Queering Education

From Mary Grabar, at American Thinker:

The gay-positive lifestyle is being promoted aggressively in K-12 schools, often under the cover of anti-bullying efforts, under the leadership of Kevin Jennings, Assistant Deputy Secretary, Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools. Before his federal appointment, Jennings founded and ran GLSEN, (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network). Under Jennings' direction, GLSEN was involved in activities that affirmed homosexuality to children with explicit materials. Jennings also wrote the foreword to a book titled Queering Elementary Education.

GLSEN, which in the 2008-2009 year enjoyed a $157,500 contribution from the NEA, the largest teachers union in the country, pitches its materials and training services to schools. It targets not only high school students, but middle school students. For example, the video and teachers guide for Out of the Past, about a 17-year-old who begins a gay-straight alliance group in her public school, is targeted for grades 7 through 12.

But this spring, the Eagle Forum reported that the American College of Pediatricians urged all 14,800 U.S school district superintendents to avoid prematurely labeling children as homosexual. The College president cited studies showing that most adolescents who experience same-sex attraction no longer do so by age 25.

Such studies are ignored by the organizations that put out a brochure titled "Just the Facts about Sexual Development of Youth." These organizations include not only the two largest teachers' unions, but also the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association. Who else is on the list? Why the American Counseling Association, the very group that provides the "professional" standards for the public universities where Ward and Keeton studied.

Furthermore, "Just the Facts" is promoted aggressively on the (GLSEN) website.

In such a way, the peer reviewers, the accrediting organizations, and professors assert their power; they actively exclude not only opposing religious views, but also studies and professional opinions of those who disagree with them. It's a problem that plagues our entire educational system.

It happens certainly in the humanities, as I can attest from my experience over nearly twenty years in earning a Ph.D. in English and then living on the crumbs of part-time teaching. Sure, one can have an opinion. She can value the writing of a conservative, Christian writer like Walker Percy, but unless she does scholarship that deals with the presumed privileges of his gender, class, and race, she will not have a scholarly paper accepted at the prestigious conferences, nor have her job application considered seriously. In the meantime, my colleague, a full professor, can direct the Sexuality Studies program in the English department and display a pornographic line drawing of a homosexual act on his office door.

While undergraduates become acclimated to graphic displays of homosexual sex, they will not be exposed to the serious ideas of someone like Walker Percy.

Perhaps there has been no outcry during the last year the drawing has been posted because students are used to such displays. A look through MTV or Comedy Central will reveal how cool and edgy homosexuality has become among teenagers and young adults.

Such an attitude is nurtured by years of classroom exposure to the narrative of victimhood and tolerance. The troubled, confused, and abused young person, if he seeks counseling, will then have the benefit of someone sealed with the approval of the American Counseling Association and the radical gatekeepers at the university. This is what passes for "professional judgment" these days.

Such prevailing "professional judgment" must be exposed for what it is: an assertion of power that promotes an agenda of "queering" education. This is where the public with its good sense must invade the ivory towers and demand that its tax dollars no longer fund the academic frauds.

RTWT, at the link.