Tag Archive for: homosexuality

Virginia School District to Remove 14 Sexually Explicit Books from School Libraries

On Wednesday, Spotsylvania County Public Schools (SCPS) in Fredericksburg, Va. announced that it would be removing 14 books that “contain sexually explicit content and themes that are inappropriate for young persons” from the school district’s libraries. With the move, SCPS joins a growing list of school districts around the country that have opted to remove school library books that contain graphic sexual content amid a growing movement of parents decrying the availability of “pornographic” books to minors.

In a press release, SCPS Superintendent Mark Taylor cited a recent state law put in place in 2022 as the impetus for the removal of the books. “These books contain sexually explicit material which makes it clear there should be parental notification,” he said. “State law sets the definition. The only way we can guarantee they’re not available to students without parental permission is to remove them.”

The measure, championed by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R), requires that parents be notified of books available in school libraries that contain sexually explicit material.

According to an SCPS memorandum from Taylor provided to The Washington Stand, the 14 books marked for removal include: “All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto” by George Johnson; “Like a Love Story” by Abdi Nazemian; “Dime” by E. R. Frank; “Sold” by Patricia McCormick; “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Perez; “Beloved” by Toni Morrison; “America” by E. R. Frank; “Looking for Alaska” by John Green; “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky; “Water for Elephants” by Sarah Gruen; “Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe” by Preston Norton; “More Happy Than Not” by Adam Silvera; “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison; and “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult.

The memo goes on to note that the books on the removal list can still be assigned by teachers with parental permission.

In an attachment to the memo, a compilation of extractions of the explicit content from the books is listed. In many of the extractions, sexual encounters between minors as well as between adults are described in graphic detail. The content also includes hundreds of instances of profanity and crude references to sexual organs and other sexual terms, as well as racial and sexual orientation slurs, which are all notably prohibited from being uttered in most schools.

A growing movement of parents protesting sexually explicit books in school libraries has taken place across the country over the last few years, with parents voicing their concerns at school board meetings in New YorkTexasVirginiaAlabama, and Florida, among others. At recent board meetings in GeorgiaTexas, and Alaska, parents who read content from sexually explicit books were told to stop reading due to the graphic content, with a speaker in Florida being physically kicked out of a meeting for reading the content.

Lawmakers in a number of states are responding to parents’ concerns, as explicit books have been removed from school libraries in MissouriFloridaLoudoun County (Va.)Texas, and elsewhere.

Critics, as well as many legacy news outlets, claim that the removal of explicit books from school libraries amounts to a “book ban.” However, the SCPS press release notes that the 14 books on the removal list remain available at local public libraries if students wish to access them. The press release went on to state that copies of the books being removed “will be stored securely until arrangements can be made to donate them.” Superintendent Taylor’s memo recommends “that they be donated to the Central Rappahannock Regional Library or another public library system.”

Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, commended SCPS’s decisive action.

“It is great to see a school system take this issue seriously,” she told The Washington Stand. “Too often, school leaders delegate this task, or allow political pressure from activists to overwhelm the reasonable concerns of parents. To his great credit, Superintendent Taylor has removed books with sexually explicit content from school libraries. He will no doubt face hysterical accusations of the worst sort from LGBTQ activists, library associations, and publishing industry lobbyists.”

“Fortunately, most parents can understand that school libraries and public libraries serve different age ranges and that no child has an alleged ‘right to read’ explicit or pornographic content. Thanks to Spotsylvania County Public Schools, their school board members, and Superintendent Taylor for preserving childhood innocence and academic excellence,” Kilgannon concluded.

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

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‘Leave them kids alone’, sang Pink Floyd in 1979. Now it’s: ‘We’ll convert your children’

Parents need to wake up to the possibility of LGBTQ+ indoctrination.


February 2023 is the month where the LGBTQ+ juggernaut ramped up its attempt to convert our children and to destroy any notion that heterosexuality has a God-given beauty.

Let’s start with WorldPride 2023.

In the run-up to the global fleshfest (and you’ll see why I chose that word as you read on), several stories have enraged local residents in Sydney, and rightfully so.

Public pornography

The first was the “gay bear mural” of a large hairy, naked man, dressed in bondage straps, with a teddy bear’s head smiling at onlookers. This was strategically positioned near to Wynyard, one of Sydney’s central city stations. This is hardly an image a healthy society would want little city kids to stare at on their way to school.

Someone took matters into their own hands and painted over the controversial gay pride mural, daubing over it with the words “leave the kids alone”. Of course, Australia’s leading gay newspaper denounced the defacers as “homophobic vandals”, and yet I have several gay friends who tell me they believe it was a wholly inappropriate image.

The next case was multiple identical images spread across the city of Sydney. Created by @Scottie.Marsh, they were a play on the angel wings mural street art now found in most cities. This one wasn’t heavenly focussed but was crudely called #dickwings. It was made up of 124 images of penises compacted together instead of feathers.

The distributors of this perverted image did not forget about the children. Oh, no. They were painted low enough for toddlers and children to pose in a rainbow of phallic symbols, a picture for the family photo album. Yes, the words “Man’s Best Friend” were placed alongside the lower mural so as to get distributors out of trouble, claiming it was meant only for animals at that height, but my Sydney friends speak of kids being pressured into being photographed by reckless adults — just “as fun” of course. Quietly and subtly, the kids are converted.

If this isn’t indoctrination, what is?

Impressionable targets

“Leave them kids alone”: this is exactly what LGBTQ+ activists don’t want to do. Minors are unquestionably their focus.

The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus told us this brazenly through their “Message from the Gay Community” in their video “We’ll convert your children” in 2021. If you never read their lyrics, then just some of them are as follows:

You think that we’ll corrupt your kids
If our agenda goes unchecked
Funny, just this once, you’re correct

We’ll convert your children
Happens bit by bit
Quietly and subtlely
And you will barely notice it

Just like you worriеd
They’ll change their group of friеnds
You won’t approve of where they go at night
Oh, and you’ll be disgusted
When they start finding things online
That you’ve kept far from their sight

We’ll convert your children
Reaching one and all
There’s really no escaping it

Pink Floyd had had us all screaming “Teacher, leave them kids alone” in their classic hit, “Another Brick in the Wall”. That was 1979. Unacceptable then — now it’s all but mandatory, and nowhere more visible than through the falsely-named ‘Safe Schools’ pro-LGBTQ+ material sown throughout many Australian students’ schooling years.

The never-ending LGBTQ+ propaganda machine, which operates on the three stages of desensitisation, jamming and conversion, is outlined in Paul Rondeau’s famous article, Selling Homosexuality to America. Its penultimate paragraph is:

“Gay rights is not about the attainment of truth nor social justice but the achievement of power. The battle centers on the control of public discourse through marketing and persuasion, to shape what society thinks about and how they think about it. Homosexual activists envision that a decision is ultimately made without society ever realizing that it has been purposely conditioned to arrive at a conclusion that it thinks is its own.”

Our kids are being indoctrinated online by videos from drag queens like Trixie Mattel and Katya. One of their hundreds of videos has nearly 7 million views. Its topic is “Straight People”. The drag queens say:

“… backpedalling to the true monsters — the heterosexuals”

“straight people are gross”

“I think of the oppression that we escape as gay people, and I think of straight people living it forever.”

Sometimes we hear the excuse that anything the LGBTQI+ community does and says is permissible: “Sorry, can’t help it — I’m gay!”. But public displays of perversion, intolerance, bigotry and hatred cannot be justified because of a minority’s sexual feelings. It appears that LGBTQI+ activists don’t know how not to be overtly sexual and how not to distribute and celebrate depravity.

Stifling choice

Anthony “Albo” Albanese prides himself on being the first Australian prime minister to march in Sydney’s Mardi Gras, claiming to news cameras, “Everyone should be respected for who they are and tonight’s a celebration of that, and it’s a great example of what an amazing country this is.”

Everyone should be respected, Albo? What about the disrespect shown to traumatised same-sex attracted or gender dysphoric citizens who want to pursue proven, life-giving therapy (and prayer) which has already been banned in one territory and two of Australia’s six states, with the remaining four states possibly on the way unless parents and concerned others speak up now?

These laws disrespect same-sex attracted and gender dysphoric people and cause them grave harm. They are already leading to greater mental anguish in the lives of those who can no longer access services which previously for some have made the difference between living life and existing on the brink of death.

I end with news coming out of the UK, which often experiences events that swiftly land on Australian soil.

Dr Bernard Randall, 50, a school chaplain, at a private Christian high school, Trent College, in Nottingham, has been sacked for defending the right of his students to question the new LGBT policies which were enforced upon them.

The school authorities decided that his sermon was harmful to pupils and secretly reported him to the anti-terrorism Prevent programme — which normally identifies those at risk of radicalisation. Then they fired him.

“We will appeal, so it takes up yet more of my life,” he said. “But it is only one battle in the war to preserve free speech and the liberal values which built our country.”

Disagreement with LGBTQ+ policies is terrorism? Every parent, grandparent, and safeguarder of children should be speaking up. I can assure that this Orwellian intolerance is on the way. As a former gay activist, I see WorldPride 2023 as a World Attack on Heterosexuality 2023. Australia has little to be proud of after hosting this event.

AUTHOR

James Parker

James Parker was a gay rights’ activist. He now facilitates True Identity, an informal network that supports those struggling with sexuality & gender identity issues. More by James Parker

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

VIDEO: The mysterious power of an international transgender declaration that no one has ever heard of

Why are the Yogyakarta Principles so influential?


Russian feminist Anna Zobnina’s excellent summary of the Yogyakarta Principles at a recent seminar.

The reasons for the rapid conquest by transgender activists of the media, universities, government departments and woke corporations are mysterious. Is it cultural? Psychological? Philosophical? Legal?

Without being a complete explanation, one reason is widespread acceptance of the Yogyakarta Principles. Amnesty USA describes them as “a universal guide to applying international human rights law” to LGBT issues. A leading German NGO, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, describes them as “a groundbreaking document, extensively used since by human rights mechanisms and advocates” and Human Rights Watch has praised them as “a milestone for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender rights”.

America’s leading LGBT think tank, the Williams Institute at UCLA, says that “the Yogyakarta Principles are the primary document defining the application of international human rights law with respect to sexual orientation and gender identity.”

But despite scholarly journals often quoting these principles they are not recognised in international human rights law.

The Yogyakarta Principles, promulgated in 2006, addressed lesbian, gay and bisexual rights. In 2017, more principles to accommodate transgender rights were added. These are called the Yogyakarta Principles + 10.

You may have never heard of either document. But trans activists have turned them into powerful propaganda tools for transforming transgender rights into human rights. As an example, a recent submission by Amnesty Australia to a federal government inquiry into religious freedom quotes the Yogyakarta Principles over and over again.

The trouble is, they are not worth the paper they are written on.

The back story

The genesis of the Yogyakarta Principles is a horror story involving several key people, legal strategies and well-organised public relations events around the world, all designed to replace the term “sex” with “gender”.

The site of the first meeting in November 2006, Yogyakarta in Indonesia, was chosen because it was “south of the equator, in a Muslim majority country and in a jurisdiction ruled by a Sultan”. The co-chairs of the meeting were from Thailand and Brazil and representation was carefully selected from outside the West and Latin America, including individuals from Botswana, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Pakistan, South Africa, Thailand and Turkey. The participants came from only 25 countries.

The original document became the Yogyakarta Principles Plus 10 in 2017. Its new principles included gender expression, sex characteristics, sexual orientation and “gender identity”.

The 2017 document was signed by only 33 people.

Legally inconsequential

What is their legal status? They have none at all. They are just a Christmas shopping list for the transgender lobby.

The Principles have never been accepted by the United Nations. Attempts to make gender identity and sexual orientation new categories of non-discrimination have been repeatedly rejected by the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council and other UN bodies. In fact, a majority of members of the General Assembly opposed any reference to the Yogyakarta Principles as they are seen as being contradictory to the position of the UN Human Rights Council.

Despite its reputation in Australia, the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee has acknowledged that the Yogyakarta Principles have no statutory power in Australia. They have no binding effect in international human rights law either.

Compare this to the legal support that the international community has given to women. The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was adopted by the United Nations in 1979 and has been ratified by 189 states (the US being one notable exception).

Australia became a signatory of CEDAW in 1980, but the convention was further empowered by our federal legislature when it was incorporated in its entirety into the Commonwealth legislation enacted to protect and further the rights of women, the Sex Discrimination Act of 1984.

Feminists betrayed

Do feminists support the Yogyakarta Principles? No.

In fact, an international feminist group, the Women’s Human Rights Campaign (WHRC), which includes many well-known academics and feminist activists, is fiercely opposed to them. In their view, the principles are misogynistic and attempt “to make sex a defunct legal category.” The Yogyakarta Principles document is designed to replace “sex”, which is a scientific, biological fact, with “gender identity”, which is a socially constructed fiction, based largely on postmodernist rhetoric and identity politics.

They claim that the popularity of the document is a sign that “we are moving towards a society where sex does not exist”, especially for women and girls. They fear that acceptance of the Yogyakarta Principles will destroy the enormous gains made in past decades by the feminist movement.

Nor has the Yogyakarta Principles project had much popular support. It is largely coordinated by Allied Rainbow Communities, or ARC International (ARC), an NGO based in Canada. In her analysis of the Yogyakarta Principles, feminist Anna Zobnina notes that ARC is basically a lobby group, not an internationally representative organisation.

The WHRC Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights has been signed, as at September 9, by 11,772 individuals and 256 organisations from 119 countries. All supporters of the WHRC are listed on its Declaration page. It is quite transparent.

The ARC website is not transparent. Its latest accounts date from 2016, when it received $407,000 from “membership and donations” in 2016. It also received $275,000 from “foundations” and $71,000 from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.

The WHRC Facebook page has about 4,000 likes; the ARC page has about 2,500. The WHRC has representatives across at least 25 countries and was established only 18 months ago. The ARC was established 17 years ago.

What’s wrong with the Yogyakarta Principles?

In the Yogyakarta Principles “gender identity” is defined as:

Understanding “gender identity” to refer to each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender. Including dress, speech and mannerisms.

As noted by American human rights lawyer Tina Minkowitz, “gender itself is not defined, but is situated in relation to “sex assigned at birth”, with which a person’s internal experience of gender may or may not correspond” and the reference to “sex” is only to indicate that it does not refer to personality traits. “Sex” is not defined either.

Alarmingly, for everyone, “YP implicitly accepts a concept of gender as equivalent to stereotypes. When beliefs about mannerisms, dress and speech appropriate to one sex or the other are abstracted and made to serve as a ground for personal identity, they are shielded from challenge.”

This unravels decades of progress for feminists. The notion that an innate feeling can lead to a change in an individual’s sex status at birth, with the corresponding legal entitlements and access to spaces and places reserved for girls and women (including their sports), is a violation of the protections established over decades for women, beginning with CEDAW.

As Minkowitz further notes, “It is not gender identity that is being protected, but the substitution of internal identity for recorded sex, upon the request of any person”. The legitimisation of this process is simply creating new forms of discrimination against girls and women and is in conflict with CEDAW.

This is not to say that transgender people should not be protected, but replacing “sex” with “gender identity” not only erases sex as a category and girls and women as a class distinct from that of boys and men, but also erases girls’ and women’s human rights.

A significant, currently relevant, example of the consequences of these changes is given by Minkowitz. She states that women have “little reason to expect their rights will be protected, in (a) law and policy environment that treats their discussion of sex and gender as tantamount to hate speech”.

On the matter of “sex” and “gender”, the CEDAW Committee’s General Recommendation 28 emphasizes that changing one’s gender does not change an individual’s social positioning. Gender identity advocates are naïve to think this is possible; the ideological nature of their claims renders them as fictional as the postmodernist thinking upon which they are based.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are six fundamental criticisms of the Yogyakarta Principles and its “Plus 10” extensions:

  1. They were constructed by a few unelected, unrepresentative civil groups and individuals;
  2. They have never been adopted by the United Nations;
  3. They have no legal force either internationally or within Australia and were rejected by the Commonwealth legislature and the United Nations;
  4. The Yogyakarta Principles +10 principles were signed by just 33 people;
  5. They are often quoted misleadingly by members of parliament and trans lobby groups as though they had been adopted by UN resolution; and
  6. Their full implementation would effectively make “sex” a defunct legal category, replacing it by the ambiguous category of “gender”.

This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

COLUMN BY

Geoff Holloway

Dr Geoff Holloway writes from Hobart. He is a sociologist, poet, author, and Fado fan. His current research interests include domestic violence in Portugal, ecocentrism, Green politics, transgender politics,… 

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

Almost Everything the Media Tell You About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Is Wrong

A major new report, published today in the journal The New Atlantis, challenges the leading narratives that the media has pushed regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.

Co-authored by two of the nation’s leading scholars on mental health and sexuality, the 143-page report discusses over 200 peer-reviewed studies in the biological, psychological, and social sciences, painstakingly documenting what scientific research shows and does not show about sexuality and gender.

The major takeaway, as the editor of the journal explains, is that “some of the most frequently heard claims about sexuality and gender are not supported by scientific evidence.”

Here are four of the report’s most important conclusions:

The belief that sexual orientation is an innate, biologically fixed human property—that people are ‘born that way’—is not supported by scientific evidence.

Likewise, the belief that gender identity is an innate, fixed human property independent of biological sex—so that a person might be a ‘man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’—is not supported by scientific evidence.

Only a minority of children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood. There is no evidence that all such children should be encouraged to become transgender, much less subjected to hormone treatments or surgery.

Non-heterosexual and transgender people have higher rates of mental health problems (anxiety, depression, suicide), as well as behavioral and social problems (substance abuse, intimate partner violence), than the general population. Discrimination alone does not account for the entire disparity.

The report, “Sexuality and Gender: Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences,” is co-authored by Dr. Lawrence Mayer and Dr. Paul McHugh. Mayer is a scholar-in-residence in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and a professor of statistics and biostatistics at Arizona State University.

McHugh, whom the editor of The New Atlantis describes as “arguably the most important American psychiatrist of the last half-century,” is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and was for 25 years the psychiatrist-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was during his tenure as psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins that he put an end to sex reassignment surgery there, after a study launched at Hopkins revealed that it didn’t have the benefits for which doctors and patients had long hoped.

Implications for Policy

The report focuses exclusively on what scientific research shows and does not show. But this science can have implications for public policy.

The report reviews rigorous research showing that ‘only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood.’

Take, for example, our nation’s recent debates over transgender policies in schools. One of the consistent themes of the report is that science does not support the claim that “gender identity” is a fixed property independent of biological sex, but rather that a combination of biological, environmental, and experiential factors likely shape how individuals experience and express themselves when it comes to sex and gender.

The report also discusses the reality of neuroplasticity: that all of our brains can and do change throughout our lives (especially, but not only, in childhood) in response to our behavior and experiences. These changes in the brain can, in turn, influence future behavior.

This provides more reason for concern over the Obama administration’s recent transgender school policies. Beyond the privacy and safety concerns, there is thus also the potential that such policies will result in prolonged identification as transgender for students who otherwise would have naturally grown out of it.

The report reviews rigorous research showing that “only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood.” Policymakers should be concerned with how misguided school policies might encourage students to identify as girls when they are boys, and vice versa, and might result in prolonged difficulties. As the report notes, “There is no evidence that all children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior should be encouraged to become transgender.”

Beyond school policies, the report raises concerns about proposed medical intervention in children. Mayer and McHugh write: “We are disturbed and alarmed by the severity and irreversibility of some interventions being publicly discussed and employed for children.”

They continue: “We are concerned by the increasing tendency toward encouraging children with gender identity issues to transition to their preferred gender through medical and then surgical procedures.” But as they note, “There is little scientific evidence for the therapeutic value of interventions that delay puberty or modify the secondary sex characteristics of adolescents.”

Findings on Transgender Issues

The same goes for social or surgical gender transitions in general. Mayer and McHugh note that the “scientific evidence summarized suggests we take a skeptical view toward the claim that sex reassignment procedures provide the hoped for benefits or resolve the underlying issues that contribute to elevated mental health risks among the transgender population.” Even after sex reassignment surgery, patients with gender dysphoria still experience poor outcomes:

Compared to the general population, adults who have undergone sex reassignment surgery continue to have a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes. One study found that, compared to controls, sex-reassigned individuals were about five times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide.

Mayer and McHugh urge researchers and physicians to work to better “understand whatever factors may contribute to the high rates of suicide and other psychological and behavioral health problems among the transgender population, and to think more clearly about the treatment options that are available.” They continue:

In reviewing the scientific literature, we find that almost nothing is well understood when we seek biological explanations for what causes some individuals to state that their gender does not match their biological sex. … Better research is needed, both to identify ways by which we can help to lower the rates of poor mental health outcomes and to make possible more informed discussion about some of the nuances present in this field.

Policymakers should take these findings very seriously. For example, the Obama administration recently finalized a new Department of Health and Human Services mandate that requires all health insurance plans under Obamacare to cover sex reassignment treatments and all relevant physicians to perform them. The regulations will force many physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers to participate in sex reassignment surgeries and treatments, even if doing so violates their moral and religious beliefs or their best medical judgment.

Rather than respect the diversity of opinions on sensitive and controversial health care issues, the regulations endorse and enforce one highly contested and scientifically unsupported view. As Mayer and McHugh urge, more research is needed, and physicians need to be free to practice the best medicine.

Stigma, Prejudice Don’t Explain Tragic Outcomes

The report also highlights that people who identify as LGBT face higher risks of adverse physical and mental health outcomes, such as “depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and most alarmingly, suicide.” The report summarizes some of those findings:

Members of the non-heterosexual population are estimated to have about 1.5 times higher risk of experiencing anxiety disorders than members of the heterosexual population, as well as roughly double the risk of depression, 1.5 times the risk of substance abuse, and nearly 2.5 times the risk of suicide.

Members of the transgender population are also at higher risk of a variety of mental health problems compared to members of the non-transgender population. Especially alarmingly, the rate of lifetime suicide attempts across all ages of transgender individuals is estimated at 41 percent, compared to under 5 percent in the overall U.S. population.

What accounts for these tragic outcomes? Mayer and McHugh investigate the leading theory—the “social stress model”—which proposes that “stressors like stigma and prejudice account for much of the additional suffering observed in these subpopulations.”

But they argue that the evidence suggests that this theory “does not seem to offer a complete explanation for the disparities in the outcomes.” It appears that social stigma and stress alone cannot account for the poor physical and mental health outcomes that LGBT-identified people face.

One study found that, compared to controls, sex-reassigned individuals were about five times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide.

As a result, they conclude that “More research is needed to uncover the causes of the increased rates of mental health problems in the LGBT subpopulations.” And they call on all of us work to “alleviate suffering and promote human health and flourishing.”

Findings Contradict Claims in Supreme Court’s Gay Marriage Ruling

Finally, the report notes that scientific evidence does not support the claim that people are “born that way” with respect to sexual orientation. The narrative pushed by Lady Gaga and others is not supported by the science. A combination of biological, environmental, and experiential factors likely account for an individual’s sexual attractions, desires, and identity, and “there are no compelling causal biological explanations for human sexual orientation.”

Furthermore, the scientific research shows that sexual orientation is more fluid than the media suggests. The report notes that “Longitudinal studies of adolescents suggest that sexual orientation may be quite fluid over the life course for some people, with one study estimating that as many as 80 percent of male adolescents who report same-sex attractions no longer do so as adults.”

These findings—that scientific research does not support the claim that sexual orientation is innate and immutable—directly contradict claims made by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in last year’s Obergefell ruling. Kennedy wrote, “their immutable nature dictates that same-sex marriage is their only real path to this profound commitment” and “in more recent years have psychiatrists and others recognized that sexual orientation is both a normal expression of human sexuality and immutable.”

But the science does not show this.

While the marriage debate was about the nature of what marriage is, incorrect scientific claims about sexual orientation were consistently used in the campaign to redefine marriage.

In the end, Mayer and McHugh observe that much about sexuality and gender remains unknown. They call for honest, rigorous, and dispassionate research to help better inform public discourse and, more importantly, sound medical practice.

As this research continues, it’s important that public policy not declare scientific debates over, or rush to legally enforce and impose contested scientific theories. As Mayer and McHugh note, “Everyone—scientists and physicians, parents and teachers, lawmakers and activists—deserves access to accurate information about sexual orientation and gender identity.”

We all must work to foster a culture where such information can be rigorously pursued and everyone—whatever their convictions, and whatever their personal situation—is treated with the civility, respect, and generosity that each of us deserves.

COMMENTARY BY

Ryan T. Anderson

Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation, where he researches and writes about marriage, bioethics, religious liberty and political philosophy. Anderson is the author of several books and his research has been cited by two U.S. Supreme Court justices in two separate cases. Read his Heritage research.

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That is why it is our mission to ensure you receive accurate, timely, and reliable facts impacting our society today. Culture wars dominate the news, and for good reason.

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‘The Sexual Revolution’ Gave Us ‘the Rape Culture’

By Judith Gelernter Reisman and Mary E. McAllister

CNN’s The Hunting Ground has won critical acclaim from filmmakers, winning the Stanley Kramer award from the Producers Guild of America while garnering criticism from Ivy League elites who worry that their reputations are being sullied by the depiction of a “rape culture” on their campuses (Harvard Crimson). That, in turn, has prompted a response from students in the form of a discrimination complaint under the Federal anti-discrimination law known as Title IX.

The attention that The Hunting Ground has attracted raises the question, “has it always been so on college campuses?”

VIDEO: Trailer The Hunting Ground.

Even radical sexologists such as Prof. Ira Reiss have to admit that it has not. Reiss reports that unmarried WWII 18-22 year-old Army lads were largely “still virgins.” Even Hugh Hefner was a college virgin at age 22. Dutch “sexperts” Drs. Kronhausens’ 1960 survey revealed, “The average modern college man is apt to say that he considers intercourse “too precious” to have with anyone except the girl he expects to marry and may actually abstain from all intercourse for that reason.” (p. 219). However, by the 1970s youth were generally sexually radicalized–once normalized, most thought unwed sex was “natural.”

How did this transformation occur? A brief chronology shows the historical context:

1950: “Age Disparity (Relations Involving One Adult) …. [P]ersons under the age of 7 are legally regarded as not responsible….but many are by endowment and training fully capable of….responsibility for sexual behavior.”

Manfried Guttmacher, Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP).

1953: “The cultural tendency to overprotect women and children [is] often…more detrimental to the…victim than the offense itself….Kinsey’s findings…permeate all present thinking on this subject.” The Illinois Commission on Sex Offenders

1955: “Despite the indication that 12 is…the onset of puberty….it is known that significant numbers of girls enter the period of sexual awakening as early as the tenth year.” Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry; the ALI, Model Penal Code

1983: “[T]he older term “rape” was fraught with negative emotion and [is] unrealistic for this era. . . . [T]he female is [not] … harmed in some unique way by untoward sexual behavior.” C. Nemeth, How New Jersey Prosecutors View the New Sexual Offense Statutes; N.J. Law Journal.

Fast forward from a Hugh Hefner as a 22 year old virgin to today, where high-profile college and professional athletes like Tim Tebow and Russell Wilson are ridiculed for announcing they will abstain from sex until they are married. Does this contempt for virginity reflect somehow a kind of “sexual exploitation pedagogy” of esteemed professors and administrators? And how have these prestigious graduates of a sexploitive pedagogy affected society? Have elitist sex abuse fantasies evolved into ideology, seeping into leading minds of the legal, political, educational, legislative, religious, scientific, medical, justice, law enforcement, entertainment, etc. worlds? And is pornography in university offices and dorms seeding its widespread sexual ideology?

Statistics tell the story. Roughly 80% of college men and 34% of co-eds use porn on campus or off, sanctioned by “free speech” Harvard professors and administrators—that’s campus sex culture! And, ominously, Data4Justice documents many “professors and staff…arrested for trading in brutal child sex abuse, including of infants.”

From University of Virginia’s Assistant Dean, Michael Morris downloading infant anal rape to Kirk Nesset, creative writing professor at Allegheny College with over 500,000 videos/images including” rape of infants. Professors and staff are involved in child sex trafficking….Since 2015 August, at least two professors per week have been arrested, arraigned or sentenced.”

Moreover, FBI’s Joseph Campbell says “the level of pedophilia is unprecedented right now.” A “survey of high school graduates” found 13.5% had sex with a teacher. If some administrators and professors are viewing child rape on campus computers does this become an intellectualization of a “rape culture”? A 2014 op-ed by Yale Professor Jed Rubenfeld, drew heated objections from Yale Law Students. He reminds our largely historically ignorant populace of the fallout following the nostalgic 1969 “Woodstock” “sexual revolution”.

It’s part of the revolution in sexual attitudes and college sex codes that has taken place over the last 50 years. Not long ago, nonmarital sex on college campuses was flatly suppressed. Sex could be punished with suspension or expulsion….Rape was a matter for the police, not the university. Beginning in the late 1960s however, sex on campus increasingly came to be permitted….The problem then became how to define consent.[Emphasis added]

So almost three generations ago, youth were lied to (read Dr. Reisman’s books for details) and persuaded that the WWII generation were closet sexual adventurers. This belief in their parental hypocrisy (see, The Graduate, 1967) helped youth reject the American legacy of sex restrictions in exchange for “sex drugs ‘n rock-n-roll.” Since then, each subsequent generation has been increasingly sexually permissive. Sexpert ideologues now teach sex to children in school, videos, social media, film, novels, text books, even pulpits while “every five days, a police officer in America is caught engaging in sexual abuse or misconduct.” And sexual victimization of males occurs in the military today, not just in prisons. Well over 14,000 in 2012, “[a]ccording to the Pentagon, thirty-eight military men are sexually assaulted every single day.  So, it’s not just more reporting. Is it possible pornography is training a rape culture?

Meanwhile, back at Harvard, nineteen Law Professors posted an irate protest of CNN’s portrayal of the sexualized campuses as a “rape culture.” Their most illustrious professorial signatory is Prof. Laurence Tribe, an admitted plagiarizer, who taught American Legal History to Obama and two Supreme Court Justices. Tribe apparently is inexcusably ignorant of, or deliberately hiding, the worst child sex crimes and frauds in American Legal History—of pedophile Prof. Alfred Kinsey of Indiana University, the “father of the sexual revolution.” American past and present sexual law was revolutionized based upon experiments on up to 2,035 children raped and tortured for alleged “orgasms” published in Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) Kinsey, a sadistic obsessive masturbating pedophile and pornography addict was the scientific authority for these disastrous changes. His Tables 30-34 record the worst, unprosecuted, infant andchild sexual experimentation ever conducted in American Legal History, (Reisman, 2013)

By 1952 Herbert Wechsler’s Harvard Law Review article relied on Kinsey’s sex tome to justify liberalizing all sex laws. By 1955 Wechsler, chief author of the first-ever American Law Institute Model Penal Code (MPC), reported that sex protections for females were onerous for men. The new, innovative MPC argued that reduction of sex crime required more sexual freedom, lighter penalties, parole, and tax paid therapy for all sex criminals. Under Wechsler the neoteric MPC proposed age ten for consent as her “seductive” conduct might push men to rape. Kinsey claimed of 4,441 female interviewees none was really injured by a sexual assault, hence the Kinsey-MPC plan was to eliminate “unrealistic” rape and statutory rape laws. No rape harm, no need for rape laws! With this “cultural” pedagogy promoted by our prestigious legal lights and backed by Kinseyan “sex science” our legacy would inevitably be a “rape culture”—rape on college campuses, middle schools, libraries, bedrooms, barrooms, church pews, court rooms, etc. Be careful what you ask for. After the MPC advised a lowered age of consent (to allow “peer” sex), as Reisman documents, America’s legislatures and courts loosened state laws that had favored women (harsh laws against rape, adultery, child sex abuse, incest) and eased criminal penalties for sex offenders in more than two-thirds of U.S. states.

Wechsler and others used Kinsey’s alleged “sex science” to justify these actions and claims such as “[t]he cultural tendency to overprotect women and children [is] often…more detrimental to the…victim than the offense itself… Kinsey’s findings … permeate all present thinking on this subject.” Recall, until Kinsey, society allowed “the marital act” only in the “institution” of marriage, severely limiting even “fun consensual” fornication.Morris Ploscowe wrote, in the 1948 “Pre-Kinsey era” three states gave mandatory death sentences for rape—nineteen states provided the death penalty, life, or very long terms. Twenty-eight states gave the rapist 20 years or more, and one 15 years or more. Post-Kinsey’s “data” stated that 95 percent of men were already sex offenders and most women were promiscuous, or wanted to be. According to Ploscowe, justification for strict rape, child abuse or obscenity law was largely old fashioned.

How many millions of college lassies were spared disease, pregnancy, heartbreak, rape, suicide even homicide by such “old fashioned” ideas?

Now, trained by these elite academics and since “tween-age” by media such as Cosmopolitan magazine (be a “fun, fearless female”– booze up and hook-up), millions of Cosmo followers reveal how well they have learned by accepting or appearing in student pornography magazines such as Harvard’s “Diamond” launched in 2004. At least 10 American universities followed suit, featuring nude photo-spreads of ordinary students. Dozens more host “sex events,” such as naked parties at Yale, “sex week” at Tufts or “Outdoor Intercourse Day” at Western Washington University. Other examples include photographs of half-naked gay couples at the University of Chicago, Squirm at Vassar and, arguably, the most explicit, Boink….College Guide to Carnal Knowledge at Boston University.

Elitist administrators, perhaps some of those who complained about The Hunting Ground, award free speech funds and/or advocate for abusive porn events. Yale graduate Nathan Harden reports on “Sex Week” at Yale, recruiting naïve students into today’s vicious sexploitation. Here “porn stars and sex industry CEOs are invited on campus for a marathon of sex-related film screenings, seminars, and product demonstrations — all sanctioned by the university as ‘sex education.’” Harden notes that the university polity (steeped in the sex-saturated, rape culture they deplore yet breed) no longer understand the reason for education.

This is an unanticipated cost of the ‘60’s sexual revolution along with an explosion of inventive, barbaric sex crimes against women, children, even infants, and increased recidivism.

Some academic elites are waking up. Feminist lawyer and former Democratic presidential Campaign Manager for Michael Dukakis (1988), Susan Estrich was perplexed by the MPC influence on rape laws. She wondered at the “fresh complaint” clause that said, “a complaint must be filed within three months,” if the crime were sexual. This clause had not been part of America’s Common Law. Moreover, now that liberal lawyers were in charge, only “if serious bodily injury is inflicted” would rape be a “first degree felony.”

Moreover, noted Estrich, the lawyerly libidos had new rules for rape. If the victim had a “racy” past she might be classed as a “prostitute.” Therefore, even when she was the victim of a “gang” or fraternity “group” rape, the guilty predator might be cleared of the crime. These and other new laws followed on Kinsey’s claims that rape was a harmless, natural and normal reaction to seductive females (by age 10). Also, the New York Times reported, March 8, 1949, Kinsey had proven that not more than 5 percent of arrestees cause any real damage and thus sex offense laws had no function other than to preserve custom.

Today—60 years later, the same Ivy League Schools are embroiled in controversy regarding the “rape culture” they helped create through training students, lawyers, judges, politicians and legislators in Kinseyan pansexuality and the MPC. Many of these 2nd generation learned professors are now signatories on letters protesting claims that there is a rape culture caused by the very sexual revolution they helped institute on campus.

For a truly touching video on the reality of the damage done to all by the elites’ promotion of the sexual revolution, do take time to view former porn “star” Shelley Lubben’s reverential video, Dead Porn Stars Memorial.

Judith Gelernter Reisman, PhD 

Research Professor, Director Liberty Child Protection Center, Liberty University School of Law

Mary E. McAlister, Esq.

Senior Litigation Counsel, Liberty Counsel

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EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on Breitbart.com.

The new Sex Ed: Contributing to the Deliquency of a Minor

“We’ve come a long way, baby!” Education matters little if children learn in the classroom to engage in multiple partner, “normal” as well as more “deviant” forms of sex. A massive number will be and are permanently damaged, drinking, drugging, depressed and suicidal.

So moving deviance right along, June 26, 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas the U.S. Supremes proved this besotted disconnect with reality, history, literature, religion, by legalizing same-sex sodomy. Within three short years sodomy has emerged as a schoolhouse athletic “hazing” ritual boys sodomizing boys—but with adult coach oversight.

We really must turn off the pornography in the locker room—indeed everywhere.

ATHLETIC SODOMY SEX ED

According to press reports, Maine Township High School District 207 Cook County, Illinois was involved in the 2008 sodomy of a boy by his baseball teammates as their coach observed—the same coach oversaw a 2012 varsity soccer team sodomize other boysallegedly called,hazing. One Maine local claimed, sexual abuse has been occurring as part of rituals at the school for as long as six years.” And just where could these high school lads and their coach(s)? learn that sodomy was average ho ho macho behavior?

“Contributing to the delinquency of a minor”: “Any action by an adult that allows or encourages illegal behavior by a person under the age of 18, or that places children in situations that expose them to illegal behavior.

And in Washington State on June 14, 2012, during a sex education class,” the Onalaska Elementary School principal proffered graphic descriptions of oral and anal sex. The “11-year-old students were being given a lesson on HIV-AIDS” part of the “state-adopted curriculum, facts with “no demonstrations.” “The district leader told Seattle’s Q-13 Fox News. “It’s pretty difficult to talk about STDs or sexually transmitted diseases without explaining what that is, or how it’s transmitted.” Right. Hence kiddie sodomy ed everywhere.

THE GOOD ‘OL DAYS MARRIAGE ED

In the old days (pre-Kinsey’s “sexual revolution”) most current forms of “sex education” were criminal, as “contributing to the delinquency of a minor. That is, talking about sex in front of a minor (someone, commonly under age 18) or, gracious, showing immature souls images of sex or sexy images! Who but a sex deviant would do that? Precisely.

Encouraging any kind of sex activity (lone or with others), well, that was inexcusable, immoral, egregious, shameful and yes, criminal. For, who didn’t understand that children’s brains, minds, and memories should be devoted to education, Shakespeare, mathematics, Latin, our Constitution, the Federalist Papers, learning the heritage of our pastif they would grow and govern our future wisely. Everyone recognized sex as confusing and arousing even to adults. Historically and coss-culturally, sex diverted somber thinking.

Post WWII, commonly in hygiene classes, schoolchildren learned the marital bed was where marriage was consummated, and, in single sex classes, students studied the biology of conception and for girls, the menstrual cycle. Seniors learned that a marriage license required that the boy and girl pass the state tests for the two known venereal diseases (syphilis and gonorrhea). And, oh yes, this instruction was largely normal for public school youths of all races and religions. Abortion (illegal and abhorrent) was rare enough to disdain comment, hence condoms, similarly beyond the pale, were not needed. Sodomy might appear in someone’s religious studies referencing Sodom and Gomorrah.

AND NOW, PLASTIC WRAP OR TIN FOIL SEX ED

Now, good reader, I’ll tell you a true story about children and sex and the predatory malice of what passes today for “sex education.”

It was circa 1991 and I had just finished my Education conference lecture when a youngster, about 14-years-of age, approached me with anxiety written all over her sweet face.

“Dr. Reisman,” she whispered, “could I speak to you for a moment?”

“Of course, dear” I replied, wondering exactly how I would handle the child’s question.

Moving me slightly to one side, so no one else could hear, the girl, let’s call her “Sandy,” said, “Dr. Reisman, I have a question about what you were discussing.” (I quickly thought back to my presentation and was quite sure I hadn’t said anything too advanced or graphic for anyone. I saw she was catching her breath.)

“Our teacher told us that we can use Saran Wrap in case we don’t have a condom,” she said and stopped.

“Well, sweetie, I didn’t say anything in my lecture today about condoms, but I certainly do not want you or any other unmarried youngster having sex, and that would eliminate the need for a condom,” I replied, as gently as I could.

“Well, yes, I know,” said Sandy. “But you see, I’m not asking for myself” she added quickly, “I’m asking for my friend.”

“Honey,” I murmured, “I think you misunderstood your teacher. She couldn’t have said to use Saran Wrap if you don’t have a condom. That is insane, you must have misunderstood.”

“No, I didn’t” Sandy insisted. “But that isn’t my friends question,” she said quickly. “I mean, if we don’t have Saran Wrap, can we use tin foil instead?”

Tin foil! Poor, mislead child.

I cannot recall the lecture I gave poor Sandy, one of millions of young victims of early pre sodomy ed. However, I thought, how clear is it that children should never hear psychotic, deviant sex tales wrapped in the mantle of bogus “education?They haven’t the experience, the maturity, the frontal cognition, to understand the powerful significance of sex. They can only “learn” it as the teacher tells it just as they’d learn grammar, math or geography—bad sex information is processed instantly of course and it is imprinted in the young, undeveloped brain, forever.

I was sure Sandy misunderstood the foolish and toxic teacher. After all the noise about using condoms properly as “protection,” who would recommend Saran Wrap?

Returning home I found out who—sex educators. Sitting on my desk was a 1991 New York Centers for Disease Control brochure: “THE TEENAGERS BILL OF RIGHTS “I have the right to decide

whether to have sex and who to have it with.” This illegal and immoral claim was graced by graphic directions for the poor children who received its medically fraudulent, infection and pregnancy/abortion productive brochure. Pardon my explicit language below, but this was 1991 and middle school children are exposed to worse today:

“Use a latex condom for…oral sex (penis into the mouth) and anal sex (penis into the butt).” Sandy was correct, except there was no product name, just plastic wrap. The sex brochure pictorially demonstrated: “Use a dental dam… an unrolled condom cut down one side or plastic wrap for oral sex…[I have sanitized here re:] her fluids in your mouth.” This was produced and distributed by The Division of AIDS Services, under the auspices of the N.Y. City Department of Health. How many abortions, venereal diseases, attempted suicides, or suicides, etc., and general tragedies this little leaflet produced among the children who believed it is not data released by the CDC or the Department of Health.

DEPRAVED INDIFFERENCE?

Does this brochure and the hundreds similar, constitute a case for “Depraved Indifference”? This legal violation requires that “the defendant’s conduct must be ‘so wanton, so deficient in a moral sense of concern, so lacking in regard for the life or lives of others, and so blameworthy as to warrant the same criminal liability as that which the law imposes upon a person who intentionally causes a crime. Depraved indifference focuses on the risk created by the defendant’s conduct, not the injuries actually resulting.”

The Maine West High School habit of sodomizing young baseball and soccer players constitutes Depraved Indifference, as well as criminal child sexual abuse and a broad spectrum of similar crimes, What punishment will be meted out to the adults involved and what repairs for these emotionally, physically and “orientationally” violated boys?

THE ANSWERS?! MORE PEDO-GROOMING SEX ED AND CRIMINALIZATION OF REPARATIVE THERAPY FOR “ORIENTATIONALLY” DAMAGED CHILDREN

This brings us to a November 30 article in WorldNetDaily by my friend and colleague, Liberty university attorney Matt Barber who writes:

In recent months, “progressive” lawmakers, activist attorneys and militant homosexual pressure groups have launched a fierce campaign to ban therapeutic help for child victims of monsters like homosexual pedophile Jerry Sandusky. California has already passed such a law (SB 1172). On Friday, Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver challenged this twisted ban in federal court, seeking a preliminary injunction to halt the law from taking effect on Jan. 1.

I view SB 1172 as a pederast-protection policy. This is designed to prohibit the young victims of same-sex sodomy, traumatized and often thereby homosexualized, from receiving the same therapy available to any female victim of heterosexual rape.

The Reisman-Johnson 1995 study of the leading mainstream homosexual periodical, The Advocate found their upscale reader respondents self-report (August 23, 1994) as 21% claiming they were “sexually abused by an adult, by age 15” (p. 20). These findings are confirmed, reports Barber, by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) research that “gay” men are “at least three times more likely to report CSA (childhood sexual abuse),” while The Archives of Sexual Behavior determined in a 2001 study that nearly half of all “gay”-identified men were molested by a homosexual pedophile: “46 percent of homosexual men and 22 percent of homosexual women reported having been molested by a person of the same gender” versus 7 percent of heterosexual men and 1 percent of heterosexual women reporting having been molested by a person of the same gender.”

Barber concludes, “The connection between homosexual abuse and “gay identity” is undeniable.” Legalizing same-sex sodomy clearly, and logically, will have intensified such pederast abuse leading to a backlash by pederast groups to forbid reparative therapy.

Moreover, denial is the road most taken by academicians. Rodney Erickson, Ph.D., the new president of Penn State, delivered welcoming remarks to attendees at the very first Penn State Child Sexual Abuse Conference Oct. 29-30. Erickson assumed the presidency Nov. 9, 2011, after the disgraced Graham Spanier was forced to resign as president following exposure of his foreknowledge of Coach Jerry Sandusky’s infamous pederastic rapes of young boys.

The October conference speakers ignored the infamous child sex abuse Penn State network.I never heard the names of former “Coach Sandusky” or “President Spanier” mentioned by a single carefully vetted Penn State child sex abuse speaker. Nor was there a mention of The Second Mile, the nonprofit charity founded by Sandusky & Co. –for local underprivileged and at-risk youth. The speeches are on the Internet, so if someone noted these names or events when I sneezed, kindly email those citations to me.

Before leaving pedophile and pederast perversions I want to mention what I call the state mandated pedo-grooming programs euphemistically and deliberately mistitled “sex education,” There is indeed a federal, FBI supported Anti-Grooming law that, objectively, criminalizes most of the “comprehensive sex ed” described earlier. Child molesters:

  • Lower the sexual inhibitions of children.
  • Demonstrate, teach or instruct on how to masturbate, oral sex and/or engage in sexual intercourse.
  • Desensitize children to sex. Offenders often show child pornography to their intended victims.
  • Offenders commonly use pornographic images of other children to arouse victims.

Says Barber, “Graphic sexual images and explicit “values neutral” talk of sex and sexuality are rampant throughout classrooms across America, effectively desensitizing children and numbing their natural inhibitions. These inhibitions help protect children from potential predators.

The normalization of pederasty, the “need” to lower the age of consent and eliminate “stigma” against molesters is on the fast track to success. Remember, you read it here.

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Finland Moves to Repeal Gay Marriage Law

With a new pro-family government elected this year, the “gay marriage” battle is gearing up across Finland again with more energy and momentum than ever, using Finnish language versions of MassResistance materials to educate voters.

New Finnish version of MassResistance booklet (read it here), and original version (read it here).

Late last year, as we reported, the Finnish Parliament narrowly passed a “gay marriage” law. As we’ve seen in so many other places, proponents used an aggressive, undemocratic strategy that allowed no parliamentary debate, discussion, or amendments to push the bill through its final stages. Within a week, over 12,000 people had resigned from the Finnish Lutheran Church over its Bishop’s pro-gay marriage remarks.

But last April’s nationwide elections changed the political landscape. A new Parliament was elected.  The top people in government are openly pro-traditional marriage. As a result, the Finnish pro-family movement has ignited across the country to get the bill repealed. Over 70,000 people have already signed a special petition to get it before the Parliament. And to counter the “gay” propaganda, they are out educating the population and the political leaders about the consequences of “gay marriage” for society.


The Finnish pro-family movement is gathering thousands of signatures to force Parliament to re-visit the “gay marriage” law.

MassResistance materials

MassResistance materials are being used extensively. Last month Finnish activists finished creating a Finnish-language version of our booklet “What same-sex ‘marriage’ has done to Massachusetts.”  It is being distributed across the country and to the nation’s political leaders.  Our video, “What gay ‘marriage’ did to Massachusetts” is being shown on national TV translated into Finnish, Swedish, and Estonian.

MassResistance same-sex marriage VIDEO modified for Finland
Posted on Finnish TV site and broadcast on Finnish national TV. Versions in Finnish, Swedish, and Estonian.

During July, one of the coalition leaders emailed us on their progress:

We are so thankful what you have been doing to support us in this battle. Homoseksual lobby is claiming that this issue is settled, but it is not over, for we have a very good chance to defeat them.

Now your booklet is finally translated into Finnish language and is ready for the distribution. We are going to hand it out free of charge all over this country. We’ve also added a few additional pages in the beginning and at the end of this publication to apply your message specifically to our setting here.

We are now working to inform our Prime Minister, his government and the Parliament as well as all church leaders and all leaders, what is really involved in this same-sex marriage. We are mailing your booklet to all of them and after that, all over Finland so much as possible, to wake up the whole nation.  I will let you know how our leaders respond to this campaign. Your publication will support also a new nation wide effort by www.aitoavioliitto.fi association to stop the same-sex marriage legislation.

People have been very much touched by your video, which is in three TV7 Channels – In Finnish language, Swedish and Estonian. It has already stirred up large multitude and we believe that the additional impact will come over this whole nation.

They are clearly gaining momentum.

Breath of fresh air. New Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila is not afraid to say he supports traditional marriage. But will he act on it?

Latest report from the front

Just this morning we received this updated report from the Finnish pro-family leader. (Note his comment that the Minister of Justice is not cooperating with enforcement of the “gay marriage” law. We need more of that spirit here in the US!)

Yes, set up is quite favorable for our cause.

(1) The Prime minister Juha Sipilä, the Foreign minister Timo Soini, the Minister of Justice Jari Lindström and several others are – as far as their personal opinion is concerned – for the traditional marriage standing with us.  How forcefully they are willing to persuade their parties to stand with them – that is one of the questions now!

(2) The Minister of Justice, Jari Lindström has set up his mind not to carry on – not to workout – not to confirm legislation concerning the same-sex marriage. Finnish media is quite mad with him.

(3) People defending the traditional marriage between one woman and one man – they are campaigning to defeat the same-sex marriage – foolish voting done in the parliament. Up to this date well over 70.000 have rallied behind us in this aitoavioliitto.fi campaign.

However, according to statistics there are in Finland about 3.000.000 who personally are for the traditional marriage, but most of them think – it does not matter what happens – it does not affect me. They do not understand how serious it is to legislate the same-sex marriage. Your video and booklet is wonderfully stirring up sleeping ones. My personal target is especially the men and women in high position, those who do have the authority to make the final decision concerning this matter.

(4) Our greatest obstacle is the media! Media is by and large for the homosexual lobby. Media is ‘brain washing’ multitudes with false information. The whole nation and political leaders have been programmed by the media – unfortunately!

(5) The second problem is our situation in Finland. We are part of the European Union and our previous governments have shoveled most of the money to outsiders, especially to Greece. Financial problems, unemployment and various kinds of difficulties are heavily resting upon our ministers and they do not have time to put themselves to see what we say.

However, due to this aitoavioliitto.fi campaign – our parliament has to reconsider what we say. They are bound to take it again to the legislative committee and for general voting in the parliament.

Consequently, the government ministers, the members of our parliament, the media – these are key factors to determine what happens. The final result depends on what they do.

All over Finland there is a large prayer campaign going on to stop and to defeat the homosexual movement. Homosexual lobby is rallying little children to march with them in Pride Parades waving the rainbow flags. We trust that the sensible part of our population could wake up and get upset of that ‘sexual force feeding’!

I will let you know what happens when the parliament is reconsidering our aitoavioliitto.fi demand. You could see the campaign webpage www.aitoavioliitto.fi and my personal campaign page www.suomijeesukselle.fi  Your materials, links to see them and to read them are posted in my campaign webpage www.suomijeesukselle.fi  Thank you for standing together with us and providing your materials to support us in this worldwide battle to uphold traditional & Christian family values.

The petition has until September to collect names. Given the change in government after the recent election — and the momentum across the country to reverse the “gay marriage” law forced on citizens — it’s possible that the challenge could be taken up in Parliament this fall. Or maybe sooner?

In any case, it will be a big battle!  We’ll keep you informed.

Oh What Times We Live In

Throughout the annals of history, these are most certainly times that not only try men’s souls but are also rendering everything that is good to the back of the bus.  It is bad enough that people do wrong.  Human beings have been committing evil deeds ever since Eve was duped by Satan and then convinced Adam (who knew better) to partake in an activity they should not have.  Thus the ongoing war between good and evil was on and the rest is history.

When Arab Islamic Muslims first enslaved Africans hundreds of years before the first European explorers began to purchase African slaves from the Muslims, there was an equal and opposite effort that eventually arose.  The brutality of slavery was eventually seen by millions of British and United States citizens as an evil that had to be extinguished.

When the church and the king of England both became obsessed with power over the people, some British subjects said enough is enough and sought to find land where they could worship the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob in peace and tranquility.  Out of their disdain for the ongoing abuses in the land of the Union Jack was born the Christian based belief in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

There are many including yours truly, who believes that the United States was meant to be the supreme opposite of what has been an ongoing system of survival of the fittest enduring the brutal boot heel of tyrannical governments.  America once stood out, because she was refreshingly different. Her numerous foundational documents ranging from The Articles of Confederation to the Bill of rights paved an inspired path toward greatness.  That path benefited both individuals who sought to engage in the bountiful opportunities availing themselves and the government that built into it’s foundational doctrines the recognition of the God given unalienable rights that come from him.

In more recent times, the late great President Ronald Reagan represented a stunning and invigorating contrast to the malaise of his inept predecessor, President Jimmy Carter.  Reagan refused to appease our republic’s adversaries.  He also fought to roll back the economy stifling regulations that had beaten our economy into submission.

As “We the People” prepare to choose the next leader of the free world, let us take into consideration the importance of picking someone who represents being different.  In other words,  America can no longer thrive as a great nation with leadership that is hell bent on dragging her down a path that not only inhibits economic prosperity, but also places her in mortal danger.  Let us not forget there are many who would like nothing more than to rid the world of the one nation that has been an impediment to global despots who believe that forcing people to live as they say to exist or suffer the consequences.

Millions of Christians, black Africans and many others have been murdered by Muslim groups like the Islamic Stat for the sport of it, primarily because of the accommodating (or worse) approach of the current United States administration.  One of the things that New Zealand author and orator Trevor Loudon has been doing for quite some time is crisscrossing the United States for a number of years reminding Americans of our nations place of greatness and how much the world (including his nation) of New Zealand depends on this beacon of light republic.  We are at an absolute crossroads.  The time has arrived for us to return America to our God ordained position of greatness and beacon of hope to the world.  Or we can slink away into oblivion on our nation’s current slide toward second tier status, leaving the world including our allies to try and do their best to overcome challenges posed by dedicated Muslims and traditional tyrannical enemies like China and Russia.   While these are certainly the times that try men’s souls that is no reason why we as Americans have to give in or give up, because of the horrific challenges.  I challenge everyone who cares about America to join in the fight for the future generations of this republic.  If we don’t act now, it will soon be too late.  Do you want to have to tell your children and grandchildren that our nation ended up on the ash heap of history because you didn’t want to make waves or stand for the proven principles that made our nation the envy of the world?

Yes these are trying times, but with God’s leadership and help they can become the best of times.  Dear reader, either you shall choose life or we shall choose death.  America’s future is in the balance.

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It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

animals versus human babyThree decades after the ‘Moral Majority’ revolution, after fighting numerous battles for our culture, we can claim victory on, well … hardly anything.

The world is going mad. And it’s not just political madness. It’s madness everywhere.

  • Are we really selling aborted baby body parts? It’s madness.
  • Are we really joining two people of the same sex and calling it marriage? That’s madness, too.
  • Are we really extending the power to get a nuclear bomb to Iran, a nation that has chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel?” That’s complete madness.

Oh, there’s more madness. Much more.

Law-abiding citizens are being turned into lawbreakers for such things as refusing to sell wedding cakes to homosexual couples – while those who were once lawbreakers are now law-abiding citizens, like those who smoke pot in Colorado, Oregon, Alaska and Washington.

It’s still against federal law to smoke weed. Right? But who cares?

And how about this madness: There’s world outrage over a hunter’s killing of a lion in Zimbabwe, but hardly any public outrage over hundreds of Christians being beheaded in the Middle East and Africa by Islamists.

There’s more.

A Florida man was told by a Pinellas County air quality inspector to keep his barbecue smoke in his yard. What? This should make Linda Blair’s head spin all over again.

A New York restaurant owner was fined $5,000 because he used the word “waitress” in an employment ad. An Indian-restaurant owner also was fined $5,000 in New York for trying to hire an Indian waiter.

Maddening, I tell you.

All right, I need to stop or I’ll never get to my point.

I’ve been in the movement of defending America’s traditional, moral and biblical heritage for more than 30 years, first as the editor of Dr. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority Report in 1983, then as president of Christian Action Network since 1990.

The battles back in the day seem small, compared to today’s struggles.

We were fighting abortion and court decisions to kick God and prayer out of the public schools, as well as combatting the relentless chants of feminists, homosexuals and secularists to distort, pervert and destroy the laws of nature and nature’s God.

Three decades later we can claim victory on, well … hardly anything.

Every once in a while we would celebrate a win, such as passing the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman in federal eyes, or the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on homosexuals openly serving in the military, or the Religious Restoration Act, which ensured that religious freedoms were protected from federal overreach.

And we did wage a successful campaign against the National Endowment for the Arts, which was funding some of the most blasphemous, sadomasochistic and sexually gruesome art imaginable.

(My “favorite” was the NEA’s funding of an art project called “Testicle Stretch with the Possibility of a Crushed Face.” It featured a man lying prone on a platform, a rope tied to his testicles that led to a pulley supporting heavy metal weights. If his testicles gave out, his face would theoretically get crushed, giving the art project its brutal and insane name.)

While a couple of these victories remain, the courts, Congress, presidents or federal administrators have gutted most of them.

Now we find ourselves fighting battles that make you wonder whether we are still living in America. It’s as if we’ve been conquered but refuse to admit it.

No army ever came. No outside soldiers ever took over the White House. The American flag still flies. And we still sing the National Anthem at baseball games.

But while the White House lights up in gay rainbow colors in celebration of legalized homosexual marriage, there are no red, white and blue lights on the White House on the fourth of July.

And in Reno, Nev., City Hall replaces the American flag with a gay rainbow flag. Oops, they admitted afterward, they meant to fly the gay flag ALONGSIDE the American flag.

The fact that the head of the DNC can’t explain the difference between a Democrat and a Socialist should tell us a lot.

The president of the United States ignores the laws. The U.S. Supreme Court ignores the Constitution. And Congress, well that’s easy: They ignore the people.

The IRS is using its agents to punish conservatives. If you support anything that America once stood for, you are a hatemonger. If you claim any of your beliefs are grounded in the Bible, you are immediately dismissed as a flat-earth-society lunatic.

Then there’s this particularly harrowing story out of Wisconsin, reported in the National Review:

(Illustration: Roman Genn)

In an article titled, “They came with a battering ram,” the publication exposed how certain Wisconsin officials raided the homes of innocent Americans simply because they publicly supported Gov. Scott Walker’s re-election bid and his “Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill.”

Here’s just a small excerpt from this rather frightening story. It’s the story of “Anne” and the police invasion of her home:

Someone was pounding at her front door. It was early in the morning – very early – and it was the kind of heavy pounding that meant someone was either fleeing from – or bringing – trouble. “It was so hard. I’d never heard anything like it. I thought someone was dying outside.”

She ran to the door, opened it, and then chaos. “People came pouring in. For a second I thought it was a home invasion. It was terrifying. They were yelling and running, into every room in the house. One of the men was in my face, yelling at me over and over and over.”

It was indeed a home invasion, but the people who were pouring in were Wisconsin law-enforcement officers. Armed, uniformed police swarmed into the house. Plainclothes investigators cornered her and her newly awakened family. Soon, state officials were seizing the family’s personal property, including each person’s computer and smartphone, filled with the most intimate family information.

When you get a chance, read this remarkable and disturbing article, written by David French. It will send shivers down your spine and make your hair stand on end.

Anne was told by police not to call her lawyer and not to tell anyone about the raid – not her mother, her father nor her closest friends.

She was left with a single question: “Is this America?”

Which brings me to this question: As Iranian citizens chant “Death to America”… are they too late?

RELATED ARTICLE: 405,000 people, 104 bishops sign petition to Pope Francis asking for ‘clarification’ on marriage

The Three Prime Evils

There are three big strikes that call down the hammer of God’s judgement on a nation.

ESPN Diminishes Arthur Ashe’s Legacy

Am I the only one who is thoroughly offended by ESPN giving Bruce Jenner “The Arthur Ashe Courage Award” during next month’s ESPYS award ceremony?

ESPN claims to be the global TV leader in sports coverage and is owned by The Walt Disney Company.  Disney is also the parent company of ABC Television (which will air the ceremony).

Disney is one of the most radically aggressive pro-homosexual companies in the world.

According to ESPN’s website, “Bruce Jenner won the 1976 Olympic decathlon, setting a world record and becoming an international sports star. Jenner later became an actor in a number of TV movies, a race car driver (winning the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1986) and a successful businessman. Jenner married his third wife, Kris Kardashian, in 1991, and became part of the E! network series “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” in 2007. (Kris and Bruce Jenner were divorced in December 2014.)…Bruce has received many accolades over the years for being one of the greatest Olympians of our time, but The ESPYS are honored to celebrate Bruce becoming [his new name—I refuse to use it],” ESPN executive producer Maura Mandt said. “[He] has shown the courage to embrace a truth that had been hidden for years, and to embark on a journey that may not only give comfort to those facing similar circumstances, but can also help to educate people on the challenges that the transgender community faces.”

Tell me you are kidding?  Please tell me this is a bad dream.  “Courage?”

This is a total insult to the legacy of Arthur Ashe and diminishes what he accomplished in his life. Courage is not admitting you are homosexual.  Jenner’s worst day doesn’t come close to what Ashe had to overcome being Black in America and playing as a professional in one of the whitest sports at the time.

Arthur Ashe was the personification of courage.  He grew up in the segregated south of Richmond, Virginia in the 40s and was a top ranked tennis player in the 60s and 70s.  According to Ashe’s website, “he [Ashe] was the first African-American male tennis player to win a Grand Slam tournament.  He was much more than an athlete though.  His commitment to social justice, health and humanitarian issues left a mark on the world as indelible as his tennis was on the court.  This site is dedicated to providing a unique multimedia resource for understanding and promoting the legacy and values embodied in the life and work of Arthur Ashe as a conscience leader, humanitarian, educator and athlete.”

Ashe faced serious discrimination in his attempts to integrate professional tennis; he was arrested several times for protesting against South African apartheid; was intimately involved in the Civil Rights movement; and was a noted humanitarian.  Ashe died of AIDS in 1993 from receiving a blood transfusion after heart surgery.

So, can someone please tell me how we get from the legacy of Arthur Ashe to the freak show called Bruce Jenner and by extension, the Kardashians?  Every Black person should be offended by ESPN’s actions.  But not just Blacks, but anyone who knows anything about the contribution Ashe made to the world.

Ashe used his life to change America for the better and left his fingerprints on the world; and Jenner put on a dress!

I would hope that Ashe’s widow, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, would ask ESPN to remove her husband’s name from the award because what ESPN is doing is not compatible with who Arthur Ashe was.

Name one thing Jenner has done that was “courageous;” name me one thing he has done to make America better; name me one thing he has done to make the world better.

ESPN created this award in 1993, which was well received.  A few previous winners have been Pat and Kevin Tillman; Tommie Smith and John Carlos; and Nelson Mandela.  No one could argue against these individuals receiving the Ashe award; they indeed did represent everything Ashe stood for.

Now ESPN has turned Ashe’s award into a vehicle to promote homosexuality.  The last three winners have been, Robin Roberts, Michael Sam, and now Bruce Jenner.

According to ESPN, “The Arthur Ashe Courage Award is presented to the sports-related person(s) or team, irrespective of gender or sport contested, adjudged to have made the most significant or compelling humanitarian contribution in transcendence of sports in a given year.”

Publicly declaring you are homosexual is not a “significant or compelling humanitarian contribution in transcendence of sports.”

Ashe actually sacrificed money, tennis matches, and his life to make it possible for the Williams sisters to play tennis; to end Apartheid, and to defend those without a voice.  Name me one sacrifice Roberts, Sam or Jenner has made to make America better?

We, in the Black community, must stop allowing others to expropriate our heroes to promote their own liberal agendas; especially when the expropriation is not consistent with the person’s values and lifestyle.

Transforming Education beyond Common Core: Getting the Word Out About “Gaming for Social Change”

The dangers of indoctrination become clearer when one considers the fact that the games being supported by the Department of Education focus on “social change.” Most of the presentations at the four-day Games for Change event involved lessons about tolerance of the Muslim “other,” global warming, sustainability, bullying, Native American culture, nuclear disarmament, and sexuality.

As recounted in my previous article, gaming, or the use of video games for classroom instruction, aligns with the goals of the current Department of Education and the Common Core initiative.  Gaming helps to overcome the “achievement gap” by enabling students to proceed at their own pace.  Poor readers have less need to improve their reading skills as they are given access to curricular materials through images and sound.

Abstract thought is replaced by presumed “real-world problems,” and proponents tout gaming as a way to give students experience in solving such problems.  Realistically, the problems are pretend problems, and students give pretend solutions.  There can hardly be an objective evaluation for a fourth-grader’s proposal for solving world hunger or global warming (the stuff of lessons these days).  Instead of measuring a student’s knowledge of the subject matter, points are given for such things as “creativity” and “critical thinking.”  Such subjective criteria give teachers greater leeway in evaluating students and closing the achievement gap.

But through constant auditory and visual stimulation, gaming stymies independent thought.  The constant noise and moving images make it impossible to reflect in the way one can with books.  Thus, gaming allows even greater opportunities for indoctrination.

The dangers of indoctrination become clearer when one considers the fact that the games being supported by the Department focus on “social change.”

Such common sense observations are supported by the facts: the research does not show that gaming has a positive effect on learning.  The lack of credible research, of course, has had no bearing on the Department of Education’s push for the increased use of “digital learning.”  For years now the Department has been doling out grants to game developers to teach everything from math and science, to social and emotional intelligence, to ethics, and history.

This year it took the step of co-sponsoring the “Games for Change” festival in New York.  This first-day session, attended by Department of Education representatives, was called “Games for Learning.”  The theme of gaming in the classroom continued, though, into the following days, when government employees continued to participate.  At the event, developers were invited to apply for grants from non-profit arms of technology companies and associations, as well as from the U.S. government.

The Department of Education also used its resources to promote the event.  An announcement was made by Chad Sansing, who “teaches technology and project-based learning at the BETA Academy in Staunton, Virginia,” and Antero Garcia, a “Teaching Ambassador Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education” and Assistant Professor at Colorado State University, at medium.com, where Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had promoted the event himself.  Sansing and Garcia announced that The U.S. Department of Education and Games for Change, “with support from the Entertainment Software Association,” would be hosting “the Games for Learning Summit April 21 at the 2015 Games for Change (G4C) Festival.” Expected participants (over 250) included “nationally recognized educators, the designers of some of today’s most popular video games, and members of the U.S. Department of Education.”

Sansing and Garcia recalled participating in the White House “Game Jam” with teams of game designers and some “amazing teachers” at the beginning of the school year.  Sansing’s game-design project, they claimed, demonstrated the benefits of game-based learning: “media literacy, soft skills like collaboration, and technical skills like managing an online repository of A/V assets, to say nothing of the logic, math, reading, and writing skills . . . in navigating tutorials, communicating online, and building . . .  games.”  They added excitedly, “Students even discussed gender norms in character design and traditional gaming narratives.”  They listed the same benefits of gaming as commonly ascribed to Common Core: “critical thinking, persistence, and problem-solving to master, critique, play, and make.”

Who participated in the event?  What kinds of skills were promoted?  Industry spokespeople, government officials, and game designers came together to discuss “partnering” with each other as they uncritically promoted the benefits of gaming. The partnering is much like the “partnering” that has been revealed in the production of Common Core curricula and assessment, the crony alliance between the U.S. Department of Education, technology companies, and their non-profit arms (that serve to advance sales of the for-profit companies).

In spite of Sansing and Garcia’s claim that games would teach “logic, math, reading, and writing skills” most of the presentations at the four-day event involved lessons about tolerance of the Muslim “other,” global warming, sustainability, bullying, Native American culture, nuclear disarmament, and sexuality.

The cronyism and disturbing indoctrination lessons will be discussed in following installments.

Anti Bible Christians

Homosexual marriage is gaining some strange allies. “Christians” who reject what the Bible says on the subject.

The Slow Death of Common Core

Think about the major policy undertakings of the Obama administration over the past six and a half years. It began with a “stimulus” that wasted trillions in the quest of generating jobs, but did little to nothing in achieving that goal. That was followed by ObamaCare which most agree has been a disaster for the nation’s healthcare sector and, finally, Common Core, a one-size-fits-all testing program intended, we were told, to improve learning standards in the nation’s schools. The only thing it has achieved is the opposition of parents, teachers unions, and entire states.

Heartland  - School Reform News (1)In the April edition of The Heartland Institute’s School Reform News, one could find headlines that included “Arizona House Votes to Repeal and Replace Common Core”, “Arizona House Votes to Repeal Common Core”, ”West Virginia House Passes Common Core Repeal Bill”, and “Ohio Bill Would Protect Students Opting Out of Common Core Tests.” In March, some 19 states had introduced legislation to either halt or replace Common Core. Do you see a trend here?

One trend of significance was noted in a commentary by Jason L. Riley in the May 6 edition of The Wall Street Journal. “The Soccer Mom Revolt Against Common Core” cited a national poll released by Fairleigh Dickinson University earlier this year that put “approval for the new standards at 17%, against 40% who disapproved and other 42% who were undecided. A breakdown by gender had Common Core support 22% for men and only 12% for women.”

Perhaps the greatest surprise among these numbers is that the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Educational Association, as Rob Bluey of the Heritage Foundation noted in February “is no longer a cheerleader for Common Core national education standards.” In a letter to the union’s three million members, its president, Dennis Van Roekel, took Common Core to task for its failure to even provide information for implementing it in their classrooms. The American Federation of Teachers had raised similar concerns nearly a year earlier!

Writing on September 2014, Joy Pullman, a Heartland Institute research fellow whose expertise is education held forth on the “Top Ten Things Parents Hate About Common Core.” Among them was “The senseless, infuriating math.” “If Common Core hadn’t deformed even the most elementary of our math abilities so that simple addition now takes dots, dashes, boxes, hashmarks, and foam cubes, plus an inordinate amount of time”, you are not going to get the right answer.

Parents in growing numbers have discovered, as Pullman notes, that “when they do go to their local school boards, often all they get are disgusted looks and a bored thumb-twiddling during their two-minute public comment allowance.” Pullman says, “The bottom line is, parents have no choice whether their kids will learn Common Core, no matter what school they put them in.” That, obviously, is changing as state after state pulls out of the Common Core program.

Cover - Crimes of the EducatorsIn a new book by Samuel Blumenfeld and Alex Newman, “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children”, Blumenfeld points to “Growing levels of illiteracy, plunging international rankings, the decline of critical-thinking skills, mushrooming decadence, mass shootings, and companies that can’t find the skilled workers they need—these have become some of the atrocious hallmarks of U.S. public schools.”

“Common Core schemers are engaged in what can only be described as consumer fraud with monumental implications for education and the future of America.” The bottom line is that “the scheme was never field-tested before being foisted on America.”

There is no part of student’s education that Common Core does not impede or corrupt. In the area of science, Blumenfeld says “Instead of teaching children about science—real science—the standards will offer students a steady stream of controversial propaganda presented as unchallenged fact.” Regarding climate change “students will be required to learn that human activities are mostly to blame, even though this notion is disputed by countless scientists and a vast, growing body of actual scientific observational evidence.”

Closest to home are Common Core’s “National Sexuality Education Standards” aimed to begin the “sexualization of children in kindergarten” says Blumenfeld. “Is learning about ‘homosexual marriage’ before first grade in government schools really ‘age appropriate’ or necessary?” But it gets more radical “with graphic lessons promoting everything from masturbation and fornication to transgenderism and homosexuality.”

We shouldn’t be surprised at the backlash Common Core has received from both parents and teachers unions among others. Like the “stimulus” and ObamaCare, Common Core demonstrates a thorough lack of understanding of the values of individuality that have underwritten our nation’s free market economy, helped create a respected healthcare system, and which parents have expected the educational system to pass on to new generations.

Instead Common Core teaches collectivism—socialism—and degrades various elements of education from math to English to science.

It cannot be removed from our nation’s schools soon enough.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

My 2015 Commencement Address

All manner of people are giving commencement speeches to students graduating from colleges and universities these days. It is doubtful that any will be remembered because the prospects of students depend in large part on the economy into which they are entering, the majors they pursued, their individual ambitions, and capacity for hard work. Then, too, there’s dumb luck which often plays a role.

For those graduating this year, my profound sympathy because the economy could not be much worse short of being declared an official Depression. Out of a total of 330 million Americans, there are currently 93,194,000 Americans who are not in the workforce because they can’t find a job or have given up looking. Even in the field of manufacturing—not something you studied for—the number of jobs have declined by 7,231,000, some 37% since manufacturing peaked in the U.S. in 1979.

U.S. economic growth rate has slowed to 0.2%. In short, it is virtually non-existent. So, with your diploma in hand, unless you majored in the sciences, math or engineering, you are not likely to join the workforce any time soon. Those of you who majored in social work, theatre arts, elementary education, and something called parks and recreation, are going to be at the bottom of the salary scale for the rest of your life.

Of the previous graduates from 2008 to the present who voted for Barack Obama, just 14% have real jobs. You have had the vast misfortune of being born just in time to live through the worst presidency in the history of the nation. If, in fact, you even know the history of the nation.

You are at a further disadvantage because the curriculums of the government schools you attended have been so distorted that you have been led to believe that the Founding Fathers were all slave-owning, white elitists when in fact, many opposed slavery, the labor source of their era, and would have abolished it. However they knew they could not get the Constitution ratified by the southern states if they did. It’s called compromising for a greater goal, the finest and currently the oldest functioning Constitution on Earth.

Depending on your race and sex, you have already been taught to blame anything that goes wrong in your life on whether you are white, black or Hispanic, male or female. If you want to know what’s wrong, look in the mirror and ask yourself what you are doing wrong or not doing right—dressing, manners, behavior, addictions, et cetera.

If you have been raised to believe in God and have spiritual values, you are likely to be mocked, though not necessarily to your face. While still the majority faith in America, Christianity is under attack from many directions, not the least of whom are homosexuals that constitute less than 2% of the population. Their attack on traditional (and biological) male-female marriage that has been part of every civilization going back five thousand years and more will degrade society in many ways.

For many of you, graduation means years of paying off huge loans for the privilege of picking up a degree that, as noted—short of science, math and engineering—will not yield a lot of income. This will impact your lifestyle including possibly having to move back in with your parents. It may mean putting off marriage and a family of your own for a while and your loans will affect being able to secure a mortgage on a home, but everyone is having problems doing that these days.

So, if all this looks and sound bleak, it is because it is. A real commencement speech should tell you the truth but most of them do not. They are generally filled with inspiring talk about the future.

The future you are looking at along with everyone else is fraught with danger. That, however, can be said of every “future” that every American has faced since the nation was established. It took a shooting war with Great Britain just to have a nation and Americans have been engaged in wars large and small ever since.

The threat of Communism faced Americans after World War Two and generations previous to yours waited out and opposed the Soviet Union for nearly fifty years before it collapsed. Communism is still around however in China, nearby Cuba, Venezuela and other nations who suppress their people in the name of the utopian society they claim to have.

The more recent threat is the rise of Islamism, radical Islam as practiced and supported by a significant percentage of the world’s one billion-plus Muslims. It is a cult about Mohammed based on the total domination of the world. Divided between two sects, Sunnis and Shiites, when they are not killing each other, they are killing “infidels”, anyone who is not a Muslim.

It will fall to you and your fellow graduates to fix the nation’s problems and right now its biggest one is that the federal government is too large and we are collectively facing an $18 trillion debt that must be resolved because just paying interest on it makes doing anything else difficult at best.

All of the states are in debt as well as they struggle to pay the health benefits and pensions of civil service workers, active and retired. That often doesn’t leave much money for fixing potholes and other infrastructure needs.

Whatever problems you will encounter, keep in mind previous generations often encountered much worse, such as those in the 1930s during the Great Depression and in the 1940s who fought World War II, and those from the 1950s and 1970s who were called on to fight the Korean War and the war in Vietnam; more recently those who fought the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Respect their sacrifices and their courage.

If you want to see the government grow even larger along with the debt, vote for Hillary Clinton. She’s still mentally and ideologically stuck in the 1990s, plus she has engaged in behavior that would get anyone else put in jail. You have a large choice among Republican candidates and eventually it will narrow to someone capable of tackling the future.

The best I can do is to wish you good luck. You’re going to need it.

© Alan Caruba, 2015