Special Focus on 'Gay' Clubs
Every school district in the U.S. has an absolute responsibility to the community to protect children while they are at school. This also means that school districts have an absolute obligation to do no harm to the children entrusted to their care.
These minimal expectations are being violated routinely at an alarming number of public schools in this country because of the unthinking and irresponsible embrace of homosexuality, bisexuality or transgenderism as acceptable lifestyles for students and teachers.
This is a simple issue: there is no legitimate rationale for giving or implying endorsement of homosexual, bisexual or gender variant behaviors among children of any age. It is not a viewpoint, but an often high-risk and socially questionable behavior. The issue is not one of rights, or opinions, but of health and social stability.
Unfortunately, advocates of homosexuality, including teachers, students, administrators, teachers’ union delegates, and school board members, are now permitted to promote homosexuality in a variety of ways in many school districts. Curricular materials and extra-curricular programs implying or proclaiming acceptance of homosexual behavior are becoming more and more common. These are frequently initiated through school alliances with influential homosexual advocacy groups such as GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) and PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Local resistance is suppressed as advocates receive pro bono legal support from the ACLU, the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, the National Education Association’s legal defense for homosexual teachers, and other groups. Some of these groups actually work directly with students to make demands of school boards and administrations, often to create new judicial precedent. If they meet obstacles, they are prepared to engineer a huge media circus around their efforts, and the media today is too often sympathetic.
Much of this is flying under the radar of parents and communities, yet this betrayal of trust has become a public health and social stability issue for virtually every community. The majority of students educated in public schools, even if raised in traditional-minded homes, are now being successfully indoctrinated with the belief that engaging in homosexual behavior is a right and is relatively harmless.
The truth is otherwise. Homosexual behavior and the environment of the homosexual community presents many problematic risks and influences, and those risks are well-documented, as shown in the sharp rise in HIV among young males, for example.
With homosexual behavior comes a whole host of very significant health and lifestyle risks. Whether high-risk conduct is a result of homosexual desires, or contributes to developing them, or some of both, is anyone’s guess. The fact remains that teens engaging in homosexual behavior are participating in a lifestyle that:
• may well reduce life expectancy
• increases risk of contracting HIV
• increases the risk of contracting many other sexually transmitted diseases
• involves high levels of promiscuity
As it now stands, each child enrolled in a public school is likely to receive numerous direct and implicit messages at school that homosexual behavior should be accepted as normal. The underlying (and erroneous) assumptions of these messages are:
• That homosexuality is inborn and inevitable for some students and teachers and therefore a matter of “rights”. There is no body of scientific research that establishes this proposition.
• That homosexual behaviors are no higher risk than current trends in heterosexual behavior. This is not supported by public health data, or observable practices.
• That homosexuality is a viewpoint and should be protected by “free speech” constitutional protections. Like smoking, it is actually a high risk behavior. Schools should no more permit homosexual behavior to be presented to children as “normal” and “acceptable” than smoking, drug use, etc. should be presented to children as “normal” and “acceptable”.
• That objections to homosexuality are a threat to the welfare of students who are assumed to be “born gay.” As is so often the case with politically correct “conventional wisdom,” exactly the reverse is true. Objections to homosexual behavior actually save lives and improve mental and physical health.
Hijacking the Language of Civil Rights
By posing as a part of the civil rights movement, homosexual activists have succeeded in attaching their message to the message of human rights and tolerance already incorporated into countless lessons in a typical curriculum, e.g., in social studies and literature classes. Homosexual advocacy takes the idea of being kind and civil and twists it. Homosexuals, bisexuals and cross-gender practitioners are falsely alleged to be illegitimately discriminated against, even “oppressed” by the majority, if their attractions are not affirmed.
A “safe school” becomes one that doesn’t threaten the homosexually-inclined student with disapproval--so all students and staff are forced to stifle any objections to homosexual behavior or be villified as “homophobes” and potential threats.
Propagandistic claims that “GLBT” students are at higher risk of suicide and are often the targets of bullies cow school boards into accepting homosexual clubs, “anti-harassment” policies and tolerance programs. The truth is that many students are targets of bullies and not all of them demand a totalitarian regime of mental re-programming of their classmates to stop this. The reality is that the behaviors involved in homosexuality are the real risk to these children.
Homosexual Clubs ('Gay'-Straight Alliances)
One of the most common, visible homosexual advocacy devices in public schools is the homosexual club, often called a 'gay'-straight alliance.
The group GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) says that several thousand such clubs have been formed in the past decade in American high schools (and recently, a few middle schools), so it’s certainly no longer a novelty. These clubs are said to be required through the Equal Access Act, according to the ACLU and others. We disagree, because they violate two premises of the EAA. These clubs DO threaten student welfare and well-being, and they are a force for disruption of the school environment.
A principal who is approached by a group of students to form such a club may be tempted to think, this might be a workable idea. After all, these are students who are more prone to being discriminated against (he has heard) and this would raise their self-esteem. That is the platform upon which such clubs are advocated.
But this administrator needs to step back, because we are talking here about homosexuality, not the debate team. Most or all the students who want to form this group have homosexual leanings already and may be willing to participate in the behaviors involved, behaviors commonly associated with serious diseases like HIV/AIDS. In fact, in the weirdest of ironies, there is a high probability that currently at Anytown High, there is funding for a health education program warning about the dangers of HIV, and its associated high-risk behaviors.And now the school may sponsor a club that will imply those behaviors are acceptable?
Those at highest risk of HIV are males who participate in anal sex. It's a practice engaged in by roughly three-fourths of homosexual males. Centers for Disease Control reports show that roughly two-thirds of HIV in the U.S. is still attributable to males having sex with males ( see www.cdc.gov for the latest statistics).
So how can any high school justify a club that considers homosexual behavior a respectable option? That brings homosexually-inclined teens together, as well as older advisors, for social activities? That allows teens to reinforce one another in their inclinations---inclinations that may result in serious disease? And imply to all the other school's students that it's an acceptable option? A smoking club or maybe an anorexia club might be comparably foolish.
But the issue goes way beyond health. In today's climate, a school not only encourages risky, unhealthy behavior by allowing a homosexuality club, but also fosters a climate of tension and division. This is because of what homosexual clubs, 'gay'/straight alliances, will spend their time exploring. Here's what goes on in such groups, and some of the ramifications:
* Misinformation about homosexuality will be learned. The club will reinforce the homosexual desires of vulnerable teens, without any authentic exploration of what has prompted these desires. Genetic origins will be firmly claimed without supporting scientific evidence (since there is none, according to many sources including the American Psychological Association). This dangerous brainwashing of at-risk teens, some of whom are there simply as straight "questioners," will have the aegis of school support. Liability issues are just lurking to be discovered.
* Their rights" to be who they are----i.e., to participate in homosexual behavior--will be constantly reinforced. These "rights" will increasingly be defined as they want, until adults put on the brakes. Short of that, what happens in the school environment to the rights to others to practice freedom of religion and freedom of speech (not including, of course, genuine harassment or threats)? What about privacy rights--like, the right of straight students not to be openly ogled in the shower after gym class?
* The group will dwell on what they believe constitutes harassment or discrimination by other students or teachers. Yes, there is unkind name-calling and even worse in high schools, but schools already have policies to deal with real problems. What these students will do, wittingly or unwittingly, through a club is to seek ways to manipulate the problem of unkindness into a solution that affirms homosexuality. So, having sealed their decisions to "be who they are," and being immature adolescents anyway, this group's interpretation of harassment can range from extreme sensitivity about natural and commonplace disapproval of homosexuality by other teens, to rage when a "straight" teen rejects homosexual advances— which that person certainly should have the right to do. And, depending on the limits set by the school, what this groups feels is harassment may be the standard adopted.
* Activist training will have a fertile field. Regional conferences are held for members of gay straight alliances and will be attended by the club members and adult advisors. A slight can become a potential lawsuit, because these teens, and often their sympathetic parents, will know about the resources at their disposal through ACLU, Lambda Legal Defense Fund, GLSEN, and other national, well-funded groups. Suspicion and a victim mentality are developed in already emotionally-challenged teens, and an explosive and costly situation will be in the making that holds schools hostage to special interest groups.
* Traditional religions that disapprove of homosexuality will be regularly and soundly trashed. The intolerance coming out of the adult pro-homosexual lobby is implanted here, and a mindset of animosity is created. 'Gay' clubs, by perpetuating myths, help to fuel division, not eliminate it. These kids are told that "homophobia" must be eliminated. Eliminated? These kids will be taught that, way beyond stemming actual violence, they have the moral right to silence ordinary disapproval and to become incensed at anyone's distaste for the lifestyle. Think of the many people who have well-founded objections to homosexuality. Is such a club's potential hostility something anyone wants unleashed in their school?
* Homosexual clubs will embrace the idea that cross-dressing or even sex change surgery are valid options for teens. Transgendered rights include the right to define one's own gender; to use whichever bathroom or shower one wants; or attend whichever gym class or be on whatever sports team one wishes. To not see a distorted reality as these individuals see it will be, again, "discrimination."
* Social activities will be planned for homosexual teens with their adult advisors. So their defense will be that the prom is a dating activity for heterosexuals-- why not something for homosexuals? But homosexuality is high risk. Vastly higher percentages of people suffer from the practices associated with it. If the school or your state has an abstinence education policy, all the more ammunition. How can a school sanction both simultaneously? Take a look at just a few of the recommended reading selections by pro-homosexual groups PFLAG or GLSEN - -often filled with graphic sex between teens-- and it will be easy to prove how abstinence is hardly being encouraged or promoted.
“But This is Our Identity!”
Throughout the debate will rage a continual cry---that this is an identity issue, not a sexual practices issue. When that claim is raised, search for even one article that shows conclusive ( and this is the key) evidence for a biological origin for homosexuality. By contrast, there are many sources of valid evidence that there is quite a bit of fluidity in these attractions and some who were inclined homosexually as youth later leave these desires behind.
Because of the fragility of the underlying claim of biology, "discrimination" on the basis of "sexual orientation" falls apart as public policy, at the national, state and school board level. It really comes down to just allowing certain sexual practices, or not.
Common Rationale for "Gay" Clubs
Some of the most frequently-cited reasons given for forming a "gay" club are that homosexual teens are at higher risk of suicide; have higher levels of depression; have more trouble in school, greater problems with drug and alcohol, and so on. These are generally troubled kids, and that is often true. But even though our hearts are saddened by the plight of such students, we must look with skepticism if the proposed solution is that these kids receive more social support for their homosexual behavior. It may be claimed that it is society's "homophobia" that causes all their problems. Yet the more vulnerable students with chaotic backgrounds are those most likely to be attracted to homosexuality or gender variant behavior, sadly.
The presumption of homophobia as the underlying issue needs to be challenged, because it takes one down a road that has no end to demands. It's also demonstrably untrue and prevents kids from getting real help to understand their self-destructive feelings. When teens have homosexual desire, it is a symptom, not an identity. There is a pattern in the homosexual community that seems to point to “issues,” which may account for:
* Anonymous sexual encounters, high-risk sex practices, numerous partners, and the use of substances to cope with it all;
* The suicidal tendencies that don't seem to diminish in communities of acceptance, nor with age and "well-adjustment" within the homosexual community;
* The millions of dollars spent on education about condoms and safe sex that don't seem to change the behaviors of most homosexuals;
* Higher than expected rates of domestic violence characteristic of homosexual live-in relationships.
Drawing kids into a homosexual club, for all these reasons, is the last thing these teens need.The wise high school principal is one who will know that a "gay" club involves health decisions, as well as decisions about competing rights. Ultimately, it is a somewhat moral decision. A stand will have to be taken. A "gay" club is not a position of neutrality, but a slap in the face to health, to families and really, to the kids.
Affirming homosexuality, in a club or elsewhere, may result in the demoralization of the school, and a possible increase in experimental homosexual behavior by students. The most educationally-supportive parents may flee with their families. Few responsible parents want their kids to be subjected to increasingly empowered gay students, which may affect the stability of the school system.
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