Fourteen-year-old students at an Illinois high school were told to keep their attendance at a school panel discussion promoting homosexuality a secret from their parents, Concerned Women for America reported on Christian Newswire March 13.
Students at Deerfield High School [DHS] were required to attend a "Straight Gay Alliance Network" [GSA] panel led by upperclassmen identified as homosexual, as part of an advisory class that promoted homosexuality. Students were also required to sign a "confidentiality agreement" before attending the session that forbade them from telling anyone — including their parents — about the panel material.
Matt Barber, Policy Director for Cultural Issues with Concerned Women for America (CWA), said the school‘s policy was "unbelievable."
"It's not enough that students at Deerfield High are being exposed to improper and offensive material relative to unhealthy and high-risk homosexual behaviors, but they've essentially been told by teachers to lie to their parents about it," Barber said in a press statement.
"This goes to the heart of the homosexual agenda. The professional propagandists in the 'gay-rights' lobby know the method all too well. If you can maintain control of undeveloped and impressionable youth and spoon-feed them misinformation, lies and half-truths about dangerous, disordered and extremely risky behaviors, then you can control the future and ensure that those behaviors are not only fully accepted, but celebrated. That's what homosexual activists from GSA are attempting to do, and that's what DHS is clearly up to as well."
Dr. George Fornero, superintendent of Deerfield High School, told CWA that the district "made a mistake" by requiring children to sign the confidentiality agreement and that it would be entirely aboveboard and honest with parents in the future.
However, parents were told that they were not welcome to attend the "advisory" sessions and were denied access to the materials used on the curriculum.
"Until DHS and other government schools across the country are made to stop promoting the homosexual agenda, kids will continue to be exposed to — and encouraged to participate in — a lifestyle that places them at high risk for life-threatening disease, depression and spiritual despair," said Barber.
A local pro-family group, North Shore Student Advocacy, wants the school to cancel the panel, Associated Content.com reported.
"The school makes heterosexuality and homosexuality equivalent, and our country is deeply divided on that," said Lora Sue Hauser, a Deerfield resident and leader of the advocacy group.
The group published a full-page advertisement March 1 in the Deerfield Review, accusing the school of promoting the agenda of homosexual activist groups.
"We believe these students are being used to further the causes of gay activists," the ad stated, demanding that school officials "rein in your staff who are using the school to promote their personal views."
Parental efforts to prevent their children's exposure to pro-homosexual material in the classroom have increasingly met with opposition, in some cases from the courts. In Massachusetts a federal court ruled Christian parents could not remove their children from an elementary school classroom during sessions advocating the homosexual lifestyle to students, WorldNetDaily reported.
US District Judge Mark L. Wolf wrote in his decision, "An exodus from class when issues of homosexuality or same-sex marriage are to be discussed could send the message that gays, lesbians, and the children of same-sex parents are inferior and, therefore, have a damaging effect on those students."