STUDENT SAFETY BEING USED TO PROMOTE RADICAL SOCIAL AGENDA IN OUR SCHOOLS
by Gary L. Morella

he attempt to protect the sacred cow of "sexual orientation", something that doesn't exist in an innate final sense, has resulted in a State College PA Area School District (SCASD) harassment policy which is inclusive in the extreme by making anyone afraid to comment about anything lest it be construed as harassment.

The biggest failing is the encouragement of aberrant behavior which needs to be corrected. Any students inclined to such behavior are not being harassed when the consequences of such inclinations are made clear to protect them. This should be a paramount concern if schools genuinely care about the safety of their students. But student safety is being used to promote sexual deviancy as a civil right by de facto equating self-destructive behavior that is a cause for concern (ref. the latest Center for Disease Control HIV-AIDS/ Surveillance Report Statistics) with immutable, natural characteristics and constitutionally protected behavior.

How can a school go against the wishes of parents who might be trying very hard to get their child to fight such inclinations? Would this action on the part of parents be considered harassment of their children at home? Not if the right to privacy still exists. How then can a school go against the wishes of said parents by enacting a policy which would make similar encouragement within the school an act of harassment? The school can't do this if the law says that the school is acting "in loco parentis," (in place of the parent) which is the case in Pennsylvania.

Legitimizing the concept of sexual orientation is indoctrination not education. The SCASD harassment policy did just that! I submit that one could argue that if sexual orientation is explicitly included, one has to define just what that means. Clearly, sadism, masochism, and pedophilia could be considered sexual orientations. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) tells us that these activities, like homosexuality, are perfectly normal. And who are we to doubt the 50,000 member plus APA per the admonishments of homosexual advocates who will use anything at their disposal including the reinvention of religion and Sacred Scripture to promote homosexuality as a virtue.

And what about the American Psychological Association that also holds, following the lead of the American Psychiatric Association, that "homosexuality is perfectly normal?" (Note: The APA references in the remainder of this piece refer to the American Psychological Association.)

Recent events don't support the public claims of former Pennsylvania Psychological Association executive Stephen A. Ragusea that the American Psychological Association has always held firm in its stand against child abuse. Ragusea argues that all opinions, no matter how radical, are publishable in professional psychological journals or bulletins as part of the research process whereby bad theses will be refuted. Is it necessary to test conflicting hypotheses when they are absurd? What ever happened to peer review and common sense?

The facts are that the American Psychological Association did not immediately denounce the pro-pedophilia positions taken in a special double issue of the Journal of Homosexuality but rather published a major study written by one of the authors which appeared in the Association's most prestigious Psychological Bulletin. The article, which was published in the July 1998 edition was entitled, "A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples," by Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch and Robert Bauserman.

The rest is history as a national outcry resulted in an overwhelming condemnation of this article by Congress, with the exception of a well known homosexual house member, causing embarrassment to the APA which backed away from the article's claims that child molestation with "willing" children may not be harmful, and may, in some cases, even be beneficial. The APA subsequently unveiled a resolution condemning all "sexual relations between children and adults." What's sad and very telling is that only after much pressure did the APA begin to undo the damage wrought by its publication of this badly conceived article that has been hailed by such groups as the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).

In a June 9 letter to Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex), APA Chief Executive Officer Raymond D. Fowler, who had earlier defended the article on national television as "a good study," now acknowledged that the article is "inflammatory" and includes opinions "inconsistent" with APA's policy on child protection issues. He admits that APA "failed" to "evaluate the article based on its potential for misinforming the public policy process."

Witness the increasingly radical anti-family research of the APA as reported in their bulletin, American Psychologist, which carried an article entitled, "Deconstructing the Essential Father." After studying 200 fathers, the authors concluded that traditional fathering is a "neoconservative" construct, and that fathers do not make a unique and essential contribution to child development.

Dr. Louise Silverstein, one of the study's authors, said in an interview that she objects to the "neoconservative privileging" of the ideal of heterosexual marriage that is used to "generate social policy that discriminates against mother-headed families, gay fathers, and lesbian mothers." The article criticized the male tendency to "consume resources in terms of gambling, purchasing alcohol, cigarettes, or other nonessential commodities," which "increases womens' workload and stress." The authors concluded that "the data do not support the conclusion that fathers are essential to child well-being, and that heterosexual marriage is the context in which responsible fathering is most likely to occur."

Hey, dads, based on this study you and I are obsolete along with traditional marriage because the vast majority of us, based on the APA sample, are nothing more than gamblers, alcoholics, and cigarette smokers. The irony is that no mention is ever made of the serious health dangers that follow homosexual activity. And this in a "smoke-free" society! One might ask what about students inclined to gambling, alcoholism, and smoking? Should a harassment policy formally equate this trio as a cause for nondiscrimination in a civil rights sense with skin color, ethnicity, and religion? What would be the message in that case? The answer by the SCASD would be interesting since smoking is prohibited on school grounds.

So what's the problem with explicitly including these activities along with the aforementioned "other" sexual orientations in the harassment statement? There is none using the rationale of the SCASD. If they are uncomfortable with including inclinations to these activities, then they need to be asked a very simple question. Why?

Individual freedom too often confused with license must give way to societal common good else anarchy exists. We've gone far beyond name-calling; we're talking about protected zones of advocacy for aberrant behavior. The "name-calling", like "stop the hate" slogans are simply tools used by homosexual advocates to get people to agree to stop hating the sin as well as the sinner. We're no longer talking about "leave us alone." We're now talking about coercing the public into subsidizing policies via their taxes which are counter to the tenets of their faith.

Confusing respect for the individual due to his inherent dignity as a creation of the Almighty with respect for his self-destructive behavior isn't required for the good of society, and it most certainly is not Christian.