Taxpayer Money Awarded to GLSEN-For the Next 5 Years
This is a sadly historic moment: We’ve learned that the federal government will now officially—for the next five years—fund one of the largest gay activists groups in the nation devoted to promoting homosexuality to public school kids of all ages.
GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) has been awarded [1]an annually renewable grant from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control). The grant will fund a five-year project that will allow GLSEN to “partner with 20 targeted school districts across the country” and to reach “14,500 school personnel and 4 million students.”
So GLSEN’s homosexual activism could soon be coming to a school near you—at taxpayers’ expense.
GLSEN announced that it plans to use the grant money (up to $285,000 per year) in part to start “internal Implementation Teams” and training programs based on GLSEN’s Safe Space Kit. We’ve written [2]about the Safe Space Kit before, but here’s a quick overview.
Among other things, the Kit [3]:
- Promotes GLSEN’s controversial recommended book list [4] for use in schools.
- Encourages teachers to display homosexual-themed materials from “LGBT organizations.” (LGBT=lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender).
- Recommends that schools “celebrate LGBT events” and incorporate lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender themes into curriculum and school literature. “Whenever possible,” the guide tells educators to give examples of “same-sex couples” and “LGBT parents.”
- Gives teachers an “LGBT-Inclusive School Checklist” to see if their school has, among other things, a “gender-neutral dress code” and “gender-neutral” bathrooms.
- GLSEN also wants educators to avoid using words like “husband” or “wife” in the classroom and avoid using gender-specific pronouns. A vocabulary sheet included in the Kit offers alternative pronouns, such as “zie” rather than “he” or “she.” And “hir” rather than “him” or “her.”
So basically, if GLSEN has its way, the concept of ‘male’ and ‘female’ and traditional marriage—and even basic English language pronouns—will be rendered absolutely meaningless to the average public school student.
We have raised these questions before, but now they seem even more urgent: Should the federal government really be funding and promoting homosexual activist groups in schools that are waging campaigns which contradict the deeply held values of so many families? It’s one thing for government officials to express controversial opinions—it’s another to make us pay for them in our own schools.
And what about parental rights? Homosexual activists groups have often been supportive of efforts to mandate homosexuality lessons [5], even to elementary age children, against parents’ will. Should parents now have to pay for the endorsement of groups that are actively undermining their rights to direct the upbringing of their children?