in solving problems.
Chapter 2
Schools
When it comes to school, there are abundant opportunities for educators to encourage progressive attitudes and introduce concepts that are anathema to Christian parents. Much of this occurs in the context of sex education classes, which we will discuss in all its troubling detail in chapter four. Aside from those classes, schools are busily promoting the acceptance of gay lifestyles, so-called “samesex marriage,” and gender fluidity. These topics can easily be woven into regular classes without parental knowledge or consent.
Long before same-sex marriage was legal in any state and years before Caitlyn Jenner was gracing magazine covers, my children’s school decided to put on an assembly for the elementary grades (kindergarten through fifth) called “Cootie Shots.” Billed as an anti-bullying program, it was in fact a series of skits intended to introduce concepts like same-sex marriage and transgenderism. The sketch called “In Mommy’s High Heels” speaks for itself. It was about a little boy who enjoyed dressing up like a girl.
That was bad enough. But the skit that we found most objectionable was called “The Duke Who Outlawed Jelly Beans.” The story goes like this. After a young duke is temporarily put in charge of a kingdom, he first outlaws jelly beans. Next, he decrees that since he grew up with a mother and a father, that living arrangement will be the only one allowed. That puts at risk the boy who lives with his grandparents, the girl who lives only with her mother, and of course, the girl who lives with her two mommies. As my husband and I explained to the principal, the real message of the skit wasn’t that people shouldn’t be bullied — it was that all living arrangements are equal. A girl, for example, could easily take from it the message that when she has a child it won’t matter whether there’s a father in the picture. We cited the “Hardwired to Connect” study conducted by the YMCA of the USA, Dartmouth Medical School, and the Institute for American Values that recommended, among other things, that “we reevaluate our behavior and our dominant cultural values, and consider a range of changes in our laws and public policies, in order substantially to increase the proportion of U.S. children growing up with their two married parents.”35
Our stepping forward and speaking up was to no avail. The assembly went on as planned. But here’s the real kicker: The school did not intend for parents to know about the “Cootie Shots” assembly ahead of time. There was no announcement, no parental notification, no mention of it in any email blast. I happened to find out about it purely by accident and was able to inform a few like-minded friends. Thankfully we were able to have our kids skip it.
Given the fact that so-called “same-sex marriage” is now enshrined in law and that transgenderism is on a similar path to forced-acceptance, parents with children in private secular and public schools will be at a disadvantage. They’ll likely have little control over whether those issues are discussed or how they’re being presented. The fact is they may not even know if it’s happening.
Excluding Parents
Examples abound of schools purposefully keeping parents out of the loop when it comes to controversial issues. In Emmaus, Pennsylvania, the student body at Emmaus High School was shown a series of pro-LGBT videos.35 Not only were parents not notified in advance, they weren’t allowed to see the videos after the fact! In California, parents are up against the “Healthy Youth Act,” passed in 2015, with two stated goals. As John Stonestreet writes at Breakpoint.org, the first is to “provide pupils with the knowledge and skills necessary to protect their sexual and reproductive health” from sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancy. The second is “to give students ‘knowledge and skills’ to help them develop ‘healthy attitudes’ concerning ‘body image, gender, sexual orientation, relationships, marriage and family.’”36
The law states that parents may “excuse their child from all or part of comprehensive sexual health education, HIV prevention education.”37 Here’s the kicker: the law also states that parents are not allowed to excuse children from “instruction, materials, presentations, or programming that discuss gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, discrimination … relationships or family.”38 Many parents have missed that caveat, not realizing that they were not allowed to opt out of instruction related to gender ideology and sexual orientation. They made the mistaken assumption that they could opt out of all that’s normally thought of as sex ed. As Stonestreet writes, “[P]arents in California can opt their kids out of the anatomy but not the ideology.”39
No More Dick and Jane
Even for the youngest students, school libraries aren’t what they used to be. By the time our children left elementary school, King and King was one of a couple books about homosexuality on the bookshelves. Aimed at children ages five to eight, according to Amazon, King and King tells the fictional story of a prince who marries a prince. My children could have stumbled across it on their own while visiting the library, or it could have been the librarian’s choice to read aloud one day.
There are now plenty of children’s books aimed at normalizing same-sex households. There’s Daddy, Papa and Me and Mommy, Mama and Me, both for kids three years old and up. King and King now has a sequel — King and King and Family — in which the married kings adopt a little girl while on their honeymoon. You get the idea. It’s quite likely such books are in your children’s elementary school library. There’s also nothing to stop a teacher from choosing such books for story time.
Let’s take a moment to make one thing clear: Christianity is about loving God and loving one’s neighbor. There is no place for bullying, mocking, or ridiculing others for any reason. That said, we are also obligated to live by God’s rules. In the Catholic Church, and in traditional Protestant denominations, the rules about sex and marriage are straightforward: sex is intended exclusively for marriage, and marriage is the union of one man and one woman. There is a counter-moral message in those seemingly sweet books meant, in theory at least, simply to promote tolerance and respect. This morality is not in accord with basic Christian teaching. For traditional Christians, exposing young children to such books undermines both religious and parental authority.
The same can be said for the new crop of children’s books on the topic of transgenderism. “Dyson loves pink, sparkly things. Sometimes he wears dresses,” is part of the Amazon description of My Princess Boy, written for children ages four through eight. There’s also I Am Jazz, the true story of Jazz Jennings who “from the time she was two years old … knew that she had a girl’s brain in a boy’s body.”40 It’s also intended for children starting at four years old. Introducing Teddy, for children ages three through six, is about a teddy bear named Thomas who reveals to his friend that he’s really Tilly.
Much as LGBTQ activists and progressive educators would have us believe such books are aimed at helping children who are struggling with gender identity issues, for many parents — including Christians — it’s more complicated than that. First there’s the question of introducing the very idea to children. Dr. Michelle Cretella is a pediatrician, a Catholic mother of four, and president of the American College of Pediatricians. In an interview with me for National Catholic Register, she discussed the consequences of introducing the concept of transgenderism to young kids:
Most parents with little children are going to be confronted by this at some point, whether it’s in their public libraries, preschool or K-12 schools, just by virtue of the books that could be read to them. What is dangerous is that these young children are just developing
