DriveThru – Get What You Need

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.

We can learn a lot from the Romeikes, the first family to ever win political asylum in the United States from persecution against home schoolers.

They recently fled their idyllic home in Germany for a duplex in Morristown, Tenn.  A legal brief gives a dramatic account of their case:

            …at about 7:30 a.m., armed and uniformed police officers entered the Remeike home. Without a written order, the officers forcibly took the Romeike children from the home and drove the crying, traumatized children to the government school.

That was just the beginning. In addition to police visits, the family was slapped with hefty fines, culminating with the threat of losing their home and maybe even custody of their children.

What was their horrible crime? Uwe Romeike and his wife, Hannelore, are Christians who dared to home school their five children (the youngest age 3). They felt the German public schools were contradicting their deeply held religious convictions. So they risked jail time and literally gave up everything—connections to relatives, financial security, their house—for the freedom to direct their children’s upbringing.

It makes you think, doesn’t it? How much would we be willing to give up to protect our kids and follow our convictions? The prospect of police knocking down our doors to take our children isn’t as far removed as we’d like to believe. It’s still happening in modern-day Europe.

Clearly, we take a lot for granted here in the land of the free. But the Romeikes’ plight gives us a dramatic reminder why we need to remain vigilant to protect the freedoms we hold dear.

After all, it wasn’t that long ago, that Californians were fighting for their freedom to home school.  And day after day, we hear more stories about public schools forcing kids to learn lessons that are antithetical to their parents’ faith. We’re also hearing more disturbing statements from leaders in our political and court systems, asserting that religious freedoms will lose when it comes to a conflict with “gay rights” goals.

If the current trend of sacrificing parental rights and religious freedoms in the name of “tolerance” continues—it’s foreseeable that there could come a day in this country when home schooling is the only option for people of faith.  That’s why it’s worth our time and investment to stay involved in local elections and the legislative process, and educate ourselves with tools like CitizenLink.com.

The Romeikis understood the true cost of protecting these freedoms. Do we?

During the State of the Union address, and in the days leading up to it, President Obama has promised to throw even more taxpayer dollars into the public education system (including funding for things like more “Race to the Top” grants, reworking the No Child Left Behind law, childcare expansion, etc., etc.)

This is on top of the already unprecedented $100 billion he previously promised.

Problem is, despite unprecedented levels of taxpayer funding for public education in recent decades, there isn’t much to show for it. Americans spend a total of nearly $600 billion on public schools every year. Yet student scores on national tests have not shown significant improvement, and we continue to have a serious graduation-rate crisis, with some schools not even graduating half of their students.

It’s time to start asking, where is the return for our investment? The same can be said for President Obama’s pledges to increase childcare funding.  Again, we can look at the federal government’s biggest childcare funding project (to the tune of $7 billion a year)—Head Start. Just the other day there was yet another study showing that most preschoolers in Head Start lose whatever gains they make in the program by the time they reach first grade.

Rather than continue to make more feel-good pledges, it would be nice if our President would follow through on his previous pledge to “use only one test” when determining education policy—and that is “whether it works.”

Empowering parents to make the best choices for their kids clearly works. Take the Opportunity Scholarships, for instance, a D.C. program that allowed thousands of impoverished kids to escape failing schools and go to better-performing schools, including private ones. The principal investigator, who conducted a study for the Department of Education’s own Institute of Education Sciences, said the program “has proven to be the most effective education policy evaluated by the federal government’s official education research arm so far.”

So why is President Obama allowing the program to die despite the best kind of evidence it works?

 This week, Senator Joe Lieberman, (I-CT), and House Republican Leader John Boehner, (R-OH), sent a letter to the President, pleading with him to reauthorize it. “We should not sacrifice these students to politics,” they said.

Let’s hope the President listens to those pleas. Because it’s time to stop increasing the nanny state and start empowering families instead of fostering their dependence on the federal government.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Safe Space Kit that GLSEN wants to send to every middle and high school in the nation. The kit tells educators to use GLSEN’s controversial book list, which promotes sexually graphic content to kids.

But wait, there’s more.

In addition to the book list, the kit gives educators further information for sexualizing the school environment and undermining parental rights.

Let’s just look at a few examples:

• The kit gives educators a “Checklist” to ensure they’ve done enough to sexualize the school environment  (in their words, make it “LGBT-inclusive,” meaning lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender, and we’re still waiting for more letters of the alphabet to be added.)

Suggestions include to implement “a gender-neutral dress code,” “gender-neutral” bathrooms, curriculum infused with homosexual, bisexual and transgender themes, Valentine’s Day celebrations with same-sex couples, in addition to prom and homecoming events that “allow for gender-neutral alternatives to ‘King’ and ‘Queen.’ ” 

• Teachers are instructed to avoid using words like “husband” and “wife” in the classroom and to “avoid gendered pronouns” like “he” and “she.” And to “Promote LGBT events throughout the school…”

So basically, if GLSEN has its way, the concept of ‘male’ and ‘female’ and traditional marriage—and even basic English language pronouns—will be rendered absolutely meaningless to the average public school student.

• GLSEN also wants to undermine parents’ role as the primary nurturers and protectors of their children. For instance, the “safe space” kit makes it clear that 1) teachers are to encourage an environment where kids can “come out” to them and discuss their sexual problems, but that 2) teachers are not to share this information with parents or authorities.

“Let the student know that the conversation is confidential and that you won’t share the information with anyone else, unless they ask for your help,” instructs the GLSEN kit. (Hmm, this sounds suspiciously similar to “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings’ reported response to a teenager who confessed risky behavior.)

Forget about the parents—but “be prepared to refer them to a sympathetic counselor, a hotline, your school’s GSA or an LGBT youth group or community center.”

In other words, teachers are supposed to send your kids, without your knowledge, to left-wing, radical gay-activist groups in the community who will most likely tell them that sexual experimentation is normal and to be expected.

What was that about a “safe space” again?

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.

Those trying to protect man-woman marriage in Maine have repeatedly cited the Massachusetts court decision Parker v. Hurley as a timely warning. In the decision—rendered after gay marriage was legalized in that state–a federal judge denied parents the right to opt elementary-age children out of lessons about same-sex marriage. 

But Maine’s Attorney General, Janet Mills, recently issued a statement brushing aside those warnings because, she claimed, the Parker case didn’t “turn on any provision of state law relating to marriage or education.”

But that’s simply untrue. Let’s examine the facts:

For instance, I wonder if the Attorney General took the time to read the first few paragraphs of the decision.  If so, surely she would have noticed the clear references to “Massachusetts law” granting special protection to “sexual orientation.”  The opinion specifically explained that, because of this law, the “Massachusetts Department of Education has issued standards which encourage instruction for pre-kindergarten through fifth grade students concerning different types of people and families.” (In other words, teaching about homosexuality and same-sex marriage.) So this obviously did “turn on state law”—and keep in mind that Maine also has at least one state law giving special protection to “sexual orientation.”

Furthermore, the Massachusetts judge clearly and repeatedly connected the dots between what is being taught in the classroom and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision, which mandated the legalization of gay marriage. “Students today must be prepared for citizenship in a diverse society. .. As increasingly recognized, one dimension of our nation’s diversity is differences in sexual orientation. In Massachusetts, at least, those differences may result in same-sex marriages,” said the judge [Emphasis added.]

Therefore, the judge concluded that parents cannot opt their kids out of instruction promoting gay marriage because “under the Constitution public schools are entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy.”

And in Massachusetts those “goals” now include teaching “respect” for homosexuality and gay marriage. “It is reasonable for public educators to teach elementary school students about individuals with different sexual orientations and about various forms of families, including those with same-sex parents…”

Clearly, Maine is in danger of taking a path that leads to almost exactly the same scenario—one that robs parents of their parental rights and religious freedoms in public schools.

Okay, I’m not a fan of the ACLU, and never have been. If you’ve ever read “The ACLU vs America,” then you’re probably not either.

In its rush to scrub American life of all vestiges of Christian piety and morality, the ACLU seems to have reached a new low by demanding that Christians be jailed for refusing to bend the knee to its secularist agenda. A couple news stories have popped up in one week: the first involves a Florida court that refused the ACLU’s request to hold a school employee in contempt (for asking her husband to pray a blessing at a off-premises employee recognition dinner) in violation of a questionable court order (can a school waive the First Amendment rights of its employees?); and the second involves the ongoing Lisa Miller custody case in Virginia (former lesbian-turned-Christian mom doesn’t want to allow her former lesbian partner visitation rights with Lisa’s daughter) where the ACLU’s request to have Lisa jailed for contempt was likewise denied. Another hearing in the Florida case is set for mid-September where a couple more school employees face jail for another meal blessing.

Yeah, I realize there are court orders involved and that contempt charges go hand in hand with violating those in the ordinary case. But these cases do not pass the smell test for reasonableness, in my opinion. If you find yourself on the winning side of a case that justifies jailing people for praying over a meal or for caring about their biological daughter’s upbringing, then you should be taking a long hard look at your mission statement. The ACLU is a dishonorable and dangerous organization.