The Homosexual Agenda In Our Public Schools

The battle in this country between those holding to traditional morality and those espousing hedonism has reached a fever pitch, manifested in no clearer terms that the ideological conflict over homosexuality. But forget about same-sex marriage, employment discrimination or AIDS funding. There may be no area of debate that causes blood pressures to escalate more rapidly than the question of whether public schools should teach children about homosexuality.

Now the homosexual community has thrown down the gauntlet by unveiling a video entitled It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues In School, and as its title implies, the video is aimed at the educational establishment.

The video is produced by Helen Cohen and Debra Chasnoff, the latter an Academy Award-winning documentary producer. In 1992 Chasnoff became the first woman to openly declare her lesbianism at the Oscars.

The producers went into six elementary and middle schools where teachers and principals are already force-feeding children with pro-gay grist. The narrator says the educators allowed the filming “in the hope of inspiring other educators and parents to take the next step in their own school communities to teach children respect for all.”

The video was funded largely by the San Francisco-based Columbia Foundation, as well as People for the American Way, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and the California Teacher Association’s Gay and Lesbian Caucus. The film also credits the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) with a hand in helping to fund the project.

It’s Elementary has picked up several awards, including the prestigious C.I.N.E. Golden Eagle for the Best Teacher Education Film of 1996.

Targeted to state departments of education and local school boards, the video has been screened in at least six states, and California Assemblywoman Sheila J. Kuehl, an open lesbian, said she intends to have it shown in all 50 states.

The narrator’s voice calmly introduces the video while the camera pans over a playground full of children playing peacefully together at a public school. “Most adults probably don’t see why schools should teach young children about gay people,” the voice says. While that is no doubt true, it becomes clear in It’s Elementary that homosexual activists see why schools should teach about the gay lifestyle.

It is to capture the hearts and minds of the next generation. In fact, in an interview about the video with a Santa Fe newspaper, Chasnoff states candidly, “What’s clear in the film is that the younger the kids, the more open they were….If we could start doing this kind of education in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, we’d have a better generation.”

Out of the mouths of babes

“Most adults probably don’t see …” becomes the theme of this documentary, portraying the ignorance and bigotry of adults – including parents – as the fountainhead of homphobia. In contrast, pro-homosexual statements are heard coming from the mouths of children, shown as innocents who have thus far been uncontaminated by the backwater views of adults.

A student in one New York City school thinks even 5- and 6-year-olds should be given books about the homosexual lifestyle. If parents “freak out,” it’s only because they are “biased.” And a second grade boy in Cambridge, Mass., says an adult who is opposed to lesbianism is not very“open-minded,” and in fact is downright “prejudiced.” This theme supplies the rationale for It’s Elementary: keep the discussion of homosexuality out of the hands of ignorant parents, and place it in the hands of an enlightened public school system.

Circumventing parents

Celia Klehr, whose child has gone through her school’s pro-homosexual program, has nothing but praise for the curriculum. But what if a parent disapproves of homosexuality? The program is still beneficial, Klehr insists.“At least this way it opens the topic,” she says, “so that you can then teach what you believe to your child.” But Klehr’s reasoning begs the question – should schools be teaching this in the first place?

If a parent views homosexuality as wrong, what is the child to do with a contradictory message coming from another respected authority figure – the child’s teacher? A wedge has been driven between the child’s two worlds: home and school; doubt has been raised in the child’s mind about whether or not his/her parents are wrong.

What if a child simply accepts the teacher’s pro-gay view without question, and never raises the issue at home? The moral values of some parents have been effectively undermined by an authority figure at school, and homosexual advocates have won the initial skirmish in the war for the hearts and minds of a future generation.

Ellen Varella, principal of Peabody Elementary School in Cambridge, Mass., decided that her school would host a “photo-text exhibit” entitled, “Love Makes a Family: Living in Lesbian and Gay Families.” She said she anticipated no controversy, because the school community was a “very open and embracing and nurturing community.”

The decision did result in controversy, however, presumably among the closed-minded, non-nurturing types. When a friend warned her that she could lose her job over the exhibit, Varella was unfazed. “I felt strongly that the children in this community needed to be educated around this topic,” she said.

Perhaps one of the most shocking statements in It’s Elementary came from Thomas Price, principal of Cambridge Friends School in Cambridge, Mass. “I don’t think that it’s appropriate that values only be taught at home,” he said. “There are social values as well, there are community values.” And apparently those critical community values include this one: homosexuality is good.

Enlightened white knights of the public schools

The underlying belief of these social architects is that parents cannot be trusted to convey the truth about homosexuality to their children. The intervention of the public schools is necessary. At a faculty meeting at Cambridge Friends School, the teachers are discussing the results of their fourth annual Gay and Lesbian Pride Day. One teacher admits, “I think that we are asking kids to believe that (the homosexual lifestyle) is right….[W]e’re educating them, and this is part of what we consider to be a healthy education,” (emphasis added).

Some go beyond mere recommendation of advocacy. Take for example George Sloan, principal at Luther Burbank Middle School in San Francisco. Sloan said he believed that learning under a pro-homosexual curricula “should be mandatory” for all students.

At the Manhattan Country School in New York City, eighth grade English teacher Carol O’Donnell listens as one student complains that she is confused about the issue of homosexuality, because her family tells her its wrong.

Another student agrees that kids hear different things from different places. The solution? “[S]chool needs to give us all the facts, so we can decide on our own what to think and what to do.” Some parents might be disturbed to know that their voice has been relegated to the status of being one among many. Yet it is the opinion promulgated in It’s Elementary that, when conflicting voices sow confusion, the public school system can intervene with the facts so the children can decide for themselves.

But are they given the facts? And are they really deciding for themselves?

“There’s no right or wrong answer…”

The introduction to the video tries to calm parental fears, by assuring them that the pro-gay curricula in schools will only be presented in “an age-appropriate way.” This translates very simply: rather than discussing sexual practices and sexually-transmitted diseases, the teachers will frame the issue as a discussion about tolerance and civil rights.

In New York City’s Public School 87, fourth-grade teacher Cora Sangree is reminding her students of a previous assignment, when she told them to paint whatever came to mind when she said the word, “Indian.” Now, she tells her children, they are to write whatever comes to mind when she says the word “lesbian” and “gay.”

One student asks, “So nothing’s right or wrong in this either?”“That’s right,” Sangree replies, “There’s no right or wrong answer.”

Those words play well to the casual observer of It’s Elementary. But a more critical examination of the video shows teachers’ subtle but powerful manipulation of the children to draw the desired conclusion.

In Kate Lyman’s first/second grade class the students often do “class books,” put together by the students themselves. On this day, Lyman shows the class their latest finished project, entitled, “Everybody is Equal: A Book About Gays and Lesbians.” The computer-generated introduction to their book says, in part, “We made this book to tell people to respect gay and lesbian people…” The teacher thus established the parameters of acceptable viewpoints in advance of the project: if you don’t think homosexuality is “equal” to heterosexuality, you don’t “respect” gay people.

At one school assembly celebrating Gay and Lesbian Pride Day, a teacher stands before the students and tells them he’s gay. Another teacher tearfully tells the children how proud she is of what they are doing, and encourages them to change the world with what they’ve learned.

At the beginning of It’s Elementary, the narrator explained, “We made this film to explore what does happen when experienced teachers talk about lesbians and gay men with their students.” What happens is clear. The sight of teachers standing before the entire school body in support of homosexuality has a coercive influence upon children that is frightening. Later Sangree, alone with the camera, discusses her observations about the day’s teaching session. The children, she says, are getting a lot of“misinformation” about homosexuals – not only from the culture, but also parents. And, she says, apparently to defuse potential protests, the curricula does not talk about sex. That, she says, would be inappropriate.

Instead, the school is merely attempting to eliminate “stereotypes” and promote respect. “[T]alking about people in different communities, and biases and discrimination and how that affects people’s lives,” Sangree said, “I think is appropriate.”

Here, finally, we discover that there is indeed a right and wrong answer after all.

Stacking the deck

If some of the teachers do not explicitly say that people are wrong when they oppose homosexuality, they do so implicitly. The words “gays and lesbians” are circled on the chalkboard in the third-grade class of teacher Daithi Wolfe, at Hawthorne Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin. Then, as he begins to write down the words that students associate with homosexuality, a curious pattern develops. Any negative words offered by students about homosexuals are placed on the right side of his circle: “Homophobia.” “Discrimination.” “Name-calling.” “Weird.” And, of course, “Nazis” and “Hitler.”

But on the left side of the board – apparently the side with the “right” words – are “pink triangle,” “rainbow necklace,” “same (as real people),” and “equal rights.” Such blatant manipulation might not work on adults, but it is clearly effective on children. Kim Coates, an eighth grade health science teacher at Luther Burbank Middle School in San Francisco, invited two homosexuals to address her class. One of the speakers, a lesbian, starts off telling the students that she didn’t come to school to recruit kids into the homosexual lifestyle. Instead, she admits that she came to change their minds about gays. While they may have come to school thinking homosexuals are evil, she hoped they would leave thinking that “gay people are just like me.” And she accomplishes her goal. After the class, some of the students are interviewed, and they admit that the two speakers have changed the way they view homosexuality.

Christians are the enemies of homosexuals

When It’s Elementary is not pointing the finger at bigoted parents in general, it zeroes in on Christians in particular: the Christian view of homosexuality is highlighted as an example of outrageous bigotry. In one sequence of clips from TV talks shows, two apparent Christians present the view of their faith. One says, “God hates fags.” The other: “The Bible that I read says homosexuals should be put to death.” Later, a fifth-grade boy observes, “Some Christians believe that if you’re gay or lesbian that you’ll go to hell, so they want to torture them.” This skewed view of Christianity is no accident.  Chasnoff has said that the film was made, in part, to counter the “hysteria of the Religious Right.”  But not all religious views of homosexuality are ridiculed in the video.  What, for example, is the theological position of Thomas Price, principal of Cambridge Friends School?  “We really believe that there’s God in every person, and those people include homosexuals, too,” he says.

In a twist that is positively evil, the children at one Gay and Lesbian Pride Day school assembly are led by a platoon of teachers in singing, “This Little Light of Mine.”

If there was any doubt remaining, the moral worldview of the pro-homosexual curricula surveyed in It’s Elementary is clarified by one teacher in Cambridge.

After saying that students must be taught that all lifestyles are equal, she says, “There isn’t a right way, there isn’t a wrong way; there isn’t a good way, there isn’t a bad way. The way that it is, is what it is.”

Homosexual advocates have realized that their greatest potential for changing America’s mind about the gay lifestyle lies in changing the seed for tomorrow’s crop. Varella, in fact, said she allowed her school’s photo-text exhibit in the hope that it would contribute to “improving our civilization,” because children are the “leaders of tomorrow.” With efforts like It’s Elementary, homosexuals are well on their way to deciding what that tomorrow will look like.

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