News Release
For Immediate Release: April 15, 2010
Contact: Diane Gramley 1.814.271.9078 or 1.814.437.5355
AFA of PA Joins National Coalition Advocating Day of Silence Walkout
(Harrisburg) – Friday is the Gay Day of Silence in many schools across Pennsylvania. The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN), the chief organizer of the event, is encouraging students to participate by remaining silent during the school day supposedly to promote safe schools for students who identify as homosexual. However, the primary reason for the day of activism is to validate and affirm the homosexual, bisexual and transgender lifestyles. The American Family Association of Pennsylvania (AFA of PA), a statewide traditional values group, has joined a national coalition of pro-family organizations asking parents to take action to protect their children from this indoctrination. Each of the coalition members advocates for safe learning environments for ALL students not singling out certain groups.
“The Day of Silence is a day in which the classroom is politicized. Parents do not send their children to school to be taught the erroneous message that ‘gay is okay.’ This day is a total waste of taxpayer dollars,” commented Diane Gramley, president of the AFA of PA.
The coalition members are asking parents to keep their children home from school on the 16th if their child’s school will be permitting students to remain silent during instructional time. In the past it has been noted that some schools even permitted teachers to remain silent during instructional time on the Day of Silence!
Parents who plan to keep their child home are asked to let the school know why. One way to do that is to use the Sample Call Out Letter to Schools which is provided on the Coalition website.
“Children can be better educated at home on April 16th if their school is going to be busy advocating the promotion of homosexuality as a safe alternative lifestyle. Schools need to understand their responsibility is the teaching of academics and not the promotion of dangerous lifestyles,” Gramley further noted.
Controversy has surrounded GLSEN and its founder Kevin Jennings since its inception. Many have believed GLSEN’s purpose was to indoctrinate school children that homosexuality was normal and that the vehicle used was the “safety” mantra. Recently a 1995 speech by Jennings was uncovered. In it he admitted that the rhetoric about “safety” was a political device, saying that it “threw our opponents on the defensive, and stole their best line of attack. This framing short-circuited their arguments and left them back-pedaling.”
In a 1997 speech he embraced the idea of actively “promoting” homosexuality, looking forward to a day when “people, when they would hear that someone was promoting homosexuality, would say, ‘Yeah, who cares?’” And an unsigned article on the GLSEN website in 2000 declared, “The pursuit of safety and affirmation are one and the same goal.”
In his 2002 book, Always My Child, Jennings advocated schools adopting a “diversity policy that mandates including LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered] themes into the curriculum.”)
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