If This Can Happen in a Wheaton, Illinois Elementary School
If This Can Happen in a Wheaton, Illinois Elementary School
By Laurie Higgins
FROGS! GET OUT OF THE WATER! IT’S BOILING!
A lesbian activist who promotes cultural approval of both the “LGBT” ideology and the legalized slaughter of the unborn was invited to speak to 8-11-year-olds at Longfellow Elementary School in Wheaton, Illinois, home of America’s most prestigious evangelical college, Wheaton College; evangelical Christian publishing company Crossway Books; and approximately 45 churches. If this could happen in Wheaton, Illinois, it could happen anywhere.
The kinda, sorta good news is that the event was canceled the day before it was to take place in early October. The bad news is the school hopes to reschedule it. According to District 200 spokesperson Erica Loiacono,
The day before the author’s visit, a parent contacted Longfellow Administration with concerns about the process we utilize to inform parents about author visits and the contents of the presentation and promotion. It was at that time Administration was informed that the school did not communicate to Longfellow parents information about the content of the book being presented and promoted by the author…. Parents were only informed of the author’s visit, not the content of the book, presentation and promotion…. We look forward to speaking with the author and discussing the possibility of scheduling a visit to our school community in the future.
The author, Robin Stevenson, is on a book tour—you know, the thing authors go on to promote and sell their books. The particular book she is promoting right now is Kid Activists: True Tales of Childhood from Champions of Change, which tells “childhood stories through kid-friendly texts and full-color cartoon illustrations” of activists, including Harvey Milk, the infamous homosexual pederast and friend of murderous cult leader Jim Jones, and “Janet” Mock, a biological man who through cross-sex hormone-doping and extensive surgical body modification successfully passes as a woman.
Stevenson has also written Pride Colors, a colorful board book for children from ages 0-2 that “highlights #LGBTQIA+ families in a positive, glittery light,” and teaches babies the “meaning behind each color in the Pride flag.” And for 9-14-year-olds, she has Pride: Celebrating Diversity & Community, which glossily details the history of the movement to normalize sexual deviance.
Stevenson’s devaluation of the human person extends beyond homosexuality and cross-sex identification. She devalues humans in the womb as well and seeks to indoctrinate children with her twisted views. Stevenson’s book for children ages 12 and up, My Body My Choice: The Fight for Abortion Rights, is about the “long fight for abortion rights” that “is being picked up by a new generation of courageous, creative and passionate activists.” The School Library Journal highly recommends it saying, “Readers will appreciate and find value in the colorful photographs and illustrations, quotes, and comics provided and will finish the guide feeling empowered. Youth will be armed with concrete tips and advice on how they can help fight against abortion stigma.”
Can’t have anyone stigmatizing the slaughter of tiny vulnerable humans. No siree, can’t have that.
Stevenson chastises the superintendent and school board of Wheaton District 200, in an open letter on her website:
[B]eginning next year, Illinois public schools will be required to teach history lessons that include the roles and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in U.S. history. But schools should not need to be legislated to be inclusive. Many schools are already working hard to provide a safe and supportive environment for students to be themselves and to encourage all students to respect diversity and human rights….
In choosing to cancel the presentation…. You legitimized a concern rooted in homophobia, gave this priority over the wishes of the school administration and staff who had requested the visit.
Six thoughts about Stevenson’s thoughts:
1.) Wheaton parents should ascertain exactly which school administrators and staff requested that Stevenson be invited to speak. The identities of government employees who make these kinds of decisions should not be cloaked in secrecy.
2.) Commitments to “inclusivity” do not require schools to ignore moral precepts. I don’t see “progressives” clamoring to have the roles and contributions of polyamorists, kinksters, or zoophiles included in curricula. Why is that? Have no polyamorists, kinksters, or zoophiles contributed anything of value to society? Leftists believe known-kinkster Alfred Kinsey made significant contributions to society. Maybe in the service of inclusivity, schools should share his kinkster predilections with elementary school students. Or could it be that “progressives” believe only their moral precepts should dictate which sexual predilections must be shared with students?
3.) Assuring the safety of students does not require affirming all their feelings and behavioral choices, nor do school administrators (or likely Stevenson) believe it does.
4.) Regarding schools’ provision of a “supportive” environment for students to be “themselves”: Are government schools really obligated to “support” all the feelings—including all the sexual feelings—of all students or just those feelings approved by “progressives”? What does being “themselves” even mean? Does it mean that all powerful, persistent, seemingly intractable feelings determine both “identity” and morality? If so, the “LGBTQIAP+” community has split wide open a Pandora’s box of trouble.
5.) “Respect for diversity” is a deceitful slogan. “Diversity” per se is neither intrinsically good nor bad. Diversity simply means difference or variety, and not all differences are respect-worthy. What Stevenson really means is that students should be taught to approve of homosexual acts and cross-sex identification, but no government employee—in his or her professional role—has the right to teach other people’s children that.
6.) Christian disapproval of homosexuality and cross-sex identification is no more rooted in fear or hatred of persons than is Christian disapproval of adultery, fornication, or porn use. I wonder how “safe” and “supported” conservative students feel when Stevenson calls them homophobic.
On Saturday, Stevenson tweeted this:
Were parents specifically warned that not all the activists in the book [that she is selling] were cis and straight? No, and this should not be necessary.
There you have it, folks, the arrogance of leftists who refuse to respect the rights of parents who don’t want their young children exposed to leftist views of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation.
Stevenson is a proselyte for cultural approval of homosexuality, the science-denying “trans” ideology, and the legal right of women to have their offspring slaughtered, but who does the culture deem the bad guys in this scenario? The bad guys are any Wheaton parents who object to Stevenson preaching to their children. “Bigot” and “hater” growl Wheaton leftists on social media in the mellifluous tones of tolerance to which conservatives have become accustomed.
One Wheaton mom posted this on Wheaton Moms & Families Facebook page:
Wheaton doesn’t need to be the bigoted community it was 20-30 years ago. Times are changing, families are evolving but love is the ONLY thing that is remaining consistent. I’d rather my child learn about a gay rights pioneer and activist instead of Christopher Columbus who was a murderer and rapist.
(I’ll set aside her disturbing admiration for Harvey Milk who, as an adult, sexually abused teenage boys.)
Is she suggesting that Christians are bigots and that affirming Scripture is unloving? If so, that raises the question, is she bigoted and unloving for harshly condemning beliefs that are central to the identities of Bible-believing Christians?
As Christians know from Christ’s example, genuine love—as opposed to the treacly stuff that passes for love today—does not entail approval of all feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts of others. Every parent knows this as well.
Genuine love is inseparable from truth. Genuine love requires knowing what is good and true, and desiring that for others even when they desire that which is destructive.
A 2018 Wheaton North High School graduate who currently attends Emerson College wrote this on the Wheaton Moms & Families Facebook page,
PARENTS, by rebuking and establishing that people that live differently from you are dirty and bad and deviant to you children…. You are creating ignorant children, because ignorance is LEARNED.”
She provided no evidence that any parent is telling their children that those who choose to embrace a homosexual or cross-sex identity “are dirty or bad or deviant” people. There is a difference between saying ideas are false or behavioral choices are wrong or deviant, and saying people are “dirty and bad and deviant.” By rebuking people who live differently than this college student does—people like theologically orthodox Christians—is she saying they are “dirty and bad”?
This college student made one point with which I would agree: Ignorance is learned.
Another Wheaton mom responded to the comment, “Thank God [the event] was canceled,” by saying, “you are a horrible hater.” In the upside-down “progressive” world of self-righteous and hollow claims about tolerance, love, and respect for diversity, opposition to a pro-feticide, pro-homosexuality lesbian activist promoting her book to elementary school children is a sign of hatred.
Other “progressive” scolds sniff that Stevenson wasn’t even going to talk about Harvey Milk, but that’s beside the point. First, she was shilling her book—a book the contents of which many parents would find objectionable.
Second, many parents believe that anyone who affirms homoeroticism as intrinsically good and places her homoerotic attraction at the center of her identity is an inappropriate role model for their young children. Government schools have no right to treat those parents’ beliefs and feelings any differently than the beliefs and feelings of leftists.
While culturally regressive parents find conservative beliefs on the nature and morality of volitional homosexual acts and cross-sex impersonation “bigoted” and “hateful,” others find leftist beliefs bigoted and hateful. If leftist ontological and moral assumptions are wrong, promoting them is neither enlightened nor loving. And if government schools may not present conservative moral positions to captive audiences of young children, because leftists view them as false and destructive, then government schools should not present leftist moral positions to young captive audiences, because conservatives view them as false and destructive.
(This is the point in discussions on “LGBT” issues when regressives, rubbing their hands together with a “gotcha” gleam in their eyes, wind up and toss in the manifestly dumb analogy comparing skin color to homosexual attraction and cross-sex identification. So, once more for the analogically challenged: There are zero points of correspondence between skin color per se, which is about 100% heritable, immutable in all cases, and has no constituent behavioral features, and homosexual attraction or cross-sex identification, which are constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts.)
Now back to the umbrage of leftists about the cancellation of Robin Stevenson’s misbegotten visit: Let’s imagine for a moment that Longfellow Elementary School were to invite an author to talk to young children about activism. Some of her books, replete with colorful comics, promote the views of Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer who favors the legalization of infanticide for defective babies. Some of her books advocate for the “civil right” of polyamorists to marry as many people as they love and for consenting relatives of the same sex to marry each other (love is love, ya know). In another book, she pleads for the right of those who identify as amputees to socially and surgically “transition.”
Or let’s imagine that Longfellow Elementary School were to invite an author who has written books that promote the right of the unborn to be protected from slaughter, the right of girls and women to be free of the presence of biological men in their private spaces, the right of children to be raised by a mother and a father, and that promote the view that marriage has a nature central to which is sexual differentiation? What if this author’s books included profiles of Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood director/now pro-life activist; abortion survivor and pro-life activist Gianna Jessen; Walt Heyer, former cross-sex identifier who has now detransitioned; Katy Faust, who was raised by two lesbians and opposes same-sex marriage; and Ryan T. Anderson, an activist for true (i.e., sexually-differentiated) marriage? To be inclusive of diverse perspectives would “progressive” parents approve of their 9-year-old children attending a presentation by such an author? Should conscientious objectors to such a speaker be publicly vilified as bigots and haters?
Christians are commanded by God to train up their children in the way they should go. That cannot happen in institutions that seek to cultivate love for acts that God detests. Conservative parents must exit these bubbling cauldrons of witches’ brew, formerly known as schools, before their children are boiled alive.
Here in Illinois, as in California, New Jersey, and Colorado, it is no longer merely possible that young children with impressionable minds and tender hearts will be exposed to positive images and ideas about sexual deviance. Thanks to the bill passed by regressive lawmakers and signed into law by Illinois’ feckless governor, J.B. Pritzker, it is now mandatory that this indoctrination takes place.
Parents must exit government schools, and churches must facilitate that exit. For those families who, for a variety of reasons, cannot homeschool, churches must either create affordable, distinctly Christian schools, or make funds available to church members who want to send their children to existing Christian schools but can’t afford the often cost-prohibitive tuition.