Moral Issues

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Socialism is the bane of man.


Knowing the history of violence, radicalism, coercion and tyranny in socialism, the violent rhetoric and mischaracterizations by socialists deeply disturb me. Maybe it is paranoia. Maybe I am being ridiculous, but I just can't see any good coming from this.
– Sarah, Canada


Very little good, if any, has ever come out of socialist philosophy. Socialism is the bane of man; it is the cancer of his dreams. Socialism has given us the gas chamber, the gulag and the Great Leap Forward, and has racked up a body count that would be the envy of any barbarian ruler. Show no more respect for a socialist than you would for a sociopath; indeed, all the sociopaths throughout history have probably done less damage than have socialists in any country in which they've come to unrestrained power. Which leads me to wonder if perhaps socialism is not a form of intellectualized sociopathy.

Christine

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BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS
State university hosts 'Pornfest'
Sadomasochism promoter lectures for 'Outdoor Intercourse' week



Posted: May 10, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern



By Art Moore



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
A state university is helping its students "sort out sexuality issues" with an annual week-long event featuring a porn film festival and a guest lecture by an activist in the BDSM – or bondage, dominance and sadomasochism – "community."


Ad last year for Western Washington University's campus event.

Western Washington University in Bellingham held its 11th annual National Outdoor Intercourse Day observance this week, with offerings such as condom hunts and a masturbation information table.

The student-run Sexual Awareness Center sponsored events focused on educating students about available resources the school offers on sexual topics, according to the campus newspaper, the Western Front.

"Our goal is to help students sort out sexuality issues with clear and concise information," said center coordinator Lauren Luttrell, a senior at Western. "We want to get students communicating about sex. This is a perfect opportunity to do that in a safe, fun and open way."

Lutrell told WorldNetDaily brochures were distributed to inform students of the "repercussions of sex outdoors."

"It's so people know, if they choose to do it, what the legal consequences would be," she explained.

Did anybody "celebrate" National Outdoor Intercourse Day in this way?

"We didn't see anybody," she said. "I'm sure some people did."

'Alternative' expression

Meanwhile, guest speaker Allena Gabosch, director of the Wet Spot, a "sex-positive" community center in Seattle, lectured Tuesday on dispelling the "myths" surrounding polyamory – having sexual relationships with more than one person at a time.

Regarded as a "sexual activist," Gabosch leads a group promoting activities such as the weekly "Pansexual BDSM Play Party" and workshops such as the "Whip Enthusiasts Group."

In a December interview with the Seattle alternative weekly The Stranger, Gabosch was asked, "How would you describe yourself sexually?"

She answered: " bisexual, polyamorous, masochistic switch who is only submissive to her 'Daddy.' I'm currently without a primary partner. But I have two secondary partners, my Daddy and my boi, and several other wonderful people I play with, so I keep quite busy! Recently I've become a bondage aficionado, and have spent a lot of time all tied up."

Gabosch also is listed as corporate treasurer for The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom in Washington, D.C., an organization "committed to altering the political, legal and social environment in the United States in order to guarantee equal rights for consenting adults who practice forms of alternative sexual expression."

The group's website says it is "primarily focused on the rights of consenting adults in the SM-leather-fetish, swing, and polyamory communities, who often face discrimination because of their sexual expression."

Apparently, even Gabosch favors some discrimination, however.

A blurb about the group's "Women-Only Play Party" states, "It is with our sincerest love, and our desire to create a special, once-a-month women's space, that we make the following request:

"For those who no longer seek to be women, and are taking personal action to that end, please be respectful of this event. We encourage you to attend other fabulous Wet Spot parties such as the TranscenDance, the Grind or the popular Pansexual BDSM Play Party."

Presenting 'objective' information

Hanako Lombardi, assistant coordinator of the Sexual Awareness Center, was enthusiastic about Gabosch's appearance on campus this week.


Western Washington University campus

"She has a voice that really makes you want to listen to her," Lombardi told the student newspaper. "Her stories make you feel as if you are right there experiencing it. She is very excited to come to Western."

Lombardi emphasized the activities are chosen to present information to the public in an "objective" way, and students are not forced to attend.

Yesterday, the center planned to present "Pornfest," which included a display and "Porn and Popcorn," a showing of award-winning pornographic films along with discussion sessions.

Lombardi told WND the event's purpose is not to promote pornography.

"It's providing a safe space for students to come and view films and debates about porn," she said. "We want them to decide for themselves what they believe porn is – where the line is drawn between porn and erotic art."

She admitted porn on campus is controversial.

"The Sexual Awareness Center is the one to push the envelope on the topic, but we are going to do it safely and wisely," Lombardi told the student paper.

The campus Sexual Awareness Center is described on the school website as "An Associated Students Resource and Outreach Program" that "offers confidential support information and referrals on a variety of topics including: sexual health, sexually transmitted infection, birth control and abstinence, sexual harassment, intimacy, and many more!"

In a 1999 interview with the student newspaper, the center's coordinator at the time, Kerri Sanchez, explained the thinking behind the annual event's name.

"Even though it has a controversial name, we really promote it as communication because the origin of the word intercourse is an old English word that means communication," she said.

"It's actually illegal to have intercourse outdoors," Sanchez noted, "so that's why we promote the communications part."

Lombardi told WND the center planned to show last night the porn film "Urban Friction," which she described as a "romance."

An online reviewer of the movie said, "If you are into adventurous sex and fantasy play, this movie is for you."

A member of the campus chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ, Ann Slothower, told the school newspaper students feel uncomfortable knowing pornography will be shown on campus.

"Pornography does not promote a healthy view of sexuality," she said. "Human sexuality is completely exploited in pornography. It also promotes sexual violence. I would never support pornography on campus."

Lombardi said representatives of campus Christian and Jewish groups showed up to hand out literature promoting their view of sexual morality.

"They did their thing, we did ours," she said. "We each realized the other had the right to be there."

She described the Western campus as a "very receptive community" where people who want to learn about church and people who want to learn about sexual topics each can find resources.

A taxpayer concern?

Lutrell told WND she is not familiar with the origin of National Outdoor Intercourse Day, but thinks it is observed on other U.S. campuses.

She said funding for the Sexual Awareness Center and this week's activities, which cost about $400, is from student fees, not tax dollars.

The center's overall budget for the year is $3,100, she said, which mostly went toward buying condoms, lubricants, gloves and dental dams.

As WorldNetDaily reported, some Pennsylvania lawmakers have tried to block funding to Penn State University for holding similar events.

Last year, the school featured an outspoken advocate of pedophilia and sadomasochism at a women's health conference. In 2001, campus groups held a "Sex Faire" that included "orgasm bingo" and a "tent of consent." The previous November they hosted a "C–-fest," which intended to reclaim a derogatory word for a woman's body part.

The Western Washington campus newspaper's online edition included a message board with responses to its article this week on National Outdoor Intercourse Awareness Day.

One reader wrote: "This is what our tax money is paying for? Disgusting!"

Another said: "It's great to see that taxpayer dollars are so effectively managed. Maybe if our esteemed universities portrayed themselves in a more professional manner serious about educating, the public would respond accordingly when voting to fund education initiatives."

WND attempted to reach members of the Washington state legislature's higher education committees for comment, but calls were not returned by publication time.

Some politicians might have little to say about an event condoning freewheeling sexuality.

Gabosch was asked in an interview in a 2002 book called "Trendspotting" whether a shift in "political tides" might cause trouble for her unusual Seattle group.

She said, "Possibly, but you know what, we've got politicians as members. Face it, no matter how repressed you may act in your public life, if you are sexual you are sexual."

"Our world is opening up," Gabosch continued. "I've been speaking for eight years at a local community college about SM and also about polygamy and non-monogamy. Eight years ago my response was a lot more negative. 'Oh my God, she's gonna burn in hell ... ' And I'm very low key when I talk.

"Now I get students coming up to me afterwards asking how do I get a hold of you? I get students in the class admitting to being interested where they never would before."

Related stories:

Pedophile advocate featured at university

This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows.
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32495


Art Moore is a news editor with WorldNetDaily.com.

Christine

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Gay activist groups, with teachers’ union applause, are importing a disturbing agenda into the nation’s public schools.
Queering the Schools
Marjorie King


At a high school in prosperous Newton, Massachusetts, it’s “To B GLAD Day”—or, less delicately, Transgender, Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian Awareness Day. An advocacy session for students and teachers features three self-styled transgendered individuals—a member of the senior class and two recent graduates. One of the transgenders, born female, announces that “he” had been taking hormones for 16 months. “Right now I am a 14-year-old boy going through puberty and a 55-year-old woman going through menopause,” she complains. “I am probably the moodiest person in the world.” A second panelist declares herself an “androgyne in between both genders of society.” She adds, “Gender is just a bunch of stereotypes from society, but I am completely personal, and my gender is fluid.”

Only in liberal Massachusetts could a public school endorse such an event for teens, you might think. But you would be wrong. For the last decade or so, largely working beneath public or parental notice, a well-organized movement has sought to revolutionize the curricula and culture of the nation’s public schools. Its aim: to stamp out “hegemonic heterosexuality”—the traditional view that heterosexuality is the norm—in favor of a new ethos that does not just tolerate homosexuality but instead actively endorses experimenting with it, as well as with a polymorphous range of bisexuality, transgenderism, and transsexuality. The educational establishment has enthusiastically signed on. What this portends for the future of the public schools and the psychic health of the nation’s children is deeply worrisome.

This movement to “queer” the public schools, as activists put it, originated with a shift in the elite understanding of homosexuality. During the eighties, when gay activism first became a major cultural force, homosexual leaders launched a campaign that mirrored the civil rights movement. To claim their rights, homosexuals argued (without scientific evidence) that their orientation was a genetic inheritance, like race, and thus deserved the same kind of civil protections the nation had guaranteed to blacks. An inborn, unchangeable fact, after all, could not be subject to moral disapproval. There ensued a successful effort to normalize homosexuality throughout the culture, including a strong push for homosexual marriage, gays in the military, and other signs of civic equality.

But even as the homosexual-rights campaign won elite endorsement and lavish funding, even as supportive organizations proliferated, the gay movement began to split internally. By the early nineties, many gay activists viewed goals such as gay marriage or domestic partner unions as lamely “assimilationist”—an endorsement of standards of behavior that “queers,” as they called themselves, should reject as oppressively “straight.” And they militantly began defending the “queer lifestyle” not as an ineluctable fate but as the result of a fully conscious choice.

Underlying this militant stance was a radical new academic ideology called “queer theory.” A mixture of the neo-Freudianism of counterculture gurus Norman O. Brown and Herbert Marcuse and French deconstruction, queer theory takes to its extreme limit the idea that all sexual difference and behavior is a product of social conditioning, not nature. It is, in their jargon, “socially constructed.” For the queer theorist, all unambiguous and permanent notions of a natural sexual or gender identity are coercive impositions on our individual autonomy—our freedom to reinvent our sexual selves whenever we like. Sexuality is androgynous, fluid, polymorphous—and therefore a laudably subversive and even revolutionary force.

Rutgers English professor Michael Warner, a leading queer theorist, observes that categories like “heterosexual” and “homosexual” are part of “the regime of the normal” that queer theory wants to explode. “What identity,” he writes, “encompasses queer girls who f*&k queer boys with strap-ons, or FTMs (female-to-male transsexuals) who think of themselves as queer, FTMs who think of themselves as straights, or FTMs for whom life is a project of transition and screw the categories anyway?” To overturn the old dichotomies of hetero/homo and even male/female, Warner encourages continuous sexual experimentation.

A relatively recent arrival on college campuses, queer theory has swiftly dominated the myriad university gender-studies programs and spread its influence to other disciplines, too, “queering” everything under the sun. Type “queering” into Amazon.com’s search engine, and up comes Queering the Middle Ages, Queering the Color Line, Queering India, and many other books, many from prestigious academic presses.

It would be tempting to dismiss queer theory as just another intellectual fad, with little influence beyond the campus, if not for gay activists’ aggressive effort to introduce the theory’s radical view of sexuality into the public schools. Leading the effort is the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Educational Network (GLSEN, pronounced “glisten”), an advocacy group founded a decade ago to promote homosexual issues in the public schools. It now boasts 85 chapters, four regional offices, and some 1,700 student clubs, called “gay/straight alliances,” that it has helped form in schools across the country.

GLSEN often presents itself as a civil rights organization, saying that it is only after “tolerance” and “understanding” for a victim group. Sometimes, therefore, it still speaks the old gay-rights language of unchangeable homosexual “identity” and “orientation.” But it is, in fact, a radical organization that has clearly embraced the queer-theory worldview. It seeks to transform the culture and instruction of every public school, so that children will learn to equate “heterosexism”—the favoring of heterosexuality as normal—with other evils like racism and sexism and will grow up pondering their sexual orientation and the fluidity of their sexual identity.

That GLSEN embraces queer theory is clear from the addition of transgendered students to the gays and lesbians the group claims to represent. By definition, the transgendered are those who choose to change their gender identity by demeanor, dress, hormones, or surgery. Nothing could be more profoundly opposed to the notion of a natural sexual identity. Consider as evidence of queer theory’s influence, too, the GLSEN teachers’ manual that says that middle-schoolers “should have the freedom to explore sexual orientation and find own unique expression of lesbian, bisexual, gay, straight, or any combination of these.” What is this but Michael Warner’s appeal to pansexual experimentation?
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One of the major goals of GLSEN and similar groups is to reform public school curricula and teaching so that Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender—or LGBT—themes are always central and always presented in the approved light. GLSEN holds regular conferences for educators and activists with workshops bearing titles such as “Girls Will Be Boys and Boys Will Be Girls: Creating a Safe, Supportive School Environment for Trans, Intersex, Gender Variant and Gender Questioning Youth” and “Developing and Implementing a Transgender Inclusive Curriculum.” Every course in every public school should focus on LGBT issues, GLSEN believes. A workshop at GLSEN’s annual conference in Chicago in 2000 complained that “most LGBT curricula are in English, history and health” and sought ways of introducing its agenda into math and science classes, as well. (As an example of how to queer geometry, GLSEN recommends using gay symbols such as the pink triangle to study shapes.)

Nor is it ever too early to begin stamping out heterosexism. A 2002 GLSEN conference in Boston held a seminar on “Gender in the Early Childhood Classroom” that examined ways of setting “the tone for nontraditional gender role play” for preschoolers. To help get the LGBT message across to younger children, teachers can turn to an array of educational products, many of them available from GLSEN. Early readers include One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads; King and King; and Asha’s Mums.

As for teaching aids, a 1999 book, Queering Elementary Education, with a foreword by GLSEN executive director Kevin Jennings, offers essays on “Locating a Place for Gay and Lesbian Themes in Elementary Reading, Writing and Talking” and “How to Make ‘Boys’ and ‘Girls’ in the Classroom”—the scare quotes showing the queer theorist’s ever present belief that categorizing gender is a political act.

For comprehensiveness, nothing beats a GLSEN-recommended resource manual distributed to all K–12 public schools in Saint Paul and Minneapolis. The manual presents an educational universe that filters everything through an LGBT lens. Lesson ideas include “role playing” exercises to “counter harassment,” where students pretend, say, to be bisexual and hear hurtful words cast at them; testing students to see where their attitudes lie toward sexual “difference” (mere tolerance is unacceptable; much better is “admiration” and, best of all, “nurturance”); getting students to take a “Sexual Orientation Quiz”; and having heterosexual students learn 37 ways that heterosexuals are privileged in society. In turn, principals should make an “ongoing PA announcement”—once a week, the manual says—telling students about confidential support programs for LGBT students.

Teachers, the manual suggests, should demand that public school students memorize the approved meanings of important LGBT words and terms, from “bigenderist” to “exotophobia.” Sometimes, these approved meanings require Orwellian redefinitions: “Family: Two or more persons who share resources, share responsibility for decisions, share values and goals, and have commitments to one another over a period of time . . . regardless of blood, or adoption, or marriage.”

Two videos come particularly highly rated by gay activists and educators as tools for making primary school queer-friendly. Both films strive to present homosexuality in a favorable light, without saying what it actually is. It’s Elementary, intended for parents, educators, and policymakers, shows how classroom teachers can lead kindergartners through carefully circumscribed discussions of the evils of prejudice, portrayed as visited to an unusual degree on gays and lesbians. In That’s a Family, designed for classroom use, children speak directly into the camera, explaining to other kids how having gay and lesbian parents is no different from, for example, having parents of different national backgrounds.

GLSEN even provides lesson plans for the promotion of cross-dressing in elementary school classes. A school resource book containing such lesson plans, Cootie Shots: Theatrical Inoculations Against Bigotry for Kids, Parents, and Teachers, has already been used in second-grade classrooms in California. A children’s play in the book features a little boy singing of the exhilaration of striding about “In Mommy’s High Heels,” in angry defiance of the criticism of his intolerant peers:

They are the swine, I am the pearl. . . .
They’ll be beheaded when I’m queen!
When I rule the world! When I rule the world!
When I rule the world in my mommy’s high heels!

Some of the LGBT-friendly curricular material aimed at older children is quite sexually explicit. The GLSEN-recommended reading list for grades 7–12 is dominated by such material, depicting the queer sexuality spectrum. In Your Face: Stories from the Lives of Queer Youth features a 17-year-old who writes, “I identify as bisexual and have since I was about six or seven. . . . I sort of experimented when I was young.” Another GLSEN recommendation, Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology, has a 16-year-old contributor who explains, “My sexuality is as fluid, indefinable and ever-changing as the north flowing river.”

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Some of the most explicit homosexual material has shown up in classrooms. An Ohio teacher encouraged her freshman students to read Entries From a Hot Pink Notebook, a teen coming-out story that includes a graphic depiction of sex between two 14-year-old boys. In Newton, Massachusetts, a public school teacher assigned his 15-year-old students The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a farrago of sexual confusion, featuring an episode of bestiality as one of its highlights. Such books represent a growth industry for publishers, including mainstream firms.

As part of its effort to make the public schools into an arena of homosexual and transgender advocacy, GLSEN works assiduously to build a wide network of student organizers. It looks for recruits as young as 14, who in turn are to bring on board other students to form gay/straight alliances or other homosexual-themed student clubs at their schools. Glancing over the biographies of 2002’s student organizers reveals a uniform faith among them that experimenting with a range of homosexual behaviors serves the cause of civil rights.

The behavior in question involves some practices that the Marquis de Sade would welcome. A GLSEN-sponsored, taxpayer-funded “teach out” for activists, educators, and students to brainstorm ways of creating schools and communities that “are truly inclusive and safe,” held at Tufts University a while back, is a case in point. The daylong conference, with Massachusetts Department of Education and other state employees as workshop leaders and drawing many high school students and teachers (who received professional development credits for attending), featured a “youth only, ages 14–21” session that offered a lesson in “fisting”—the potentially dangerous act, called by some the first new sexual invention in 1,000 years, of inserting one’s fist into a partner’s anus or vagina.

Thanks to two members of the local Parents’ Rights Coalition, who secretly taped the session, we know that the fisting lesson did not arouse universal enthusiasm among the teens present. A boy asks why anyone would want to do such a thing. Other teens reportedly winced. But the self-identified gay and lesbian state employees turned aside doubts. One—a woman—explained that, though fisting “often gets a really bad rap,” it usually isn’t about the pain—“not that we’re putting that down.” Rather, she assured, it is “an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be close and intimate with.”

And so the workshop proceeded, marketing the polymorphously perverse to the sexually naive and emotionally immature. The etiquette of swallowing versus spitting after oral sex came up, as did the question of whether a tongue ring makes oral sex more pleasurable. Other topics included: how to use dildos, the mechanics of lesbian sexual gratification, and whether celery makes semen taste sweeter. The workshop leaders were sophisticated, yet breezy and colloquial, using street language and referring quite openly to their own sexual experiences—a Department of Public Health worker making his homosexual promiscuity obvious. The workshop initiated adolescents into a forbidden world that their parents likely knew nothing about.

In the winter of 2001, Tufts hosted another GLSEN-sponsored conference, entitled “Creating Safety—Teaching Respect.” This time, most of the 650 people present were teenagers, rounded up by gay activists or coming on their own to receive instruction in queer sexuality. Planned Parenthood representatives handed out special kits, containing latex gloves and lubricants, for “safe” fisting.

GLSEN and other activist homosexual groups have effectively used “safe school” campaigns to further their agenda. The federal Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program—Title IV of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—provides millions of dollars to state education departments to combat drugs and violence in the public schools. Using some of these funds, gay activists have helped design and promote public school “tolerance” programs. One of the mildest of such programs, “Healing the Hate,” released in 1997 under Department of Justice sposorship, implicitly likens disapproval of homosexual behavior with the prejudices that in the past have led to lynchings, church burnings, and the Holocaust. Gay groups contend—dubiously—that such programs are necessary because homosexual students must endure bullying and hatred every day in schools across the country.

GLSEN is quite explicit about using the safety issue to silence opponents. As GLSEN chief Kevin Jennings puts it, “We knew that, confronted with the real-life stories of youth who had suffered from homophobia, our opponents would automatically be on the defensive. . . . This allowed us to set the terms of the debate.”

At the urging of gay/straight alliances, schools across the U.S. have also created “safe” rooms for homosexual or sexually confused students, as if they might not be safe from “hate” and “intolerance” elsewhere in the school. In these rooms, identified by inverted pink triangles, students can discuss same-sex attraction or anxiety about sexual orientation with teachers or counselors, who promise a nonjudgmental and sympathetic hearing. Students who drop by for private discussion about their sexual confusion will often be referred—without parental knowledge—to local chapters of gay and lesbian organizations. If queer theorists are correct that homosexuality is a free choice, then parents might be forgiven for thinking such advocacy a kind of recruitment.

Without doubt, most parents would look at the subversive agenda on offer at GLSEN conferences and in LGBT-friendly curricula and find it bizarre and offensive. What sense, they might ask, does it make to “queer” math or science or other classes—whatever that might mean—when so many public schools fail even to produce minimally literate and numerate graduates?

Especially when all the evidence suggests that the incidence of self-labeled homosexuality and bisexuality in the population is in fact minuscule—just 1.4 percent of female subjects and 2.8 percent of male subjects, according to one of the largest and most scientific surveys by the National Opinion Research Center. Even Kinsey, with a very distorted sample population of volunteers, prison inmates (including sex offenders), and deliberately solicited homosexual respondents, only came up with a 4 percent figure for exclusive homosexual behavior, still far below the 10 percent frequently cited by homosexual activists. Should we revolutionize the schools for such a tiny minority?

Even more to the point, how many parents, even those not just tolerant of homosexuality but actively sympathetic toward homosexual rights, would really want their teenage children to be seeking out a “unique expression” of sexuality (let alone with their school’s help) or learning how to “fist”? How many would want their kindergartners—just figuring out their identities and desperately needing clear-cut categories like “boy” and “girl” to make sense of them—to engage in “non-traditional role play,” so that they grow up with warm feelings about transgendered people? Or their elementary school boys and girls exposed to sexual themes that they aren’t old enough to understand and that are likely to fill them with anxiety? Parents might well brush off an old-fashioned word and describe it all as, well . . . perverse.

As for bullying, the real problem is not anti-gay prejudice but the overall breakdown of school discipline. No child should have to put up with verbal or physical intimidation at school. Making schools safer, however, does not require importing a broader LGBT agenda that offends the values of many students and parents.

Nevertheless, though many parents aren’t aware of it yet, the agenda has moved far beyond the wishful thinking of activists. The keynote speaker at GLSEN’s 2000 conference was Robert Chase, president of the 2.7 million-member National Education Association, the nation’s biggest, most powerful teachers’ union. The program booklet for the event featured greetings not only from Chase but from then-president Clinton, Chicago mayor Richard Daley, and the head of the American Federation of Teachers, the second-biggest U.S. teachers’ union. The celebratory notes expressed the kind of praise once reserved for groups like the Boy Scouts. A long list of well-known organizations has backed LGBT programs in the classroom, including the American Psychiatric Association, the American Library Association, and the National Association of Social Workers.
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No organization has been more steadfast in its support of GLSEN than the NEA. During the NEA’s annual convention in July 2001, many observers expected the teachers’ union to pass an official resolution incorporating GLSEN’s sweeping educational goals into K–12 curricula nationwide. As it turns out, the NEA, clearly trying to minimize public awareness of an unprecedented infringement on parental prerogatives, tabled the resolution and announced a task force to study how best to approach LGBT issues in the schools. But in February 2002, the NEA board of directors approved the task force’s report—a pure emanation of the GLSEN worldview, as is clear both from its numerous citations of GLSEN documents in the footnotes and from its recommendations.

Following the task force’s lead, the NEA will now struggle to expunge “heterosexism” from the consciousness of children in the classroom. The union has encouraged schools to integrate LGBT themes into curricula, instructional material, and programs; to emphasize the legitimacy of different “family structures,” including domestic partner arrangements; and to offer counseling services for students struggling with their “sexual/gender orientation.” Small wonder that GLSEN greeted the NEA task force’s report, and its endorsement by the union, with hosannas. “These powerful new recommendations signal that help is on the way for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and staff who experience day-to-day abuse in America’s schools,” enthused GLSEN head Jennings.

The queering of the public schools has perhaps advanced furthest in California, where a new state law requires public schools to teach all K–12 students (and K means five-year-olds) “to appreciate various sexual orientations.” What the new law might mean in practice, warned a state assemblyman, was on display at Santa Rosa High School, where invited homosexual activists “talked about using cellophane during group sex and said that ‘clear is best because you can see what you want to lick,’ ” or at Hale Middle School in Los Angeles, where during an AIDS education course, “12-year-olds were subjected to graphic descriptions of anal sex and tips on how to dispose of used condoms so parents don’t find out.” As the assemblyman noted, sex ed courses throughout California public schools, influenced heavily by national sex education advocates SEICUS and Planned Parenthood, have already enthusiastically endorsed the GLSEN worldview.

But California is only the cutting edge: efforts to queer the schools are under way in many other locales, from Massachusetts to Oregon. The co-chair of the Massachusetts Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, for example, informs the Boston Globe that teachers across that state are increasingly integrating LGBT themes into lessons—discussing the sexual orientation of authors as an interpretive tool in literature classes, she says, or comparing gay and bisexual with straight student mental health data in order to study percentages. After a ferocious battle, the Broward School Board in Florida recently voted to rely on GLSEN to train teachers in LGBT “sensitivity.” In Gresham, Oregon, in early 2002, school officials at Centennial High School brought in gay and lesbian speakers in English, drama, and health classes during the school’s annual “diversity” week, neither telling students about it beforehand nor letting them opt out of the classes if they wanted. Parental anger forced school officials to issue a public apology.

GLSEN constantly emphasizes the need for tolerance for homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism, but if someone bucks the LGBT party line in a school that follows it, watch out. Consider the experience of Elliott Chambers, formerly a student at Woodbury High School in a suburb of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Woodbury High had posted pink triangles on 48 of its 60-odd classrooms and offices (what made the other rooms “unsafe” isn’t clear). Belonging to a conservative family, Chambers decided one day to express his values and wore to school a sweatshirt with the words STRAIGHT PRIDE emblazoned across the front and an image of a man and woman holding hands on the back.

The school principal found this expression of support for heterosexuality unacceptable. He forbade Chambers from wearing the sweatshirt in school, explaining that another student had found it offensive. Chambers’s parents, increasingly concerned about what they considered Woodbury’s aggressive endorsement of the LGBT agenda, met with the principal, who charged them with being “homophobic”—a frequent accusation made not only against anyone who questions the morality of homosexual acts but also against anyone who doesn’t accept the entire gay activist program, as if such questioning could only grow out of psychological disturbance rather than reasoned judgment. The parents then filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that the school had squelched their son’s First Amendment rights.

When a preliminary judgment came down in Chambers’s favor, the principal announced over the school public address system that the court had actually agreed with school officials that the sentiment of “straight pride” seemed intolerant toward homosexuality, and if circumstances changed so as to create “a reasonable belief that a substantial disruption of, or material interference with, school activities might ensue” from the wearing of the shirt, the school could prohibit it again. Foreseeing further disturbance, Mrs. Chambers decided to home-school her son.

The Chamberses’ experience was far from unique. Objecting when a teacher joins the ranks of the transgendered is out of the question in some school districts, no matter how disturbing it may be to schoolchildren and parents alike. But for those adhering to the queer agenda, the problem is with the kids and parents, not their “evolving” educator. When Principal Donald Reed of the Marie Murphy Middle School in Wilmette, Illinois, announced to school officials a few weeks before the 2001 school year began that he had undergone “gender reassignment”—a sex-change operation—and would henceforth be Principal Deanna Reed, the school superintendent and other administrators, faithful to the GLSEN spirit, didn’t remove him/her, despite parental outrage. Instead, the school district hired a psychologist to advise teachers on how best to counsel children who seemed confused or disturbed by their principal’s strange transformation. Administrators encouraged parents, too, to bring their concerns to “professionals.”

Parents or other concerned citizens who complain about any aspect of the queering of public education can face withering attacks, not just from gay activists but from cultural elites in general. When the two members of the Parents’ Rights Coalition released their tape of the GLSEN-sponsored fisting workshop to the public, to take one typical example, the Boston Globe didn’t condemn the use of public funds and state employees to instruct schoolchildren in an arcane and dangerous “sexual” practice; instead, it denounced the whistleblowers as fomenters of “intolerance.”

School districts that refuse to go along with the homosexual agenda now must contend with the American Civil Liberties Union, too. The ACLU’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project has launched a national effort, called “Every Student, Every School,” that plans to sue on First Amendment grounds any school that refuses gay/straight student clubs on its premises. Already, schools in Kentucky and Texas face legal action. No compulsory public school system can be justified unless what it teaches is a worldview that the taxpayers who fund it can support. The “common schools” came into existence, after all, to acculturate immigrants to American values. For schools to try to indoctrinate children in a radical, minority worldview like that promoted by GLSEN and its allies—a vision that will form those children’s values and shape their sense of selfhood—is a kind of tyranny, one that, in addition, intentionally drives a wedge between parents and children and, as queer theorist Michael Warner boasts, “opposes society itself.” We must not let an appeal to our belief in tolerance and decency blind us to indecency—and to the individual and social damage that will result from it.

[admin]

Gay festival sparks STD concerns
By Charles Ornstein and Louis Sahagun
LOS ANGELES TIMES



With 30,000 gay revelers expected for this weekend's "White Party" in Palm Springs, a festival famous for sex and substance abuse, public health officials and some gay leaders worry openly that it will fan an epidemic of syphilis.

"We're nervous that they're going to take it there, and we're nervous that they're going to bring it home," said Dr. Peter Kerndt, director of sexually transmitted disease control in Los Angeles County.

They have reason to be nervous. For the past two years, cases of the sexually transmitted disease have risen dramatically in the Palm Springs area and throughout California, driven almost exclusively by gay and bisexual men. Outbreaks have sometimes been fueled by large gatherings, beginning with millennium celebrations in Los Angeles in 2000.

Statewide, the number of new infectious syphilis cases nearly doubled last year, to 1,035. Los Angeles County reported 362 cases, up from 199 a year earlier. San Francisco logged 316 cases, more than two times the 2001 tally, according to preliminary estimates. But Palm Springs, which is far smaller than either metropolitan area, has in one year developed one of the highest per capita rates of syphilis in the nation.

Riverside County in 2002 reported 54 new infectious syphilis cases -- 48 of them in the eastern part of the county that includes Palm Springs. The entire county reported only 17 cases of infectious syphilis a year earlier, said Barbara Cole, director of disease control for Riverside County.

The California Department of Health Services issued an alert in late January warning health authorities nationwide of the Palm Springs problem and asking them to report syphilis cases among people who recently traveled to the area. In part, the upsurge can be traced to the area's growing popularity among gay men for retirement and recreation.

"The disease is spreading dramatically here," said Robert Farrell, director of medical services at the Desert AIDS Project.

Syphilis, though easily treatable with antibiotics, can lead to blindness, neurological problems and even death if left untreated. But the disease is most worrisome, in the near term, for what it signifies: a breakdown in safe-sex practices that can lead to other sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.

Many men with syphilis already are co-infected with HIV. In both San Francisco and Los Angeles County, at least half of those testing positive for syphilis are HIV-positive. Moreover, the sores caused by syphilis facilitate transmission of the AIDS virus.

Public health officials hope that by promoting syphilis prevention and testing at the 14th annual White Party, they will reach men at risk for HIV or those who have the virus but don't know it.

Volunteers are distributing laminated wallet-sized cards warning, "Check him out! Syphilis is spreading rapidly among gay men in the Coachella Valley. The increase in cases is dramatic and is impacting the health of individuals who are infected."

The reverse side of the cards includes information about symptoms, prevention strategies and treatment. In addition, hotels and bars are being asked to distribute condoms and lubricant, which helps prevent condoms from breaking, Cole said.

White Party founder Jeffrey Sanker -- whose Web site touting the event contains many photos of muscular, shirtless men -- said he is working with local health officials and volunteers to promote safer sex.

"The safety and comfort of my patrons is my No. 1 priority," Sanker said. "The continued risk of HIV infection as well as the recent outbreak of syphilis cases in the Palm Springs area are both issues we certainly cannot ignore."

The event takes its name from the color white, which organizers said symbolizes the renewal of the spring season. Partygoers are charged $250 for access to all weekend parties or $400 for a "Titanium" pass that admits them to VIP lounges.

The main event is held Saturday night at the Palm Springs Convention Center. Last year, pop and movie star Jennifer Lopez and her dance troupe made a surprise appearance. The party continues Sunday morning at the Wyndham hotel with an event called "Climax After Hours."

Officials in Los Angeles County and San Francisco are sending health workers to the party to help with education and testing -- although they acknowledged feeling somewhat helpless to control the spread of syphilis even in their own communities.

Both Kerndt and Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, his counterpart in San Francisco, have launched many awareness campaigns in the past two years, but they said the obstacles have been enormous.

"We're talking about sex addiction, drug addiction, loneliness, isolation, low self-esteem and disease, lots of it," Kerndt said.

Although some people can be encouraged to practice safer sex, he said, "We know information is not enough to change behavior. ... "

Christine

[admin]

BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS
'Gay' activists target students
Seek 'celebration' of homosexuality, reject 'heterosexism'
Posted: April 14, 2003
2:10 p.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
"Gay" activists are pushing an agenda in Canadian schools aimed to have students, teachers and principals "celebrate" homosexual and transgendered people, reports the Vancouver Sun.



Two men leading the charge – Murray Warren and Peter Cook – filed a complaint with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal to compel teachers to deliver positive messages about homosexuals and transgendered people in every subject, in every classroom.

The complaint alleges discrimination by the education ministry for ignoring calls for homophobia and "heterosexism" to be addressed in the classroom.

"People want to see us address homophobia across the board," Warren, a Coquitlam teacher, told the Sun in an interview.

But Warren and long-time partner Cook aren't satisfied with mere tolerance or acceptance of the homosexual lifestye. According to the paper, the men also seek to stamp out "heterosexism," which they describe as the "institutionalized assumption that everyone is, or should be, heterosexual, and that heterosexuality is inherently superior to, and preferable to, homosexuality."

"Heterosexism is far more insidious than homophobia," Warren said. "Think of the thousands and thousands of kids who would have loved to have taken a person of the same gender – or worn a dress if they are transgendered. But they couldn't because they never would have survived."

The duo's campaign recently gained the backing of the Supreme Court of Canada which ruled on same-sex books in Surrey classrooms. And the Canadian Teachers' Federation endorsed the curriculum developed by activists to support same-sex and transgendered youth, which includes displays, parades and "gay"-straight clubs.

One of the activists' publications distributed in schools tells educators to strive for comfort with their own sexuality.

"We have to get away from teaching the complexities of the immune system, getting bogged down by moralistic discussions, presenting a planned heterosexual bias or continuing the practice of sexist attitudes," the publication states. "We need to work toward discussing sexuality as a normal part of development. Our youth need to know how to plan for sex, how to talk about it with a potential partner, and how to be a safe and considerate lover."

The pair has met with opposition from parents and teachers who see their efforts as social engineering disguised as good intentions to keep students safe.

Myra Ottewell, a teacher in Surrey, suggests activists, in their effort to stop one type of prejudice, are encouraging another.

Ottewell told the Sun she won't abandon her Christian belief in the sanctity of monogamous, heterosexual marriage to promote, nurture or celebrate homosexuality. She also questioned why homosexual activists have been allowed to write and distribute curriculum she insists is ideological.

"Do we have pro-life educators writing resources? Of course not. Or teachers who are in business? No. It seems we have opened the door to some groups where we wouldn't tolerate it for others," she stated.

Parents argue the advocacy of homosexuality undermines their rights.

Nasima Nastoh, a mother who lost her son to suicide because of "gay" harassment in school, told the Sun she fears activists are going too far. Before jumping from the Pattullo Bridge to escape bullying, Hamed Nastoh, 14, wrote in a suicide note that he wasn't homosexual but was taunted by peers who called him "gay," "faggot" and "queer." He said he couldn't stand it any longer.

"We have to teach the kids not to use those words to taunt and tease," Nastoh said and stressed the students are given too much information – especially about sex changes – that frightens them.

"The school's focus on social engineering has got out of control. Not just with homosexuality but also feminism, unionism and sexism," said Kari Simpson with the Citizens Research Institute. Simpson is seeking intervenor status before the human rights tribunal.

"In this day and age, the last thing children need is for schools to sexualize every topic. That would be what most parents are concerned about – the sexualization of our education system," Simpson added.

Pushing homosexuality in U.S. classrooms

WorldNetDaily has reported that promotion of homosexuality has become increasingly common in public schools south of the Canadian border as some U.S. educators view the issue as a second civil-rights movement.

California lawmakers even passed legislation revising state curriculum to require educators to "acknowledge lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender historical figures, events, concepts, and issues."

Studies indicating homosexual and bisexual youth to be at greater risk for being victimized and more likely to experience anxiety, low self-esteem, depression, to abuse substances and contemplate or attempt suicide prompted the legislation. According to the California Alliance for Pride and Equality, "students who describe themselves as lesbian or gay are five times more likely to miss school because of felling unsafe. Twenty-eight percent are forced to drop-out."

But the instruction materials and methods used in the promotion of homosexuality in California schools have drawn a lot of fire.

WorldNetDaily reported parents filed a lawsuit against the Novato Unified School District in Novato, Calif., for authorizing pro-homosexual assemblies without any prior notice or parental consent. The presentations, entitled "Cootie Shots," exposed elementary school children as young as seven to skits containing gay and lesbian overtures by theatrical members of the community.

WorldNetdaily also reported California Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy, R-Monrovia, took issue last year with sexually explicit instructional materials approved by the Los Angeles Unified School District for use in "diversity" and "safety" programs presented to elementary through high school students, which included instructions on homosexual sodomy and a glorified account of lesbian pedophilia.

Mountjoy sponsored a bill aimed at prohibiting the promotion of homosexuality in public education. The measure was summarily defeated without discussion.

"The material is being put forward under the guise of tolerance and diversity, but it's inappropriate. It's lewd and lascivious ... and is darn embarrassing. Here I sit in my office reading my porn. It made me turn red, and I don't easily turn red," Mountjoy told WorldNetDaily. Mountjoy concludes the committee's vote against his bill sanctions continued use of the material in public schools.

Schools also face the threat of lawsuits by advocacy groups such as the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network if they fail to address "student-on-student abuse based on sexual orientation." On its website, GLSEN applauds a "landmark settlement" received by a Pennsylvania "gay" teen.

"There are clear lessons to be learned by school administrators and staff ... that teachers and staff take a risk – a risk that can have dire fiscal implications on their districts – when this kind of maltreatment goes unchecked," said Executive Director Kevin Jennings.

Pro-family advocates seek to turn the tables on the homosexual activists, adopting the same tactic.

Armed with a recent national survey, The American Family Association of Michigan, is alerting education officials they face legal liability for negligence should physical, mental or emotional harm come to children who experiment with homosexual behavior as a result of schools caving to the demands of homosexual activists.

As WND reported in February, 71 percent of parents responding to a poll conducted nationally said they opposed sex education programs that teach students that homosexual love relationships are comparable to heterosexual relationships.

"Parents nationally and in Michigan don't want their children indoctrinated or their health put at risk by 'politically correct' sex ed or diversity programs which tell kids there's nothing wrong with homosexual sex," said AFA-Michigan President Gary Glenn.

Glenn cites a Harvard Medical School study of 4,000 high school students which found that "gay-lesbian-bisexual youth report disproportionate risk for a variety of health risk and problem behaviors ... engag(ing) in twice the mean number of risk behaviors as did the overall population."

Related articles:

Parents say 'no' to 'gay' agenda in schools

Schools sued over pro-homosexual skits

Lawmakers 'sanction' use of district-approved 'porn'

This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows.
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[admin]

Chasing The Bug
by Matt Butts
pozthink@GLBTPress.com
Barebacking was only the beginning.



A couple of years ago, I was cruising in an internet chat room when a young man summoned me into a private chat. We talked for a few minutes, exchanged physical statistics and photos, and even discussed the prospect of hooking up for a little play. He seemed pretty hot. Then he asked me a question I didn’t quite understand.

“You into conversion?”

This struck me as a little odd. Was this guy some member of a weird religious cult wanting to recruit me into his belief system? I didn’t understand, so I asked him, “Conversion to what?”

Came the answer: “Me to poz.”

I stared at my screen in disbelief. “You want me to give you HIV?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s insane,” I told him. “Why on earth would you—”

End of chat. He clicked off the window and disappeared back into the corner of cyberspace he’d sprung from when he realized that I wasn’t interested, and that worse yet, I was going to chastise him for his request.

I had just encountered my first “bug chaser.”

Bug chasers are usually young people, ranging in age from 18 to 40. These are HIV-negative men who seek out HIV-positive men for the purpose of intentionally getting infected with HIV. The yin to their yang is a subculture of HIV-positive men who are euphemistically known as “gift givers,” positive men who are more than willing to share their infection with anyone willing to receive it.

They huddle in well-hidden places on the internet, such as one Yahoo Group where “conversion” is a hot subject. At least, it was: the group hasn’t had a new posting in nine months, but in two years it amassed over a thousand messages.

Most of the messages are online personal ads from young, negative men looking to take a “charged load” and HIV positive men offering their “gift” to anyone who wants it. Others are the exuberant rejoicing of young lads who have just learned that they have “the gift” and the gleeful declarations of men who have just learned that their latest effort to give “the gift” was successful. Some even boast of giving “the gift” to an unknowing recipient, and how they “love spreading it.”

Bug chasers and gift givers use a rather quaint terminology, a twisted metaphor for the child-bearing process. Many bug-chasers are just plain sluts who will get sodomized by anyone with a viral load, others shop around as one would for a husband, looking for just the right person to be the “father” of their infection. The giver “impregnates” the chaser with his “gift.” The virus passed between them is a “child” that they share.

Chasers see being HIV-positive as membership in a sort of brotherhood they want to join, and there are sick bastards out there who are more than willing to induct them. I don’t know, maybe it’s the only way they can get laid?

Don’t ask me to explain all this; I don’t understand it myself. Why would anyone want to consign themselves to a lifetime of pills with horrific side effects and so many blood draws their veins eventually collapse? Do they think people will still consider them cute when their faces explode with seborrheic dermatitis, or that their bodies will still be sexy when mottled with KS lesions? And who’s going to want to kiss someone with a mouthful of thrush?

Think I’m being too preachy here? Well, mark my words: ten years from now, when these happily “pozzed” young men are stumbling on neuropathic feet to get to the biffy before they soil their tighty-whities with explosive diarrhea, they’ll be singing the same song. They might as well start learning the lyrics now. Those who think having HIV is something “hip” or “cool” are sadly deluded. The “gift-givers” are deceiving these misguided young souls. Worse, they’re deceiving themselves. Someday they will curse this “gift” and the son of a bitch who gave it to them. But they will have no-one to blame but themselves. The old adage “be careful what you wish for…” was never more true.

Maybe I shouldn’t judge, but there’s more to this subject than sexual freedom and the rights of the individual. I’m thinking down the road here, about how an already overburdened health care system is going to deal with this influx of “voluntary” HIV infections, not to mention the strain this will place on state programs and social service organizations many people with HIV desperately depend on for their medical and economic needs.

As I said, the group I consulted hasn’t had a new posting in several months. But one of the last messages, from a new member of the group, was probably the most chilling of all:

“Hi. My name is David. You don’t know me, but some of you knew someone who did. He called himself Irish here, I guess. His name was Lee and he was my uncle. Well, my dad’s college roomie, but he was always Uncle Lee to me. He died on January 3 of this year, but only after giving me the bug.”

Maybe that’s why people stopped posting.

Think Positive.

Christine

[admin]

Hi my name is (wants to remain anonymous), and I am a heterosexual woman married to a gay man.



Ok, before I get into that, I wanted to ask a question. Why do the fundamentalists consider "gay" to be so sinful when it's a normal occurance in the animal kingdom? Let me give you an example. DH and I have 4 parakeets, 2 male and 2 female. The 2 males engage in sexual activity with each other and affectionate activity like preening and so on. But they won't go anywhere near the females. They are totally attached to each other. The females do not engage in any sexual activity at all except for nesting activities like shredding paper and so forth. We took the birds to the vet who told us, surprise surprise, that homosexual activity in the parakeet kingdom was a frequent and normal occurance! He also told us that aside from humans, no other animal kingdoms seem to have a problem with it, that it is totally natural for some creatures to do this. I'm wondering what you all have to say about this? Did your god create the creatures to behave this way or is it some kind of sin or demon?

Ok, now back to myself. I am 100% hetero, and my husband is gay. My husband and I were best friends for many years before he asked me to marry him. He is atheist and I am wiccan. He knows that he would never have to hide his gayness from me and that if he wanted to take a gay lover i would not have a problem with that. He knows that he could come to me and tell me and it would be no big deal. So far in the 8 years we have been married, he has not asked for a gay lover, though he does admire goodlooking men along with me

In the years that we were best friends he had many boyfriends. It never bothered me. We actually did not have sex until our wedding night, and it was wonderful. His reason for marrying me, of course he loved me and I was his best friend. Same here. We don't have kids and don't want any, he had a vasectomy. We have a great sex life. I never could stand those macho type guys anyhow, all of my male friends are gay. It's great with him, we do all kinds of things together I could never do with some macho jerk, like shopping, the salon, decorating, cooking. And he hates sports!

Like I said, if the day came where he felt like he just had to have a male lover to satisfy his needs in that respect, I would understand. I would want to be part of picking out his partner, and he knows that. Anyhow, just wanted to add a little story here that is different from the others.