Sex Education and Homosexuality?

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A New Jersey high school special education teacher is under attack after allegedly posting anti-homosexual remarks on her Facebook page. Vicki Knox criticized the school’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) history month display and stated that homosexuality is “a perverted spirit that has existed from the beginning of creation.” She went on to say that homosexuality is a “sin” and that it “breeds like cancer.”

John Paragono, who is a lawyer as well as a former councilman and municipal judge in Union Township where the school is located, came across the teacher’s Facebook post.  After reading the comments, he wrote to Union Township Schools Superintendent Patrick Martin to request some sort of action be taken.  “Hateful public comments from a teacher cannot be tolerated,” wrote Paragano. Paragano continued: “She has a right to say it. But she does not have a right to keep her job after saying it.”  In response to the controversy, Knox was escorted from school property, but Martin declined to confirm whether or not she would be suspended.

Eugene Delaudo wrote: “The Homosexual Lobby is taking over our schools and using them to promote their radical agenda to our children and grandchildren. And they are attacking anyone who tries to stop them.” Delaudo wrote that Vicki Knox expressed her opinion on her private Facebook page that the homosexual display was wrong to have in a school. She said homosexuality is “against the nature and character of God.” Public schools are “not the setting to promote, encourage, support and foster homosexuality.”  And for that she is being smeared by the New York Times, pro-homosexual websites, and is under investigation from her school district!

The question comes as to whether and how the public schools can approach the subject of homosexuality. Judeo-Christian thinking as well as Islamic thinking have traditionally very much opposed the practice of homosexuality.  Some Protestant denominations such as the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Unitarians, and the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) have tended to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.  But most religious teaching has been opposed to it. The public schools, however, are not religious institutions, but how should they teach about or in regard to homosexuality?  How can they help homosexuals see the problems, overcome the problems, and leave the lifestyle?

In March 2000 the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s Massachusetts organization held its Ten Year Anniversary GLSEN/Boston Conference at Tufts University, fully supported by the Massachusetts Department of Education and the Safe Schools Program.  Barack Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” Kevin Jennings, is the founder of GLSEN, and was paid $273,573.96 as its executive director in 2007. Jennings was the keynote speaker at this 2000 GLSEN conference.  Jennings, throughout his career in education, has focused on bringing homosexuality into the public schools.

The Little Black Book, a publication of GLSEN, was distributed to hundreds of kids (middle school age and up) at Brookline High School, Brookline, Massachusetts, on April 30, 2005. It was written by the Boston-based AIDS Action Committee, with help from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the Boston Public Health Commission.

The book says its purpose is to teach safe sex to homosexuals.  The event that day was designed for children and their teachers across Massachusetts and organized by the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).  This is the group that runs “Gay-Straight Alliance” clubs in public schools across the country.  These clubs are one way that GLSEN has said the stigma many homosexuals feel in the public schools can be taken away.

However, after learning about the availability of  The Little Black Book at a high school assembly, then-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney released a statement that said, “Graphic pornographic material on the gay lifestyle has no place in any school….The particular publication is grossly inappropriate and should never find its way into the hands of school-aged children.”  (Selling Homosexuality to America’s Schoolchildren – Dr. D. James Kennedy, www. coralridge.org – 2006.)  The Bible is the book they need!

The Bible declares that homosexual practices are sinful and an abomination to God, as it says in Leviticus 18:22 that “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is an abomination,” and in Romans 1:26-28 where it says: “For this cause God gave them up to vile affections: for even the women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error which was meet.”  This tells it as it is!

Proverbs 19:27 says, “Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge.”  And Proverbs 22:6 says: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  It should be important for the teaching about homosexuality in the public schools to focus on the real knowledge about homosexuality and the great dangers in disease, emotional problems, and negative influences associated with homosexuality. It is not educational to neglect this!   It does not have to be from the biblical teaching, but from the overall facts, though the Bible is not in contradiction to the overall facts.  Tendencies can be genetic, but all, like alcoholics, they can change from it.  Many do!

The American Psychiatric Association regarded homosexuality as an illness until 1974, and many mental health practitioners still feel it is an illness.  But what has happened is that many feel it is normal just to become politically correct.  However, just think of the gory murders and high incidence of murder often committed particularly in the homosexual communities and the widespread molesting of children in that community!

In the pamphlet, The Legal Liability Associated with Homosexuality Education in Public Schools, it is said:  “What is becoming increasingly clear, however, is that despite claims to the contrary, the “safe school” message of the organizations (the gay rights groups) is nothing more than a deceptive ploy to preach safety while actually encouraging sexual behaviors that are quite unsafe.”  (Citizens for Community Values -info@ccv.org, p.1)

In the Journal of the American Medical Association, January 2001, is an article supporting the position that men with same-sex sexual behavior are at greater risk for psychiatric disorders compared to heterosexual men.  The homosexual men are:  “727% more likely to have suffered bipolar disorders at some point in their lives with 502% more likely in the last twelve months—718% more likely to have suffered obsessive-compulsive disorder in the last twelve months with 620% more likely at some point in their lives—632% more likely to have suffered agoraphobia (fear of leaving home or being in public) in the last twelve months, and 454% more likely at some point in their lives—421% more likely to have suffered “panic disorder,” and 229% more likely to have suffered “social phobia” at some point in their lives—375% more likely to have suffered  “simple phobia” in the last twelve months, and 361% more likely at some point in their lives—311% more likely to have suffered mood disorders at some point in their lives, and 293% more likely in the last twelve months—261% are more likely to have suffered anxiety disorders in the last twelve months with 267% more likely over the course of their lifetimes—270% more likely to have suffered two or more psychiatric disorders during their lifetime, and 235% more likely to have suffered major depression at some point in their lives.”  What does this say about mental health?

In respect to homosexual women, the same study of the Journal of the American Medical Association compared the two sexual behaviors and found that homosexuals are “405% more likely to have suffered a substance abuse disorder—241% more likely to have suffered mood disorders during their lifetimes, and 209% more likely to have suffered two or more mental disorders during their lifetimes.”  This is to say nothing about the problems with AIDS/HIV or other types of venereal disease that are physical, not mental.

Homosexual youth are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than other young people, and they may comprise up to thirty percent of completed youth suicides annually.  Homosexual men are six times more likely to attempt suicide than straight men, a University of California at San Francisco study reported. (<jsheehy@ari.ucsf.edu> –August 5, 2002)  If grown men display this tendency toward suicide, why would we think it would not be evident in the homosexual teens as well?

The question comes down to: “Is it right to hide the facts about homosexuality in the context of education?”  To blame Christians or even school officials for the suicides of some students, who have felt harassed because of being homosexual or bisexual, or who are offended by Christians saying homosexuality is sin, or even by public health officials that say it is an illness, is faulty reasoning. As the public schools teach about homosexuality in sex education, they should look at and teach the facts, not the feelings – even if the facts happen not to contradict the teachings of the Bible.  The homosexual lifestyle is a problem lifestyle, and it can be overcome or avoided.

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by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, Box 751, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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