By Susan Brinkmann
Staff Writer
(Feb. 26, 2008) A coalition led by the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Psychological Association (APA) has sent a 24-page booklet to all 16,000 public school superintendents in the United States advising them to affirm homosexual orientation and behavior.
Entitled, “Just the Facts About Sexual Orientation and Youth: A Primer for Principals, Educators and School Personnel,” the coalition claims the booklet is “a renewed effort” to protect the well-being of all students, including “those who are at higher risk because of their sexual orientation.” However, the content of the booklet raises more questions than it answers about the agenda of NEA leadership.
According to the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), the booklet endorses a gay-affirming program and advises schools against sexual-reorientation therapy and using any literature that presents heterosexuality as normal.
“Without question, the aim of gay-affirmative counseling programs is humanitarian. They are responding to a problem of scapegoating which schools much address,” said NARTH in a published response to the booklet.
“But the problem is, while claiming only to discourage scapegoating, gay-affirming programs do much more. In reality, they promote a particular worldview, complete with truth claims that students are expected to adopt . . . .These programs promote the value systems of a particular social group and denigrate the views of another, while at the same time, distorting science.”
For instance, on page 4, the booklet warns educators that “The promotion in schools of efforts to change sexual orientation by therapy or through religious ministries seems likely to exacerbate the risk of harassment, harm and fear for these youth.”
Religious ministries “tend to have negative attitudes toward homosexuality,” says the booklet. Because ex-gay and transformational ministries usually characterize homosexuality as sinful or evil, these approaches should be avoided, the booklet says.
In reality, numerous studies reveal that change is possible, including the psychiatrist who normalized homosexuality in the 1973 diagnostic manual, Robert Spitzer, M.D. “I’m convinced from people I have interviewed,” he said. “Many of them . . .have made substantial changes toward becoming heterosexual. I came to this study skeptical. I now claim that these changes can be sustained.”
NARTH believes students should have the right to consider this option, but the NEA does not agree and chose to leave this information out of its publication.
The booklet also implies that there is a distinct population of gay, lesbian and bisexual students who were “born that way” and cannot change. What they don’t say is that there has never been any scientific evidence to support this notion. In fact, one of the most prominent researchers of the “gay gene’, Dr. Dean Hamer, who is himself gay, has said there is absolutely no evidence of a gay gene.
“Contrary to the ‘born that way’ myth, scientific evidence links homosexuality to social and parental influences – including certain family patterns, same-sex peer problems, childhood molestation, and peer labeling, combined in varying degrees with biological predisposition in some people,” the NARTH statement continues.
None of this information is provided in the publication.
The booklet lists the names of many medical, health, and mental health professional organizations as being in support of the content of their publication. While the radical politics of the NEA is well known, the public is much less aware of the ideological positions of many of these professional organizations.
For instance, the APA lists among its favorite causes radical feminism, sexual liberationism, and gay activism. At the same time, it marginalizes philosophies that promote traditional family and respect for religious positions. The APA has even encouraged its members to fight the Defense of Marriage Act which would effectively usher in same-sex marriage.
“Because these scientific groups do not clarify that their positions represent social and political philosophies, the public erroneously believes that these positions are science,” NARTH explains.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council agrees. “This is no surprise to those who have followed the leftward drift of the NEA leadership,” Perkins told Randy Hall of CNS News.
“For years the organization has used teachers’ dues to subsidize its top officials’ left-wing fanaticism, which includes everything from promoting homosexuality and abortion in schools to pushing birth control.”
Saying the APA is “no better,” Perkins said, “Now both groups are using their influence to transform public schools into incubators for their radical social agendas. These lessons in political correctness must stop!”
The Family Research Council is offering its own 36 page document, “Homosexuality in Your Child’s School” to equip parents who wish to oppose the promotion of homosexuality in their schools. It is available through the website at www.frc.org
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