Is homosexuality a human right? Is it an issue of social justice? Yes, if you listen to liberal educators, many U.N. affiliated groups, and self-labeled “progressive” churches.
But no, it’s not, if you heed the word of God. Homosexuality is not innate, it’s not God-ordained, and it’s always a sin in Scripture, something that separates the practitioner from God.
Two homosexuals and their sexual actions are always outside the will of God, with or without a commitment or some notion of “marriage.” By contrast, a heterosexual couple is outside the will of God if they have sex before marriage, but fine after marriage. The structure is designed by God, so sin here is a timing issue. But homosexuality is always a structural dysfunction. It’s just that simple, and virtually all cultures recognize this.
But youth are hearing the “social justice” spin literally everywhere now, and it is dulling their eyes to obvious truths. Why are advocates using this particular twist? They are desperate to re-position these activities as “identity,” and move away from a close look at the unnatural, high risk and degrading behaviors of homosexuality. How can we make sure our kids are not deceived by the seductive but erroneous concept that homosexuality is a noble “right”?
Social Justice at School
If your son or daughter comes home with an assignment on “social justice,” make sure you look through the backpack. “Homophobia” and “heterosexism” may be some of the “injustices” taught in these lessons.
Some schools observe the United Nations “Human Rights Day” on December 10 and weave in pro-homosexual sentiments. Others go much further and observe the so-called “Coming Out Day” for homosexuals on October 11.
Many high schools teach about the Matthew Shepard case as part of “injustice.” Matthew Shepard is the homosexual college student murdered in 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming. His murder is held up as evidence of widespread discrimination and “hatred” of homosexuals, and also as validating the need for hate crimes legislation including sexual orientation as a special category.
But an investigation by ABC’s “20/20” revealed that money and drugs motivated the two murderers, not prejudice against a homosexual.1 The killers are both serving life sentences. But that’s evidently not enough justice.
Despite the facts, high schools throughout the country are producing a drama about Matthew Shepard as a routine part of “social justice” curricula. A play called “The Laramie Project” (which was also a movie) has been produced in West Des Moines, Iowa, York, PA, Arlington Heights, IL, Bloomfield, NJ, Sleepy Hollow, NY, Seattle, WA, several high schools in Oregon, all over California and even in Shenandoah Junction, WV and Danville, KY.
In many of these school districts, parents did object but their concerns were overruled. In Beaverton, OR and Oakhurst, NJ, school officials at one point cancelled the play’s production, only to cave in and re-schedule the play after pressure from homosexual activists.2
The play has even been produced in several Catholic high schools: St. Ignatius in Cleveland, OH; Bishop O’Dowd in Oakland, CA and Jesuit High in Beaverton, OR.
The drama is an inaccurate propaganda piece that includes sex, profanity, violence and anti-Christian elements. In some cases, the profanity is toned down in the high school productions. But the flagrant deception remains.
To complicate matters, the loony anti-homosexual protester Fred Phelps has picketed several of these plays. He is featured in the play because he picketed Shepard’s funeral. Phelps always makes the local news and is depicted as representative of those who oppose homosexuality. His irrational venom does not represent a pro-family position, and all the major Christian groups have denounced his message and tactics. (We do as well).
Regarding the play, the picture is not totally bleak. The sense of school officials and parental objections have resulted in the cancellation of “The Laramie Project” productions in high schools in Surrey, BC, and Yakima, WA.
Social justice endorsement of homosexuality can permeate a curriculum. In the Canadian province of British Columbia, school officials have drafted a pilot program which aims to teach students how to “move toward a socially-just world.” Diversity and acceptance of homosexuality are throughout the program. One of the lessons will “analyze specific examples of injustice in Canada related to characteristics such as...sexual orientation.”3
Fixing Schools by Creating Student Revolutionaries
In troubled school districts like Boston and Chicago, the “social justice” concept is sometimes much more than one lesson. Now, themed high schools called “social justice academies” are the newest experiment to fix failing schools. These urban schools are essentially taking disadvantaged kids and under the guise of “excellence,” have begun training teens as left-wing activists.
In Boston, the Social Justice Academy at Hyde Park High School claims to provide “rigorous” academics. “SJA will guide its students to be critically thinking, informed and empowered agents of positive change in their communities...” says its mission statement, yet one of its first “core values” is “an anti-bias orientation (race, class, religion, sexual orientation, gender, “ability”).” 4 Student input is of high importance. The school has partnerships with a laundry list of left-wing educational groups, including Harvard School of Public Health and Facing History and Ourselves.
So far, the rigorous academics aren’t very visible. The Great Schools web site rates this school at 1 (the lowest on a 1-10 scale). The score for English was 38%,and math was 29%, reflecting students who tested at proficiency level or above. 5
The Social Justice High School in Chicago lists one of its core values as “Struggle and Sacrifice...Our struggle is against systems of power that have been historically used to deny, regulate, and prohibit access to the most basic human rights that should be granted freely to members of society regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or religious belief. We accept the reality that such struggle will require sacrifice from all involved.”6 There is no rating yet on this school of 100 ninth graders.
Is this the solution to failing schools? Is this what will give minority students a leg up — fine-tuning rage against traditional values? Learning to be “inclusive” of sexual deviancy? This is a recipe for more failure, not less.
But, hold on. It’s not just inner-city kids who are guinea pigs. There are also “social justice academies” as special programs at suburban high schools like North Hollywood High (CA) and East Chapel Hill High (NC).
Where does this nonsense get started? First, educators get indoctrinated in teachers’ colleges. Sol Stern in Front Page Magazine wrote about the prestigious Teachers College of Columbia University, where “social justice” permeates every aspect of course work.
And terrorists are the tutors. Stern points out that one of the leaders of the social justice education movement is none other than William Ayers,
....who took a doctorate in early childhood education from Teachers College in the late 1980s and is now Distinguished Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ayers will be remembered as one of the leaders of the Weather Underground of the 1960s and 1970s. He participated in numerous acts of terrorism against our democratic institutions during that period, including planting a bomb in the Pentagon. Coming up from the underground in the early 1980s, Ayers found a second act for himself as an education professor... Without having expressed a word of repentance for his terrorist past, Ayers now promotes the infusion of “social justice” teaching throughout the K-12 curriculum.7
Ayers also wrote an endorsement appearing on the cover of the radical book Queering Elementary Education (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.,1999), which has a foreword written by none other than Kevin Jennings, founder and president of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.
This perhaps explains at least in part why radical “gay” activism goes hand in hand today with a virulent, anarchistic strain of anti-Americanism in today’s left-leaning youth. How ironic that affluent, healthy, privileged American youth are learning in social justice lessons that, being the “oppressed,” they can now justifiably become the oppressors.
Notes:
- http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=277685&page=1
- See latter part of this article for references to Southridge High, Beaverton and Oakhurst, NJ school controversy.
- http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/irp/drafts/sj12_draft.pdf, p.25.
- http://www.greatschools.net/modperl/achievement/ma/3189
- http://sj.lvlhs.org/sj/mission_vision.jsp?rn=2947327
- http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/
