By Jim Brown and Jody Brown
A Christian legal group is cautioning people about the potential fallout from a new anti-family policy being implemented by the largest mentoring organization in the United States.
Last year, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA) ordered all 490 of its local affiliates to allow homosexuals to mentor children. At that time, many pro-family groups — among them Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, and Family Research Council — reacted strongly to the move. Dr. Bill Maier, a psychologist with Focus on the Family, called it a “recipe for disaster” to match up children who are emotionally fragile and starving for attention with homosexual men and women.
Now, with a new school year starting, the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has taken it upon itself to warn public school superintendents and parents across the country of the liability risks school officials face if homosexual mentors take part in the BBBSA program.
In letters sent last week to educators and parents, ADF acknowledges that “tremendous good” can be accomplished in the lives of young people through mentoring — but that “a mentoring relationship that goes wrong causes great damage.” ADF also points out that Big Brothers Big Sisters realizes it would be both risky and improper to pair children with mentors of the opposite sex — and consequently does not allow that.
But amazingly, says ADF, the group that describes itself as “the expert in youth mentoring” does not apply those same precautionary standards when matching children with same-sex mentors who have a preference for homosexual acts. And that is despite the fact that several allegations of sexual abuse are filed against BBBSA mentors every year, according to a survey conducted by the National Mentoring Partnership [PDF] .
Peter Gentala, a staff attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, says parents need to be aware of what is going on with the group that says its volunteers are, “foremost, friends to children.”
“Big Brothers Big Sisters of America has admitted through its spokesperson that homosexual mentors can be matched with children without parents' knowledge,” he says. “This type of relationship should not be instigated unless parents are apprised [and] unless they give full, written, informed consent for their child to work with a homosexual mentor.”
He explains that the letters sent to schools stress it is in their best interest to obtain parental consent for participation in the mentoring program because BBBSA has “abdicated” a form of screening for mentors.
“[BBBSA has] decided they're not going to screen mentors in the ways that they used to,” the attorney says. “By opening the floodgates like that and allowing just anyone to come in and be a mentor, that means parents are going to have to be that much more involved. And if parents aren't involved, then it ultimately [boils] down to the school's responsibility.”
Gentala says the recent sex-abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church have shown that any time an adult is placed in a position with access to children, extreme damage can be done if the adult abuses that position of authority.
And like the Catholic Church, ADF says schools open themselves to “substantial legal liability” if physical or emotional abuse occurs as a result of a school-based mentoring program. In fact, ADF cites a recent Forbes article that states lawyers who are winning settlements from Catholic dioceses “are already casting about for the next targets: schools, government agencies, day care centers, police departments, Indian reservations, [and] Hollywood.”
(This article courtesy of Agape Press).
