSEN’s apparent blindness to its own advice to “think before you speak.”

One of the ads GLSEN wants teachers to display, for instance, features a boy with the words, “That’s so ‘Jock who can complete a pass but not a sentence.’ ” At the bottom, in small print, it says “Think that’s mean? How do you think ‘that’s so gay’ sounds?”

Another displays a teenage girl and the words “That’s so ‘cheerleader who like can’t like say smart stuff.’ ” Yet another one features a slam on a “gamer guy who has more videogames than friends.”

So basically, GLSEN has insulted entire segments of the population in an effort to teach people not to insult homosexuals. (Read about some of the backlash here.)

To me, this reveals the faulty thinking at the heart of group-identity politics—which teaches that people deserve to be protected because of certain traits or associations, rather than the simple fact that they are human beings created by God with inherent worth and dignity. We see this same faulty thinking reflected in many so-called school bullying polices, which single out some groups of people as more worthy of protection than others. 

Wednesday the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing on the issue of bullying in public schools, innocently titled, “Strengthening School Safety through Prevention of Bullying.”

What prompted this hearing is a bill currently under consideration in the  House (H.R. 2262) that would would give money to schools who agree to craft and implement “anti-bullying and harassment” policies.

Sounds good, right? Who wouldn’t want the government to give money to schools in order to help them keep our kids safe from bullying and harassment?

But look closer.  The government gets to tell schools which categories of bullying and harassment are “worthy” of protecting against.

Here are the magical categories over which if a student bullies  another, he or she is in big trouble:  race, color, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity and religion.

So under this bill,  if a student harasses another for reasons other than the ones listed above, it’s, somehow, less bad? Yes.

Put another way, if Joe punches Ryan in the nose because Ryan is a Christian or maybe self-identifies as gay, then Joe is deserving of serious punishment.  If Joe punches Ryan because Ryan is small and wears glasses, Joe is deserving of less punishment.  That is unequal treatment at it’s height.

The truth is that all kids who are on the receiving end of a bully’s actions should be protected equally.  Period.

A parent standing in the principal’s office with her wounded child wants the school to bring the full force of discipline on the bully for his act,  not for what the bully was thinking when he did it.   A bully might “think” a bad thought about any number of students during the school day.  But it’s his actions that should have consequences.

There’s another problem with the bill.  Mandating that a school’s anti-bullying policy spell-out the categories of  “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” introduces sexualized and often politicized topics into the school environment–where they don’t belong.

And gay activists will use this federal mandate as the leverage they need to promote homosexuality in public schools.  We’ve already seen evidence of this.  A school district in Alameda, California recently mandated a pro-gay curriculum for elementary kids.  Parents were told they could not opt their kids out, meaning that kids as young as first grade will be taught about same-sex couples whether parents like it or not.  Guess what the school used to justify the pro-gay curriculum? So-called “student safety” and “nondiscrimination” laws.

So make sure your Member of Congress hears from you that if the federal government is going to give money to schools for anti-bullying programs, the government shouldn’t mandate that some students are more deserving of protection from bullying than others.  And that our kids’ school environments shouldn’t be platforms for sexualized or politicized topics.