Let
the Exodus Begin...
by Gary DeMar
Less
than a year ago, I wrote an article called "No Fundamental
Right" about a ruling made by the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals in California. In case that wasn't enough of a jolt to
wake up California's (and the rest of the country's) Christians
regarding government education, here's yet another shot. On
Monday, August 28, Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB 1441 into law
and it has been virtually ignored by major media outlets. SB 1441
"requires 'any program or activity that…receives any
financial assistance from the state' to support transsexuality,
bisexuality, and homosexuality or lose state funding. SB 1441
contains no exception for religious colleges and universities,
child care providers, or after-school programs." In other
words, anyone that receives state money for any reason must begin
to support trans, bi and homosexuality, or risk losing said state
money. Regardless of religious affiliation, regardless of mission
statement, regardless of any prior commitments to the contrary. If
you take state funds, you now must adhere to state
doctrine—which happens to be pro-homosexual, transsexual and
bisexual (others will be added later to be sure).
For
those out there that weren't convinced to get out of the state
system by Fields v. Palmdale, SB 1441 is the next logical
step. This is what happens when Christ's people try to play by two
sets of rules. Christ said that no man can
serve God and mammon, and this includes Christian schools in
California. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and Gov.
Schwarzenegger has just put a quarter in the jukebox, baby. If you
have ears to hear the tune, start dancing out of the system now.
Since the article is still timely, here is a re-print of "No
Fundamental Right," from November 9, 2005:
No
Fundamental Right
by Eric Rauch
11/09/2006
The
most out-of-step and blatantly liberal court in the land has
finally outdone itself. Up until last week I never would have
considered the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to be an ally in
hurrying along the exodus of Christians from the Pharoahs of the
Public School system, but that’s exactly what the Court has
become—an ally. If their bold ruling in Fields v. Palmdale
School District doesn’t awaken “the sleeping giant” of
ignorant Christians, then quite possibly nothing will.
So what
exactly is Fields v. Palmdale and why should you care?
Here is a brief synopsis from Agape Press:
The case
involves the Palmdale School District in California, which
notified parents of its intentions to conduct an assessment of
children ages seven to ten in order to “establish a community
baseline measure of children’s exposure to early trauma (for
example, violence).” What the letter to parents did not convey
was that ten of the 79 questions on the survey would ask the
children about the frequency of “touching my private parts,”
“thinking about having sex,” “having sex feelings in my
body,” and “can't stop thinking about sex.”1
Six
horrified sets of parents of children in the Palmdale School
District sued when they found out what was actually on the survey.
The parents claimed that “the school had interfered with their
constitutional rights by surveying their elementary-age children
without disclosing that the survey contained personal questions
about sex.”2 The ruling of the Ninth
Circuit Court, which upheld previous rulings in favor of the
school district opined that:
Parents
have a right to inform their children when and as they wish on
the subject of sex; they have no constitutional right, however,
to prevent a public school from providing its students with
whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise,
when and as the school determines that it is appropriate to do
so. Neither Meyer nor Pierce [two earlier
Supreme Court rulings] provides support for the view that
parents have a right to prevent a school from providing any kind
of information—sexual or otherwise—to its students.…
Perhaps the Sixth Circuit said it best when it explained,
“While parents may have a fundamental right to decide whether
to send their child to a public school, they do not have a
fundamental right generally to direct how a public
school teaches their child.3
So
there you have it. I couldn’t have written a better apologetic
for home-schooling or private Christian schooling if I tried. The
Ninth Circuit, in quoting the Sixth Circuit, is spelling out in
crystal-clear terms that once you send your children off to the
state for their education, you are in effect signing an unwritten
contract giving them permission to teach your children whatever
they want and deem necessary or expedient. The NEA’s agenda for
that year will be taught and pounded into young minds, regardless
of your protests. Next time, Palmdale will most certainly skip the
gratuitous survey; it was a huge waste of time and school funds.
With the blank check for indoctrination that the Ninth Circuit has
written to California school districts, parents can expect to get
less, not more, information about what their children are being
taught and doing for 35-40 hours a week in the hands of state
educators. And based on a recent story in The Washington Post,
one of the things that the kids are doing is putting their school
lessons into practical application:
Two
students were discovered recently having sex in an Anne Arundel
County high school gym. Four students at Col. Zadok Magruder
High in Rockville were arrested in June after performing sex
acts in the school parking lot. A boy and a girl at Springbrook
High in Silver Spring were caught "touching
inappropriately" in a school bathroom. Last year, three
teenage boys at Mount Hebron High in Howard County were arrested
after a student accused them of sexually assaulting her in a
school restroom, but charges were dropped after the boys said
the sex was consensual and the girl recanted.4
Were these
students awarded extra-credit for their post-curricular
activities? Is this really the environment that Christian parents
want their own children “educated” in? How long will we turn a
blind-eye to this open hostility to the values and morals of
Christianity? If this isn’t the “wake-up call” to pull our
children out of the state system, then just what will it take?
When is enough, enough? Jessica Miller, a recent graduate of T.C.
Williams High School in Alexandria, VA, rightly asks the question
regarding the promiscuity among teenagers in public schools,
“Our parents are the ones who had the sexual revolution, so why
are they surprised?”5 Why indeed.
Education doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If the public schools are
going to teach safe sex, then they should also provide a
safe environment for the kids to practice it. If you
think this is far-fetched, read this again in five or ten years.
Twenty years ago John Dunphy sounded like a radical, now, however,
he sounds like a prophet:
I am
convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged
and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly
perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a
religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of
what theologians call divinity in every human being. These
teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most
rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of
another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to
convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach,
regardless of the educational level—preschool day care or
large state university. The classroom must and will become an
arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting
corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and
misery, and the new faith of humanism, resplendent in its
promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian ideal
of “love thy neighbor” will be finally achieved.6
Dunphy
states that we’re engaged in a “battle for humankind’s
future.” The Ninth Circuit Court has simply taken spray paint
and made the battle lines clear for all to see. Dunphy and the
humanists will not rest until victory has been attained. Our
pathetic pleas and attempts to reform the state education system
will never sway the worldview of an army of Dunphys. They are
fixed on victory. It’s time for Christians to concede and let
them have their churches back. They were never ours in the first
place.
1.
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/11/32005a.asp
2.
http://www.family.org/cforum/news/a0038483.cfm
3.
Stephen Reinhardt, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Opinion:
Fields v. Palmdale (Nov. 2, 2005), 14-15. Available online: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0356499p.pdf
4.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR2005110501414_pf.html
5.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR2005110501414_pf.html
6.
John J. Dunphy, “A Religion for a New Age,” The Humanist (January/February
1983), 26.
