In The Days

• Source: WND
• Author: Bob Unruh
• News Date: 3/13/07

‘Confidentiality’ promise requires students ‘not to tell their parents’

Jesus said, “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”
—Luke 17:2

Officials at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Ill., have ordered their 14-year-old freshman class into a “gay” indoctrination seminar, after having them sign a confidentiality agreement promising not to tell their parents.

“This is unbelievable,” said Matt Barber, policy director for cultural issues for Concerned Women for America. “It’s not enough that students at Deerfield High are being exposed to improper and offensive material relative to unhealthy and high-risk homosexual behavior, but they’ve essentially been told by teachers to lie to their parents about it.”

In what CWA called a “shocking and brazen act of government abuse of parental rights,” the school’s officials required the 14-year-olds to attend a “Gay Straight Alliance Network” panel discussion led by “gay” and “lesbian” upperclassmen during a “freshman advisory” class which “secretively featured inappropriate discussions of a sexual nature in promotion of high-risk homosexual behaviors.”

“This goes to the heart of the homosexual agenda,” Barber said. “The professional propagandists in the ‘gay-rights’ lobby know the method all too well. If you can maintain control of undeveloped and impressionable youth and spoon-feed them misinformation, lies and half-truths about dangerous, disordered and extremely risky behaviors, then you can control the future and ensure that those behaviors are not only fully accepted, but celebrated.”

He said not only is forcing students to be exposed to the pro-homosexual propaganda bad enough, but then school officials further required that students sign the “confidentiality agreement” through which they promised not to tell anyone – including their own parents – about the seminar.

Barber said that also aligns with the goals of the disinformation campaign being run by those in the pro-homosexual camp. “That’s what homosexual activists from GSA are attempting to do, and that’s what DHS is clearly up to as well.”

The situation, according to district Supt. George Fornero, was partly “a mistake.”

He told CWA, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization, that requiring children to sign the confidentiality agreement wasn’t right and the district would be honest with parents in the future about such seminars. But CWA noted that even after the district was caught, parents still were being told they were not welcome to be at the “freshman advisory” and they were not allowed to have access to materials used in compiling the activist curriculum.

Barber noted the damage being done is significant.

“Until DHS and other government schools across the country are made to stop promoting the homosexual agenda, kids will continue to be exposed to – and encouraged to participate in – a lifestyle that places them at high risk for life-threatening disease, depression and spiritual despair,” he said.

It’s not the first situation where WND has reported on schools teaching homosexuality to children.

In Massachusetts after a school repeatedly advocated for the homosexual lifestyle to students in elementary grades, several parents sued, only to have the federal judge order the “gay” agenda taught to the Christians.

The conclusion from U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf found that it is reasonable, indeed there is an obligation, for public schools to teach young children to accept and endorse homosexuality.

Wolf essentially adopted the reasoning in a brief submitted by a number of homosexual-advocacy groups, who said “the rights of religious freedom and parental control over the upbringing of children … would undermine teaching and learning…”

David and Tonia Parker and Joseph and Robin Wirthlin, who have children of school age in Lexington, Mass., brought the lawsuit. They alleged district officials and staff at Estabrook Elementary School violated state law and civil rights by indoctrinating their children about a lifestyle they, as Christians, teach is immoral.

“Wolf’s ruling is every parent’s nightmare. It goes to extraordinary lengths to legitimize and reinforce the ‘right’ (and even the duty) of schools to normalize homosexual behavior to even the youngest of children,” said a statement from the pro-family group Mass Resistance.

An appeal of that decision is pending.

The judge concluded that even allowing Christians to withdraw their children from classes or portions of classes where their religious beliefs were being violated wasn’t a reasonable expectation.

“An exodus from class when issues of homosexuality or same-sex marriage are to be discussed could send the message that gays, lesbians, and the children of same-sex parents are inferior and, therefore, have a damaging effect on those students,” he opined.

“Under the Constitution public schools are entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy,” the judge wrote. “Diversity is a hallmark of our nation. It is increasingly evident that our diversity includes differences in sexual orientation.”

And, he said, since history “includes instances of … official discrimination against gays and lesbians … it is reasonable for public educators to teach elementary school students … different sexual orientations.”

If they disagree, “the Parkers and Wirthlins may send their children to a private school …[or] may also educate their children at home,” the judge said.