MORE COPY AND PASTE NONSENSE FROM TOPAZ _ WHERE DOES SHE GET THIS
STUFF???
Topaz wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:31:34 GMT, "S. A. Joyce"
>
SPAMatt.net> wrote:
>
>>>Well, she certainly got that right!
>>
>>
>>Good! We're wise to be skeptical of anything that sounds so far-fetched
>>that even the _National Enquirer_ would be embarrassed to print it. If it
>>*sounds* too nutty to be true, chances are it *is* too nutty to be true.
>>Even if the grammar and spelling are okay (as they often aren't in such
>>rants), the incoherence and hysterical tone are still an obvious tip-off
>>that the writer is running on emotion rather than reliable evidence and cool
>>reason.
>
> Homosexual activists are exploiting their agenda through "safe school"
> laws across the nation - and California is their latest laboratory.
> It's 1 o'clock in the morning and 27-year-old Lybe Crumpton is
> standing alone, shaking and on the verge of tears. No, she hasn't been
> robbed. She's a fifth-grade teacher who's afraid her students might be
> harmed by the homosexual agenda.
> A petite brunette with large brown eyes, she has just watched her
> school board approve the idea that classrooms like hers play a video
> called That's A Family!, featuring 9- and 10-year-old children lauding
> the benefits of living with two moms or two dads.
> My dads are gay, and gay means . . . two men or two women love each
> other, says one smiling girl in the video. It's sort of like having a
> mom and a dad love each other, just that it is a man and a man.
> But that's not the worst of it. The video which also portrays
> children of divorced, single and even jailed parents comes with a
> teachers handbook including a crossword puzzle for elementary kids
> using words like
> transgender and discussion questions such as, What did you learn from
> this video about families with gay parents? What else would you like
> to know?
> It was five hours ago that Crumpton slipped unnoticed into the back of
> the Novato, Calif., school board meeting and heard gay-rights
> activists warning the board it had better allow tolerance lessons like
> this video or risk lawsuits.
> That upsets Crumpton because she doesn't think elementary-school kids
> are ready to discuss sexual lifestyles, especially one as physically
> and spiritually devastating as homosexuality.
> They're not worried about who is sleeping with whom, she says. They
> worry about who's the best at soccer.
> They are just opening a Pandora's box, Crumpton told Citizen moments
> after the vote.
> Exploiting Danger
> What's happening in Novato, an affluent Bay-area suburb in Northern
> California, has become increasingly common across the nation as
> homosexual activists use safe school laws and concerns over school
> bullying to advance their agenda.
> It works like this: First, homosexual activists tout hate crimes those
> sad but rare incidents in which students are harmed because they are
> gay and then they push for laws protecting homosexual students. Once
> those laws pass, activists persuade schools to adopt curricula that
> promotes not just student safety, but acceptance of homosexuality.
> Making schools safe . . . is strongly tied to ensuring that classrooms
> are inclusive of LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] themes,
> said the Web site for one of the nation's largest homosexual lobby
> groups the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).
> GLSEN's executive director, Kevin Jennings, made no secret of that
> strategy while extolling homosexual activists inroads into
> Massachusetts schools a few years ago.
> We immediately seized upon the opponents calling card safety, he
> said. We knew that, confronted with real-life stories of youth who had
> suffered from homophobia, our opponents would automatically be on the
> defensive. . . . This allowed us to set the terms of the debate.
> So far the tactic is working; at least eight states have passed safe
> school laws to protect gay and lesbian students, and five more
> (including Florida and New York) are considering similar legislation.
> But it's California schools that have taken the lead.
> Over the last two years, legislators in Sacramento have cranked out
> laws requiring curriculum to reflect appreciation of different sexual
> lifestyles and adding sexual orientation to school discrimination
> policies.
> Those laws leave schools that resist homosexual pressure vulnerable to
> lawsuits, explained Jeff McAlpin, a Novato school board member who
> voted against pro-homosexual curriculum.
> The state of California has put us in a very difficult position, he
> said. We don't have a choice in terms of providing protection [for
> homosexual rights], so then the question becomes how far do we go?
> It puts you at some level of risk if they can prove you didn't have a
> safe environment. And that risk has cast the door wide open to
> homosexual activists wielding the threat of lawsuits.
> The Gay-Straight Alliance Network (GSA), for instance a group that
> openly pushes for the normalization of homosexuality through student
> clubs has issued a fact sheet urging activists to think of AB 537 [a
> California safe school law] as a tool and use it as leverage to work
> to change the school climate.
> Apparently, members took their marching orders seriously.
> After homosexual students in Visalia, Calif., complained of
> harassment, their district was punished with a federal court
> settlement under AB 537 that forced teachers to receive mandatory
> gay-rights training. This year, the district's ninth-grade students
> also will attend court-ordered classes taught by the GSA.
> While the case does not directly apply to Novato, said McAlpin, It was
> clearly a shot across the bows of all school districts that [safe
> school laws] had an impact on one district . . . and other districts
> better be careful.
> Part of the Price?
> If the California education system is the latest gay-rights
> laboratory, then the Hayward Unified School District is its most
> successful experiment. Unlike Novato, with its Victorian homes and
> white picket fences, Hayward is an industrial town on the south side
> of the Bay filled with cinderblock buildings and windowless factories.
> But just like Novato, Christian teachers in Hayward feel forced to
> promote a political agenda.
> Our backs are against the wall, said Matthew Freschi, a physical
> education teacher at Hayward High School. We feel the need to step
> forward. Enough is enough.
> What pushed Freschi into action was the 2-4-6-8 Are you sure you're
> really straight? sign he discovered on his gymnasium door, as well as
> the staff meeting he attended at which teachers were encouraged to
> assign students library books about homosexuals. Both incidents were
> billed as the school's effort to foster safety for gay and lesbian
> students.
> I agree that no student should be abused or battered for any reason,
> Freschi said, but to me that's not protecting anybody; that's
> promoting something.
> Indeed, Hayward is the perfect case study of how safe school laws
> create special privileges for some and oppression for others.
> Just ask Monica, a Spanish teacher who had her pay docked last year
> for refusing to attend a seminar endorsing homosexuality.
> When Hayward school officials ordered teachers to attend sensitivity
> training on April 8, Monica and three colleagues at Tennyson High
> School requested permission to opt out.
> We didn't want to sit and be indoctrinated for four hours, said
> Manriquez, who'd already suffered through previous sensitivity
> sessions. I have no problem with being sensitive, but what they mean
> by that is that we have to be pro-gay in our classrooms.
> After the principal denied their request, the teachers sought help
> from the Pacific Justice Institute, a Sacramento-based Christian legal
> organization, which argued that civil-rights laws protect religious
> freedom in the workplace.
> But school officials claimed safe school laws trumped those rights, in
> a letter stating that the District has an obligation to ensure that
> its employees are properly trained in applicable law. A few days
> later, the teachers received notice their pay would be docked for
> missing half a day.
> These teachers offered to work [in their classroom], so the issue was
> not their willingness to work, said Brad Dacus, chief counsel for the
> institute. The issue was the intolerance of the school district . . .
> that would force teachers to compromise their convictions as
> Christians.
> That wasn't the end of their troubles. Dubbed The Tennyson Four by
> media, the teachers were derided in local newspapers and ostracized at
> work. These four teachers are out of touch with the standards of our
> community, wrote the Hayward Daily Review in an editorial. It's
> possible that some public school students in Hayward are being
> assigned to a teacher who hates them. . . . Their human rights should
> outweigh teachers religious rights.
> Nobody would talk to us for a while, added Monica. But that's part of
> the price.
> As the Hayward school district quietly trampled on religious freedom,
> it drew national attention for a resolution granting homosexual
> teachers the right to declare their homosexuality without fear of
> reprisal and bring up homosexual relationships in class without
> parental consent.
> Once again waiving the safe school banner, the April 10 resolution
> asserted that a crisis exists in Hayward and called for ongoing
> sensitivity training and curriculum that provides positive images of
> GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender] people in the classroom.
> In a newspaper interview, Tennyson drama teacher Kelsey Hartman
> expressed relief that she could now talk about her lesbianism and have
> students read a play featuring two women falling in love without fear
> of punishment: Now I know we have support, she said. If I'm ashamed,
> it shows the students there's something wrong with it.
> But Christian teachers don't have the same protection. At previous
> sensitivity seminars, Monica said she was told our religion is not to
> be brought up. We are to talk about our culture, but not our religion.
> Courage Under Fire
> Another Christian teacher who did attend the April 8 training, Cynthia
> Huggett, says Monica was right to stay away.
> When Huggett arrived, the first thing she saw was a display of
> newspaper articles about The Tennyson Four. There was a lot of
> negativity toward them, Huggett remembered. I heard comments . . .
> like they couldn't understand why those teachers couldn't be here. . .
> . What's their problem?
> I was kind of wondering myself, well, why are these four people
> refusing to go?
> She soon found out. During sessions led by educators from area
> schools, religion was constantly ridiculed, said Huggett. In a seminar
> video called Teaching Respect, for instance, a presenter
> matter-of-factly listed people homosexual students could go to for
> help, including parents and teachers, but when he got to the word
> pastor, he stopped. He paused, and he looked at the audience to get a
> laugh out of it like, Right . . . Christians hate gays. . . . If
> anything it would be somebody that they would not trust. That was the
> gist of it, said Huggett, a Tennyson math teacher. She recalled her
> shock when other teachers laughed:
> I was thinking, Why are they laughing? Here this was called
> sensitivity awareness. . . . First you start with joking, you break
> the ice by saying we can make fun of these people now.
> According to Huggett and others , the video also claimed that biblical
> references about Jesus sitting at the right hand of God were used to
> discriminate against left-handed people.
> They used Scripture to point out the fact that . . . Christians have a
> history from the beginning of bashing homosexuality and people who are
> different because God said so, said Huggett. I thought, How dare you
> say I can't stand up and talk to my kids about what I believe and
> bring out the Bible, but you can go ahead for your purposes and
> actually misquote [the Bible]?
> By the time the lunch break rolled around, Huggett was too distraught
> to stay, so she sought comfort at home in a daily devotional book. To
> her surprise, Hebrews 12:2, a verse that describes Jesus sitting at
> the right hand of God, was referenced on that day's page.
> To come home and see it in my journal . . . it was one of those
> moments in my Christian walk that I felt was the closest thing to God
> just opening his mouth and talking to me, Huggett said. It was like,
> Yes Cindy, you are right. . . . You see what's going on. You see the
> evil in it. You understand it. And I'm going to let you know by
> Scripture.
> Emboldened, she spoke her mind a few days later at a faculty meeting.
> I strongly feel that if I don't say something, this will continue and
> Christians will be bashed again and again, And I'm not going to let
> that happen. I will not stay here if that is going to happen. I will
> lose my job and wash dishes if I have to.
> Cinderfella
> So what does coercing Christian teachers into attending seminars that
> belittle their religion have to do with teaching homosexuality to
> kids? The answer is simple: To advance their cause, homosexual
> activists must first undermine beliefs that categorize right and wrong
> behavior.
> We've seen the same pattern emerge over and over, said Scott Lively,
> who as director of the Pro-Family Law Center has tracked homosexual
> infiltration into Vermont, Oregon and Massachusetts school districts.
> The gay agenda is first pushed to teachers, then they are trained how
> to get it in the classroom. They are being trained that it is
> acceptable, even expected, to trample on the private beliefs and
> values of the students in their care.
> Handouts from the Hayward sensitivity seminars over the past two years
> illustrate this agenda. A What You Can Do list distributed at one of
> this year's seminars, for instance, suggested that teachers say the
> words often lesbian, gay, bisexual in a positive way and identify
> gay, lesbian, bisexual contributors throughout the curriculum.
> Another handout encouraged schools to bring in openly gay, lesbian,
> bisexual adults as resources in classes and assemblies and identify
> staff who are gay-friendly and to whom questioning students may go for
> advice.
> Demonstrating blatant disregard for parental control, yet another page
> entitled If a Student Comes Out to You told teachers if trust and
> openness exist, sexual behavior could also be addressed.
> For teachers in need of more indoctrination tools, a Resources list
> distributed at a 2001 seminar recommended several gay-rights
> curricula, including Preventing Prejudice: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
> Transgender Lesson Plans for Elementary Schools.
> A copy of Preventing Prejudice includes a lesson plan for first- and
> second-graders entitled Who Loves Whom LGBT Relationships. The plan
> encourages teachers to introduce the lesson on Valentine's Day to
> broaden the definition of love that is associated with that holiday
> and to ask students to rewrite stories that involve heterosexual
> relationships, e.g., fairy tales like Cinderella, substituting LGBT
> relationships.
> A kindergarten lesson included in the same curriculum called Jesse's
> Dream Skirt tells a story about a little boy who is praised for
> wearing a dress to school.
> According to Hayward district spokesperson Kim Hammond, those lesson
> plans, as well as books like Heather Has Two Mommies, are available to
> all staff in the district.
> What disturbs me most, said Huggett, is that once you say this should
> be part of our curriculum, [teachers] will have to appear to believe
> that homosexuality is a normal, healthy lifestyle.
> Given the pressure on teachers, the only hope for public education is
> parental outrage
> There will be no resistance [to pro-homosexual curriculum] from within
> the system, from the administration. There might be individual
> teachers who object, but the union is lock-stock in step with this. As
> a matter of fact, much of the leadership is controlled by these
> people anyway.
> When one school had a gay-pride day, there wasn't a peep of protest,
> an anonymous administrator said. If the phones were ringing off the
> hooks the day after they did that . . . saying, How dare you? believe
> me, it would have empowered the staff to say, You know this is really
> taking things too far. But the great masses just seem to be, I don't
> know, asleep.
>
>>
>>But though she couldn't believe it, she decides to believe it anyway. (The
>>term for this is "make-believe.") Nice going! Never let reality and reason
>>ruin a chance to exhibit your extraordinary...um...delight in bizarre
>>fantasy.
>>
>>Thanks so much for your most entertaining (though borrowed) comments, Topaz.
>>I appreciate that you feel strongly about children and education. Strongly
>>enough, I trust, that you support worthy public programs and adequate
>>funding for them.
>
> Only after the straights take over the country. Until then schools
> are the most evil brainwashing camps that ever corrupted the earth.
>
>>
>>However, children and education are NOT the topic under discussion in this
>>particular thread.
>>
>>NOR are role-playing games.
>>NOR paranoids terrified of anyone who's a little different.
>>NOR diseased minds inclined to twist innocence into wickedness.
>>NOR cynics who misinterpret pleas for tolerance as bids for control.
>>NOR uptight folks who are terrified of anything non-traditional.
>>NOR mixed-up folks who don't know that homosexuality and pedophilia are
>>entirely different things.
>>NOR anti-intellectual folks who think it's terrible to encourage kids to
>>_think_, not just memorize and obey like good little robots.
>>NOR creepy folks whose eyes pop at the thought of kids' underwear. (Geeze!)
>>
>>No, we were not discussing any of these things. So your post is a little
>>perplexing, by virtue of its being completely off-target.
>
> Bull
>
>>
>>What I asked about was MARRIAGE. Different kinds, but still MARRIAGE, as
>>the "Subject" line clearly indicates. A committed, legally sanctioned
>>relationship between consenting adults. MARRIAGE. Got it?
>>
>>Okay, let's say your previous miss was just a practice shot, and doesn't
>>count. Maybe you'd like to have another try. Now let's try really hard to
>>focus this time, shall we? Again, the general theme is "threat to
>>marriage," so try to keep that in your sights. And again, the question was
>>(and still is):
>>
>>**********
>>What SPECIFIC DANGER does SAME-SEX MARRIAGE pose to TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE?
>>**********
>
> We should abolish homosexual perversion. The fact that they push
> their perversion on children in schools is more than enough reason.
>
>>
>>This question challenges the (so far) unsubstantiated (and thus apparently
>>red-herring) claim, so vehemently asserted during the recent U.S. election
>>campaign, that allowing same-sex marriage would somehow destroy the
>>institution of traditional marriage.
>>
>>The cause-effect connection is apparently taken for granted by many
>>conservatives, but is far from obvious to the rest of us (if election
>>results are any indication). Therefore, the alleged danger needs to be
>>specified, and the presumed causal relationship of same-sex marriage
>>explained, with credible relevant evidence and cogent logic, in clear enough
>>terms that sober conservatives, moderates, and even we stupid egghead
>>liberals can get it. A really good response should also address evidence to
>>the contrary, from places in which same-sex unions are accepted, with
>>apparently no ill effects to traditional marriage.
>>
>>So please help us out here, Topaz, if you can. Try to stay focused.
>>Remember, your response should have something to do with *marriage* and the
>>supposed *threat.*
>
> We should abolish homosexual perversion. The fact that they push
> their perversion on children in schools is more than enough reason.
>
>>
>>If you have, or can find, a serious answer to THIS question, then we'd very
>>much like to read it. Especially if the answer makes sense and there's good
>>evidence to back it up. I, for one, am trying to remain open-minded enough
>>to suppose that there might be a valid explanation out there somewhere
>>(which is why I'm asking). But to be quite honest, we don't expect much.
>>So surprise us. Even if your answer isn't very convincing, keeping it
>>relevant to the question would be a great first step, and might give us
>>something to work with.
>>
>>But if you do not have, or cannot find, an answer to THIS question, then you
>>might want to consider whether this is an appropriate forum to randomly air
>>personal delusions and hang-ups, either your own or Ms. LaHaye's. It's
>>probably a safe guess that most of us in alt.philosophy are not
>>mental-health professionals, and it seems that such might be the best sort
>>of person with whom to discuss such problems.
>>
>>Do try to keep it real, Topaz, and have a really nice day. :o)
