The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a medical professional organization of 60,000 pediatricians, has joined a chorus of criticism against an antigay Christian Right political group, after the latter sent a letter to U.S. public schools pretending to represent mainstream professional pediatric expertise.

The statement reads:

In 2008, a diverse coalition of 13 national organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) joined in a renewed effort to protect the safety and emotional well-being of students, including those who are at higher risk because of their sexual orientation. This group of education, health, mental health and religious organizations developed and endorsed Just the Facts about Sexual Orientation and Youth: A Primer for Principals, Educators, and School Personnel and sent the resource to public school superintendents across the US.

On or around March 31, 2010, school superintendents may have received another letter from the American College of Pediatricians, which is in no way affiliated with the American Academy of Pediatrics. The letter promotes another campaign titled “Facts About Youth,” which professes to offer guidance to educators on “approaches to students experiencing sexual orientation and gender identity confusion.” Their campaign does not acknowledge the scientific and medical evidence regarding sexual orientation, sexual identity, sexual health, or effective health education.

The AAP encourages school administrators and officials, teachers, parents, and youth to become familiar with and utilize the AAP developed and endorsed resources on this issue for reliable, sound, scientific, medical advice:

Just the Facts about Sexual Orientation and Youth: A Primer for Principals, Educators, and School Personnel – A guide for employees who confront sensitive issues involving gay, lesbian and bisexual students. It is intended to help school administrators foster safe and healthy school environments, in which all students can achieve to the best of their ability. “Just the Facts” includes the most recent information from professional health organizations, as well as up-to-date information on the legal responsibility of school officials to protect students from anti-gay harassment.

Sexual Orientation and Adolescents – A clinical report from the AAP Committee on Adolescence.

Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Teens: Information for Teens and Parents – Questions and answers from the AAP for teens and parents about sexual orientation.

Gay and Lesbian Teens – Information on sexual orientation from the AAP’s Caring for Your Teenager.

Gender Identity and Gender Confusion in Children – Information on gender identity, sexual stereotypes, gender confusion, and sexual orientation from the AAP’s Caring for Your School Aged Child: Ages 5-12.

With this statement, AAP joins University of Minnesota researcher Dr. Gary Remafedi, M.D., M.P.H. and conservative Christian professor Warren Throckmorton of Grove City College in Pennsylvania in criticizing the Christian front group’s falsifications and distortions of legitimate research.

Last week, Remafedi said:

Knowingly misrepresenting research findings for material or personal gain is a flagrant violation of this code of conduct. Implicating me in this chicanery is doubly damaging to my professional reputation and career by holding me accountable for misstatements and by associating me with a cause that most ethical Pediatricians will recognize as misguided and hurtful to an entire class of children and families.

After citing specific acts of research fraud by the ACP, Remafedi asked the ACP to retract its misuse of the research with a written statement on the front of its web site, and to return any donations made to the ACP on the basis of its fraudulent claims.

Throckmorton cited additional examples of fraud and misrepresentation.

“The ACP’ new anti-gay website essentially replaces facts with quacks,” said Truth Wins Out executive director Wayne Besen. The ACP consists largely of members of the discredited reparative therapy organization, the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Former NARTH officer Arthur Abba Goldberg — a convicted Wall Street con artist and disbarred lawyer, not a doctor — sits on the ACP’ so-called “Pediatric Psychosocial Development Committee.”

Given the repeated acts of research fraud and misrepresentation that have been committed by NARTH, Focus on the Family, Exodus International, and PFOX, a joint effort among medical and mental-health professionals is needed, not just to slap down such political propaganda disguised as science, but to slap it down the moment it is made public.

The ACP has not corrected its website, and Focus on the Family and PFOX both continue to market the ACP’s fraudulent web site as if it were a factual resource for schools.

We do.

(h/t Good As You)

By the way, my heart totally skipped a beat at 0:36. Why, hello there.

More here.

Instead of engaging in true conversation through schools’ Gay-Straight Alliances or the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s annual Day of Silence, Exodus continues to con its youth groups into a phony, egocentric conversation amongst themselves.

Exodus’ DOT website now hosts two new videos featuring what it calls “man on the street” interviews at an unidentified school:

The interviewees are reasonably diverse, but ignorant of antigay violence and bullying — and kept ignorant by Exodus. Besides sidestepping the focus of the Day of Silence, the videos also perpetuate Exodus International’s relativist habit of encouraging people to define reality to be whatever they want it to be — not what medical, statistical, and psychiatric facts dictate.

Besides fact-deficient videos, the DOT offers:

a “survey” in which antigay youths and faculty are encouraged to invent their own reality.
a “supplies” store where people can buy posters, shirts, and cards that, again, are free of any troubling doses of factual reality.

Until Exodus supports and interacts with existing channels such as GSAs and GLSEN, its DOT must be regarded as a campaign to deliberately suppress public awareness of antigay violence, to sidestep real conversation, and to insulate self-identified “Christians” from reality.

Focus on the Family blasts the Day of Silence — GLSEN’s annual antiviolence vigil and conversation-starter in schools — as a sinister manifestation of the “homosexual agenda.”

Focus is alarmed that the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network encourages schools to acknowledge the existence of LGBT youth — such acknowledgment being an obvious prerequisite to stopping violence against those youth.

Instead of acknowledging that gender- and orientation-variant youth exist and should not be assaulted and intimidated with impunity, Focus claims that the ex-gay activist group Exodus International offers “redemptive truth” as an alternative to nonviolence.

Exodus’ Day of Truth, purposely scheduled one day prior to the Day of Silence, condemns LGBT youth to hell and urges “Christian” youths to view their LGBT-tolerant classmates as inferior prior to any “conversation” about violence that the Day of Silence might otherwise prompt.

Violence does not concern Focus; “lesbian, gay and bisexual materials in the classroom” do.

Focus and Exodus are purposely ignorant of the New Testament’s repeated admonitions against violence toward ethnic and gender minorities; and where Focus and Exodus claim to be knowledgeable, the knowledge is false. “The biblical truth for sexuality” — as interpreted by their mentor James Dobson — isn’t Biblical at all. It is a 1950s TV sitcom fantasy of heterosexual marriage at age 18 followed by premature child-raising and lives of suffocating gender-role conformity. This myth of white suburban Americana rejects the Bible’s conflicting affirmations of celibate evangelism, polygamy, rape, and same-sex relationships; ignores the ethnicity and modest living standards of Biblical characters; and applauds the Bible’s ignorance of crucial scientific and historical facts.

Do Focus or Exodus offer Biblical truth? No. Redemption? No. Freedom from violence? Absolutely not. What they do offer is little more than a cocoon of smug self-satisfaction, ethnic and sexual ignorance, and the sort of hypocritical moralizing and intimidation that Jesus of Nazareth reputedly condemned.

GLSEN’s Day of Silence is still a month-and-a-half away, but Exodus International is already mobilizing antigay teens in schools across North America with Exodus’ misnamed “Day of Truth” campaign.

The DOT mobilizes antigay churches and students to harass LGBT students and their friends, and — under the guise of so-called “conversation” — to lobby schools to exclude LGBT students from schools’ antibullying policies.

In a press release last week, Exodus applauded its past successes in convincing antigay youths to be ignorant, misinformed, and sanctimonious toward their lesbian and gay “friends.” (If you’re wondering why Exodus doesn’t mention transgender students, it’s because the organization effectively denies the existence of people who are not conventionally male or female, equating them with drag queens.)

Here are some of Exodus’ “success” stories:

“One girl in particular asked me if it was hard because I have a friend that is a lesbian. I told her that “yes” it is hard, but I’m not going to give up on her. I think that God has so many awesome plans for that girl and for the rest of us. The Day of Truth is something that is so awesome!” – A high school freshman in Arizona

“I was so glad to hear about the Day of Truth. My daughter is a freshman.. and we have both been in shock that the school counselor would promote a club to encourage gay lifestyles. We need to pray for these kids and people encouraging this sinful and deadly lifestyle and give our kids a voice to proclaim the truth.” – Pam, a parent

“I still disagree with your views, and I always will. However, you’ve expressed your views in a polite and forthright manner, without being confrontational, and I wanted to tell you that I very much appreciate that.” – An adult who does not support Exodus International’s views on homosexuality

Please note that Exodus lacked sufficient integrity to identify these people for purposes of confirmation; that none of these people indicate any knowledge of specific truths about their friends and children; none of them acknowledge the violence and harassment that is happening against their LGBT classmates; none of them admit the truth that Exodus ex-gay counseling programs are a dismal failure; and that the two antigay poster-persons view the task of having gay friends or relatives as a chore — or worse, a threat. That’s Exodus-style “love” for you.

Truth Wins Out urges schools and GSAs around the country to become alert to Exodus’ possible formation, in coming months, of affiliate student groups that intend to harass and ostracize religious and sexual minorities — and to sabotage nascent efforts by parents and friends of assaulted youths to make schools safer for LGBT students.

Weekly Column

It is generally understood that today’ youth are more supportive of equality for gay and lesbian people. Faced with losing the next generation, fundamentalists are ferociously scrambling to capture the minds of youth through homeschooling and the subversion of public education. By sequestering students at home or creating public schools where the only drink served in the cafeteria is Kool-Aid, they hope to reprogram tomorrow’ leaders.

It appears America’ religious fanatics are modeling their efforts on the success of radical Islamists in the Middle East, who reversed the trend of secularization in the region by hijacking education. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently wrote about this phenomenon:

Beginning in the 1970s, the trend in Yemen, Morocco, Egypt and the Persian Gulf “was to Islamicize education as a way to fight the left…”

…Then, in 1979, after the Saudi ruling family was shaken by an attack in Mecca from its own Wahabi fundamentalists, the Saudi regime, to fend off the anger of its Wahabis, gave them free rein to Islamicize education and social life in Saudi Arabia and neighboring states.

The rest is a very sad and tragic history.

In America, according to the Aug. 7, 2009 edition of The Economist magazine, the number of children who are home-schooled—1.5 million—has doubled in the past decade, and 83 percent of home-schooling families do so for religious or moral reasons.

It is important to realize that the goal of many in the homeschooling movement is to create an army of zealot zombies who are committed to transforming America into a fundamentalist “Christian Nation.”

“We are not home-schooling our kids just so they can read,” said Michael Farris, the founder of the Home School Legal Defense. “The most common thing I hear is parents telling me they want their kids to be on the Supreme Court. And if we put enough kids in the farm system, some may get to the major leagues.”

Many of the cult-kiddies are coming of age and have already infiltrated Washington. Homeschoolers are well represented on Capitol Hill, and they played a disproportionate role in George W. Bush’ administration.

While many of these students are educated in terms of test scores, they may lack critical thinking skills. In a sense, they are like computers with large hard drives that have been programmed with faulty software. No matter how fast they compute they always arrive at same flawed conclusions based on the Biblical bugs planted early in their memory chips.

For example, Children’ Conferences International hosts events across the nation for homeschoolers. Their “2010 theme” is science fiction, except to keep the minds of the children pure there will be no extraterrestrials allowed.

“Parents won’t have to worry about their children learning about aliens or some mysterious force in this fun filled futuristic space age theme,” according to their website. “Children WILL learn important life lessons about trusting God, faith over atheism, and the dangers of being enamored by the world.”

Instead of E.T. and space, these poor children have to endure crazy, spaced out adults determined to strip-mine their minds and corrupt their imaginations. In my view, this is a form of child abuse and deprives these students of real childhood experiences, while making them closed-minded.

Of course, funneling children into homeschooling is not enough for these predators. In order to succeed, the extreme right must hijack the curriculum of public schools. They are already making serious inroads in Texas, with zealots on the state school board rewriting history textbooks. This is vitally important because Texas is such a large consumer of textbooks, that they essentially have the ability to set the standards for much of the nation. So, if history is rewritten in Austin, the revisions will likely appear in your state as well.

One leader of the public school putsch, according to a recent cover story in The New York Times Magazine, is Cynthia Dunbar, a member of the Texas Board of Education. In 2008, she published a book called, “One Nation Under God” where she wrote: “Hence, the only accurate method of ascertaining the intent of the Founding Fathers is from a biblical worldview.” She also stated, “this battle for our nation’ children and who will control their education and training is crucial to our success for reclaiming our nation.”

For all of her passion, Dunbar is opposed to public education, writing of, “The inappropriateness of a state-created taxpayer-supported school system,” and says that sending children to public schools is akin to, “throwing them into the enemy’ flames, even as the children of Israel threw their children to Molech.”

Clearly, Dunbar’ real agenda is infiltrating the school system in order to destroy it.

When it comes to support, the next generation was supposed to be a wash. However, this successful trajectory is threatened if we allow today’ youth to be brainwashed. While paying attention to school boards is boring, it must become a priority for all Americans who want schools to be about education instead of indoctrination.

Focus on the Family today applauded a Missouri senate panel’s endorsement of legislation which Focus claims would merely protect religious freedom.

In fact, the legislation does the opposite:

The legislation, Senate Resolution 31, establishes a ballot issue to amend the state constitution. The amendment would permit conservative Christians to impose official prayer and official religious symbols in public schools — against the will (and the faith) of Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, atheist, and liberal Christian parents.

The Resolution would violate the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It is poorly written and, while likely to increase litigation, may be difficult to enforce, according to Leigh Hunt Greenhaw in an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The real purpose of the law is to scare conservative voters into believing, falsely, that their right to pray is under fire so that they will go to the polls and vote for extremist candidates who are intolerant of religious minorities. The Post-Dispatch writer observes:

The proposed amendment to Section 5 could be a partisan strategy. If voters hear our right to pray is endangered and that an amendment to the Missouri Constitution is needed to protect it, they might come out to vote for it. And those that do might well favor candidates and parties that have supported the amendment.

Focus and its Missouri affiliate hinted at this true intent in today’s statement:

Joe Ortwerths, executive director of the Missouri Family Policy Council, said his group promoted Senate Joint Resolution 31, because groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, for example, are trying to convince public school officials that freedom of religious expression cannot be permitted in public settings.

The Christian Rightists deliberately mischaracterize the ACLU’s defense of individual religious freedom — in particular, the freedom of minorities to pray as they wish without official school interference or official religious indoctrination.

The “religious freedom” that Focus and Missouri’s Christian Right seek is a freedom from the religion of others, not religious freedom for all.

Focus on the Family today celebrated opposition in Wyoming to the Anti-Defamation League and a program by the ADL called “No Place for Hate.”

Focus objects in particular to the program’s repudiation of hatred toward LGBT students — and applauds two schools in the Platte County School District for siding with local bullies who demanded that banners exclude LGBT students from the anti-hate message.

The Tuscaloosa News reported yesterday that a state legislator has prefiled a bill, with the support of the governor, to prohibit public universities from offering employee benefits to same-sex domestic partners.

But the same lawmaker is willing to subsidize unmarried heterosexuals who shack up.

The legislation penalizes the state’s taxpayers in order to subsidize the benefits of heterosexual bureaucrats, based on the religious bias of evangelicals who oppose religious freedom and the separation of church and state.

Rep. DuWayne Bridges said taxes should not be used to treat state workers equally. He said it is objectionable to “subsidize same-sex lifestyles” but offered no apparent objection to subsidized benefits for unmarried heterosexual couples.

Contrary to Bridges’ assertion that “liberals” engage in social engineering, it is he and Alabama Gov. Bob Riley who seek use taxpayer money to reward sectarian religious activists’ favored bureaucrats and to cheat skilled and accomplished government workers out of equal benefits.

Bridges also applauded the notion of Alabama voters deciding who is or isn’t entitled to constitutional rights, when they voted to ban marriage equality. The new bill will be introduced to the state legislature in January.

What next — a bill to require universities to hire only conservative Christians?

Focus on the Family complained tonight that “Alabama schools are now required to write stricter anti-bullying policies, thanks to language in a bill that opens the door to the gay agenda.”

But a Focus on the Family employee doesn’t seem to know the difference between a bill and a law; he uses the two terms interchangeably.

He may be referring to the Student Harassment Prevention Act, which goes into effect Oct. 1. (PDF copy of the Act.) The legislation empowers the state department of education to develop a model policy for local districts to receive reports of harassment and to punish perpetrators. In particular, the law directs the department to develop “a procedure for the development of a nonexhaustive list of the specific personal characteristics of a student which may often lead to harassment. Based upon experience, a local board of education may add, but not remove, characteristics from the list.”

In other words, the state might specify race and religion for statewide protection; a local district might add sexual orientation to its local policy.

According to the Times Daily of Florence, Ala.:

Until now, there haven’t been any legal repercussions from bullying and it’s an issue the state has long needed to address, said longtime educator Lisa Moses, of Florence, who said bullying is one area addressed in another new piece of legislation known as Taylor’s Law. Under that law, a student’s behavior at school, including bullying, can delay the student from acquiring a driver’s license.

“Bullying has too long been ignored on the school level and has somewhat been accepted with a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude,” Moses said. “Kids need to be able to report these things anonymously, but they don’t trust that it will be kept quiet and they’re scared.” …

The issue came to a head in April when 11-year-old Jaheem Herrera committed suicide at his Atlanta-area home after his parents say he was repeatedly tormented in school. District officials denied it, and an independent review found bullying wasn’t a factor, a conclusion his family rejects.

Until now, Alabama children have been completely unprotected:

Alabama’s law covers grades pre-kindergarten through 12th. The sponsor of the bill, State Rep. Betty Carol Graham, D-Alexander City, said the new Alabama law was three years in the making and grew out of the rise in suicides among youth in the state and nation.

Focus on the Family objects to the law’s attention to “the motivations and ‘characteristics’ of victims, rather than on the wrong actions of the bullies.”

In other words, Focus believes that bullying is not really bullying in the case of certain types of victims. Focus believes that the distinction between “bullying” and physical action to correct homosexual youths should be decided not by the community or police, but by individual bullies and antigay faculty members.

Focus offers applause to Betty Peters, a member of the Alabama education board, who (Focus claims) said gay activists are “encouraging like-minded individuals to sign up for local committees that will be responsible for writing similar policies. She encouraged parents who oppose the gay agenda to do the same.”

Focus warns:

Parents should watch out for attempts to mandate special protections for “gender identity” and “sexual orientation”‚Äî which can pave the way for pro-gay curriculum and mandatory “diversity” training.

Focus believes other characteristics of students may be protected from bullying — but not gender identity or sexual orientation.

Josh Montez, Focus’ staff writer, fails to inform readers that Peters is a member of the American Family Association, Alabama Republican Assembly, Eagle Forum, and Christian Coalition. Peters wants creationism to be taught in schools. She was the lone no-vote on state Superintendent of Education Dr. Joe Morton’s recommendation that Alabama participate in a state-led initiative to develop common core standards for English and mathematics. Peters also opposed President Obama’s speech to school children.

Peters’ Eagle Forum membership is worth remembering — we shall revisit this momentarily.

Montez also failed to tell readers about the experiences of bullied students and faculty. According to radio station WBHM-FM in Birmingham:

…Critics say that merely implying that gay students are protected is not enough. The result, they say, is that no one is safe, even those who are just perceived gay.

Experts say that these days children are hearing more anti-gay language in school. Carly Friedman is a Samford University psychology professor and research consultant for the Alabama Safe Schools Coalition. Friedman is surveying Alabama students to gauge how often they hear gay slurs in school.

“We are seeing an increase in things like, Oh that’s so gay, You’re such a fag. These words that we are hearing more often I think that really can have an effect on young people.”

She’s found that they don’t concentrate as well, they skip class, and they have higher rates of depression and suicidal thoughts. Friedman adds that gay slurs affect all youth. …

But people like Eunie Smith, president of Eagle Forum of Alabama, a conservative activist group, say homosexuality shouldn’t be talked about in schools, much less tolerated.”Well, young people are highly impressionable. And for the schools to provide some special status for those who would perceive themselves to be homosexual…would be to legitimize and therefore to encourage these unhealthy lifestyles.”

Smith and Peters — both of them, leaders within the Eagle Forum — object to safety for LGBT students despite those students’ safe and responsible lifestyles, and even when those students’ parents and churches accept them. In the view of Smith and Peters, antigay parents and students enjoy a “religious freedom” to slander and bully others: a freedom that supersedes the personal and religious freedom of LGBT students and their families.

But Focus’s Montez does not share any of this information with readers.

Focus says Montez obtained a bachelor’s degree in communication from Moody Bible Institute. One wonders what kind of communication is really taught at Moody.