Parents angry at public schools' pro-gay practices

by Ed Vitagliano                                                                                          Vol. XX, No. 8, October 2007

When it comes to the issue of homosexuality in public schools, the clash between the religious and moral beliefs of parents and the determination of pro-gay teachers and administrators is all over the map. Over the last few months disputes have erupted in New Jersey, Illinois, Minnesota, and Massachusetts.

Evesham Township School District in New Jersey was the scene of the latest dustup. Parents there were upset to learn that third-grade students were forced to watch the video That's a Family! as part of the health curriculum. AFA Journal reviewed that film in its March 2001 issue and found it to be a clear propaganda piece which targeted children and which normalized homosexuality and same-sex families. Evesham parents were never told beforehand about the content of That's a Family!

However, Garden State Equality, a New Jersey gay rights group, applauded the school district. Steve Goldstein, the group's chairman, admitted that he thought children should be targeted with a pro-gay message. "We take this seriously," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "For us in the gay community, prejudice perpetuates into future generations unless the current generation. .. is taught diversity."

This fall school officials in Shiloh Elementary School District in Illinois came under fire for allowing children to check out the book And Tango Makes Three, the story of two male penguins raising a baby penguin and forming a "family."

Parent Lilly Del Pinto said her five-year-old daughter brought the book home, but she immediately stopped reading it to her little girl when she got to the part in the book in which a zookeeper says "the [two male] penguins must be in love."

Del Pinto and other parents asked Jennifer Filyaw, school district superintendent, to restrict children's access to the book and require parental approval before a child could check it out.

Filyaw refused and argued that the school's library should "represent different families in a society – different religions, different beliefs."

Meanwhile in the Interdistrict Downtown School in Minneapolis, parents complained to school officials about the gay man who was teaching their second-grade children.

Gena Bounds explained to the Star-Tribune that her daughter, seven-year-old Darriell, came home one day after school and "told me that her teacher had read the class a book about a girl with two moms. Then he told them that he's gay and that he and his partner are adopting a child, and the child will have two dads. Now Darriell thinks the school is telling her she needs to believe that two daddies or two mommies is the same thing as a mom and a dad."

The diversity curriculum being used in the school district is called "Families All Matter," and includes books like Asha's Mums, which was read to Darriell's class; Daddy's Roommate, for kindergartners; and King and King, a book for first-graders about a prince who marries another prince instead of a princess.

What most upset Felicia McCorvey Preyer, who has second-grade twins at the Minneapolis school, was that she had specifically told school administrators at the beginning of the school year that she did not want her children exposed to books with homosexual themes.

"They knew my wishes and they defied them," she told the Star-Tribune.

That's nothing compared to what parents in the Lexington Public School District in Massachusetts have been enduring for the last two years. Parents of kids attending Estabrook Elementary have been outraged at the pro-gay material being shoved at their children, but their complaints have been ignored.

In an interview with Bay Windows, a gay newspaper, Lexington Public School Superintendent Paul Ash said he believes that teaching children about homosexual issues is "a civil rights issue," and he would not "be bullied" by parents who disagree.

And what did Ash say to parents who wondered if they had any rights? He told the newspaper, "[Y]es, you do have rights. You can choose not to send your child to a public school."

[Reprinted by permission from the AFA Journal, March 2007 (www.afajournal.org)]

Editorial Note: That last sentence is good advice. Don’t think, “Our school is different!” It’s not. It may be at a different stage of the anti-family, anti-Christian, anti-moral onslaught, but all government schools are part of the same strategy. By definition and by law government schools must separate religion and education. That specifically contradicts God’s commands to parents.

When we come to the end of our lives and stand before Christ, I do not believe He will ask about the jobs we have held, the size of our bank account, the car we drove, the size house we lived in, our looks, our clothes, how famous we were, or any such thing. But one thing for which we will definitely be held accountable is how we educated our children. Did we ensure that they got a Christ-centered education or not?

What will your answer be?

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