Laigle’s Forum

 EU flag over Buckingham Palace creating a furor

By Donald Hank

No Union Jack is in sight atop the home of the royal family. But if the following web site is a reflection of the reality over there, things are really heating up.

Click here to see the blue flag (no, it’s not the Union Jack!) and read the comments

For those who haven’t been following this issue here, citizens of the UK have been denied the opportunity to vote on whether or not to allow their constitution, which dates back to the Magna Carta, to be replaced (superceded) by the EU Constitution.

That is because powerful politicians have signed on to various treaties over the years that, bit by bit, took away the sovereignty of the Brits, who would almost certainly nix the EU Constitution if they could.

How could this happen, you ask?

Look around you: Americans too have a long history of having policies shoved down their throats by politicians, some elected but many not. The Council on Foreign Relations acts in some ways like an arm of the government, setting policy, much of it highly unpopular, behind our backs. This trend heated up when we were forced to accept Most Favored Nations status for China. The people didn’t want this, would not have voted for it, but our leaders suddenly took the ball and ran with it, and next thing you knew, we had betrayed Taiwan and jumped in bed with the Red Chinese, their-and our-worst enemies in that region, and are becoming poorer every day as a result.

Next came NAFTA. You didn’t vote for it. But unelected zealots in the CFR pushed for it and eventually, they found a stooge to sign it and now you have a treaty that was touted originally as bound to favor the US, but wound up increasing our trade deficit, making us all poorer. Then there was an open-border policy, amnesty for illegal aliens, CAFTA, and now the SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership) and soon a truck route to deliver Chinese goods all over North America in Mexican trucks, and now the latest trick: a military partnership that grants Canadian military personnel authority over you and me.

What are we losing, you say?

Sovereignty, and economic power.

Why?

Because powerful people many of whose names are unknown to us, are deeply entrenched in high places, and they are protecting their own personal interests at the expense of citizens, enriching other nations, most of which are hostile to us, for their own gain but also out of a Marxist zeal to see our wealth redistributed to poorer countries.

The Great American Experiment has been hijacked.

Suddenly, Americans in the know feel a great deal of solidarity with the British, because we are all in the same boat.

The people who gave the world the Magna Carta now joins the people who founded the most powerful nation on earth in ceding their power back to a few powerful men.

But by the looks of the above-linked web site, the rich and powerful have not figured out how to make them like it.

Nor have our rich and powerful figured out how to make us like the three candidates they have foisted upon us.

Tom Cox ” fires” the GOP

Fellow conservatives and constitutionalists: Have you noticed as I have, that when you vote for the lesser of two evils for President, you still get evil?

 I have threatened to vote third-party in the past, but the fear tactics of the Republicans have pulled me back at the last minute. This year is different. I am watching the Constitution Party (CP) very carefully. If they nominate Dr. Alan Keyes as their candidate for President, I will vote for him, even if I have to write him in

 Keyes is the only guy in the whole field with the backbone and principles to restore the federal government to its Constitutional functions and limits. The Democrats and Republicans lost interest in the Constitution long ago, and are content to squabble over power until the nation goes down the drain.

 The Libertarians are OK on some issues, but they are clueless on national defense and sovereignty. Defending personal freedom is meaningless if our nation is attacked and destroyed.

 This was a great country, once, and it can be again, but only if we act soon. Stop choosing between evils. Check out the Constitution Party, http://www.constitutionparty.com/

 Tom Cox
Charlotte, TN

Apologetics Critical to Homeschoolers, All Christians, Says Academy

MEDIA ADVISORY, April 14 /Christian Newswire/ — Athanatos Online Academy offers course modules about the facts of the faith to supplement curriculums for churches, homeschool organizations, while remaining available to individuals.

The academy offers an Apologetics Certificate program as well. The academy home page is www.athanatosministries.org/academy.

The apologetics academy offers affordable, short term courses that are easy to plug in to existing programs.

Executive Director Anthony Horvath explains, “If you’re studying the conditions that led to the fall of Rome you’re also talking about the same context in which the New Testament came into its final form. Our courses on the creeds or the New Testament canon would help students see the relationship between Christianity and history. That is something we are convinced homeschooling families are interested in.”

Horvath explains that apologetics is consistent with the incarnation and a rejection of Gnostic ways of thought, “God didn’t have to come in the flesh. He is the one that stepped into history and challenged people to believe the miracles which they saw with their own eyes. God answered the problem of pain and suffering by entering into the human experience. He could have dealt with us apart from our senses, but he didn’t.”

Horvath argues that people are confused about apologetics, “Many people think apologetics and they think arm twisting. But apologetics can just be setting the facts straight. But apologetics also represents a way of thinking, too. Jesus said to love God with your heart, yes, but also with your mind. Homeschoolers understand this.”

The online academy is not about convincing nonChristians to become Christians but to equip Christians with the facts and evidences for Christianity so that they can more effectively minister to family, friends, and others that they meet. Horvath argues, “We need informed Christians because uninformed Christians tend to fall away completely- or at least their children tend to. It helps when you understand where Christianity fits into other areas of study.”

The academy’s courses are two to five weeks long and do not have a burdensome workload. Much of the reading material is available on the Internet but the academy aims to expose people to the writings of top Christian scholars, too.

The Academy is in session four times a year and the next session begins April 21st. The academy is enrolling now. Group rates are available.

The academy page is www.athanatosministries.org/academy

You may contact Anthony at 202-280-7971 or press@athanatosministries.org

Commentary by Don Hank

HILLARY and McCain in defense of Americans: You aren’t bitter, just bigots

Obama recently suggested that religion, guns and border security are for “bitter” rural people.

Hillary countered this by saying Pennsylvanians are resilient. Clinton, known for her elitist views on everything, also accused Obama of being an elitist.  But she didn’t defend rural Americans on the religion, guns or border security issue.

John McCain, who has been out of touch with voters throughout his career, says Obama is out of touch with Americans. McCain didn’t take issue with Obama on the religion, guns or border security remark either.

So while neither of the other candidates explicitly takes issue with Obama on his religion, guns and border security statement, both apparently agree that we bigots aren’t necessarily bitter.

How sweet of them to come, at least conditionally, to our defense.

Hear the two pots and the kettle spouting off here.

__

OPRAH supports Vagina Monologue author Eve Ensler

At the LYNCUP site, I had introduced readers to feminist icon Andrea Dworkin, quoting passages from her book Woman Hating that openly and unambiguously endorse adult-child sex. I had pointed out the hypocrisy of this woman, considered an authority on domestic violence, not just sanctioning but actually endorsing something that is obviously a form of violence against children. If you remember nothing else, please remember that there is an unbroken bloodline between the older feminists and the social “change” advocates of today (gay agenda, domestic violence industry, GLSEN, liberal/progressive educators, psychologists, media, Hollywood, etc), as Americans for Truth makes clear in an article on Eve Ensler, the author of Vagina Monologues, the obscene play intended for young people. The article exposes a conversation Ensler had with a 6 hear old girl, asking her intimate questions about her vagina. Ensler too has advocated adult-child sex.

Oprah, who operates a school for girls, likes and supports Ensler.

These are the kind of people who are having increasing influence on public education, having made great strides in all states, but particularly in California, where educators are required by law to endorse homosexuality; Massachusetts and Montgomery County, Maryland, where homosexuality is endorsed in the early grades; and almost all public schools throughout the US, which are poised to celebrate a Day of Silence intended to support homosexuals, who are supposedly being abused, but where in fact Christian kids are the ones who suffer raw assaults on their faith at every turn. David Parker’s son was beaten by gay activists for his father’s Christian stand.

For Christians, every day is a day of silence.

What can you do?

If your school is celebrating the DOS on April 25, call the superintendent or principle and explain why this is unfair to Christian kids, that homosexual kids are more protected than kids from traditional families, that by granting a special day only to this special group, the school is in fact politicizing education, and that in any case, it is disruptive, adding still another distraction.

If they won’t listen, keep your child home that day, and make it a day of prayer and fasting.

__

UK Constitution to be scrapped, without the people’s permission

It is happening here in the US as well. It is called the New World Order and, as the name suggests, it is Brave New World translated to reality. Remember how Bush Sr. talked incessantly of this New World Order, sounding more like a wizard than a president? Mr. McCain, one of its implementers, may be our next president.

Though conservatives reject McCain, Big Brother has chosen him to take us another step toward the North American Union, the replacement of the US Constitution. Once that happens, the perfidy will be complete.

For a glimpse of what awaits our country, click here.

__

MORE on Britain’s national crisis

When a government turns criminal, people need to take on a moral code of their own. In Britain, youngsters used to seeing their government behaving lawlessly, are assuming that immorality is acceptable. Who is left to judge them?

Click here for Jeff Randall’s “spot-on” article “In a land without morals, it’s no wonder children are killing each other.”

There’s a crisis on our streets, especially in London, and it has nothing to do with the cost of housing. As the blame game is played out between ministers and bankers over why mortgages are suddenly much more expensive, the price of life in parts of Britain’s inner cities has hit rock bottom.

 __

OLD hippies never die…

Did you know that Muslims are victims of us?

Click here for “Victims on Parade at NYU ‘Academic Freedom Conference’”

__

I, Sir, am a rightwing Christian bigot! (Whap! bam!)

Thinking about his next item, I couldn’t help remembering the Steve Martin movie The Jerk, where Steve Martin is confronted by a bigot who tells him he will help keep away the n…gers, and Steve indignantly says, “I, Sir, am a n….ger!” and proceeds to punch his lights out.

It seems the folks at Next Theatre blog consider grassroots Americans hate mongers for opposing the presentation of the play Angels in America at Deerfield High School. They counter with an article at their blog NextTheatre entitled Rightwing Christian bigots attack Deerfield High School, referencing a parent who “was so horrified that she formed North Shore Student Advocacy to lend legitimacy to her hatemongering, fear-peddling campaign against the devils at Deerfield.”

The leftwing elitists recommend sending a letter of support to the superintendent of the Deerfield District.

Friends, let’s counter this the way we successfully countered the slime attack on state rep. Sally Kern when she opposed the gay agenda in her state.

Here is how:

Email Superintendant George Fornero at gfornero@dist113.org and tell him the real bigots are the ones who are attacking universal standards of decency. Tell him decency is not a construct of Judeo-Christianity, as is rumored lately in elitist circles, but in fact is and has been accepted everywhere in the civilized world, except at Deerfield High School, for thousands of years, and you are not about to give up decency without a fight. Tell him to stand down from his untenable attack on decency or turn over the job to someone who will.

Oh, and you can tell him that if some parents object to decency, they might want to send their kids to a private school that endorses age-inappropriate subject matter such as obscenity and explicit sex scenes and language in books, plays and the like.

This just in from Mass Resistance:

 1. GLSEN Conference at high school in Boston reveals empowered homosexual agenda targeting schools. Coming up: gay clubs in middle schools, transgenderism, and more. Unbelievable.

2. Uproar over homosexual curriculum in Lexington brings threat to superintendent. Three TV stations go to David Parker’s house for comment.

3. HELP NEEDED NOW! Don’t allow the Massachusetts Legislature to spend $550,000 in 2009 state budget helping homosexual activists target kids in the schools.

1. GLSEN Conference at high school in Boston reveals empowered homosexual agenda targeting schools. Coming up: gay clubs in middle schools, transgenderism, and more. Unbelievable.

On Saturday, March 29, the Gay Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) held its regional conference at English High School in Boston.  GLSEN is a member of the tax-funded Massachusetts Commission on Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Youth, which funds its “gay straight alliance” (GSA) school clubs, the Day of Silence, and other activities.

Over half a million dollars in the upcoming state budget will be going to some of the most horrific homosexual programs in the public schools.  We got a glimpse of what to expect at the recent GLSEN conference. There’s a big push to start “gay” clubs in middle schools and normalizing transgenderism and cross-dressing to kids. GLSEN serves as a conduit to funnel taxpayer money into raw homosexual programs in the schools aimed at children.

GLSEN is an aggressive national homosexual activist group targeting schoolchildren across the country. At a recent GLSEN conference at Brookline High School, the pornographic Little Black Book - Queer in the 21^st Century was handed out to kids, causing a national uproar. In 2000, the infamous Fistgate episode took place at a GLSEN conference.

A full court press on kids

Like most GLSEN conferences, it was mostly middle school and high school kids bussed in from all over the state. About 300 people attended, with over 80% of them children.  The average age of all attendees appeared to be 15. Although it cost $70.00 for adults to attend, kids could get in for free or nearly free.  Most of the adults appeared to be homosexual activists, many of them schoolteachers.

There were speeches, performances, and 26 specialized workshops throughout the all-day conference, as well as lots of reading material freely passed out.

The overall theme was making kids comfortable with homosexuality and related behaviors one way or another, and encouraging them to establish a “gay identity”. Much of it was psychologically intrusive, meant for vulnerable and confused kids. And many of the kids there were sad to watch; a lot of them were obviously in need of some real help. Others were well-meaning kids who were being drawn into the movement by adults. They had become, as one person observed, “well- trained tellers of the lie.”

And it was very devious. As one workshop leader said about discussing homosexual sex in middle schools GSAs, “It’s not our main agenda, but we’ve got to keep it in the agenda.”

A LOT of material - must be seen to be believed

This meeting was so full of disturbing material that it’s too much for one email. It’s that bad So we’ll be posting much of it over the next several days. You’ll see it each day on the website.

Check out these postings from the Conference:

1. General observations: Who attended, GLSEN’s goals, etc.

2. Setting up homosexual clubs in middle schools

To be posted, one or more each day, starting tomorrow:

3. Making kids comfortable with transsexuality / crossdressing

4. PFLAG: Encouraging kids to “come out” and embrace a homosexual identity

5. Embracing bisexuality

6. Strategies to organize schools and intimidate officials: GSAs, Day of Silence, etc.

7. Teaching kids radical homosexual politics

8. Connecting kids with other homosexual groups & adults

It’s pretty overwhelming. The homosexual lobby is clearly poised to push the envelope as much as they can.

Remember, YOUR tax money is putting it into your public schools, targeting your kids. YOU must stop it. (See #3 below.)

2. Uproar over homosexual curriculum in Lexington brings threat to superintendent. Three TV stations go to David Parker’s house for comment.

As we reported in our last email, Lexington, MA, schools superintendent Paul Ash announced that he was going to institute a homosexual-affirming curriculum in the Lexington elementary school where David Parker’s children attend. Citing the latest federal court opinion in the David Parker civil rights case. Ash stated that he would not allow parents to opt-out or even be notified — even in elementary school.

This caused an outrage that has quickly spread across the country. Sunday night, a little-known Internet radio talk-show host in New Jersey posted Ash’s home address on a website, with the admonition that people go there and confront him.  Since then the local CBS, Fox, and NBC TV stations have been to David Parker’s house for a comment.

Read our full report here, with links to the TV and newspaper reports.

3. HELP NEEDED NOW! Don’t allow the Massachusetts Legislature to spend $550,000 in 2009 state budget helping homosexual activists target kids in the schools.

The horrible things you are reading about will continue unless it is stopped by citizens. And that means all of you.

We’ll get right to the point.  Over the next several days, the House Ways and Means Committee is poised to put $550,000 into the 2009 budget that will go directly to the Mass. Commission on Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Youth. GLSEN is a member of that commission.  Much of that money will go to GLSEN’s programs in your schools. All of it will go to very destructive ends.

Here’s how it looks now. Earlier this year the Governor released his budget recommendations. At this point there is “officially” $550,000 of direct earmarks for homosexual activism in the public schools, broken down this way.

7010-0005  Dept of Education . . . . . $200,000
“Programming to ensure compliance by schools with the Board of Education’s recommendations for the support and safety of gay and lesbian students”

4590-0250  Dept of Public Health . . . . . $350,000
“Commission on gay and lesbian youth”

(This does not include non-earmarked money, which could be up to a million dollars or more, but takes a little more time to uncover.)

You’ve heard a lot of talk about how the homosexual lobby is seeking $2.9 million for these programs.  In our opinion, that’s just a smokescreen. They know they won’t get that with the current budget problems. They just want to make sure they get their $550,000 intact. 

These homosexual activists SHOULD NOT GET ONE PENNY of taxpayer money for these destructive programs. But they’ll get it unless you stop them.

Let’s look at some facts.  At this minute, with a recession upon us, the Legislature is looking at a $1.2 billion budget shortfall. They’re talking about raising a ton of taxes -  corporate taxes, cigarette taxes, highway tolls, and more. Towns will be getting less for schools. And they’re having to cut all kinds of other legitimate programs. To fund homosexual activism is insanity.

Do something NOW - and keep it up every day.

The deadline is next Wednesday, April 16 for the House Ways and Means Committee to decide on the budget.

Every one of you must let them hear your voice. Tell them:

We don’t want one penny of public tax money spent on pushing homosexuality in our schools.  Parents and citizens are sick of it and won’t take it anymore - especially with a $1.2 billion budget shortfall this year!

DO NOT include $200,000 in item 7010-0005 (Dept of Education) for homosexual programs.

DO NOT include $350,000 in item 4590-0250  (Dept of Public Health)  for the “Commission on gay and lesbian youth”.

(And add your own comments, also!)

Who to contact:

1. You can call:

Rep. Sal DiMasi, Speaker of the House  617-722-250

Rep. Robert DeLeo, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee 617-722-2990

2. You can email the entire Ways and Means Committee by clicking HERE.

3. You can get to the other contact information of the Ways and Means Committee members by clicking HERE.

Below is a letter by Wiliam Donahue, the outspoken and often hard-hitting defender of Christians’ rights in the public square, to the administration of Deerfield High School, which made the indefensible decision to expose its students to an obscene play.

The letter is followed by a manifesto by Laurie Higgins, who challenges the same school administration and draws a line in the sand.

It is amazing that anyone would have to defend against the indefensible, but here we are, fighting for our future as a nation against people who have no valid arguments, no moral foundation and no large following, nothing but raw political power.

Ladies and Gentlemen, that is the Left. Everywhere you see these usurpers on their ill-won thrones, they are like cowbirds who have laid their eggs in the nests of hardworking decent birds who were too busy to notice what was going on.

That’s where Laigle’s Forum comes in. Pest control is what we do best.

March 12, 2008

Superintendent George Fornero

Township High School District 113

1040 West Park Ave.

Highland Park, IL 60035

Dear Mr. Fornero:

As the president of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization, I take seriously situations in which members of any group are being viciously maligned.  Because of this, I have grave concerns regarding students at Deerfield High School being exposed to Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.” 

While we condemn the negative stereotypes of gays offered in the play, as well as the abundant profanity and racism, we take particular exception to the line, “S__k my d__k, Mother Teresa.”  Such an obscene and slanderous assault on a woman who has been beatified by the Catholic Church is intolerable. 

A play of this kind should never be mandated for minor students, nor should it be offered as an optional assignment.  If you believe otherwise, I’d like to hear your reasons.  Would there be any novel, play, film, or poem that you would find out-of-bounds for the school environment? 

Yours truly,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.

President

Cc:  Ms. Sue Hebson

Manifesto

By Laurie Higgins

It would be enormously helpful if religious leaders who find objectionable the teaching in public high schools of the odious and obscene play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes would weigh in on the debate. After all, some of the children whose spiritual growth is, at least in part, their responsibility, are being exposed to dogmas that contradict the teachings of the Catholic Church, Orthodox Judaism, Islam, and many Protestant denominations. I think that if pastors, priests, rabbis, and a’imma would weigh in publicly, their followers would be emboldened to do likewise. If they and we don’t tirelessly oppose the efforts of activists in American society, their influence will only grow.

I consider myself a de-activist, and in the service of de-activism, here are my goals:

- to depoliticize the academy

- to restore academic integrity by ensuring that when controversial topics are addressed, all sides are fully, fairly, and objectively analyzed, with scholarship from all perspectives presented, or, alternatively, none are addressed

-to demand that no teacher attempt to emotionally or morally challenge his students (and here I use the universal “he” which includes both men and women, because I do not subscribe to feminist theories of language use)

-to demand that no teacher make known their politics or use the classroom to persuade their students that a particular socio-political view is right (e.g. on race, social justice, gender/feminism, ”sexual orientation,” “sexual identity,” war, abortion, euthanasia, fetal stem cell research, presidential elections, economic theory [i.e.. socialism], same-sex marriage etc.)

- to ensure that excessively obscene material is prohibited from use in public school curricula. It’s an untenable offense that public schools seem to be exempt from obscenity laws.

- to ensure that resources that denigrate faith traditions be prohibited. If society is going to commit itself to establishing an extra-constitutional ”wall of separation” between the church and state, then public schools, as an arm of the state, must be prohibited from presenting material that denigrates, mocks, or misrepresents faith traditions.

- to demand that policy or curricula that includes controversial or arguable language or ideas be first publicly discussed and debated with the decision-making body being composed of equal numbers of individuals from all  philosophical perspectives. We must safeguard the integrity of the academic enterprise by insisting on the most essential form of diversity, and the form least valued in the academy: intellectual diversity.

- to demand that the arguable philosophical presuppositions that underlie policy and curricula be exposed, analyzed, and justified with reasons and evidence before policy is adopted or resources used

Laurie has suggested some links to us, the first being:

http://www.robgagnon.net/

Robert Gagnon is a rather mainstream theologian and that is what makes him interesting, because far from blindly following the soft postmodern theology of the Emerging Church and its vapid political correctness, Gagnon interprets the Bible to mean what it says, at variance with most of his colleagues.

The other link is to some sermons by John Piper on Romans. Why Romans? Because Romans is the part of the Bible that the gay agenda has tried to extirpate from the national consciousness. (Paul doesn’t exactly think the active gay lifestyle is Godly). Interestingly, the Red Letter Christians (otherwise known as the Christian Left. So why don’t they call themselves simply the Reds?) like Tony Campolo, and even many heads of denominations once thought of as conservative, now seem to agree.

So now you can read about the real Romans and the real Apostle Paul, something your own pastor may be keeping you in the dark about. By the way, isn’t it odd that Christ would choose as his number one apologist a man who supposedly differs with him on the matter of sin?

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/ScriptureIndex/10/

We are living in a postmodern world. In the modern world, we had relativism. You couldn’t tell good from evil, or the distinctions were blurred.

Now we have a world in which the distinctions aren’t blurred any more. Everything godfearing decent people once believed in is now considered evil and the slimiest, foulest, most disgusting behavior you can think of (they even eat worms on TV these days!) is celebrated. That is no exaggeration, and good people in the education profession know it better than most. Like the librarian who was fired recently for alerting police to a sex offense. Look for the places where professionals are expected to protect and nurture children, and there you will find the most heinous of crimes occurring in broad daylight on a daily basis. It is chic to harm children. Shame on America. For those who allow this, it would be better for them that a millstone were hanged about their necks…

Today there is no such thing as a good person who does nothing.

Book Banning

by Laurie Higgins

Parents are increasingly being confronted with the use of inappropriate and offensive texts in their children’s public school. Here are some of the common arguments that parents may encounter when they challenge books for their problematic ideological messages, the nature and extent of profanity and obscenity, or the nature and extent of depictions of sexuality, followed by brief responses:

1. Parents are taking words out of context, and it is the context that justifies the language.
 
Response: There is no context that renders frequent and excessively obscene language acceptable in texts selected by public school teachers.  There is no context that can justify or render acceptable the teaching of the most extreme violations of decency and truth. In other words, the presence in a text of extreme and pervasive obscenity should render the entire text unsuitable for public schools whose mission is to cultivate the best behavior in students.

Put another way, can school administrations or school boards imagine any text in which the sexual vulgarity, obscenity, profanity, or sacrilege is so extreme or offensive that its very presence would render a text unsuitable for teaching, no matter what positive elements may also be present? Or will positive literary elements always trump issues of obscenity, profanity, and sacrilege? Are administrators, teachers, and school board members claiming that they will never, under any circumstances take into account the nature and extent of obscenity, profanity, and sacrilege? If they are making this claim, they abdicate their right to be administrators, teachers, and school board members.
 
2. Profane and obscene language is justified because it represents authentic adolescent language.
 
Response: If the author is justified in using this language to portray authentically adolescent culture and the emotional experiences of adolescents, then surely students are justified in using this language in school in order to be authentic and to express adequately and accurately their emotional truths. Teachers too should be allowed to use this language because it also represents authentic adult language and experience. In fact, society euphemistically refers to profanity and obscenity as “adult language.”
 
3. Counting numbers of swear words constitutes an immature or silly evaluative mechanism.
 
Response: Taking into account the extent of foul language is neither silly nor juvenile. There is a substantive difference between one incident of “f**k,” which I am not defending, and one hundred. The incessant drumbeat of obscenities desensitizes readers to their offensiveness and normalizes their use. Moreover, although adults may distinguish between literary use and endorsement, many adolescents do not.

Parents and educators should realize that books with profuse obscenity and the willingness of educators’ to teach them convey the message that there are justifiable reasons and contexts for using extremely foul language.

4. Although the text has “mature” content, it’s only being taught to older, more mature students.

Response: This argument is based on the substitution of the inaccurate euphemism ‘mature’ for the more accurate term “obscene.”  The use of obscene language represents the very antithesis of maturity. It is puerile, intemperate, uncivil, offensive language.
 
5. Since students mature at different rates, some students are mature enough for these texts. Parents, therefore, should decide what is appropriate for their child.

Response: Whoever makes this argument should be asked to define maturity. If they are referring to intellectual development, then it is irrelevant to the discussion in that parents who challenge texts because of language, sexuality, or pro-homosexual messages, are not doing so because they find the material intellectually inaccessible.

If educators are referring to emotional maturity, meaning that students are emotionally stable enough to read and discuss emotionally difficult material without being traumatized, that too is likely irrelevant, for few parents who object to language, sexuality, or pro-homosexual messages are concerned that their children will be emotionally traumatized.

The concern conservative parents have is with moral development. They recognize that all adolescents, including even mature high school seniors, are not yet adults. They are still constructing a moral compass. They are impressionable, malleable, and much more vulnerable to external influences than are adults whose moral compass is likely fixed and stable. For a teacher to contend that there is any 12-18 year-old whose moral compass is fully developed, mature, and fixed represents an ignorant and hubristic assertion.

Every parent should be able to send their child to school confident that their beliefs regarding decency and morality will not be challenged by educators or curricula, especially since this confidence can be secured without compromising the academic enterprise. It is even more important today in a culture in which profanity, obscenity, and sexual imagery relentlessly bombard our youth that schools stand as one of the last bastions of integrity, civility, and temperance.

6. A small minority group is trying to impose their morality or religious beliefs on the whole community.
 
Response: Since schools are ostensibly committed to honoring the voices of all in the community, there is no justifiable reason to ignore the concerns of even minority voices. Schools should respect the values of people of faith, especially when doing so does not compromise student learning. In addition, objections to obscenity, sexuality, or pro-homosexual messages can be either religious or secular in nature. If objections to, for example, the use of obscenity represented the imposition of religious belief, then why do virtually all school districts have policies against its use by students in school?  It is the mark of a civilized society to honor the concerns and values of people of diverse faiths and to aspire to decency.

7. There are other options for those who object to particular texts.
 
Response: First, opting out of reading an assigned class text results in a diminished, isolated academic experience for students. But equally important is the issue of whether taxpayers, even those who have no children in school, should be required to fund the teaching of offensive material. A text like Angels in America contributes to the debasement of an already vulgar culture, and schools should never in any way contribute to the baser aspects of culture. This does not mean that texts must avoid looking at the flaws and evil that afflict man. Rather, it means that we should choose texts that look at the presence of ignobility and evil but do so in ways that inspire, edify, chasten, and point us in the direction of truth, beauty and righteousness. Texts like Angels in America do none of this.

8. Refusing to offer this book will lead ineluctably to the world of book-burning à la Fahrenheit 451.
 
Response: This is an irrational, alarmist, specious canard. There is simply no evidence that including in selection criteria the nature and extent of obscene language or sexuality, or a consideration of highly controversial political messages will result in wholesale book banning. There is, however, ample evidence, that a steadfast refusal to ever take into account these elements will result in a slippery slide down the other slope to the use of corrosively vulgar and polemical texts.

9. This book has won prestigious literary awards or has been approved by the American Library Association (ALA). Or the teacher teaching this text has won prestigious teaching awards.

Response:  This justification begs the question: Who serves on committees that award prizes or review texts? And this argument calls for a serious, open, and honest examination of the ideological monopoly that controls academia and the elite world of the arts that for decades has engaged in censorship of conservative scholarship. To offer as justification for teaching a text the garnering of literary prizes or ALA approval without acknowledging that those who award the prizes and belong to the ALA are generally of the same ideological bent is an exercise in sophistry.

What school committees, departments, administrations, school boards, the ALA, the National Education Association (NEA), and organizations that award literary prizes desperately need is the one form of diversity about which they are least concerned and to which they are least committed: ideological diversity.

 Furthermore, this represents a common fallacy called “argument from authority” which relies on the word of an expert or authority rather than on evidence. In essence the fallacy goes something like this: This teacher made the decision to teach this odious text, and he is a “Teacher of Distinction.” The fallacy lies in the fact that someone’s intelligence or teaching abilities do not serve as justifications for a decision to include a particular text. Really smart people can make really chuckleheaded decisions.

10. Kids relate to this book and, therefore, it captures and holds their interest.

Response: If this criterion has assumed a dominant place in the selection process, then teachers have abandoned their proper role as educators. Appealing to the sensibilities and appetites of adolescents should not be the goal of educators. There’s another word for capitulating to the tastes of adolescents: it is called pandering. Schools should teach those texts that students will likely not read on their own. We should teach those texts that are intellectually challenging and offer insight, wisdom, beauty, and truth. We should avoid those that are highly polemical, blasphemous, and vulgar.

11. Although there is strong language and obscenity, the text raises important questions for student discussion:

Response: Simply because teachers are able to extract something of value from the midst of an odious miasma of a text is insufficient justification for permitting students to be exposed to that which is odious. Multiple other texts can easily be  found that explore similar or other important questions, and do so without the features that assault religion, goodness, truth, and beauty, including the virtue of modesty, .)

12. To remove this text constitutes censorship.

Response: Parents who object to the inclusion of texts on recommended or required reading lists due to obscene language, sexuality, or highly controversial messages are not engaging in some kind of inappropriate censorship. All educators evaluate curricular materials for objectionable content, including language, sexuality, and controversial themes. The irony is that when teachers decide not to select a text due to these elements, the choice constitutes an exercise in legitimate decision-making, but when parents engage in it, they are tarred with the label of “censor.”

 Furthermore, virtually no parents advocate prior restraint and only rarely are they asking for the removal of a text from a school library. Rather, parents are suggesting that it is reasonable to include the nature and extent of profanity, obscenity, and sexuality when selecting texts to be recommended and/or taught to minors in public schools.

Are those teachers, administrators, and school board members who disagree with that suggestion saying that they will never take into account the nature and extent of profanity, obscenity, and sexuality? If they are claiming that they will never take into account these elements, then parents should reconsider both their veracity and their fitness for teaching.

In all four years of high school English, students read approximately 28-32 books. From the dozens and dozens of texts available, it seems unlikely that any student’s education would be compromised by teachers, in the service of respect for parental values, comity, and modesty, avoiding the most controversial texts.

Author Laurie Higgins works as a writing instructor in a writing center in a public high school in Illinois.

IS YOUR child’s school on the GLSEN hit list?

Here is a long state-by-state list of participating schools in GLSEN’s Day of Silence:

http://www.missionamerica.com/homosexual.php?articlenum=70

If your school is listed here, there is something you can do about it. If you are too timid to do your duty, maybe you are too timid to have a child in today’s world.

Don’t make your child pay for your hesitation to follow your conscience. If you won’t fight now, imagine the world you will be bequeathing to your grandchildren!

EMPLOYEE fired for reporting crime!

We had mentioned in a recent comment at the post “Sally Kern vs gay agenda” (see comments below the column) that those who are endorsing “gay” marriage now will some day understand that gay marriage is only a step in the incremental path to enforced acceptance of much worse things, including pederasty.

I was wrong only about the time frame.

Consider this a retraction. It’s here now:

http://www.clipsyndicate.com/publish/video/542559/lindsay_librarian_fired_for_reporting_man_viewing_child_porn?wpid=1770 

Citizens who want to be like Citizen Kane had better think twice. Ordinary people like you and I may (and should) call them heroes for snitching on a potential threat to the children.

But not so the authorities, particularly in public libraries, who have a distorted view of the First Amendment and privacy rights - a view that is becoming increasingly widespread among the Left (so-called “progressives” and “liberals”). Their view is that dealing with real and present threats to children takes a back seat to the issue of privacy and freedom of “expression” for perverts. This is, of course, culturicidal. No nation can survive this limp-wristed laissez-faire approach to grotesquely twisted and potentially dangerous behavior.

Our advice to people who still have old-fashioned ideas about decency: don’t let the cultural revolutionary perverts in power positions stop you. Go ahead and do what you know is right. Then if they try to punish you for it, go for their jugular - together with a good constitutional lawyer.

This incident happened in Lindsay, CA. Imagine that! In California of all places! (dripping with sarcasm).

Public sex allowed in Dutch park

It will happen here if we don’t start to “get it” soon. We already fire public officials who inconvenience sex offenders.

Why not this next?

Holland is our crystal ball. We are only a few years behind…and catching up fast! The attitude of our religious leaders is paving the way for this. They want to make nice with the enemy of God. Woe unto them!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/13/wgay113.xml

The following article contains graphic language that you may find offensive. We have censored mildly by abbreviating the foulest of words. We present this piece to show you what children are being exposed to in some high schools in America. Nonetheless, you deserve a warning. This is not for the faint of heart or the young. Read at your own risk. Or simply skip to the links at the end relating to European news. If you think this kind of foul language in public school settings is an exception, you are right, but if you think it will stop in Deerfield, IL, then think again. Without help from good Americans everywhere, pulling back with everything you have got, our country is most certainly doomed to fall into a complete moral cesspool, and that is not an exaggeration. Already, a California judge has ruled that parents do not have the right to home-school their kids. That is a first in the nation, and as California goes, so goes the nation. Brace yourselves for much more hideous grotesqueries in the name of “tolerance” and “diversity,” which are code words for a transparent attempt to deprive you of your Judeo-Christian morality and your right to pass it on to your kids. Never before has America stood to lose so much in such a short time and never before has the Christian community sided with, and capitulated to, evil to such an extent, basing their treachery on a tragically distorted interpretation of the Bible.

Can they not see?

By Laurie Higgins

A privileged high school in Deerfield, IL is receiving some well-deserved negative press for the unconscionable administrative decision to permit the teaching of the odious pro-homosexual play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The play expresses a virulent hatred and seething intolerance of conservative faith traditions and is replete with some of the most obscene language and imagery imaginable.

The plot revolves around two couples: married Mormon couple Harper and Joe whose marriage is disintegrating in large measure due to Joe’s repressed homosexuality, which he eventually acts upon; and a homosexual couple Louis, who is Jewish, and Prior, who is the WASP.  Louis leaves Prior when he finds out that Prior has AIDS, and has a month-long affair with Harper’s husband Joe. Roy Cohn - the infamous, unscrupulous, foul-mouthed, closeted, Jewish, Republican lawyer - is also a central character, who dies of AIDS. Then there is the black, homosexual, drag queen nurse with the heart of gold, Belize, and the Angel with “eight vaginae” whose visits prompt sexual arousal and orgasm. Heaven is a dreary place that looks like San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake with people sitting around on crates playing cards. The Angels say that God has abandoned man.

Deerfield High School administrators are trying to sell Angels in America by dissembling. They are attempting to present a sanitized, neutered, palatable gay fantasia for public consumption, conveniently omitting the angry, pro-homosexual political intent that dominates the work. Here is an excerpt from a letter the administration of District 113 sent out to all Deerfield and Highland Park parents, staff, and faculty: 

“The teacher raises questions for student discussion that include:  “How do we respond to the illness of a loved one?  What does it mean to abandon that loved one?  How do our personal beliefs clash or coincide with our politics? To what extent do we truly know ourselves? To what extent are we blind? What does it mean to be willfully blind? What is the role of forgiveness?”

But Kushner’s own words reveal that he views his plays as part of a political movement; that he sees them as politically useful to “progressives”; and that he worried that Angels wasn’t angry enough. The administration never points out to parents, staff, and faculty the hostile, aggressive, political purposes that dominate the play:

 Q: Do you see your plays as part of a political movement?

Kushner: I do. I would hate to write anything that wasn’t. I would like my plays to be of use to progressive people. I think preaching to the converted is exactly what art ought to do. I am happiest when people who are politically engaged in the world say, “Your play meant a lot to me; it helped me think about something, or made me feel like I wasn’t the only person who felt this way.”

 Kushner: ‘Initially, I worried that there isn’t enough anger in Angels . . . .I was concerned because being polite in political activism is not a very effective tool.’”

Kushner: “One of the important aspects of the revolution that took place in this country in the 1960s was the sexual revolution . . . and I think it has been, to some degree, the responsibility of lesbians and gay men to keep that alive, even through the Nixon-Reagan-Bush counterrevolution. America watching the spectacle of itself being able to accept homosexuality is good for America.”

Q: When was the last time that a belief in the system paid off?

Kushner: It was the day they got that f…..g Ten Commandments monument out of Alabama. I found that thrilling. With all the blows that the Bush administration has delivered to the separation of church and state — we have a president who can’t stop talking about his relationship to Jesus while he gleefully murders thousands of people — it turns out that we still kind of get it.”

Some in the administration question why community members who do not have children in school would object to the teaching of Angels in America. It seems an odd question from those who believe that “it takes an entire village to raise a child,” but here are the reasons I object:

I object because I am a taxpayer, and my money is going to support a text that is profane, obscene, and blasphemous.

I object because my money is going to pay the salary of a teacher who, notwithstanding his considerable teaching gifts, has chosen to expose students to noxious and corrosive ideas and images.

I object to the desensitizing effects of yet more exposure to obscene and profane language

I object to yet one more context in which liberal views on sexual orientation and identity are presented to students with no presentation of thoughtful, intelligent conservative scholarship on these topics.

I object to the teaching of this text for the same reasons that liberal political activists and ideologues who claim to value diversity and inclusivity steadfastly censor dissenting views. They view those ideas as ignorant, dangerous, and destructive, and use their power and position, and my money to censor them. Similarly, I view the ideas, language, and imagery in Kushner’s play as ignorant, dangerous, and destructive to the lives of individuals and the fabric of society.

In addition, the language is unconscionably filthy. Can administrators and school board members not see that? Have they been so desensitized and blinded to truth, beauty, and goodness that they cannot see that educators should flee from teaching anything that includes this:

 ”The nose is really a sexual organ.  . . . Smelling.  And tasting.  First, the nose then the tongue . . They work as a team, see.  The nose tells the body - the heart, the mind, the fingers, the c..k— what it wants, and the tongue explores, finding out what’s edible . . .

(Louis slips his hand down the front of Joe’s pants.   They embrace more tightly.  Louis pulls his hand out, smells and tastes his fingers, and then holds them for Joe to smell.. .. . . . they kiss again.)”

 or this:

 ”Prior:  OH!  Oh.  (He looks under the covers.  He discovers that the lap of his pajamas is soaked with c..m)  F… f… f….  Will you look at this!  First g-dd-n orgasm in months and I slept through it. . . . . I am drenched in sp–j. .. .Sp–j? . . . . C.m. J.z.  Ejaculate.  Sp..j?  Onomatapoetic, isn’t it.  I’ve had a wet dream.” 

 or this:

 ”Angel:  Open me Prophet.  I I I am The Book.  Read.

Prior:  Wait.  Wait.  How come . . . How come I have this . . . unm, erection?  It’s very hard to concentrate.

Angel:  The stiffening of your penis is of no consequence.

            ( . . . They both get very turned-on)

Prior:  (Hit by a wave of intense sexual feeling):  Hmmmmmm . . .

Angel:  The Pulse, the Pull, the Throb, the Ooze . . .

Angel:  Priapsis, Dilation, Engorgement, Flow.  The Universe Aflame with Angelic Ejaculate

Prior:  Oh, sh.t . . .

Prior:  OH!  OH!  . . . . OH!  Oh, Oh, oh . . .

Angel:  HOLY Estrus!  HOLY Orifice!  Ecstasis in Excelsis!  AMEN!”

Can they not see that educators should present material that upholds the dignity of all; that cultivates modesty; that inspires and edifies rather than degrades; that promotes temperance, civility, and grace in language, rather than intemperance, incivility, and coarseness? Can they not see that this text violates innocence? Do they not see that educators should seek to rise above the pervasive vulgarity that pollutes our culture, demeans men and women, and undermines that which makes this earthly life not only livable, but rich and beautiful? It makes me weep to think that they cannot see that.

The author is a married mother of four children who all attended the high school where she worked full-time for eight years in the writing center. Over the course of the past decade, she witnessed firsthand the increasing abandonment of neutrality on the issues of “sexual orientation” and “identity” in her school and urged the administration to fulfill its pedagogical obligation to honor diverse voices and foster intellectual exploration by including in curricula the ideas and work of conservative scholars on the topics of sexual orientation and identity. All her efforts were to no avail.

Laurie writes:

Intolerance and censorship of traditional views on these topics are pervasive. The typical high school student will be exposed to non-traditional views on sexuality multiple times during their four years of high school, through essays, articles, plays, novels, panel discussions, films, speakers, and fine arts productions. It is not uncommon, however, for students to make it all the way through all four years of high school without ever being presented with contexts and re