SPRINGFIELD – "While the Christian faith does not stand in the way of the LGBTQ community having the freedom to live as they please, their choices must not be imposed on us…"
Words from a fundamentalist pastor's sermon in southern U.S.? How about from a right wing extremist website?
It's from neither. It's from a British parent group called "Our Children Our Faith Our Rights" [OCOFOR] that is not sitting back in anticipation of a law that will affect their children's education in Fall 2020.
The group is circulating an online petition that goes on to say the OCOFOR group is "fighting to protect the rights of people of faith to peacefully live out their beliefs according to the Holy Bible (a book that dates back more than 2000 years) in the U.K. without fear of persecution or prejudice especially as it relates to the LGBTQ agenda currently in full swing."
Next fall, U.K. parents will not be allowed to remove their children from classes that teach "lessons about LGBT activities that conflict with the family's religious faith in the government's bid to "normalize" the LGBTQ lifestyle."
The U.K. Department for Education claims the lessons are "age-appropriate and take into account the religious backgrounds of pupils." But they still teach as normal all of the various configurations of the LGBT lifestyle, WND comments.
In the state of Illinois, a similar law will take effect when government schools open in 2020. (ED correction from original story: The bill goes into to effect July, 2020)
The measure signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker earlier this year requires all students in K-12 public schools be taught about the “roles and contributions” in American history of persons, based on their sexual identification.
Little protest was noted in Chicago or statewide media.
However, Illinois Family Institute writer Laurie Higgins spelled out what the law means for Illinois children. Higgins said Leftist are centrally concerned with fostering approval of particular sex-related behaviors – the ones the Left deems "moral."
"They want to use cultural contributions as a means to transform the feelings and moral beliefs of students about homosexuality and cross-sex identification, " she wrote in a column entitled "Illinois Lawmakers Advance K-12 'LGBT' Indoctrination Bill."
"Homosexual and 'trans' activists know that if positive contributions are associated with homosexuality or cross-sex impersonation, the good feelings students have about contributions will transfer to homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation," she wrote.
Illinois parents, however, are technically allowed to remove their children from these classes – but the new Illinois law says 8th graders must show a proficiency in specific history topics, including LGBT historic figures.
UPDATE: At the end of the section on history topic requirements ranging from African-American topics to labor unions, the law says, "No pupils shall be graduated from the eighth grade of any public school unless he or she has received such instruction in the history of the United States and gives evidence of having a comprehensive knowledge thereof."
Opting out will become a choice many are unable to make as more and more the LGBT mindset is woven into more and more curriculum topics and less and less segregated into easily-identifiable sex education classes.
At this time, Illinois Review is unaware of a petition similar to the one based in the U.K. available upon which Illinois taxpayers may register their views.
