GAY-ED FOR TOTS
SAUNDERS, DEBRA J.
Gay-Ed for Tots by Debra J. Saunders THE SAN FRANCISCO Unified School District has a lesson plan for teaching kindergartners and first-graders about homosexuality. It is called “My Family” and...
...While Apont and Levin both have said they want to listen to parents’ concerns, Levin’s real attitude came to light in a recent interview...
...Why not inform parents...
...Cassidy had received school notices (“noticias,” since the school is bilingual) reporting that the very active Gay/Lesbian Parents’ Group was working on a gay pride banner, but she assumed that the work would occur after school...
...A family is “a unit of two or more persons, related either by birth or choice, who may or may not live together, who try to meet each other’s needs and share common goals and interests...
...That Buena Vista’s proselytizing, forced on kids who aren’t old enough to think critically, might be the liberal equivalent of public school prayer doesn’t compute with them...
...She was surprised when her son came home and told her about the gay man who had addressed his class and read Gloria Goes to Gay Pride...
...She added, “All children have a right to be validated within their existence...
...Debra J. Saunders last wrote for THE WEEKLY STANDARD about teacher testing in California...
...Recently it renamed a school—again an elementary school—the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, after the gay San Francisco supervisor who was slain in office 18 years ago...
...Surrender your children or go...
...It is called “My Family” and is disseminated through the district’s Support Services for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth Department...
...Why inform children about sexual issues at an age when they are pre-sexual...
...Levin and others have argued that children must be taught to be tolerant of homosexuality because young children call each other “faggot” in the schoolyard...
...Homosexuals are “people of the same sex who have feelings for one another in a romantic way...
...After talking about the need for dialogue so that dissenting parents could understand her point of view, she said, “If there are people in the public schools who don’t feel comfortable with [pro-homosexual school policies], then they shouldn’t be in the public schools...
...Sounds like a caucus to me...
...The raison d’?tre of “My Family” is to induce pliant children to hold the views that Levin and company want them to hold...
...But this year, students also worked on a rainbow banner for the gay pride parade, and they did so during class time...
...Karen Hart, who works for the department, explained that “My Family” is about “validating all kinds of families that are within the school district...
...Had I been given a choice,” she said, “I would have pulled my son out...
...The lesson provides definitions that are politically correct—and downright confusing to adults, never mind kids...
...Completely absorbed with engineering how children think, the board is criminally lax at improving what children know...
...And where is their common sense...
...As a school missive explained, kindergartners “designed” the red strip, first graders the yellow, and so on up to fifth grade...
...Nor do true believers seem to understand the invasive nature of “My Family” exercises, which instruct children to discuss their families in public...
...Cassidy believes the school district should notify parents before such sessions, but Hart argued that as long as the gay or lesbian lecturer does not discuss sex, there is no need for parental notification...
...Some citizens would rather they all could read...
...It is not enough, they say, to punish those who use that word in school...
...According to Levin, sessions do not involve sexual discussion—and don’t need to when speakers define homosexuals as people who have special feelings for members of their own sex...
...In a first-grade class, a gay man read to the children the district-approved book Gloria Goes to Gay Pride...
...Those who support pressing young children into making the gay banner have insisted there is nothing political about it or the city’s gay pride parade...
...Activists who respect diversity and value tolerance ought to recognize that “My Family” infringes on those parents’ rights...
...Missing from this diversity-appreciation equation, however, are parents who dissent, parents like Rose Cassidy, who did not believe the lesson was ageappropriate for her seven-year-old son...
...They so much want to inform children,” Cassidy lamented...
...As it had done in past years, the school invited gay parents into classrooms to talk to elementary students...
...The rainbow banner, the message boasted, “reflects the creativity, love and appreciation for diversity as expressed by the children of Buena Vista...
...What good will love and tolerance and politically correct views on gay rights do children who don’t have a prayer of landing a good job...
...This year the Buena Vista Alternative School went beyond “My Family...
...Buena Vista PTA vice president Julio Apont put an inclusive spin on the issue: He agreed that parents should be notified before their children work on banners, but he did “not want to single out the gay and lesbian banner to be the only one they have to be notified for...
...Black high school students’ grade point average is 1.86 (out of 4.0...
...The lesson includes class exercises designed to reinforce the notion that all families should be validated— presumably including families with no dad, three dads, or a 14-year-old mom...
...The political focus of the San Francisco school board is unrelenting...
...Cassidy said she never received it...
...Dissenters, do not darken the doors of San Francisco’s public schools...
...Instead, they have equated the gay pride parade with Martin Luther King Day...
...Love it or leave it...
...Lynn Levin, of the Gay/Lesbian Parents’ Group, said the school sent out a notice at the beginning of the year that informed parents there would be lessons about “different kinds of families” and provided parents with the opportunity to opt their children out...
...Board president Steve Phillips explained that the school’s emphasis on civil rights would provide a “point of unity” for pupils...
...But there are parents who believe homosexuality is a sin...
...School prayer is different, Levin insists, because it’s religious...
Vol. 1 • August 1996 • No. 47
