Assault on Innocence in Massachusetts
By Linda Harvey
Imagine you are seven years old, and you go to a public school in a liberal region of the country. Imagine that, like many families in that area, yours is one that believes homosexuality is a harmless, neutral civil right, and that children should be taught to accept it and thereby live enlightened and peaceful lives in a newly-constructed utopian world.
And as part of this enlightenment, you discover there are families in your school who don’t believe what you believe. These families believe that homosexuality is harmful; that it goes against the Creator’s plan for human sexuality; that children should have a mother and father; that marriage likewise consists of one each, male and female.
When you, the seven-year-old, ask your parents about these families, they tell you these people are very wrong, which a seven- year- old understands as “bad.” These are people who would keep Jenny’s two moms from living together, breaking up their family. At no time are you told details about what homosexuality entails; you are only told it’s about “love.”
So naturally, over the course of a school year, hearing only one viewpoint at school and at home, you develop a sense of childish outrage. Outside groups like GLSEN—the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network—provide your school with lots of material talking about these “mean” people who probably want to bully you. At some point, this misinformation and brainwashing can erupt into violence against a classmate who belongs to one of the “bad” families. You could become a bully, because children are impressionable.
Children who had apparently learned such hateful attitudes attacked the seven-year –old son of David Parker on May 17 in the schoolyard at Estabrook Elementary School in Lexington, Massachusetts. In an isolated area of the playground away from adult eyes, the boy was surrounded, kicked and punched in the chest, stomach and genital area by a group of 8 to 10 children. Finally, one little girl told an adult, who intervened but neglected to take the boy to the school nurse.
David Parker only went public about this incident a week ago, because he was waiting to see what the school would do. School officials have now “looked into it,” as have the Lexington Police, the district t attorney and the state child service agency. In record time for bureaucrats, all have speedily concluded the incident is virtually without merit, and that no adults did anything to provoke the beating.
But patience continues to be David Parker’s approach, as it has been all along. He worked for months through an appropriate school committee in 2005 for reassurance that his son would not be subjected to a lesson about homosexual “families” similar to one that had already occurred without his notification as a parent. That assurance to him never came, so in frustration, Parker politely hung out one day near the principal’s office, waiting for a conversation and a commitment. Instead of behaving in the tolerant manner reflecting anti-bias and sensitivity training, instead of respecting Parker’s parental rights, the principal called the police and had Parker arrested for trespassing. A few months later, the spurious charges were predictably dropped.
Parker’s son is physically fine; the injuries were superficial, at least outwardly. But in later years as he recalls the event, what will Jacob Parker have learned about “tolerance,” about prejudice, about “safe schools” programs? Is it possible he will see such programs as ineffective and hypocritical? That one is only “safe” if he/she holds certain prescribed beliefs?
The incident occurred on the two year anniversary of the legalization of homosexual marriages in Massachusetts. Parker believes there was probably some degree of planning behind this. “It is at the very least an astounding coincidence that this would happen to our son on that day,” he told me. Since kids are very suggestible, I asked if there had there been posters, announcements, any observance of the same sex marriage anniversary that day at his son’s school?
Parker doesn’t know, because the school refuses to notify him of planned pro-homosexual lessons or observances. Other parents are equally incensed at the pro-homosexual lessons and propagandistic books read to children like King and King (about a prince who dates a male). One family finally removed their children from the school and moved. Troublemakers who expect true equality in parental rights are not really wanted there.
“No matter what your faith or beliefs are,” Parker says, “there is a bright red line the school should not cross, where parents want to be the ones to discuss issues like human sexuality and marriage. These are the psyches of our young children, and I consider this to be a responsibility of my household.” Parker and another family filed a federal lawsuit against the school in April.
Before the school’s animosity toward him surfaced, Parker served on the school’s “anti-bias” committee. During that time, a representative of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, gave a workshop entitled, “How and Why to Talk about Diversity with Children.” The speaker dwelt on methods to normalize homosexuality among children. Obtaining library and classroom books featuring same sex couples and parents was among his strongest recommendations. In Parker’s son’s class even after all the controversy are the books Molly’s Family ( little Molly has two “moms”) and Who’s in a Family? (highlighting alternative families, including those headed by homosexuals). Similar books reside in all the classrooms at Estabrook Elementary, Parker told us.
When parents all across the country hear about the need to make schools “safe” through “anti-bullying” programs and tolerance training, be wary. “Many anti-bullying programs have their basis in homosexual activism,” said Brian Camenker, director of Mass Resistance.
Apparently, the anti-bias committee at Estabrook didn’t do its job. Or---did it?
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