If you want a clearer sense of whom we are paying to teach our children, read this.

Friday, I wrote this  on IFI:

In order to know whether an idea embodies love, one must first know if it’s true. The idea that volitional homosexual acts are morally neutral or morally good is not true and, therefore, promoting it is not loving. Promoting such an idea to young children—as is happening in our publicly subsidized schools—is downright evil. 

In response to this passage, homosexual high school English teacher Rich Robinson from Maine (about whom I wrote last August and who sends me between 2-5 harassing emails every week) sent this:

Oh Laurie, your angst and your shrill accusations belie your hate. Can you imagine if someone referred to your volitional sexual acts in any capacity? The ick factor in this is nauseating. You are sex obsessed and to imagine that your sex obsession is being parlayed to public school children is simply certifiable. Good Lord woman, every blog you post is a journey into a diseased and sinister mind. Where can you possibly go from here?

So now public expressions of the belief that homosexual acts are not moral is evidence of a “diseased and sinister mind.”

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20)

Correction: An astute reader alerted me to my incorrect reading of this structurally fuzzy sentence in Robinson’s email: “You are sex obsessed and to imagine that your sex obsession is being parlayed to public school children is simply certifiable.”

Here is a new and improved—I hope—response:

Robinson casts my concern with the use of public funds to promote “progressive” views of homosexuality to children in public schools as a “sex obsession.” He further implies that I am concerned solely with what he describes as the “ick factor” regarding homoerotic acts. After asserting that claim, he then casts my belief that teachers spend instructional time discussing homosexuality as lunacy (i.e. “certifiable”).

Well, hard to know where to start. First, I rarely discuss the “ick factor.”  The colloquial phrase the “ick factor” refers to biology, anatomy, and disease, all of which constitute an important topic but not one that I discuss. Rather, I discuss the moral status of homoerotic acts and relationships and the problem of how it is addressed in public schools.

Second, it is a laughable prevarication for Robinson to suggest that public school teachers do not address homosexuality. They do so through picture books, bullying prevention activities, sex education, novels, films, essays, plays, speakers, magazine articles, and assorted GLSEN-generated activities. All of these various and sundry “learning” opportunities espouse one set of moral assumptions: “progressive.” And when public school teachers promote either implicitly or explicitly the truthy assumption that homosexuality is moral, they are necessarily promoting the assumption that homosexual acts are moral. While assigning texts that promote “progressive” moral, ontological, and political views of homosexuality, these same teachers routinely censor materials that espouse conservative beliefs. If anyone is homosex-obsessed, it’s “progressive” teachers to whose pro-activities I’m merely responding.

My belief is not that schools should promote conservative moral convictions to public school children. That ship has sailed. My belief is that issues related to homosexuality and gender confusion should be removed from the classroom entirely, since moral beliefs are not facts and are informed by areas of life that  teachers have not been hired to teach, including theology, ethics, psychology, and philosophy.

I have also argued, however, that if teachers insist on introducing curricular texts and supplementary resources that espouse “progressive” assumptions about homosexuality and gender confusion to students, they have an ethical and pedagogical obligation to present resources that espouse dissenting views.  Calling efforts to stop the promulgation of “progressive” views of homosexuality in public schools a “certifiable, sinister, diseased sex-obsession” is yet another attempt to silence dissent.

Though public education can no longer even pretend to be dedicated to the pursuit of truth or the cultivation of character, it should at least retain a commitment to intellectual exploration and diversity of ideas without which education becomes indoctrination.

Click HERE to support the work and ministry
of Illinois Family Institute.