NEWS RELEASE, FEB. 25, 2009, Parents for Democracy in Education

Feb. 20 and 21, I attended the first “Social Justice conference” staged by the BC Teachers’ Federation at University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotford. It was an eye-opener!

 

Although the stated purpose of the conference was to show teachers how to approach the Social Justice 12 curriculum adopted under BC’s Corren Settlement Agreement, an underlying purpose was clearly revealed by a graphic of a staircase, distributed by the BCTF in its information packages: the goal is to move students’ attitude towards LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning) people beyond “tolerance” to “acceptance”—and then further along to “support,” “admiration,” “appreciation” and finally “celebration” of deviant sexuality.

 

Most Canadians have never seen what constitutes “celebration” of homosexuality; but our big cities’ annual “Gay Pride” parades clearly show the reality: public nudity (partial and/or total), simulated fornication, lasciviousness—and open mockery of traditional morality.

 

This exposure of the BCTF’s real goal—to manipulate the attitudes of students until the “Prescribed Learning Outcome” of celebration is attained—reveals that the teachers’ union is actually in violation of its own code of ethics, which forbids using the classroom for indoctrination.

 

What has given the BCTF this extraordinary power to manipulate the attitudes of BC’s children? The cowardice of a pusillanimous government, and especially of two cabinet ministers—Education Minister Shirley Bond and Attorney-General Wally Oppal—who reached a secret agreement with two homosexual activists without ever allowing debate in the Legislature.

 

Those same ministers have consistently resisted efforts by parents’ groups to have a countervailing voice in the education of their children on sensitive topics.

 

This BCTF conference similarly lacked any opportunity for input from parents who want to resist manipulation of their children’s curriculum to make acceptance of homosexuality a goal.

 

The February conference was the first of four planned to train BC teachers how to implement the Correns’ ‘Social Justice 12’ curriculum. It did not deal with the companion—and more radical—teacher’s guide Making Space, Giving Voice, which the Correns were able to force on a supine Ministry of Education. Making Space, Giving Voice instructs teachers how to make every subject, at every level from Kindergarten to Grade 12, ‘gay’-friendly.

 

In one workshop, a teacher suggested that if a student says his or her parents disapprove of homosexual behaviour, he (the teacher) deflects the comment by saying, “Well, different people have different ideas about sex.”

 

“That won’t accomplish the kind of change we need,” said Dr. Martha Dow, a professor in the Department of Social, Cultural and Media Studies at UFV. “Students feel silenced by that kind of comment. ‘What does everybody think?’ is a bigoted comment. We need to decide who we want silenced.” So such students are to be told that their parents’ ideas are wrong. Several times Dr. Dow identified the “problem” as “Evangelical and Fundamentalist” Christians.

 

That theme recurred in several sessions.  The result of the BCTF’s unilateral advocacy that “gay is good” can only be to drive a wedge between children and their parents. And the long-term social result of that alienation would be worse than the problems they are trying to correct.

 

However, the BCTF apparently operates on the assumption that they are in possession of an absolute truth—even though peer-reviewed science has discredited every claim of discovery of a “gay gene”; and even though medical studies indicate that homosexual behaviour shortens life expectancy dramatically. To “true believers” in the BCTF dogma, such facts are apparently irrelevant.

 

Their position is essentially religious—a fact that was vividly highlighted by a teacher who said in a Friday workshop, “I don’t think I can teach this without being converted.”

 

The conference was lamentably short on factual information—but presenters were quite willing to reiterate falsehoods, like the “10 percent myth”, based on the discredited 1948 and 1953 Reports of self-styled “sexologist” Alfred Kinsey. (Kinsey alleged that 10 percent of the population is homosexual; however the 2003 Canadian Community Health Survey showed that only one percent of the population identify themselves as homosexual.)

 

Dr. Judith Reisman, in her book Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences, revealed that Kinsey’s “research” included criminal sexual abuse of infants, and that a substantial part of his survey population was drawn from prison inmates and ‘gay’ bars—but they were represented by Kinsey as typical of the whole population. Kinsey himself was a homosexual who died from orchitis, an inflammation of the testes often caused by excessive sexual self-abuse.

 

Keynote speaker Alex Sanchez—brought in from Florida to deliver a message called “Faith and Spirituality”, claims to be a ‘gay’ Christian. He said in one of his workshops: “Jesus didn’t say anything about homosexuality.” Of course, that’s utterly untrue: Jesus affirmed every jot and tittle of the Mosaic Law, which includes explicit prohibitions against sodomy.

 

Referring to the Mosaic Law in Leviticus 18:22, one participant asked me, “So, does that give you the right to stone me?”

 

“No,” I answered. “For two reasons: one is that the same Torah says there must be at least two eyewitnesses—‘You shall not put a man to death on the testimony of one witness’—and because you say you’re trusting Jesus for your salvation… and He died to pay the penalty for your sins and mine. But just as with the adulterous woman, He says, ‘I don’t condemn you; go and sin no more.’”

 

The conference was not without merit: participating teachers were given some useful tips on correcting students who use slurs or bully other students.

 

But the underlying theme—BCTF’s absolute certainty that only their pro-‘gay’ dogma is correct, and they have the right to impose it on BC’s children because “we’re professional educators”—was terrifying: such use of government power to compel conformity is the very essence of fascism.

Ron Gray is a former journalist (Vancouver Sun, Chilliwack Progress, BC Report, Fiji Times, Richmond Review) and was a member of the founding administration of Fraser Valley College, the forerunner of University of the Fraser Valley. He is currently Vice-President of Parents for Democracy in Education.