The Divisive Twists to Teach Perversion in the Classrooms

The divisive twists to teach perversion in the classroom have very much replaced the sound implantation of the gospel in the education of our youth, and the results are becoming very much evident as the youth struggle with inappropriate eating or sleeping habits, inabilities to concentrate, abrupt changes in their personalities, impulsiveness, inability to concentrate on academic work, decline in grades, absenteeism, loss or lack of positive friendships, abuse of alcohol and drugs, and increased involvement in homosexual behavior, on to increased cases of suicide in the school age population.

Without question some homosexuals have been teased, put down, castigated, and bullied at times by other students in the public schools with some reverting to suicide for relief. But now the U.S. Department of Education is blaming conservative Christianity and traditional morality as the cause of this bullying, implicating them as the culprits behind the problem.  Programs are thus being established to present homosexuality in the most positive terms!

There should be no tolerance of bullying, but the liberal activists groups are using the issue of students being bullied as a tool to press a social agenda. Part of this agenda is to blame the religious right! In his national radio broadcast, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, warned that a “national homo-sexualization of schools” is coming. He called on parents to take action against what he called a “recent push to integrate pro-gay curriculum in schools”and said he believes it’s a “nationwide effort that will soon put almost every child at risk.” (Pro-homosexual resolution may face National Education Assoc. convention–Posted on Mar 21, 2001  by Jim Burns)  This warning was some time back, but it is really happening as warned by Dobson.

The legislation and power of the federal government is being set up to force pro-homosexual, pro-transgender indoctrination into the classrooms of our public schools.  A California law has only positive information about alternate lifestyles, including homosexuality, in its public schools. Ben Johnson in The Right’s Writer, (October 7, 2011) wrote about how an Obama court case could force Christian schools and churches to employ HIV-Positive, Transgender Teachers. LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) History Month celebrates the achievements of thirty-one lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender icons. Each day in October, a new LGBT icon is featured with a video, bio, bibliography, downloadable images, and other resources.  These government rulings prescribe the wrong medicine to the wrong malady. It is a divisive twist being set up to teach perversion in the classrooms!  But seeking to put homosexuality into a positive picture frame is not going to curtail bullying to any real degree.

The Obama administration’s recent warning to the nation’s public schools – that some bullying may violate federal anti-discrimination law – is less about bullying than it is about advancing the homosexual agenda in public schools, some critics say.  The Right-Wing-Watch, a liberal publication, says, “many Religious Right activists want to derail efforts to combat bullying. An increasing number of conservative leaders and organizations have fiercely opposed anti-bullying programs developed by schools and education groups for the sole reason that such programs identify and attempt to combat the widespread bullying of LGBT youth.” (People for the American Way—December 2011).

In fact in one article, “Suicide Risk may be Lower for Gays, Lesbians in Supportive Areas”, it suggests that a supportive school and community might be able to reduce that risk, if only slightly, for both groups.  They bring out that “Gay and bisexual teens are five times as likely as heterosexual peers to attempt suicide, according to new research — but a supportive social environment can cut that rate by one-fifth.” (“World Health” April 18, 2011, Marissa Cevallos).  That would make it about four times as likely.

Yes, a small degree of help by catering to homosexual values can be provided to alleviate the suicide problem with homosexual students, but is it right, wise, and discrete to do this by exposing the vast majority of the straight students to the encouragement to become involved in homosexual practices?  There might be certain genetic tendencies for one to be homosexual like there are for alcoholics, but that doesn’t determine the issue, for many with homosexual leanings can be delivered from the disaster of a homosexual life.

Liberal social activists have launched an attack on traditional morality, singling out conservative Christian values as being the villains, the cultivators of the bullying. Bullying involves intentional and unprovoked actions toward the victim, repeated negative actions by one or more people against another person, and an imbalance of physical or psychological power. It is absurd to blame traditional morality, which developed from the Judeo-Christian values in our land and which has frowned upon all types of bullying in whatever category. Verbal gay bashing or bullying might use sexual slurs, expletives, intimidation, or threats of violence. These are forms of homosexual bullying. But bullying can be for all types of reasons, such as size, color, appearance, race, particular sex, being in or out of a particular group, whatever—not necessarily for homosexual categorizations at all.  Bullying, however, is not Christian in any way!

In a Layman article it says: “According to a 2008 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about thirty percent of American middle and high-school students reported being either a victim or an instigator in a bullying situation – so the bullying is by no means just a homosexual experience. According to the National Education Association, around 160,000 students report missing school every day due to fears of bullying. The report does not state whether or not sexual orientation is a factor in such fears.”  (The Layman Online  – “Former Moderator Says Churches Give ‘Tacit Approval’ to Gay-Student Bullying” (Jason P. Reagan, The Layman, Posted Thursday, June 9, 2011).

However, the liberal activists feel that Conservative Christian churches are currently leading the fight to: 1) prevent gays and lesbians from enjoying rights and protections equal to the general population, 2) prohibit marriages for loving, committed same-sex couples, 3) oppose adoption by gay or lesbian adults, and 4) keep accurate information on sexual orientation out of the public schools. (“Schools Battle Suicide Surge” (Health Pop, October 11, 2010 by Keil Natz)  I could write an essay in rebuttal to each of these, but what matters is to see some of the ways the blame is taking shape!  The Bible throughout condemns homosexuality, and for good reasons relating not just to spiritual health, but physical, mental, and social well-being as well.

It is absurd that the liberal social activists would blame conservative Christian values as the cause of the problem of suicide of homosexual students when the Judeo-Christian influences have increasingly been subtracted from public education, while the secular humanist values have only increasing been instituted and promoted.  If suicides have increased, why then would the blame be put upon the more conservative values?

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for fifteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds, and the sixth leading cause of death for five-to-fourteen-year-olds. Teenagers experience strong feelings of stress, confusion, self-doubt, pressure to succeed, financial uncertainty, and other fears while growing up. However, in 1989, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its “Report on the Secretary’s Task Force on Youth Suicide,” which found that a majority of suicide attempts were by homosexuals, which were two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than other young people. The American Foundation for Suicide went further and set the rate at three to six times. Confusion can exist in respect to whether an act is classified as an accident or suicide. There are many influences in teen suicide, but homosexuality is without questions one of the most influential.

However, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its diagnostic list of mental disorders in 1973, despite substantial protest. The A.P.A. was strongly motivated by the desire to reduce the effects of social oppression. However, one effect of the A.P.A.’s action was to add psychiatric authority to gay activists’ insistence that homosexuals as a group are as healthy as heterosexuals. This has discouraged publication of research that suggests there may, in fact, be psychiatric problems associated with homosexuality.  Back in 1998 the suicide rate for homosexuals was six times greater than the average, which was concerned with all age groups combined, not just youth. Suicide by the homosexual youth is not primarily to be blamed on bullying in the schools, or why is suicide especially characteristic of all in all age groups. (“Homosexuality and Mental Health Problems” —N.E. Whitehead, Ph.D.)

More recently, in the Archives of General Psychiatry— an established and well-respected journal– three papers appeared with extensive accompanying commentary (Fergusson et al. 1999, Herrell et al. 1999, Sandfort et al. 2001, and e.g. Bailey 1999).  J. Michael Bailey more recently, in the Archives of General Psychiatry— an established and well-respected journal–said, “These studies contain arguably the best published data on the association between homosexuality and psychopathology, and both converge on the same unhappy conclusion: homosexual people are at substantially higher risk for some forms of emotional problems, including suicidality, major depression, and anxiety disorder, conduct disorder, and nicotine dependence…The strength of the new studies is their degree of control.”  (Homosexuality and Mental Health Problems N.E. Whitehead, Ph.D.–(Author of “My Genes Made Me Do It”)

A strong case can be made that the male homosexual lifestyle itself, in its most extreme form, is mentally disturbed. G. Rotello, a gay advocate, notes, “the outlaw aspect of gay sexual culture, its transgressiveness, is seen by many men as one of its greatest attributes.”    Same-sex eroticism becomes for many, therefore, the central value of existence, and nothing else–not even life and health itself–is allowed to interfere with pursuit of this lifestyle.  (Rotello, G. (1997): Sexual Ecology. AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men. Dutton, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK).

A.P. Bell and M.S. Weinberg, in their classic study of male and female homosexuality, found that 43 percent of white male homosexuals had sex with 500 or more partners, with 28 percent having 1,000 or more sex partners. 1978, pp. 308,309).  Homosexual promiscuity fuels the AIDS crisis not to mention all the other inflections characteristic of homosexual activities in the West, but even these tragedies are not allowed to interfere with their so called sexual freedom.  (Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women–New York: Simon and Schuster, P. Bell and M. S. Weinberg,)

Bullying is bad, but it is not the real cause of the increased suicide.  Tom Prichard, president of the Minnesota Family Council said: “There should be no tolerance of bullying, but these groups (those espousing the ultra-liberal thinking) are using the issue to try to press a social agenda.”  (In Suburb, “Battle Goes Public on Bullying of Gay Students” Erik Eckholm, Sept. 13, 2011)

In the December 18^th 2011 Christian Observer publication there is material by the Rev. T.M. Moore entitled, “Educational Foundation for the Devotional Series,” where he writes:  “American education is in a shambles because American educational policy has moved away from the foundations of God’s truth and become fixed to the shifting sands and unreliable tides of mere pragmatism and utilitarianism. Only a return to educational policy more firmly rooted in the fixed standards of God’s Law will return stability and fruitfulness to what has become an educational house of cards. The way back to such stability will not be easy; however, Christians who seek a just and good society, who pray for the shalom of their communities and nation and are committed to working for its welfare, must also take up the cause of educational policy reform without apology, without fear, and without mincing words.”

The shalom or real peace is from and with God, and it is the product of the Christian faith, where to accuse us who call for Biblical Christian teachings of promoting bullying, a concept in contradiction to the shalom, is most outrageous.   By returning to God’s ways we can move away from The Divisive Twists to Teach Perversion in the Classrooms and see true improvement in the product our schools produce, positive moral young men and women, a Conversion in our public education system. May God help us to do so!

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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