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"It’s Elementary" Video Lies to the Children about Homosexuality

Death is the Real Face of Practicing Homosexuality

By Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources, (www.originalsources.com)

August 31, 1999

In my travels to the Chicago area I find that the video It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School” has been backed by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, through Mary Morten, identified as “Daley’s liaison on gay and lesbian issues.” It appears that the video, which is being shown on many Public Service TV channels, is being slipped into the public school system throughout the nation without the knowledge of most parents.

Chicago school officials - who stress that ‘It’s Elementary’ will not be shown to students - are a tad skittish about talking about their plan.” the Associated Press reported yesterday. “They confirm that the district’s 589 principals will view the film beginning in September and receive a copy of the video for their schools - a plan funded by lesbian tennis star Billie Jean King. But several teachers who’ve already viewed the film on their own declined to be interviewed out of fear of criticism.

The city official who helped get the film - in part due to backing from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley - into the district was more forthcoming. She says the decision was aimed at fostering tolerance and, in turn, preventing violence against gay and lesbian students.

‘It’s practical. It makes good sense. It’s about safety for children. I don’t think anybody regardless of their religious background, can argue with that,’ Mary Morten said. In San Francisco, the recognised Homosexual Capital of America, school officials not only are using “It’s Elementary” they have “imposed a ban on anti-gay slurs.” The First Amendment not longer applies in Elementary School.

"It’s Elementary" was written and produced by Women’s Educational Media which, according to their website, (http://www.womedia.org/our/elem.html) was “intended for an adult audience.” So, when school administrators emphasize it’s “not being shown to students” they are deceiving parents. It’s not SUPPOSED to be shown to students. It’s intended as a film to teach educators how to discuss “gay issues with their students in age-appropriate ways” and was “shot in first through eighth grade classrooms across the United States.” It was filmed by Debra Chasnoff and producer Helen S. Cohen.

In the video, at one point, a teen ager says, “Schools should teach the facts about homosexuality.” Good point. Does the video teach facts? No. After reading the AP story that this film was “about safety for children” the natural question would be, “Does the film address safety for children?” No. Does the film actually teach ANYTHING truthful about homosexuality? At one point, a student, finding out for the first time that a teacher is a homosexual says she found out that the homosexual teacher is “just like” any other teacher. Is that true? No.

The teachers in the video - from San Francisco, Madison, Wisconsin and New York undoubtedly teach children in their classes about the dangers of SMOKING, which can shorten their lives by 8 years. In fact, almost everything taught about smoking is not how to do it, but the dangers of doing it. Is the same approach used in the video?
I’m afraid not. The Women’s Education Media idea of teaching about homosexuality and about safety issues is described as follows:

Q: Why is this kind of education necessary?
A: Negative language about gay and lesbian people is common on the playground, in school hallways and classrooms, on playgrounds, and even in teachers' lounges. Many children and school employees are adversely affected. For example, an estimated 6 to 11 percent of school children have gay or lesbian parents or siblings, and another 5 to 9 percent will at some point figure out that they themselves are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or Transgender. These children are now being taught that either they or the people they love most are sick and perverted.

Q: Aren't elementary and middle school children too young to be introduced to this topic? Shouldn't we wait until they're older?
A: As you can see in IT'S ELEMENTARY, very young children have already been introduced to gay and lesbian matters. Negative name-calling begins as early as first grade. And long before they grasp the meaning of the words, they've heard or witnessed many negative images about being gay and gay people. So it's not possible for a school to introduce these topics. What a school can do is create a safe environment for children to ask questions, consider what they're hearing and seeing, and be given some accurate information.

Q: What about parents who don't want their children to learn about gay sex?
A: We agree that it's inappropriate for schools to teach young children about gay sex. But think about all the stories children read about mommies and daddies. Just as those stories aren't about heterosexual sex, lessons about gay people aren't about gay sex. What we're talking about is incorporating ways, in the context of lessons about families, current events, literature, or civil rights, to simply acknowledge that gay and lesbian people are among us and to prevent harmful stereotypes and prejudices.

Q: What if a person's religion teaches that homosexuality is wrong? How can the school teach that it's a normal lifestyle? Isn't that going against the parents?
A: Our goal is to provide a safe, respectful learning environment for all children. Religion is a good example: Even if you don't agree with someone else's religion, you would expect their religion, as well as your own, to be acknowledged and respected at school. Similarly, we may not all agree about homosexuality, but a school is obliged to make sure that gay people and their family members are validated and shown respect.

Q: Won't teaching children about it encourage them to become gay or lesbian themselves?
A: Providing children with information and a forum for discussion doesn't "make" anyone gay. If that were true, then most children who grow up with gay or lesbian parents would turn out gay, but they don't. Most turn out heterosexual, in about the same proportion as the general public. However, having a chance to learn about gay people might make a child less likely to insult someone he or she thinks is gay, or to allow a friend to be ostracised for having a lesbian mom or gay dad.

Sample explanation for what it means to be gay:
"It's about people loving, or being attracted to, someone who is the same sex as they are. Most people, when they grow up, realise they're attracted to people of the other sex. That's called heterosexual or ‘straight.’ But some people realise that they're attracted to people of the same sex. Lesbians are women who love, or are attracted to, other women. Gay men love, or are attracted to, other men. Bisexual people can be attracted to people of either sex.”

So, what’s the problem with these warm fuzzy descriptions of homosexuality as a lifestyle? It is a totally false portrayal, that’s the problem. It says nothing of the REALITY of homosexuality and lesbianism. Let’s take a look at the reality of being a homosexual in the following description, by a homosexual, Richard Rodriguez, from the Castro District of San Francisco, a heavily homosexual area, in an essay which provides a griping picture of being a active homosexual:

"Science has warned it's too early to imagine the end of AIDS, but here in San Francisco's Castro District, one of the world's most famous homosexual addresses, there are rumours of optimism and the persistence of sorrow. This year's International AIDS Conference held in Vancouver concluded with something more than official expressions of pessimism: "The new combinations of anti retro viral drugs are holding out new hope. ... in America the most public face of AIDS, a disproportionate number of its victims and its most furious antagonists, have been homosexual. The Castro District has known death intimately as a neighbour since the early 1980's. There is a special poignancy here to something as ordinary as a for sale sign on an empty house. .... Come to the Castro on a weekday afternoon and see people who have held the dying in their arms shop for tonight's dinner. You hear from the young, especially, a despair. I've heard gay teenagers call themselves pre-HIV, meaning it's only a matter of time. The bars, the clubs of the Castro are crowded every night. Perhaps it's like this during any war, young men grown so accustomed to death that they could only be merry.

"...and people keep dying of AIDS here on the famous 5th floor, the AIDS ward, at San Francisco General Hospital. My own cousin died in this place three months ago. No matter what day the cure is found it will always be a day late for someone. The terrible wartime question persists: Was your son the last to die on the battlefield? There is, in truth, no possible happy morning after AIDS. The plague has cut too deeply and the morning after the AIDS epidemic, grief will persist, routine lives will persist, the man whose lover died of AIDS will still eat breakfast, and strangers will wait for the bus to take them to work."

Death is the real face of homosexuality - a face never mentioned in “It’s Elementary.” A recent report entitled: Homosexuality-A public Health Problem” by Raphael Kazmann states that the average age of homosexuals who die with AIDS is 39. The average age of homosexuals who die of other causes is only 41. The study, accomplished over five years, shows the homosexual conduct reduces life expectancy by at least 30 years. Other studies puts the reduction of life expectancy at 40 years. In the Kazmann report a review of thousands of cases, found that only one percent of homosexuals lived to he 65 or older.

The report indicated five things contribute to early death for homosexuals:
(1)Suicide is epidemic among homosexuals. Their suicide rate is 60 times as high as the general population. Labelling their lifestyle as "gay, may prefer death rather than to continue living in it." Homosexuals say suicide is the result of religious and societal pressures. But, society viciously denounces the racists of the Klu Klux Klan without raising the Klan suicide rate.
(2)Drug abuse is 3 times higher among male sodomites than in the general populace. 'This combined with a like rate of alcohol abuse leads to an increase of heart, lung and liver failure as well as increased incidence of accidental deaths.’
(3)Auto accidents kill them. Highway fatalities claim the lives of homosexuals at a rate 45 times higher than the heterosexual community.
(4)Disease takes its toll. Homosexuals are 14 times more like to have Syphilis; 23 times more likely to contract some venereal disease; thousands of times more likely lo contract AIDS. Lesbians are twice as likely to suffer from genital warts; four times as likely to have scabies.
(5)Murder claims lives. The ratio of homosexual men murdered was found to be 50 times that of the general population.

None of these facts are mentioned in "Its Elementary." That is outrageous. How can public educators, backed by Bill Clinton and the powerful NEA, bemoan smoking by young people, back bills that would collect billions of dollars from tobacco companies to “pay” for the ailments caused, which cut 8 years from the lives of smokers, and then turn around and CHAMPION a homosexual lifestyle that shortens a person’s life up to 40 years?

If, as the homosexuals insist, the time has come to teach about it in public schools, it is well PAST time for parents and grandparents to DEMAND that the instruction be scientifically accurate, not just warm, fuzzy, propaganda. Kids still smoke after being lectured from kindergarten up about the dangers of tobacco and some will still choose to be active homosexuals even if they are told the truth about its dangers to their health.

The moral issue involved in this latest piece of educational propaganda is whether or not parents and educators tell young people the truth about homosexuality and lesbianism, or whether the wholesale lying about the subject to the youth is going to continue.

To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com

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