The Destruction of America Through the Education of Our Children

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“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves“. – Abraham Lincoln. January 27, 1838.

Today Americans are living the results of a deliberately dumbed down education.  Our founders had IQ of 120+. The traditional American education was fact based providing the students with the skills to navigate their life’s plan.  By learning reading, writing and math students excelled beyond expectations.  The products they created set the stage to advance human life beyond expectations. Rather than continue this plan focused on American exceptionalism, greed set in.  Those in power Communist/Socialist/Progressive (aka Communists) realized that to keep their power they must destroy competition. “Educated people require more from their government.  Poor people depend on their government to exist.”  Communists learned quickly that the best way to destroy a country was to destroy the culture starting in school. Dumb the population and the nation will crumble.

In the late 1800’s till today education changed from a fact based curricula to an outcome based value driven hatred filled curricula.  Parents trusted schools to provide excellent students and instead they got hate filled victims incapable of thinking on their own. Today we are living the results of those failed plans.

There are many reasons for implementing this plan to turn our children into “robots” but first there were things that had to be accomplished like:

  • the destruction of America’s morals, values, beliefs and independence
  • promote a global unity in thinking by giving up values
  • lack of economic understanding
  • removal of our constitutional rights and personal freedoms.

Students are divided into identity groups and those groups were turned against each other creating chaos. Collectivism not exceptionalism was/is the goal.

It is also very clear to me that for years we have been led to believe that more and more money was needed to educate our children properly. We are continually told that more money will give our children the best education possible. I find in my research the ones most benefiting from this are the “fat cat college professors” , the superintendents and their administrations (top heavy). The money goes to the unelected bureaucrats in salaries and benefits, not to the children or teachers. Did you ever stop to ask yourself why it is we can send a child to a private school for less money than what it costs to educate in a public school?

In my opinion the Federal Department of Education was formed for no other reasons than to (1) satisfy the Unions and (2) shape our children into “robots”. You and I know that almost every program the Federal government touches fails.  Why in the world would we think they would do a good job educating our most precious resource – our children?

Many things have changed over the years since the Federal government got their hands on the education of our children.  Today they are working hard to remove “parental control” and replace the family with the school family. The goal is still the same – New World Order! One World Government!  Results in the first quarter of the 20th century IQ slipped to 110, in the late 20th century the national IQ was around 100.  Today after 10 years of Common Core the national IQ is below 100. Shall we give the Education Department more money to fix the problem?

The purpose of this timeline is to show you not only what has been happening for over 100 years, but to also show it is a non-partisan action by both parties. Acceptance of Government control of all aspects of our lives is a communist ideology that gets watered down and called new names but the underlying goal is still the same ‘POWER, CONTROL AND MONEY” led by their “EGOS”. These modern day communists are using our children advance their agenda.

As you read the timeline it is important to remember:

  • Everything is connected
  • Nothing is random
  • There are no coincidences
  • Everything has a plan
  • All plans are based on lies.

The true Communist/Socialist/Progressive/Liberal/Globalist goal:  MONEY, POWER, CONTROL

This time line is a summary of the highlights of programs inflicted on our educational system. It includes the devastating effects of “Modern” fact-less education in the first half of the 20th century. More to follow:

1896 – John Dewey, socialist, father of Progressive Education, entered the scene in America to work on establishing a force to change education in America. He gathered the college Education teachers into liberal groups teaching then the Marxist theory of education. His focus was from reading, writing and arithmetic to a socialization progress which would be concerned with attitudes, relationships and feelings.

1905 – The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) was founded. Together with other Carnegie Foundations, they have been a major promoter and funder of socialistic, global ventures.

1918 – Rockefeller & Carnegie Foundation planned the demise of Traditional Academic Education – Rockefeller to be in charge of US – Carnegie too charge of International Education.

1919 – The Institute of International Education (IIE) was established with a grant from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Edward R. Morrow became IIE’s Assistant Director and John Dewey served on the National Advisory Council.

1934 – National Education Association (NEA) Former Executive Secretary Willard Givens warned that “…all of us, including the ‘owners’, must be subjected to a large degree of social control… An equitable distribution of income will be sought… the major function of the school is the social orientation of the individual. It must seek to give him understanding of the transition to a new social order.”

1934 – The Carnegie Corporation funded the American Historical Association’s Report of the Commission on the Social Studies. Like most of today’s social studies curricula, the report called for a shift from free enterprise to collectivism:

“…the age of individualism and laissez faire in economy and government is closing and… a new age of collectivism is emerging… It may involve the limiting or supplanting of private property by public property or it may entail the preservation of private property, extended and distributed among the masses… Almost certainly it will involve a larger measure of compulsory as well as voluntary cooperation of citizens in the context of the complex national economy, a corresponding enlargement of the functions of government, and an increasing state intervention in fundamental branches of economy previously left to individual discretion and initiative.

1942 – The editor of the NEA Journal, J. Elmer Morgan, wrote an editorial titled “The United Peoples of the World.” In it, he explained a world government’s need for an educational branch, a world system of money and credit, a world police force, and a world bill of rights and duties.”

1945 – Creation of the United Nations and playing a very large role in that was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce along with cooperation from the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation. Large banks and trusts could see future profits for themselves if they cooperated with the Chamber.

1946 – J. Elmer Morgan wrote in his editorial, “The Teacher and World Government” in the struggle to establish an adequate world government, the teacher can do much to prepare the hearts and minds of children. At the very top of all the agencies which will assure the coming of world government must stand the school, the teacher, and the organized profession”.

1946 – Canadian psychiatrist and World War II General Brock Chisholm, M.D. head of the World Health Organization (WHO), promoted the behavior modification processes now mandated through the educational program called Goals 2000. Compare his vision with today’s Mastery Learning and planned control of the family.

1951 – In a report entitled, The Greatest Subversive Plot In History, Rep.John T. Wood of Idaho, stated in the Congressional Record on Thursday, October 18th 1951, “Just how careless and unthinking can we be that we permit this band of spies and traitors to exist another day in this land we all love. Are there no limits to our callousness and neglect of palpable and evident treason stalking rampant through our land, warping the minds and imaginations of even our little children, to the lying propaganda and palpable untruths we allow to be fed to them through this monstrous poison? UNESCO’s scheme to pervert public education appears in a series of nine volumes, titled “Toward World Understanding” which presumes to instruct kindergarten and elementary grade teachers in the fine art of preparing our youngsters for the day when their first loyalty will be to a world government.”

The record continues, “The program is quite specific. The teacher is to begin by eliminating any and all words, phrases, descriptions, pictures, maps, classroom material or teaching methods of a sort causing his pupils to feel or express a particular love for, or loyalty to, the United States of America. Children exhibiting such prejudice as a result of prior home influence,“of which “UNESCO calls “the outgrowth of the narrow family spirit” are to be dealt an abundant measure of counter propaganda at the earliest possible age. Booklet V, on page 9, advises the teacher that: The kindergarten or infant school has a significant part to play in the child’s education. Not only can it correct many of the errors of home training, but it can also prepare the child for membership in the world society.”

1953 – Rowan Gaither, president of the Ford Foundation explains to Norman Dodd the plan in the works for a House-directed plan to merge the United States and the Soviet Union

1958 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the first agreement with the Soviet Union including an education agreement—something that would not come as a surprise to those familiar with the White House directed plan to merge the United States and the Soviet Union.

Is America Worth Saving?

What will you do?

Will you review texts?

Ask your family what they are learning?

Speak the truth.

Correct the lies.

Vet the candidates.

Run for office.

Call your Legislator.

I will not comply. Will you?  Doing nothing is complying.

©  All rights reserved.

Teachers Unions Try to Thwart Education Access at a Most Inopportune Time

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With millions of students at home as the result of coronavirus district closures, and families finding themselves thrown into “unexpected homeschooling,” Americans rightly expect that teachers, administrators, and principals at all types of schools would be embracing an “all hands on deck” approach to this challenging situation.

But while instances of cooperation between public and private schools, charters, and virtual academies abound, unfortunately, so does the continuation of education politics as usual.

The Wall Street Journal reports that, “under pressure from the unions,” the Oregon Department of Education is now preventing students from transferring to the state’s virtual public charter schools.

Many families in Oregon sought to enroll their children in virtual charter schools when the brick-and-mortar public schools closed their doors on March 16.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

But the Oregon Education Association convinced the state to halt any further transfers to virtual charter school, blocking enrollment of 1,600 students at Oregon Connections Academy alone.

There’s more hopeful news out of Alaska. Students there could soon be the beneficiaries of a partnership between their state and the Florida Virtual School. The online provider has signed a contract to offer courses to Alaskan students who cannot access their now shuttered public schools, the Anchorage Daily News reports.

As Alaska Education Commissioner Michael Johnson put it, “While the world around us is scrambling with uncertainty, I believe our students and teachers can and will re-imagine teaching and learning.”

Johnson’s right. Yet the teachers union in Alaska is also trying to put the deep freeze on education access. It stands firmly opposed to the partnership, in part because it hasn’t been vetted by “Alaska education professionals.”

The union apparently believes nothing is better than something that hasn’t been blessed by their professional “experts.”

What is really at the heart of the special interest groups’ opposition? We find a blunt answer in Alaska: the union is afraid the online learning option will remain a permanent feature of the Alaskan education landscape. And it isn’t alone.

The Los Angeles teachers union is resisting efforts by the Los Angeles Unified School District to have teachers move instruction online during the pandemic.

The Pennsylvania Legislature, acting under pressure from unions, has cut off tuition for any additional enrollees at the states’ cyber charter networks, which are now scrambling to serve the surge of students for free.

The political obstacle course is all the more disappointing because this could be a time of great cooperation and cross-pollination of best practices between traditional public schools and those that, by the nature of their model, are better prepared for this disruptive crisis.

Some virtual schools have offered free distance learning instruction to districts, and dozens of educational technology companies are offering their products heavily discounted or entirely gratis, but few have taken them up on the offer.

Turf wars are not the only political barrier impacting instruction during the coronavirus crisis. In states as diverse as California, Kentucky, and Washington, districts are choosing not to offer instruction online at all because not every student will be able to access the lessons.

Instead of finding creative ways to deliver internet services to disadvantaged families as some New York charter networks are doing, these districts are ceasing instruction for the majority of students who would otherwise be able to continue learning, ensuring that everyone falls behind.

Just as the nation faces dark weeks and months ahead, the coming year will be difficult and turbulent for students, families, teachers, and schools.

For the education sector, the problems will continue long after the virus is largely defeated, as school systems face large budgetary shortfalls due to reduced tax revenue. In facing these challenges, our priority should be to keep students learning as much as is possible.

Delivering continued education and support to students and families during this time will take cooperation, creativity, and a heavy dose of pragmatism, not retreads of pre-crisis political debates.

Originally published by Tucson.com

COMMENTARY BY

Lindsey Burke

Lindsey M. Burke researches and writes on federal and state education issues as the Will Skillman fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation. Read her research. Twitter: .

Inez Feltscher Stepman

Inez Feltscher Stepman is a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum. Twitter: .

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Idaho Becomes First State to Protect Women’s Sports From Transgender Agenda

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Idaho Gov. Brad Little has given women athletes renewed hope. Faced with a politically correct culture that is denying women the right to a fair playing field in sports, the Republican governor signed into law new protections for them.

Recognizing “inherent differences between men and women,” Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act provides that “athletic teams or sports designated for females, women, or girls shall not be open to students of the male sex.”

The measure, which Little signed into law Monday, applies to all of the state’s interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, and club teams at the high school and college levels.

Idaho is the first state to prevail against forces working to stop similar bills across the country that seek to right the wrong girls face when state policies force them to compete in women’s sports against athletes who are biological males.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Getting this bill across the finish line wasn’t easy.

Proponents led by state Rep. Barbara Ehardt, a former Division 1 athlete and coach, bucked powerful activists in the business community, including Chobani, Clif Bar & Co., HP Inc., and Micron Technology Inc. But legislators overwhelmingly sided with female athletes and all who support them—moms, dads, coaches, fans, and Idaho citizens, including my parents and extended family.

Little and state legislators rejected the threats of corporate activists who, in the name of “diversity and inclusion,” claim without proof that laws recognizing birth sex as a biological fact will cost the state business.

What big business ignores is the opportunities lost in sports for women and girls. Its social justice agenda drowns out the voices of women who should be protected under sex discrimination laws, not exploited by them.

To their enormous credit, Idaho leaders withstood the pressure and have paved the way for other states to follow.

Proponents should be emboldened by U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who recently intervened in a related federal court case to state emphatically that Title IX prohibits the injustice in women’s sports condoned by corporate activists.

On March 24, the Justice Department filed a Statement of Interest in a Connecticut lawsuit challenging that state’s participation rules in sports.

High school athletes Selina Soule, Chelsea Mitchell, and Alanna Smith have faced the sting of defeat and been denied state titles in girls track because they had to compete with biological males. The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference requires schools to allow athletes to participate in sports according to the “gender” with which they publicly identify.

For the past several seasons, Connecticut has allowed male runners to compete and win as transgender athletes in girls track. In fact, female athletes in every state in the Northeast region have been forced to compete under the same circumstances and under similar rules. Many also have lost their rightful place across the finish line and on the podium.

Congress passed Title IX in 1972 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, in large part to ensure equal opportunities in athletics and education for female students. It extends to programs operated or sponsored by schools receiving federal funding, which includes every K-12 public school and virtually all colleges and universities in the country.

In evaluating the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s policy, the Justice Department concluded:

CIAC’s construction of Title IX as requiring the participation of students on athletic teams that reflect their gender identity would turn the statute on its head. One of Title IX’s core purposes is to ensure that women have an ‘equal athletic opportunity’ to participate in school athletic programs. … Reading Title IX to compel schools to require biological males to compete against biological females in athletic competitions is precisely the type of interpretation that this Court should reject.

The Justice Department’s instruction to the Connecticut federal court carries a warning for all states to heed. Inherent, physiological differences between the sexes still matter. Title IX expressly prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex and is being violated by schools and state policies that allow male athletes to compete in women’s sports.

The Justice Department’s action has dignified Little’s bold action to enact the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which will protect equal opportunity in sports for female athletes in Idaho.

Other states have the opportunity, and responsibility, to get on track.

COMMENTARY BY

Doreen Denny

Doreen Denny is vice president of government relations for the Legislative Action Committee of Concerned Women for America.

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

PODCAST: How to Do Homeschooling — Practical Advice From an Expert

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Choosing to homeschool your child is a big decision, but many Americans just had the choice made for them. Schools all over the country have closed their doors due to the coronavirus pandemic—with some states, such as Virginia, announcing that schools will remain closed through the end of the academic year.

Leigh Bortins, founder of Classical Conversations, a homeschooling curriculum focused on classical education, joins The Daily Signal Podcast to offer practical advice and resources to parents who suddenly find themselves overseeing their child’s education. Listen to the podcast below or read the lightly edited transcript.

We also cover these stories:

  • President Donald Trump says he’d like to “reopen” the economy by Easter, despite the spread of COVID-19.
  • Vice President Mike Pence says the White House isn’t considering a nationwide lockdown.
  • The International Olympic Committee and Japan agree to postpone the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The Daily Signal Podcast is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show!

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Virginia Allen: I am joined by Leigh Bortins, founder of the homeschool curriculum Classical Conversations. Leigh, thank you so much for being here.

Leigh Bortins: Thank you for having me. It’s very nice to get to speak with you, Virginia.

Allen: Yes, we’re all speaking from a distance right now, maintaining that social distancing. But right now, because of social distancing and the Coronavirus, so many parents are finding themselves homeschooling their children and they’re looking for support, they’re looking for resources. I want to pick your brain a little bit and find out what some of those resources are. But first, let’s just talk a little bit about why you chose to homeschool.

Bortins: I chose to homeschool … How much time do we have, you want the whole story or the short version?

Allen: A shorter version maybe for the sake of time.

Bortins: My husband’s 10 years older than I am and when we got married and then I got pregnant with my first born I saw a TV show about homeschooling and those folks struck me as quite weird and I knew I wanted to join them. We didn’t have a TV, I was walking through the mall and saw it on TV at “The Phil Donahue Show,” if anybody remembers that.

And then when I got home I told my husband about it and him being 10 years older, he had been very discouraged by students in our college program or at the University of Michigan getting our aerospace engineering degrees.

He just said, “I’m so happy to hear there’s this way to do this because there’s no way our kids were going to go to school if they’re going to be as unintelligent as you freshmen seem to be to me.”

So he was just relieved for the academic side of it and then eventually we both became Christians and, of course, we stopped wanting to emphasize having our children in college and instead said, “Let’s make sure that they’re in Christ.”

So now I would say we homeschool for the best of reasons so that we can constantly model our love for the Lord and hope that our children will do the same.

Allen: Yeah, I love that. That’s beautiful. But it’s one thing to say, “I want to homeschool my child.” It’s an entirely different thing to decide that you’re going to create a homeschool curriculum. Tell me a little bit about the reasoning behind Classical Conversations and what really drove you to create it.

Bortins: When our eldest, Robert, who’s now the CEO of Classical Conversations, was in middle school, … like so many other homeschooling parents, I thought, “Oh no, can I do high school?”

So I started reading more books on higher level academics and looking around for programs, speaking with our friends, and a lot of them were very nervous also about it.

Just after doing a lot of research, and again, working with my husband, we really came to the conclusion that we were still the best solution for our children. But one thing we really wanted to have was a classical education for them, which very much requires a community.

So my husband and I decided that we would once a week have people into the house, adults and children, and we would work together on rigorous academics that were hard to do on your own, not just because they were rigorous, but sometimes you want other people to do a Shakespeare play with or discuss a chemistry lab or you need debate partners.

So we came up with a curriculum where the families could do the majority of their work at home and then just get together once a week and polish it off and finish in community.

It’s kind of like a weekly PTA meeting for the parents, a weekly training for them to do better in classical Christian education. And, of course, the socialization, which has nothing to do with the children, it’s the mothers who all want to have friends, the kids will naturally.

So it just came out of a lot of different needs and within doing it in the first three years, we had 300 people on the waiting list to get into the program. So my husband quit his job and we worked with some of our friends and that’s kind of how the story all began.

Twenty years later, we’re in 20-some countries and in the United States alone we have over 120,000 children enrolled in our curriculum.

The greatest joy I have is to see how many homeschooling parents just dig in and really want to learn and are so glad for weekly support as well as recommendations and curating of the actual academics.

Allen: Obviously, right now, you all aren’t able to get together and do those larger group meetings. So is a lot of that taking place online or how are you continuing to maintain that connection that you mentioned being so vitally important?

Bortins: Right. A couple of ways, some of our communities are online temporarily for this end of year. But because we always homeschool within the parameters of safety, it’s not a big issue for us because we have a less than 12-to-1 … tutor to family ratio or to student ratio and so we’re in small groups anyways, most of the time.

Now, we do have programs that are in churches and much larger and so those have disband to personal homes, and if they can’t do that, then they do it online right now.

So we’re making do, as all homeschoolers do all the time, we just get the resources the Lord gives you and you just gratefully move forward and so that’s how we’re doing it.

Allen: Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, let’s get practical and talk about what were some of those challenges that you had when you first started homeschooling and how did you overcome them?

Bortins: I would say the one that we all have is, I have never had this day before with the children I have at the ages they are before. His mercies are new every morning for a reason because you don’t know what the day’s going to ever hold for you, and so you can react in fear or you can react in wonder.

During those middle school years where I was talking about where we were trying to explore what would we do with our high school students, we continued through in fear and trembling with the confidence the Lord would help us day by day. And, of course, after getting through your first child, and then your second, and then your third, and so on, you end up realizing that there really was nothing to be afraid of.

Most people I think quit homeschooling in the high school years because of the lack of confidence, not lack of ability. Because, remember, they’re still children and there’s so many good resources out there, parents are quite capable of homeschooling through the high school years.

So we just had to learn that because being the first generation of homeschoolers, I didn’t get to see that. So it’s hard to believe what you don’t see, but then, of course, as Christians, that’s what we’re called to do, is walk in faith and so our faith was strengthened through that. So, practically, it really is trusting the Lord even though that might sound like a platitude at this point.

Allen: Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit more about that because I know so many of our parents out there listening, they do have kids in [high school] that are now at home or even in middle school and they’re looking at the math assignments that they’re supposed to be doing or the science assignments and they’re thinking, “I do not remember this.” So, practically, how can they be helping their kids right now in subjects that they honestly don’t even remember how to do?

Bortins: You have a couple of different ways. If somebody is homeschooling right now because of a short-term reason with the virus, and most homeschoolers actually only homeschool for a short amount of time. They do it because they’re military, or a job loss, or they moved, or a child’s sick for the year, or something sets the majority of folks who homeschool.

So if people are listening to this thinking that all of us have this lifetime commitment like I do, that would not be true. Most homeschoolers are going to do it to get through … a bad situation or maybe a really delightful, great situation. They’ve been traveling, or dad’s home for the year working from home and they want more time with them.

A lot of people homeschool not because of academic reasons but just because of family reasons and here we are one more time having a lot of different family issues to deal with.

So there’s two groups, there’s the folks that are trying to get through this temporary situation and they tend to rely a lot on resources like we have at Classical Conversations. A lot of new people will begin with Classical Conversations also. And as people get more confident in what they’re doing, they start to be able to branch out and figure out a myriad of resources that are … available for homeschoolers.

For those that are just kind of jumping in, a resource I would turn you to for now to finish off this school year is one that we’ve put together called homeschoolingjourney.com. It’s a site where people can download what we call our survival kit and find all kinds of resources from our partners and more.

We’ve put together … a lot of things that are commercially viable that are now free for a short amount of time or highly discounted as well as YouTube videos. Then we have games and we have some of our own products that are for free.

We have one thing that a lot of people don’t know about is this service called Right Now Media, it’s like the Netflix for Christians and that’s free on our website, homeschoolingjourney.com as well as science activities.

There’s even a fitness program. … [If you] can’t get outside, which, it is spring, I would think you’d go outside, but if you want to stay inside and get your kids moving, we even have a fitness program on there.

So there’s a lot of things that we’re doing and I know other homeschooling resources are doing the same. Just trying to pull together things people can do to help their children and stay active for the next three to eight weeks or maybe even finish off the school year.

Of course, what we’re hoping for is people will see those resources and maybe consider homeschooling permanently or for at least another year and then, of course, we would ask them to look at classicalconversations.com.

Allen: That’s so great. That’s such a practical resource to have, That kind of emergency kit package that parents can literally go to right now and start utilizing.

Bortins: Yeah. Because we’re not the only one, right? A lot of people don’t know that there’s thousands of homeschoolers who have curriculum and materials that are for people, they can use it any time and, of course, there’s YouTube. They’ve had a lot of ads lately about how you can go on YouTube and learn anything, so people aren’t without resources.

But all of these I’m talking about right now are online resources, they really are our weakest resources because when you’re working with children, your best resource is a pat on the back and a smile or a word of encouragement. Looking them in the eye and helping them consider why they’re struggling or what they’re interested in or … what kind of homework help they might need.

So we really believe that the idea of social distancing is probably not the best word to describe what’s going on now, we are all social creatures who need a hug. So in this time when we’re trying to not hug our neighbor because we’re worried about passing on various viruses, really a better word is physical distancing because you and I right now are being social together, aren’t we?

Allen: Correct. Yeah, absolutely.

Bortins: Yes. One of the things that we just love about homeschooling is five or six of us can flop on a couch and just read a book together. In fact, we have a new series called “New World Echoes” and it’s a collection of stories that are very short read alouds that are appropriate for the entire family, whether you have a 17 year old or a 7-year-old, they’ll just lay on the couch or flop on the floor and read together.

If you’re able to throw a blanket outside and have a picnic, it would be appropriate to bring them too because they’re small books you can hold in your hand. I really would encourage parents to use as little online resources as possible right now and to just spend time with their children talking face to face and getting to know them in a different way than they had before.

Allen: But what about the parents who are listening and thinking, “Oh, I would love to do that, but I have a full-time job that I’m trying to do online right now”? About how much time should parents who do have full-time jobs and are working online be building into their schedules in order to keep educating their children and making sure that they’re still continuing to learn and get the attention that they need?

Bortins: Yeah. I know one time a grandfather told me he wished his daughter would homeschool, but since she had four children and they’re six subjects, he didn’t see how she could homeschool 24 hours a day. I just kind of looked at him and said, “Nobody does that.”

In general, I think homeschoolers through about eighth grade might spend three hours, five days a week at the most where it’s kind of a sit-down academic situation.

And then once your children are in high school, if you include those three hours, plus, they have, of course, a much more extensive reading time—which a lot of times they’ll do before they get out of bed in the morning and as they’re going to sleep at night. I mean, it’s really rare to have a six-hour day of academics, no matter how many children you have.

One thing homeschooling teaches you to do is to be efficient and picking the best things to do and not being robbed by somebody else’s lists, but being able to look at your children and say, “These are the things that we want to do together.” And make them your priority.

So when it comes to time, this is a quick schedule just to give someone who maybe has to work and still has the kids at home, get up in the morning and do your reading or a Bible study and devotion together and have breakfast and then go off to do what you need to do for the day.

At lunchtime, break and do a math or science lesson, go outside and look at the plants and maybe do a little bit of journaling and writing. Then when you go to bed in the evening, I suggest that you, again, you have like what they used to call the children’s hour and just spend an hour playing board games and doing read alouds, and if you want, watch a movie … something that’s for the whole family.

But break it up into segments that fit into your day and don’t feel like it’s something where you just sit down and work for three hours straight or six hours straight, whatever you think you would need to do.

I can’t say that I’ve ever been in a room doing more than probably two hours straight of academics with my four children. But that doesn’t mean that in their high school years there weren’t days where we did spend five or six hours, but it wasn’t every day by any means.

One of the things that we’ve become accustomed to with the public school system and institutional schools is just having 50 minutes with five or six different people each day. That’s just not how homeschooling works. Mom or dad, whoever’s doing the educating, just spends time with the whole family.

Studies have shown that the average child only gets about 30 minutes of academic instruction in a classroom situation that’s personal. So you really can do it and I suggested everyone find a friend who homeschools and just learn more about what it’s really like rather than probably what you imagine it’s like.

There’s no reason to bring school home, you actually can just have a family life together. And just think about it, if you love your children and there was no such thing as any school, wouldn’t you still teach them basic skills and how to read and do math … how to serve their community and how to take care of their home?

The things that you just do in your average life and then like now helping with homework after school take up about the same amount of time we homeschoolers devote to academics.

The better part of our day is spent with our children doing things we just all enjoy doing. So we travel more, and we have field trips more, and we get together with friends more, and we can work at the community centers and service with seniors and things like that because service is a big part of homeschooling with children.

A lot of people are so worried about the math and science where there’s so much help like we offer and YouTube offers, when really what we’re trying to do is teach our children to be good citizens and have a constant civics lesson of how to behave appropriately in any situation you find yourself in. There’s a lot more to it than I think people think of and it’s a lot easier than they think.

Allen: Yeah. No, that’s really interesting to hear. Because I’m sort of thinking, all right, if you’re a parent who has maybe four kids, they’re all different ages, you’re saying you don’t have to kind of have these individual specific full days worth of work for each child. You maybe have like a little bit of time for each of giving them their own assignments, but then you’re able to actually do a lot together and have more group activities even despite the age differences.

Bortins: If you think about it, they said, “Reading, writing, and arithmetic forever” for really good reasons. You need a child on your lap when you’re teaching them phonics, they need some individual time then, you need your middle schoolers sitting next to you while they’re struggling with difficult material, which is the same as taking them through phonics when they were younger.

So there’s some personal time that’s needed and then there’s quiet time that’s needed. Each of your children should be able to go off and on their own, whether it’s playing Legos or writing an essay, they shouldn’t have to have mom or dad next to them all the time.

On the other hand, some of my favorite things to do was write papers with my children or build Lego castles with them, right? As a parent, it was just my job to assess their needs and our family’s needs and each day do my best to work it out because, again, His mercies are new every morning and who knows if the dishwasher’s going to leak that day or someone’s going to come down with the flu, whatever it is, you just have to learn to roll with the punches.

For those of us who’ve been regulated our whole lives, we’d go to school from day care through college and then we’re at work, … sometimes it’s really difficult to retrench and just say, “Hey, I’m in charge for a little bit. What is it we want to do as a family?”

Allen: Oh, this is so good, I feel like it’s just kind of taking the pressure off, this is great. But are there maybe some do’s and don’ts of homeschooling that you can offer us? Just things that you’ve learned over the year through trial and error.

Bortins: The biggest don’t is to not worry that you’re not doing enough. Because here’s the thing, none of us are doing enough and all of us are doing too much and it depends on what field or area you’re talking about. Not one of us is perfect, so we’re going to have our strengths and our weaknesses.

On those days where you just feel like you are so weak in a certain area, just stop and don’t say, “I failed” or “I quit” or “I’m a bad mom.” Stop and say, “You know what? I might not have done this so well, but I did do this other thing really well and the children are going to get a lot of different experiences from me as an adult and all of them have some sort of value.”

So to not make light of the things that maybe seem unschoolish, they may be where the best teachable moments occur or where your kids are really listening.

So the one thing that I shared a little bit about … earlier was to learn to not be afraid and to just be really joyful and grateful. And then when you just want to kick the kids out of the house or put your husband’s face in the mud, whatever it is, you just have to say to yourself, “OK, this too shall pass and we’re going to start over tomorrow and we’ll have a great day.”

I used to, at the end of the day when I had all four of them home, if I knew I’d opened up with Bible reading with them, did a math lesson, and then read to them at night, my kids were well-educated, that was enough.

Allen: Let’s go back and talk a little bit more about Classical Conversations. You all have come a long way since you first started in the early 2000s, what do you think really led to that success? What was kind of that switch that just people were so hungry and really wanted to learn more and find out more about Classical Conversations that has allowed it to do so well?

Bortins: It surprised me, the answer to that question. About six, seven years into it, I realized that a high percentage of our families were military and that’s what was making us grow because once the families were bought into homeschooling and classical education and saw how easy and approachable our program was—they, of course, get deployed every three years somewhere else—then their attitude was like, “Well, there’s not a CCD here, so I’ll start one and I’ll get together with my military friends there.”

So, of course, that’s why we’re in bases all across the world. And then, of course, the families who’ve started the bases across the world have started to find natural citizens in those countries to take over for them. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if … a third of our families are in the military.

So think what we do for them, and what we do for them they recognize is important. But people need to remember one-third of children move year-round, no matter what situation their families are in, we don’t really have community schools anymore because of all the moving that occurs.

So by being in Classical Conversations, the military families had two things. They had, one, they knew exactly what the curriculum was that they were going to be doing in the following week, no matter how far away they moved. So that was a strain off the parent trying to decide what to do about curriculum.

Then the second one was that they instantly had friends for their children when they moved because of our small communities that we needed.

Again, the moms want the friends as much as the children do. So that’s why they kept starting everywhere because they wanted to have [the] academic community as well as the military community that they were in and enjoying the travel opportunities they had being military families. That was really quite a surprise to me, and now I’m super grateful to all of them.

Allen: Yeah. Well, it’s just incredible to see the success that you have had. I mean, you’ve been in this movement for such a long time. How do you think that it’s changing as we’re hitting a second generation? For instance, there’s now homeschool kids, they homeschooled themselves, their parents homeschooled them, and now they’re turning around and homeschooling their own children. So how has the movement really changed over the years?

Bortins: Yeah, probably my happiest stories are how many grandmothers, mothers, and their children are in Classical Conversations. In other words, I got three generations all working on the material.

So think of the connectivity that we have in the sense of not just laterally with other families, the legacy with the families that stay generation after generation. That’s been really neat to see happen.

For those of you that aren’t aware, we’ve been around for 20-some years now and so if folks came in, you don’t have to start at kindergarten, right? People might have started at high school and been with us for four years and then got married a few years later. So that’s why we’re able to do that in a single generation. That’s just been fun to see.

The thing that I would say would be different is, it’s almost a whole ‘nother conversation. My eldest two children who are in their 30s had a more similar education to my grandmother than … compared to their two brothers.

What I mean is this, they didn’t have technology, the internet was not something in our house, we didn’t have computers when they were going through school. So they learned [with] pencils and paper and books and then going outside and playing and the various things that my grandma and my mom and myself all did.

Versus the second two, we have a 10-year gap between our two sets of kids. The second two were very computer literate and expected a lot of things to be done quickly and didn’t have necessarily the same level of patience as the older two because things were pretty snappy once you’re in the computer age.

So helping them deal with the fact that they don’t always get to have electricity and technology and the things they see in front of them, that it’s important to be outside and to be playing, and writing your own stories and reading books with something hard in your hand that’s not a Kindle was a battle for us, just like it is for all parents—trying to get the Nintendo off and determining whether you’re going to have a TV in your household or not.

I got sort of both worlds there, one where it was kind of easy to homeschool because all families were used to playing together and working together to the place where now everybody can be in their own little silo and not even know what their siblings doing. So it’s something to overcome.

Allen: We want to make sure that all of our parents listening know how they can find out more about Classical Conversations and start utilizing those resources today, so where can they go?

Bortins: Go, again, if you’re a short-term homeschooler who’s just looking into all this, go to homeschoolingjourney.com, and that’s where we have our survival kit. And if those kinds of items interest you, go on to classicalconversations.com and you’ll see the whole universe of what we offer for kindergarten through 12th grade.

We sell books and curriculum as well as information on the communities and the philosophy.

We are a Christian company and so you’ll see things like what we believe in, our statement of faith, and anybody’s welcome to participate in our curriculum, so we encourage everyone to look at it.

I wanted to let you know that we are looking to make a really big announcement on March 28th. We are going to be offering some new services and I’m not allowed to tell you what they are, but I want our listeners to go [on] our website on that day, I’m pretty excited.

Classical Conversations is about to change the face of homeschooling again, and it’s not what any of you would think of. So please go look at it.

Allen: All right, great. That’s Saturday. We’ll mark the calendar. Leigh, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it.

Bortins: Thank you, Virginia. I hope that I was helpful and I pray blessings on everybody and that they will just be healthier and wiser than they ever knew possible when we come up the other side of this.

Allen: Yes, I agree and I echo that. Thank you.

Bortins: You’re so welcome.

COLUMN BY

Virginia Allen

Virginia Allen is a news producer for The Daily Signal. She is the co-host of The Daily Signal Podcast and Problematic Women. Send an email to Virginia. Twitter: @Virginia_Allen5.

RELATED ARTICLES:

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25 screen-free educational activities for kids

My children finished their schoolwork.  Now what?

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

School Closures—and Accidental Homeschooling—Continue. Here Are More Resources for Families

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As of today, 91,000 public and private schools in 39 states with more than 41 million students collectively, have closed because of the coronavirus, according to Education Week. 

As parents continue to navigate their new role as homeschool instructors, resources are being made available online to meet the needs of families.

Some schools have begun live-streaming PE classes. Others are delivering virtual content to students, and at some—such as Success Academy in New York—teachers begin the day with phone calls to each of their students and hold virtual office hours later in the day. Families, schools, and free markets are rising to the challenge of schooling during a worldwide pandemic.

Here are 10 resources to check out for your own family:

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

  1. Project Gutenberg is an online library of more than 60,000 free eBooks of the world’s great literature. These great works are available in full online for free because they are older works for which U.S. copyright has expired.
  2. The Ashbrook Center’s Teaching American History Project is a treasure trove of history resources that “explore themes in American history and self-government through the study of original historical documents.”
  3. Mike McShane of EdChoice recommends Brain Pop, which offers online resources, interactive activities, quizzes, and lessons in everything from science and social studies to art and engineering.  He also recommends the Cincinnati Zoo’s page, which offers a Facebook Live safari every day at 3 p.m. Eastern.
  4. The entire Core Knowledge Foundation curriculum is now online for free.
  5. Get a crash course in homeschooling through the Home School Legal Defense Association’s homeschooling through high school page.
  6. The Space Foundation partnered with Peanuts to create 10 free lesson plans, in its “ongoing quest to catalyze the next generation of space explorers, innovators, and entrepreneurs.”
  7. Beginning next Wednesday, Code Break will offer a live, weekly webcast to teach students computer science at home, even offering learning options for students without computers.
  8. The Bill of Rights Institute has a wealth of history curriculum resources.
  9. More advanced students can check-out the University of Dallas’ Arts in Liberty courses in Logic, Rhetoric, Geometry and Arithmetic, and Astronomy.
  10. Open Culture provides access to free online courses from universities worldwide as well as audiobooks and documentaries, and EdX offers free online courses from universities on topics such as language, business management, and engineering.

COMMENTARY BY

Lindsey Burke

Lindsey M. Burke researches and writes on federal and state education issues as the Will Skillman fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation. Read her research. Twitter: .

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

We’re All Homeschoolers Now

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In the fight against coronavirus, 33 states have closed some 64,000 schools, affecting more than 32.5 million students, Education Week reports.

Texas is waiving state testing requirements for school districts, New York is relaxing state requirements for how many days a year schools have to be open, and, in California, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced a partnership with PBS to put school lessons on television for students at home.

The District of Columbia and Puerto Rico also have closed schools to help curb the spread of the new coronavirus disease, which health experts call COVID-19.

Like other institutions, schools should implement social-distancing policies. Keeping that policy in mind while trying to help needy students, some schools—including those in Ohio, Michigan, and New York—have begun providing pick-up breakfasts and lunches at designated places for eligible students.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

A rapidly flourishing market of online resources is beginning to meet the content needs of millions of students across the country.

Numerous companies such as Zearn and STMath are providing their materials online for free during the coronavirus outbreak. Existing options such as Khan Academy offer a wealth of educational resources for families navigating homeschooling for perhaps the first time. Prenda microschool is offering its coursework to families for just $100 for the remainder of the year.

Here is a fantastic list of online learning resources that every family should bookmark on their computers during this pandemic.

National School Choice Week has online resources categorized by content area. You can find online tools such as communications platforms, math, social studies, English language arts, and foreign language education.

Be sure to check out “Daddy School” while you’re at it.

Also available are virtual visits to museums, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and 2,500 other museums that have partnered with Google to make their art and virtual tours available online.

The Met will offer opera performances online for free beginning at 7:30 every evening through March 22. When you have a chance, check out some 450 online courses available for free from Ivy League universities.

Many of these online learning providers have been doing this for a long time, and traditional school districts should look to either imitate them or work with them—so that districts don’t try to create something from scratch and then realize it doesn’t work.

The list of online resources for families and teachers is growing as social distancing becomes the necessary, new normal. But policy actions by officials in school districts and state governments, as well as at the federal level, can maximize health and safety and provide learning opportunities for students.

District and State Level Policies

  • States and school districts should put online learning resources on their websites. They could include links such as those above to existing private resources and tools, along with links to virtual platforms (such as Blackboard) enabling families to contact teachers directly, access lessons, and stay in touch virtually with classmates.
  • State restrictions on teacher certification should be lifted temporarily to free up the supply of online tutors, allowing anyone with a bachelor’s degree to provide instruction online.
  • States should restructure per-pupil K-12 education funding in the form of emergency or temporary education savings accounts for families of children with special needs, so that they may continue to receive the therapy they need. Five states currently have ESA options in place. (Parents receive a portion of their child’s per-pupil public school funding in a restricted-use account that they then can use to pay for any education-related service, product, or provider of choice.)

Federal Policies

  • At the federal level, Congress should immediately but temporarily make funding authorized under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act both student-centered and portable, allowing children with special needs to access learning services to which they’re entitled under federal law. These IDEA funds could be used to pay for in-home tutors and behavioral therapies, among numerous other allowable uses, to help children with special needs continue to have access to service providers that are so critical in their lives.
  • The Elementary and Secondary Education Act requires every state to administer reading, mathematics, and science assessments annually to all students in tested grades, the outcomes of which are used in state accountability plans. Although the U.S. Department of Education currently is providing targeted waivers to federal testing provisions under ESEA, it temporarily should provide a blanket waiver to all states, enabling them to postpone testing until this pandemic has subsided.

The coronavirus pandemic has created unprecedented health challenges, which have affected schools from the earliest grades through college. These temporary measures can provide some relief and flexibility, helping schools to better meet the needs of families during this challenging time.

And the growing body of online learning resources can help parents as they navigate this new normal.

COMMENTARY BY

Lindsey Burke

Lindsey M. Burke researches and writes on federal and state education issues as the Will Skillman fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation. Read her research.Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLE: More Than 6.1 Million CA Students Might Not Be Going Back to School Before Summer

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Professor, Punished for Not Using Preferred Pronouns, Appeals After Judge Dismisses Case

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A professor at an Ohio university is appealing a federal judge’s ruling that he contends compels him to say something he doesn’t agree with.

“Professors don’t give up their First Amendment freedoms simply by choosing to teach,” said Travis Barham, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal aid group that represents the professor.

Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio, says he was “illegally disciplined” by his employer because he chose not to adhere to a male student’s insistence on being referred to with female titles and pronouns.

“Dr. Meriwether received a written warning … threatening him with ‘further corrective actions’ if he does not start expressing the University’s desired message,” Barham said in an email to The Daily Signal, adding:

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

These further corrective actions could include suspension without pay or termination. He is still employed at Shawnee State University, though he has this black cloud hanging over his head all the time. This punishment is illegal because it violates his First Amendment rights.

On Nov. 5, 2018, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit on Meriwether’s behalf, maintaining that he should not be forced to use feminine pronouns and titles for a male student.

“Public universities have no business trying to force people to express ideological beliefs that they do not hold,” Barham told The Daily Signal. “Dr. Meriwether remains committed to serving all students with respect, but he cannot express all messages or endorse all ideologies.

“When the university tried to force him to do this and then punished him for exercising his rights, it violated the First Amendment,” Barham said.

U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott threw out the lawsuit Feb. 12, and Alliance Defending Freedom announced Thursday that it is appealing her decision.

Dlott, appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1995, is senior judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.

Emilie Kao, director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email that Meriwether is being robbed of his constitutional rights.

“Compelling a university professor to utter scientific falsehoods in the name of a political ideology is un-American,” Kao said. “The Constitution protects the freedom to speak according to one’s conscience. It must be protected on controversial issues like transgender ideology if diversity of thought and intellectual integrity are to be preserved.”

Jonathan Butcher, a senior policy analyst in Heritage’s Center for Education Policy, said in a written statement provided to The Daily Signal that “students and professors should be allowed to speak freely on public policy issues of the day and not fear reprisal from the university based on positions the school has decided to take on such topics.”

The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation.

COLUMN BY

Rachel del Guidice

Rachel del Guidice is a congressional reporter for The Daily Signal. She is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Forge Leadership Network, and The Heritage Foundation’s Young Leaders Program. Send an email to Rachel. Twitter: @LRacheldG.

RELATED ARTICLE: Boomer, Meet Millennial: Examining the News Through a Multigenerational Lens

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Embedding LGBT ideology in the curriculum carries serious risks for young people. We need to tell them the facts and consequences.

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The UK government funded the LGBT Lobby Stonewall to produce a programme; ‘Creating an LGBT inclusive Primary Curriculum’ which has been designed to erode ‘heteronormative’ assumptions in primary schools. The programme embeds same sex relationships throughout the curriculum, using psychological techniques such as ‘usualising’, ‘actualising’ and desensitization to make these relationships appear normal to our youngest children. Teachers are told to eliminate ‘he’ and ‘she’ from the curriculum, turning the world into a place inhabited by sexless ‘theys’. Stonewall tell us that schools will be monitored to see how successfully these ideas are adopted.

Stonewall resources are already widely used in UK schools although there are no legal requirements to teach about LGBT relationships. Nor can it be supported by the Equalities Act, which simply protects against discrimination. In fact the Department for Education could probably be legally challenged as much of the programme undermines parent’s religious beliefs.

We do not allow political or religious groups such influence over the curriculum. How come a single issue group like Stonewall has such influence on the basis of their ideological belief?

Part of the reason is the assumption that ‘being gay’ is, like sex or disability, an innate characteristic, and that those who are affected need our protection and support. This belief is an outcome of a long-term campaign carried out by the LGBT lobby whose aim was most clearly articulated in After the Ball by Kirk and Madsen:

“The mainstream should be told that gays are victims of fate, in the sense that most never had a choice to accept or reject their sexual preference. The message must read: ‘As far as gays can tell, they were born gay, just as you were born heterosexual or white or black or bright or athletic. They never made a choice, and are not morally blameworthy… Straight viewers must be able to identify with gays as victims.” (See here)

This assumption influences how we teach about same sex attraction (SSA) in schools today. For example, LGBT activists Barnes and Carlile instruct teachers to draw an equivalence between disability, colour and being gay: “When we study the Paralympics are we promoting disabilities?… When we study the civil rights movement are we promoting being black?” The answer is evidently, “No!”’

The result is wide acceptance of the view that some people are ‘born gay,’ but there is little evidence to support this.

Same-sex attracted people are not ‘born gay’

Research suggests that in some cases there may exist predisposing hormonal factors. Some biological correlates have been identified, but ‘being gay’ is not genetically predetermined. This has been comprehensively confirmed.

Our sexuality, or sexual expression, is indicated but not determined by biology. Many lesbians and gay men have had sex with an opposite sex partners and enjoyed it. For some, desires change over their lifetime.  Others are clear that their sexuality is a product of nurture rather than nature. Some have been so convinced of this that they have successfully sought therapy to change their sexual orientation.

Who we desire is profoundly complex and shrouded in mystery. Biology is a clumsy tool for understanding the ins and outs of sex.

The importance of these less tangible factors is appreciated by gay rights advocate Peter Tatchell: ‘Many studies suggest social factors are also important influences in the formation of sexual orientation. These include the relationship between a child and its parent, formative childhood experiences, family expectations, cultural mores and peer pressure.’

The evidence backs him up.

Some research has identified a range of social factors which correlate with homosexual marriage including divorced parents, older mothers and absent fathers.

Another factor which emerges consistently is child abuse. For example a study found that 46% of homosexual subjects reported abuse, as opposed to 7% of heterosexuals. Another study found that 19% of lesbians had been involved in incestuous relationships while growing up.

Some psychologists have argued that  SSA is linked with a weakened sense of masculinity which can have a number of causes.. Some gay men have argued that their relationship with their father has been key. (see here and here)

For others it is simply a choice.

All this suggests that ‘born that way’ this isn’t actually true. Rather  ‘Moral values, social ideologies and cultural expectations – together with family patterns and parent-child interaction’  are some of the factors impacting on the development of our sexual identities, as Peter Tatchell has explained.

Normalisation is boosting same-sex and trans trends

However, if we accept that cultural mores, peer pressure, moral values and social ideologies all impact on the development of homosexuality and lesbianism, what are the implications for the normalisation that is going on in schools?

Is it possible that young people who might otherwise have grown up to be purely heterosexual will be tempted into gay relationships? And if so, should this be a cause of concern?

One study estimated that as many as 80 percent of male adolescents who report same-sex attractions no longer do so as adults. Had those young people lived in today’s gay affirming society it seems likely that the numbers who then moved into full homosexuality would have been higher.

We have seen how, since teaching children about transgender identity began in schools, the number of children who are now suffering from gender dysphoria has soared – by over 4400 percent. If children and young people can become confused about their sex, which is so obvious, surely confusion about sexuality could also occur?

There does appear to be evidence that homosexual orientation is slowly beginning an upward climb. Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that there is an increase in the proportion of people who identify as gay lesbian or bisexual and this increase appears to be more concentrated in the younger age groups.

For LGBT activists the possibility that gay affirming schools will encourage homosexuality is positively welcomed: “Were future generations to grow up in a gay-positive, homo-friendly culture, it’ likely that many more people would have same-sex relationships, if not for all for their lives at least for significant periods,” says :Peter Tatchell. His hope is that “With this boom in queer sex, the social basis of homophobia would be radically undermined”.

However, Tatchell and others are not supported by the evidence. The evidence seems to suggest that the massive push to affirm LGBT people in schools and society may be reducing tolerance and pushing the numbers of hate crimes up. (US evidence  and UK Evidence)

There are other reasons why encouraging homosexuality to ‘become commonplace’ among our younger generation may not be a good idea.

Young people should be told the health implications

For the facts are that although promiscuity has declined enormously since the early days of AIDS, gay men do, on average, tend to have higher levels of promiscuity. As parents, this is something we would be keen for our children to avoid. It also appears that in the process of achieving intimacy some gay men and women engage in risky and dangerous practices which most of us would be desperate to protect future generations from.

There is evidence that gay people are more likely to show multiple indicators of mental disorder, including higher rates of depression, anxiety, suicidal thinking and attempts, substance abuse, eating disorders and, at least for lesbians, intimate partner violence. And this not necessarily because of discrimination as is commonly assumed.

What perhaps is most alarming are the increased risks of sexually transmitted and other diseases, overall poor health and shortened lifespans due to HIV. (see here, here and here)

If ‘eliminating homophobia’ depends on sacrificing the health, happiness and the future wellbeing of our children, I, for one, am not prepared to pay the price.

Children are being taught that sexual relationships with your own sex or the opposite sex are both equally desirable. But this simply isn’t true.

Children need to understand that all human beings are equal. However, when it comes to lifestyles, our different choices have costs and benefits attached. For example, being gay can leave a person more vulnerable to relationship instability, mental health problems, dangerous sexual practices and exposure to disease. When it comes to family formation, one of the most significant events in determining our whole life course, being gay is a disability, not to put too fine a point on it.

For some young people choice does not appear to come into it, and of course we accept them, and hopefully journey with them, and make sure they know they have all our support.

But this does not mean that we should teach all young people that it will make no difference to their long-term health, happiness and life plans whether they settle for being straight or decide to explore the possibilities of being lesbian or gay.

So let’s encourage an accurately informed decision making process which takes into consideration the costs and benefits of different types of relationship for those young people who do feel they have a choice.

This is the direction in which we should be guiding our young people.

But that won’t happen while the LGBT lobby are in charge.

COLUMN BY

BELINDA BROWN

Belinda Brown is author of The Private Revolution: Women in the Polish Underground Movement and a number of well-cited academic papers. British, she also writes for The Daily Mail and The Conservative Woman. She has a particular interest in men’s issues and the damage caused by feminism. 

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Teacher Takes Union to Court for Ignoring Supreme Court Ruling on Dues

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“Everything the union does is inherently political, and I could see that in the mailings I received,” says art teacher Greg Hartnett, who sued the Pennsylvania State Education Association over fees imposed on nonunion employees.

Pennsylvania’s largest public employee union needs to stop evading a landmark Supreme Court ruling, an art teacher argues in a lawsuit that could undo key provisions of state labor laws.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association continues to negotiate provisions to give it “fair share fees” in collective bargaining agreements, despite the fact that the highest court in the land ruled those fees unconstitutional, a lawyer who represents the art teacher told The Daily Signal in an interview.

“PSEA specifically has a history of thumbing its nose at Supreme Court precedent, and it has sometimes required litigation to make them comply with the court’s rulings,” Nathan McGrath, litigation director at the Fairness Center, said of the teachers union.

The Fairness Center, a nonprofit, public-interest law firm based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, represents art teacher Greg Hartnett and three other public school teachers who sued the Pennsylvania State Education Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association.

Hartnett and the others argue the teachers union shows “a willingness to challenge or ignore Supreme Court precedent,” and that the teachers should not be forced to pay the union’s fair share fees.

The case, Hartnett v. PSEA, is with the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is expected to rule in a few months. The Fairness Center teamed with the National Right to Work Foundation to represent the four complaining teachers.

The brief filed in August argues that the teachers union has a long history of undermining and violating Supreme Court rulings. It cites several examples that occurred after the high court’s June 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, which invalidated fair share fees, as being the latest in a series.

Related: A Year After the Supreme Court Rules Against Unions, What’s Changed 

“PSEA specifically has a history of thumbing its nose at Supreme Court precedent, and it has sometimes required litigation to make them comply with the court’s rulings,” McGrath said of the teachers union, adding:

Because of that, the fact that the PSEA and its affiliates are still negotiating fair share fees provisions into collective bargaining agreements after Janus is not actually very shocking to us. This seems to be par for the course for how [the unions] operate, and it’s required federal court cases in the past, and in some cases a very lengthy period of time, to get them to comply with what the Supreme Court has said.

U.S. Department of Labor records show the Pennsylvania State Education Association has about 180,000 members, more than any other government union in the state.

The Daily Signal sought comment from the teachers union on the Hartnett case and on the allegations that the union has a history of violating Supreme Court rulings, including the Janus decision. At the time of publication, the union had not responded.

Targeting Pennsylvania Law

Referring to the 3rd Circuit, McGrath said: “At the end of the day, we would like them to bring Janus to Pennsylvania and say that Pennsylvania’s fair share fee law, which is currently on the books, runs counter to what the Supreme Court has said and to declare the Pennsylvania fair share fee law unconstitutional.”

In the Janus ruling, the Supreme Court said state laws requiring nonunion government workers to pay fair share fees to a union violate the First Amendment rights of employees who do not support the political agenda of public employee unions.

In a press release, the Fairness Center estimates that in more than 70% of Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts, public school teachers who opted out of joining the union were required to pay fair share fees to teachers unions to cover collective bargaining costs.

In the 2016-2017 school year, the fees were only 26% less than full membership dues, the center says.

Hartnett, who teaches art teacher in Homer-Center School District in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, and is the lead plaintiff in the case, previously was a member of the teachers union.

Hartnett, the father of five and an avid hunter, has taught since 1999.

He says that when it became apparent that the union’s political positions were in conflict with his own, he decided to go through the formal process of opting out of membership, which he described as “arduous and complicated.”

After the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling, Hartnett opted out of paying nonmember fair share fees.

“I came to see that the union’s platforms and positions were very liberal and very different from mine and I did not want to contribute to someone else’s politics,” Hartnett said in an interview with The Daily Signal, adding:

The collective bargaining process itself is very political, and when they say political funds are separated from fair share fees, I don’t believe it. Everything the union does is inherently political, and I could see that in the mailings I received. I believe in the freedom of choice for each individual to represent themselves.

Teachers who prefer not to be in the union but need liability insurance and legal protection have alternatives, Hartnett said.

“There are free-market alternatives to the problem of the PSEA,” he said. “It is possible for teachers to go out and get a better product for less money, but I’m not sure many teachers are aware of these options.”

Paycheck Protection

On the day of the Janus ruling, Rebecca Friedrichs, a former California public school teacher, made a prescient observation near the steps leading up to the Supreme Court.

Friedrichs told supporters that the high court’s decision to strike down mandatory union dues and fees was “just the beginning, not the end, of a very long fight.” Friedrichs told The Daily Signal.

In an interview, she said she “she ardently supports the Hartnett case,” which closely mirrors her own litigation.

Related: The Christian Educator Behind Teachers’ Fight for Free Speech at the Supreme Court 

Friedrichs, who taught elementary school students for 28 years in the Savanna School District in Anaheim, California, was the lead plaintiff in a suit opposing mandatory union dues and fees.

She joined with nine other teachers and the Christian Educators Association International to sue the California Teachers Association, the National Education Association, and several local unions. Like Janus, Friedrichs and the other teachers argued that the union mandates violated their First Amendment rights.

Friedrichs’ case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where oral arguments were held Jan. 11, 2016. With the death of Justice Antonin Scalia just a few weeks later, the court deadlocked in a 4-4 ruling that left California’s “agency shop” law in place until it was overturned in the Janus ruling.

But unlike Janus, the Friedrichs case explicitly asked the court to address the need for “paycheck protection” rules to prevent school districts from automatically deducting union dues from employees’ paychecks without their permission.

The former schoolteacher submitted an amicus brief in the Janus case, explaining why it was necessary for government employers and unions to obtain “affirmative consent” from employees before deducting dues or fees from their paychecks.

“We need paycheck protection, otherwise taxpayers will continue to pay for the collection of union dues,” Friedrichs told The Daily Signal, adding:

I submitted an amicus brief in the Janus case where I addressed the need for an opt-in rather than an opt-out arrangement where an employee needed to make a conscious decision to opt in to joining a union rather than going through the cumbersome process of opting out. This is not something Janus specifically asked for, but the court did deliver on this and said that employees must give their affirmative consent and consciously opt in to joining a union and paying union dues. But the other part of this is paycheck protection.

The Commonwealth Foundation, a free-market think tank based in Harrisburg, published a timeline of legislative efforts to implement paycheck protection, which would prohibit state and local government agencies (including school districts) from collecting union dues from the paychecks of government employees at taxpayers’ expense.

“Janus is the first domino and many others need to fall,” Friedrichs said. “Teachers unions are out of control. They’re not unions in the traditional sense and they are not representing teachers.”

The union label is misleading, she argues, because it is used as “a mask to advance a far-left agenda.”

“The unions are using the public schools to spread propaganda to undermine constitutional limited government,” Friedrichs said:

Unions are the root cause of the failure in our schools. They are also still finding ways to collect fair share fees, but they just don’t call them that. The Hartnett case is very important to help ensure the law is being followed and free speech rights are being protected. God bless them.

Friedrichs is the founder of For Kids and Country, a grassroots group of parents, teachers, students, faith leaders, and citizens who support education reform.

Legislative Reforms

Although his clients no longer pay fair share fees, McGrath said, he finds that teachers unions continue to make a concerted effort to undermine the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling.

“PSEA continues to work with their locals to negotiate fair share fee provisions into their collective bargaining arrangements that are being negotiated and signed after Janus,” the Fairness Center lawyer said. “It’s illegal language that’s being negotiated into these contracts. For the most part, PSEA controls negotiations for the locals on their behalf. They are largely dictating what goes into these collective bargaining agreements.”

While the Fairness Center continues to press its case, some Pennsylvania lawmakers have stepped up in an effort to reform the state’s labor laws.

Related: With Millions in Dues at Stake Across US, One Man Fights His Union for a Refund

State Rep. Kate Klunk, a York County Republican, introduced a measure (HB 785) that would require government employers to notify workers of their rights.

State Rep. Greg Rothman, a Cumberland County Republican, introduced a bill (HB 506) to allow government employees to resign from a union anytime they like, without a window to do so or any other restrictions.

“The aim of House Bill 785 is rather simple,” Klunk said in an email to The Daily Signal, adding:

It ensures workers who were once forced to pay into a public sector union know their rights, namely that they do not have to pay so-called fair share fees.

Though the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the ruling in the Janus v. AFSCME decision, not all workers know that they no longer have to pay these fees. My bill would make sure they are alerted to the change. My bill would also alert those who apply for public sector jobs that being a member of the union is not a condition of employment, and that as a nonmember they have no obligation to make any payments.

COLUMN BY

Kevin Mooney

Kevin Mooney is an investigative reporter for The Daily Signal. Send an email to Kevin. Twitter: @KevinMooneyDC.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Pro-Lifers Should Get Same Access to Schools as Planned Parenthood Does

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Many of the political and cultural trends that are anathema to traditional values or free-market conservatism in society today can be traced back to a lack of education, poor education, or education rooted in progressive bias.

One college group, Students for Life of America, is attempting to do its part in upending that cycle.

Students for Life has requested access to Los Angeles public schools to counteract the rhetoric and statistics students learn about abortion rights through behemoth organizations such as Planned Parenthood.

It’s about time.

Students for Life is trying to get in touch with nearly 30 high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, not to try to squelch any pro-abortion rhetoric but to get equal access to tell young people about pro-life values with the same earnestness and verve.

In December, Planned Parenthood announced it would open so-called “Well-Being Centers” in Los Angeles area high schools, a prime location and a malleable time in an adolescent’s life to be manipulated by pro-abortion rhetoric.

The Washington Post reported that the centers will provide a “full range of birth-control options, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy counseling.”

California’s expansive anti-parental rights laws ensure students can visit these pro-abortion clinics without their parents’ knowledge or consent, making Planned Parenthood’s message that much more persuasive.

Students for Life plans on offering these centers “life-affirming, local resources for pregnant and parenting students.”

Brooke Karmie, Pacific Southwest regional coordinator with Students for Life of America, is the liaison contacting each school individually to acquire access.

“Empowering students by providing resources that will meet their needs, while also helping them achieve their goals should be a common foundation for all educational institutions,” Karmie said in a recent written statement.

“Students for Life filed a [Freedom of Information Act] request to see which schools would go first, and we are asking the principals of those schools … to allow us to balance out the messaging,” spokeswoman Kristi Hamrick said.

“And here is a key difference, [Students for Life] won’t make money off our conversations, but will offer resources and support,” Hamrick said. “But Planned Parenthood will both make money and market their abortion business. Conflict of interest?”

I’ve always been confounded by the no-holds-barred infiltration of secularism, anti-God, anti-free market, and anti-life values the public school system has maintained with hardly any competition since the 1960s.

Such an approach not only has fast-tracked an idyllic view of far-left political ideology, such as socialism, but also of controversial topics that pose bioethics issues, such as abortion, evolution, or LGBT issues, and topics that typically would look much different when viewed from a religious worldview rather than when presented to students only through the lens of a godless, leftist scope.

Although Student for Life’s efforts to access schools no doubt will prove to be controversial, and I assume Planned Parenthood will do its best to prevent it, equal access in education is a concept that should please most progressives.

If schools were still rooted in religion, as universities such as Harvard were when this country began, liberals would be clamoring today for equal access (if not more).

The concept of offering young adults equal access to pro-life and pro-choice or pro-abortion materials not only has potential to aid women and men in understanding the importance of promoting a culture of life in all its stages.

It’s also a way of communicating that promotes critical-thinking skills: Planned Parenthood says life begins at birth and suggests abortion, whereas Students for Life says life begins at conception and suggests adoption or raising the baby with help.

With more access to accurate information, including offers of much-needed aid, students might just embrace a culture of life and pro-life values more than society—and especially progressives—realize.

COMMENTARY BY

Nicole Russell

Nicole Russell is a contributor to The Daily Signal. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Review, Politico, The Washington Times, The American Spectator, and Parents Magazine. Twitter: .

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Notre Dame Professor Gabriel Said Reynolds falsely claims that Qur’an teaches only Allah should take revenge

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The fact that Gabriel Said Reynolds, who demonstrates here that he is either abjectly ignorant or willfully dishonest about Islam, is a professor of theology at Notre Dame shows how much our nation’s universities (and the Catholic Church) are dominated by fantasy and wishful thinking rather than being willing to deal with unpleasant realities. Reynolds is an academic laden with honors, employed at Notre Dame and published in the New York Daily News, not because he speaks the truth, with which he is either unacquainted or unwilling to disclose, but because he tells people what they want to hear: that Islam, if only it were properly understood, is actually a religion of peace. How it came to be that so many Muslims misunderstand the religion they follow so devoutly, he does not bother to explain.

Meanwhile, would the New York Daily News ever publish a comparably lengthy theological defense of Christianity? Not on your life.

Anyway, to make his case that in Islam, vengeance belongs to Allah alone, Reynolds quotes a number of Qur’an verses, but he doesn’t even mention or attempt to explain away others that disprove his case. There is actually a great support, passed over in silence by Reynolds here, in the Qur’an and Sunnah for the death penalty for blasphemy. It can arguably be found in this verse: “Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment.” (5:33)

But if you don’t think that verse justifies killing those who insult Islam, there is this: “Those who annoy Allah and His Messenger – Allah has cursed them in this World and in the Hereafter, and has prepared for them a humiliating Punishment” (33:57)

Yes, he has cursed them both in this world and the hereafter. What does a curse in this world look like? Muslims are told to fight such people: “If they violate their oaths after pledging to keep their covenants, and attack your religion, you may fight the leaders of paganism – you are no longer bound by your covenant with them – that they may refrain” (9:12).

Not only that, but the Qur’an explicitly says that Allah will punish people by the hands of the believers: “Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and satisfy the breasts of a believing people, and remove the fury in the believers’ hearts.” (9:14-15)

There is more in the hadith. In one, Muhammad asked: “Who is willing to kill Ka’b bin Al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?” One of the Muslims, Muhammad bin Maslama, answered, “O Allah’s Apostle! Would you like that I kill him?” When Muhammad said that he would, Muhammad bin Maslama said, “Then allow me to say a (false) thing (i.e. to deceive Kab).” Muhammad responded: “You may say it.” Muhammad bin Maslama duly lied to Ka’b, luring him into his trap, and murdered him. (Bukhari 5.59.369)

“A Jewess used to abuse the Prophet and disparage him. A man strangled her till she died. The Apostle of Allah declared that no recompense was payable for her blood.” (Sunan Abu-Dawud 38.4349)

Why doesn’t Gabriel Said Reynolds mention any of those passages?

“What radical Muslims get wrong about the Koran: Vengeance is reserved for God alone,” by Gabriel Said Reynolds, New York Daily News, March 1, 2020:

In the name of Allah, militant Muslims continue taking up arms against people they consider threats to their faith and way of life. But does it make theological sense for humans to pick up swords and guns to exact retribution in this life?

The Koran, the book those same Muslims purport to revere, says no….

The irony of blasphemy laws, and the tragedy of these attacks carried out in supposed defense of Islam, is that the Koran time and again insists that it is God’s right, and God’s right alone, to exact vengeance.

Allah does not need Muslims to step in and punish those who insult Him. In fact, Allah does not want Muslims to do so. The God of the Koran is clear: He is the only avenger of Islam.

The case of blasphemy laws in Islam is particularly peculiar in light of the example of Muhammad himself. The Koran describes how the unbelievers in his native city of Mecca disputed his claims of prophethood and insulted him.

Koran 68:51 describes how they accused him of insanity: “Indeed, the faithless almost devour you with their eyes when they hear this Reminder, and they say, ‘He is indeed crazy.’”

The Koran does not respond by demanding that the blasphemers be killed for their insolence. It simply affirms the claims of Muhammad.

Elsewhere in the Koran, the voice of God counsels Muhammad to be patient when faced with opposition. Koran 16:126 alludes to some persecution or affliction which Muhammad has suffered from the unbelievers.

The next verse, in response, suggests that Muhammad could strike back in moderation, but should simply endure the persecution patiently: “If you retaliate, retaliate with the like of what you have been made to suffer, but if you are patient, that is surely better for the steadfast.”

This does not mean that the idea of vengeance is foreign to the Koran. The question the Koran poses is not whether offenses against Islam and Muslims should be avenged, but who should do the avenging.

And the answer is consistent: “God.”

Remarkably, and if only Boko Haram and other Salafi-Jihadis would listen, the Koran even teaches this lesson specifically about Christians. In Sura 5, God asks some questions of Jesus about those who followed him, but Jesus does not demand that the wrongdoers be punished.

He leaves their fate in God’s hands: “If Thou chastisest them, they are Thy servants; if Thou forgivest them, Thou art the All-mighty, the All-wise.”

The same lesson is taught about Muslims who are unfaithful to the laws of Islam. In chapter 5, verse 95, the Koran describes the laws of the pilgrimage to Mecca (known as the Hajj). But as for he who breaks the rules, the Koran gives no worldly punishment: “God will take vengeance on him, God is all-mighty, Vengeful.”

So what does divine vengeance look like in the Koran? Allah punishes those who offend Him in hell. The Koran not only describes paradise in vivid colors (as a place with food, drink, and women), it also describes hell in gruesome detail.

Angels of punishment will strike the damned from the front and the back. The damned will be condemned to drink boiling water and eat from a tree named Zaqqum whose fruit is like the heads of demons.

The Koran clearly considers this punishment enough for an unbeliever. Whereas the standard schools of Islam teach that someone who leaves the religion, an apostate, is to be killed, the only punishment for apostasy spoken of in the Koran is hell: “’Did you disbelieve after you had believed? Then taste the chastisement for that you disbelieved!’” (Quran 3:106).

The Koran also teaches that God need not wait for the afterlife to punish unbelievers. He is the lord of the universe and can intervene when He chooses.

A number of chapters in the Koran tell a series of tales, dubbed “punishment stories” by scholars, in which unbelieving peoples are punished for rejecting the prophet who is sent to them. Among these prophets are Biblical figures including Noah, Lot, and Moses, and others who seem to come from Arabian lore with names like Hud, Salih, and Shuʿayb.

In each story it is not the Prophet but God who intervenes….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

PODCAST: LGBT Activists Promote ‘Trans Reading Day’ in Public Schools

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It started as just one rogue Wisconsin school, showing their LGBT pride. Now, five years later, it’s a national public-school movement — and most parents have no idea it’s happening.

Do you want your child to be psychologically manipulated at school on Thursday? Most moms and dads would say no. But this week, February 27, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and their pals at the powerful National Education Association are teaming up to promote “Jazz and Friends National Day of School & Community Readings.” “We want the listeners to know,” FRC’s Meg Kilgannon told me on “Washington Watch,” “this could be happening in your school. Your children could be hearing a book on Thursday… [that] can be very disturbing to young children.

The book I Am Jazz is a favorite of transgender activists. It’s based on the real-life story of “Jazz,” a boy who was convinced that he was born in the wrong body. “As a child he was injected with hormones to block his normal sexual development, and recently, he had radical surgery to complete his ‘transition’ to another sex. Which, of course, is impossible.” Now, LGBT groups are pushing schools to make the reading of the book an annual event. The day will be used, Cathy goes on, “to promote gender deviance and LGBT politics to vulnerable children. Not all schools are doing it. Yet. But some are.”

In one Arlington, Virginia school, administrators enlisted “mystery readers” to come read to the children. “The school has not revealed to parents who they are and what they will read,” Cathy warns. And based on what we know about the drag queen story hour movement, that could mean anyone. To counterpunch, the Arlington Parents Coalition is urging parents to keep their kids home.

“We want all children to be treated with respect and dignity as children of God,” Meg agreed. “That’s a basic tenet of the Christian faith of many faiths that everyone should be should have dignity. [But] that doesn’t mean that we need to reinforce these controversial ideas… that are untrue, biologically, and impossible. A boy cannot become a girl. A girl cannot become a boy.” But unfortunately, she warned, this kind of activity isn’t necessarily going to make it on the school calendar. “It’s just something that’s going to happen — and then, once it’s over, it’s too late.”

Meg and Cathy urge everyone to call their child’s school principal and ask, “Are you planning to have this reading in your school?” If they say, “yes,” it’s a great opportunity to turn in the universal opt-out letter that’s available on FRC’s website. “It’s up to you what kind of a statement you want to make,” Meg emphasized. But if your school is participating, make sure they know where you stand!

Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC Action senior writers.

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Study Shows the Result of Left-Wing Conformity on College Campuses

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Are our institutions of higher education little more than left-wing indoctrination centers?

A recently released study found that, whether that’s generally true or not, the perception that they are indoctrinating students is fairly universal at one of the nation’s large, public universities.

A team of professors at the University of North Carolina conducted research on the attitudes of students at the school to gauge the campus culture. Their findings revealed that the culture was generally hostile to right-leaning viewpoints and to conservative people in general.

The researchers wrote that they found professors to be fairly accommodating to students with both liberal and conservative views. However, it was clear that conservative students in particular fear lower grades as a result of expressing their views and other forms of chastisement, more so from fellow students rather than school faculty.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

The study found that nearly 68% of conservative students self-censored, compared with only 24% of liberals. Political attitudes were found to have a huge impact on personal relationships, too. The study found that 92% of conservative students would be friends with liberals, but only 63% of liberals would be friends with conservatives.

Perhaps most worrisome of all, the study found that more than 25% of respondents said that “they would endorse blocking or interrupting events featuring speakers with whom they disagree.”

According to the researchers, there was particular opposition among liberals to opposing viewpoints.

Some of the more in-depth responses showed where the attitude that it was acceptable to shut down speech came from.

“[W]hen asked about a potential ‘Free-Speech Week’ that would include speakers from the political right, students in the liberal focus group expressed skepticism,” the researchers wrote. “Specifically, one student worried such an effort would ‘put the left and right on equal footing,’ which would be improper because ‘I don’t think much of the right is using logical arguments’ and ‘it would basically just promote far right-wing ideologies.’”

That last comment was perhaps the most revealing part of the study, which was limited to UNC, but it’s difficult not to see it as part of a general trend in American higher education.

The problem of ideological conformity extends beyond the bias of professors, who, according to another recent study, donate to 95 Democrats for every one Republican.

While many of those professors undoubtedly attempt to be evenhanded, the general left-wing culture on a typical college campus is inescapable.

Left-wing views are regarded as a given; conservative-leaning views are at best tolerated, but assumed to be wrong. Since those on the left are simply correct in their own minds, what’s the point in engaging with those who have a different point of view or set of principles? Why not just purge the heretics and be done with them?

The result of this dynamic is that the most aggressive left-wing students feel emboldened to use their power on campus to shut down the speech of those they disagree with, while conservative students must continually weigh whether expressing their own real viewpoint is worthwhile.

Unfortunately, many campuses have fed into this through their inability or even unwillingness to ensure that the First Amendment rights of their students are protected.

That’s hardly conducive to creating a haven of free inquiry that many presume colleges and universities to be, but it does explain why so many members of America’s elite cultural and political institutions are so dogmatically left-wing.

They are simply products of that college campus environment that taught them that their views are inherently correct and that conservative viewpoints are nuisances to be stamped out, rather than a serious challenge to their worldview.

“We don’t fully know how this environment has shaped a generation of graduates,” wrote  Emily Jashinsky, culture editor for The Federalist, adding:

Judging by reporting on major companies and media outlets, some young employees seem to want their workplaces to replicate the ideological culture of their campuses—progressive by default, openly intolerant of dissent.

None of this will make our political discourse any healthier.

That our colleges skew left has been obvious for generations. What this study shows, however, is that there is an implacable resistance to any ideas that would intrude on the left-wing haven that students see the schools to be. Again, it’s hard to see a difference between the University of North Carolina and countless other universities across the country.

No wonder there is now such a deep cultural divide in America, and such little ability to bridge it. The institutions that should be at the forefront of helping our putative elites understand those differences now exist in an environment that treats one side as inherently illegitimate.

Add to this the reality that student debt is reaching a tipping point and college costs are escalating. Many now question the value of a college degree, which isn’t the pathway to economic success that it once was.

All things considered, It’s easy to see why trust in these institutions is waning fast.

COMMENTARY BY

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is a contributor to The Daily Signal and co-host of The Right Side of History podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. He is also the author of the new book, “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.” Twitter: .

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

PODCAST: Booker T. Washington — A Legacy of Enterprise and Education

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Author and educator Booker T. Washington played a critical role in the promotion of education and free market enterprise among black Americans at the turn of the century.

Alabama businessman and political consultant Richard Finley joins The Daily Signal Podcast to discuss what the legacy of Washington, who died in 1915, means to him and others in the African American community.

Listen to today’s podcast episode or read the lightly edited transcript below.

Rob Bluey: We are joined on The Daily Signal Podcast today by Richard Finley, who’s head of the Finley Group, a business and political consulting firm in Birmingham, Alabama. Richard, thanks so much for joining us.

Richard Finley: Thank you for having me.

Bluey: You are somebody who’s served on the Republican Party State Executive Committee there in Alabama, and very much have lived through the civil rights movement and history, and you’ve seen it before your own eyes.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

And throughout the month of February, Black History Month, we’re featuring some of the stories of American heroes. Maybe some of those who are listeners can learn a little bit more about, so we appreciate you taking the time to share with us about Booker T. Washington specifically and some of your own experiences.

Finley: I appreciate the opportunity.

I just feel that Washington was probably the most significant black figure in American history. And I know that’s arguable, but the things that he was able to do at Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, and the economic strategy he had for lifting up a people out of slavery was extremely significant and extremely valuable. And I dislike the fact that it is being downplayed in modern public schools’ telling of black history.

When I initially decided to become politically active in Birmingham, I went to the established black leadership and I told them, I said, “Well, I am going to become politically active, and I’m going to become politically active as a Republican.”

I explained to them that when I was in high school and college here as a young man, being an activist, our fight was with the yellow dog Democrats of Alabama in the South. And I didn’t quite understand returning to Birmingham and finding all of the black leadership now in bed with the yellow dog Democrats who were the oppressors.

Democrats controlled Alabama from Reconstruction up through the 1970s. So they had a long run and all of the segregation efforts, the laws that were put in place to segregate and oppress the black citizens were put in place by the yellow dog Democrats of Alabama.

I didn’t quite understand why our leadership had chosen to get in bed with these people. But I said that if you’re going to be politically active, then you have to have options. If you don’t have an option, then you really don’t matter in the overall equation. They can write you in, and then go pursue those folk who might be exercising their options.

And I felt that black people needed to hear both sides of the story. They needed to be able to get the information, and then make a conscious decision as to which way they wanted to go. Rather than being locked into the party of the same people who had been oppressing us for the [300] or 400 years leading up to the Civil War.

Bluey: Thank you for sharing that. We appreciate your leadership and speaking out.

I think it’s so critically important that people do have an open mind and understand history. Because I think, too often, as you’ve indicated to me, sometimes we only look at the recent history and not necessarily look back at the figures who had a transformative impact on our country. And Booker T. Washington is, certainly, one of them.

He was born in 1856, died in 1915. He was, obviously, an educator. You mentioned his role at Tuskegee University. He was a leading Republican, at the time. He was somebody who was among that last generation of black Americans who were born into slavery, and then became a leading voice.

So tell us more about him and why you consider him to be such a profound figure in American history, and an influence on your own life.

Finley: I was conscious of him all through elementary school when we were taught black history as part of the Jefferson County, Alabama, colored school system.

In the colored school we had all black teachers who had a sensitivity, or a consciousness to making sure that young black kids understood the contributions that we, as a people, have made to America.

My two heroes were Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. And I tell folk that I believed, as Frederick Douglass did, in free people and, as Booker T. Washington did, in free enterprise. So, free people and free enterprise was sort of my driving motto.

But Washington had a unique plan and strategy for lifting newly freed Africans who had been purposely blocked from learning to read, or being taught the way the system worked in this country.

Ignorance was being brutally enforced upon Africans who were in slavery. And once they were free, Washington had sort of a manifesto of here are the things that you need to first do in order to lift yourself up out of the poverty that you were left in.

In 1866, they set you free, but there was no budget with that. And so, newly freed Africans had a major challenge.

But having lived in such close quarters, just through observation, they understood how the system worked. And Booker T. Washington and his team at Tuskegee Institute, working with some Northern philanthropists, started to establish schools so that the newly freed Africans could immediately began to learn to read.

I think if you check the history in that period between 1866 and, say, 1930, illiteracy was reduced within the black community pretty close to 60%, 65%. So it was a major achievement in establishing a school network.

And there was an eagerness, or a hunger, from the newly freed Africans to learn to read and write the language—from being in proximity with the plantation owners—and how they operated the business they had picked up, pretty much, how the system was working.

If you look during that period, there was substantial economic gain made within the African or black community. They rapidly acquired what, ultimately, wound up being at the height about 15 million acres of land, went into various business pursuits. And Tuskegee was sort of the training ground, or the breeding ground, for this entrepreneurial effort.

Tuskegee Institute, if you read the stories, they talk about how they took straw and made bricks, and built the buildings on the campus at Tuskegee Institute. Well, not only were they making bricks and masonry products, they were doing lumber. And they became one of the largest, if not the largest, supplier of building materials in the South.

And with that business acumen, Dr. Washington then set about on a plan that was to be called the Tuskegee Industrial Complex. He established organizations all over the country under the title of the National Negro Business League. He had in his employ, at Tuskegee Institute, Dr. George Washington Carver, and several other botanists, and chemists, and scientists who were putting together a lot of the products that we use today.

It was his plan to turn Tuskegee into an industrial complex to create these various common need products, the deodorants, the soaps, the hair creams, all of these things were things that were being made from plants in Dr. Carver’s laboratory.

So Washington’s plan was to begin to manufacture all of these products there at Tuskegee, and distribute them across the country through the National Negro Business League.

He also, as I said earlier, had the capability for the building materials and so forth. He was building out of this industrial complex concept what would today be a multibillion-dollar American corporation.

A lot of this stuff that Proctor & Gamble was doing, a lot of that stuff that Kellogg was doing, and Rockefeller, and Firestone. All of these industrial giants were constant visitors at Tuskegee and with Dr. Carver.

To this day, some of their institutions still contribute to Tuskegee’s well-being, but they also became very wealthy corporations off of the formulas that Dr. Carver had put together.

Dr. Carver was the first to create synthetic nylon that was crucial to the American war effort. When they started developing automobile tires, Firestone was the beneficiary of what they were doing at Tuskegee in terms of creating rubber and synthetic nylon from the products that Carver was growing there on the Tuskegee properties.

Bluey: It’s really fascinating to hear you share those examples. Clearly, Booker T. Washington had a passion not only to educate, but also an entrepreneurial spirit as well, as you indicated there. …

We were at an event together in Washington, D.C., in February, it was put on by Black Americans for a Better Future, and you shared with me Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Exposition speech. And it’s really fascinating in the impact that it had.

I wanted you to share a bit about that particular address and how it really set the course in motion, some of the things that he was able to accomplish.

Finley: It was a plan, a roadmap, if you will, that was put before the American white community, the business community.

The left wing, or the socialist elements of the time, headed up by W.E.B. Du Bois, labeled it a compromise speech. And I just assumed that they didn’t understand what Washington was putting forward. He was putting forward a plan for economic growth and development here in the South.

And his position with the Southern white businessmen were OK, if we are allowed uninterrupted to acquire land, to farm that land to build our churches, our schools, and our homes. And, in fact, own that property uninterrupted by whatever government the South was putting in place at the time then we, as newly freed Africans, we as newly freed participants in the American economy would want to establish, basically, a parallel relationship, or a parallel economy where we would bring our excess produce to the market, and we would live as neighbors. All being Americans.

Washington was a nationalist. He believed in America, he believed in the American concept, and he wanted the newly freed Africans to be able to establish a parallel system, as well as a parallel economy.

He said to the assembled people, anything social, that’s your preference. We can be as separate as the fingers on the hand, but should we be attacked by an outset aggressor, then be assured that we as citizens of the country will come together with you to defend America against any enemy, foreign or domestic.

He made that statement to the established audience there. But he then went on to talk about our sojourn up to that point here in America and the challenges that we were facing now as free American citizens.

If you remember, during that time frame, the great American railroad experiment was beginning, and the Chinese were the immigrants of the day, and they were taking jobs that the newly freed Africans were applying for, or wanting to do. And Washington addressed that position in his speech as well, the immigration problem.

Again, he went on to assure them that, hey, we’ve been here living in close proximity for [300] or 400 years, we’ve never, to any real extent, had a major uprising. We’ve been in situations where you’ve got [200] or 300 slaves on a plantation with maybe 10, 12 white people on the plantation. So, if there was any ill intent, it would’ve shown itself a long time ago.

So, he was saying that you could be comfortable with the black citizens. All we wanted was an opportunity to be productive and to generate and own property of our own, to be able to educate our children, to be able to establish and conduct our church and religious life as free citizens here in America. And, again, as a parallel to what was existing within the white communities at that time.

Bluey: Certainly.

Finley: So it was the first presentation of separate and equal. And it was, I think, well, you can read the other stuff that was in there, but it was the first actual deal or arrangement put on the table for blacks and whites to coexist in America.

Bluey: And we will make sure that we link to it for our listeners or our readers on The Daily Signal so they can see.

Richard, one final question for you. You spoke about the importance of educating today’s Americans and young people about our history. What are some steps that you’re taking, or what advice do you have for our audience who want to do a better job of making sure that young people understand those American heroes who came before us?

Finley: The thing that’s most personal to me now is, at my age, to have time to sit down and talk with young people. I think we need to encourage the storytelling. And, especially, within the black community, we are losing generations to poor public education. And now, with the advent of social media and the electronic communications, they’re getting stories that are coming at them so fast that they don’t have time to put them in perspective, and to understand what it is that they’re getting in all this information that’s flowing.

… I’m 70 years old, so I’m at the point where, as I told my children, I said, “I was there when the colored sign came down and I’m not sure it was the best thing to do for us.”

I said, we had, at that time, operating in Alabama, five nationally-established black insurance companies that were employing thousands of black people across the country. We had three banks here in Birmingham. We had a community that consisted of doctors and dentists and all of the various medical capabilities. We had a black-established and -run hospital within our community and we had the pharmacist in our community. All these businesses were going.

When Martin Luther King [Jr.] arrived in Birmingham, he had to have a serious conversation with A.G. Gaston who, at that time, was one of the leading black businessmen in the country. But he was stationed here in Birmingham and owned major buildings and property in, what is now, downtown Birmingham proper.

He cautioned King and his followers that they need to give serious thought to what would happen after the colored sign came down, and how would we be positioned financially or economically to compete in the broader market with the much more financially established white entities in a downtown area.

So we had a lot of questions that were going on that don’t get told in the stories of history today. It was a significant debate about the economic cost of integration to the black community. And people need to understand that there was not a whole lot of problem with the concept of separate and equal. The problem was we never could get the equal worked out.

Bluey: That’s right.

Finley: And the public tax revenue didn’t come into our community, but we had successful black businesses going on. We had successful black churches, black contractors were building houses. We had what by most standards would be a pretty comfortable working-class or middle-class existence in Birmingham. And that was lost once the colored sign came down. And we have not been able to reestablish.

I hear black businesses crying, “Well, we don’t have capital to do this, that, and the other.” I’m saying, I’m old enough to remember when we had all of these things, and whatever capital was needed we were able to put it together to do what needed to be done.

So understanding that history, and what we built, and how we built it, the drop in the link of communications has interrupted our ability to build on those successes.

The Johnson Publishing companies, the 300 black-owned radio stations, the 15 million acres of land, all of that is lost. And I feel that … the misdirection of the public education system and the breakdown in the family communications within our community have cost us tremendously. And that history, that story needs to be told.

When I talked to you about T.M. Alexander, the Rosa Parks story is a great human interest story, but this was the Montgomery bus boycott, [which] was an organized quasi business entity that was going on here. And the people didn’t stop going to work, they just stopped riding the bus.

In creating a car pool to be able to deliver these people to their jobs, they needed to have a blanket insurance. So we had a millionaire black insurance executive insurance company owner out of Atlanta who stepped up and provided a $2 million blanket policy to cover the bus boycott.

Now, Rosa’s courage is not to be diminished, but there was a business end to this, and the black conservative businessmen who, for the most part, were all Republicans, provided the financial strength necessary.

They did this up until the point that the movement itself became integrated, and groups with other objectives got involved. And then, I think, the black community sort of got lost in the shuffle.

Bluey: Richard, I want to thank you for the work that you’re doing and coming on The Daily Signal to share these stories with us. It’s incredibly important to all of us that here at The Heritage Foundation and The Daily Signal we keep this history alive and continue to tell these stories.

It’s so powerful to hear about them, and to have somebody like yourself who cares so passionately do it is a real treat for us. So I want to thank you, again, for joining us on The Daily Signal Podcast and [I] hope to have a future conversation with you and continue talking about this.

Finley: Well, I want to thank you. I appreciate what you’re doing and I hope you do continue to do this service for our community.

Bluey: Thank you.

Finley: Thank you.

PODCAST BY

Rob Bluey

Rob Bluey is executive editor of The Daily Signal, the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation. Send an email to Rob. Twitter: @RobertBluey.

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Parents Ask Court to Stop Schools From Helping Children Make Gender Transitions

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A group of Wisconsin parents is asking a state court to halt a public school district’s policy that they say instructs teachers to assist and encourage children in adopting transgender identities without notifying—and possibly while deceiving—parents.

The lawsuit is being brought by 14 parents, representing eight families, who allege the Madison Metropolitan School District’s policy violates constitutionally protected parental rights.

The lawsuit, filed in Dane County Circuit Court, includes an affidavit from Dr. Stephen B. Levine, a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, in which he asserts that gender transitions for minors expose vulnerable children to dangerous, lifelong physical, social, and mental health risks.

“For a child to live radically different identities at home and at school, and to conceal what he or she perceives to be his or her true identity from parents, is psychologically unhealthy in itself, and could readily lead to additional psychological problems,” Levine writes in the affidavit. “Extended secrecy and a ‘double life’ concealed from the parents is rarely the path to psychological health. For this reason at least, schools should not support deceit of parents.”

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Levine’s affidavit continues:

 Most children are both legally and developmentally incapable of giving informed consent to such a life-altering intervention. And parents, of course, cannot give informed consent if the fact of their child’s wish to assume a transgender identity is concealed from them.

The 14 parents are represented by lawyers with Alliance Defending Freedom and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, both nonprofit, public interest legal organizations.

“This is a life-altering decision that educators have no business making,” Roger Brooks, ADF senior counsel, said. “As Dr. Levine explains based on decades of experience and extensive scientific literature, putting children on a pathway to puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones can have devastating effects across a lifetime. That should serve as a wake-up call to parents and all Americans: When schools cast aside biological reality in favor of gender-identity ideology, it’s children who are hurt the most.”

The legal motion formally requests the court to impose a temporary injunction against the school district’s policy.

The school district hadn’t been served with the lawsuit as of late Wednesday, said Tim LeMonds, public information officer for Madison Metropolitan School District. LeMonds said the district wouldn’t comment without reviewing the claims.

The school district “prioritizes working in collaboration with families to support our students and it is always our preferred method of support,” LeMonds said in a formal statement, adding:

MMSD must also prioritize the safety and well-being of every individual student who walks through its doors each day. It is with this focus [that] the district stands by its guidance document on transgender and non-binary students, and recognizes its tremendous responsibility to uphold the right of every child to be educated in a safe, all-inclusive, and nondiscriminatory learning environment.

The lawsuit calls for school officials to be transparent and honest when dealing with parents, and to meet standards of informed consent.

The 50-page affidavit from Levine says that multiple studies show that among children who experience gender dysphoria or transgender identification but do not socially transition, 80% to 98% “desisted,” or became comfortable with their biological sex, by young adulthood, according to Alliance Defending Freedom.

The affidavit also says that among boys “who engaged in a partial or complete social transition before puberty,” according to other data, fewer than 20% had desisted when surveyed at age 15 or older.

“It is profoundly unethical to reinforce a male child in his belief that he is not a boy (or a female child in her belief that she is not a girl), and it is particularly unethical to intervene in the normal physical development of a child to ‘affirm’ a ‘gender identity’ that is at odds with bodily sex,” Ryan T. Anderson, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email, adding:

To do any of this without parental involvement not only harms children but violates parental authority. Childhood and adolescence are difficult enough as it is. Adults should not corrupt the social ecology in which children develop a mature understanding of themselves as boys or girls on the pathway to becoming men or women.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

RELATED ARTICLES:

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Science, sex, and suicide

Court Ruling Protects a Transgender Child More Than Other Kids

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.