This is a rather ad hominem attack. It’s also rather disturbing that it originates from your blog. Coming from a person espousing a religion that was demonized and persecuted for holding sexual and social views considered deviant by the conservative majority of the populace, you would think that your approach to this would more closely match Sen. Hatch’s approach to the Manhattan Mosque project. You cannot shelter in the Constitution’s protections of individual liberty and religious expression without extending those protections to others. To do otherwise is the rankest of hypocrisy — the thing that Jesus hated most.

If the challenge of the secular church becomes very real, let us, as in all other human relationships, be principled but pleasant. Let us be perceptive without being pompous. Let us have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.

Before the ultimate victory of the forces of righteousness, some skirmishes will be lost. Even these, however, must leave a record so that the choices before the people are clear and let others do as they will in the face of prophetic counsel. There will also be times, happily, when a minor defeat seems probable, that others will step forward, having been rallied to righteousness by what we do. We will know the joy, on occasion, of having awakened a slumbering majority of the decent people of all races and creeds–a majority which was, till then, unconscious of itself. (Prop 8 and Neal A. Maxwell).

We now apparently live in the day when it is no longer an “indirect” but a direct effort to establish irreligion as a state religion.

Knowledge gained in public schools is not worth the price of a soul. This same knowledge can be gained more quickly, fully, and divinely at home where parents can teach by the Spirit.

Thanks for the notice about the dead link. (Well, the link isn’t really dead, it’s just that the content of the post is curiously missing.) I’ve updated the link in the post to point to a website where somebody re-posted the original content.

As somebody who was regularly disturbed by our junior high/high school reading material, which often contained pretty graphic accounts of abuse and violence, I’m not sure what benefits we expect to gain from exposing children to some pretty graphic identity issues and normalizing destructive behavior. This really does go beyond the gay issue.

That said, I keep finding the same three selections repeated everywhere. Neither am I aware of the context of the material or how prevalent this type of writing is across their reading list. (Many of these books for younger readers, for example, seem to be pretty standard children’s books with a “two mommies” twist or something similar.) From a political standpoint this is really more of a foundations of public education issue (something that’s been covered many times on this blog) than an issue with a specific cabinet appointment.

I have been tracking many of the changes to society based on a similar list to the one I linked to above ever since I read that book in the 80s. (Interestingly, I read 1984 in the year 1984, then I read Brave New World shortly thereafter). And I find it very disturbing to find such substantive similarities between our society and that of Huxley’s “World State” as well as Oceania’s regime of Orwell’s 1984. It is more disturbing still to see the trend towards even more similarities.

I’ve often wondered how far government would go before I would kill a government agent coming to my home. What justification could I make before God? What would I risk my life, family, fortune, and sacred honor for?

In the movie “The Musketeer”, the captain of the Musketeers makes a decision that he would rather die than continue to cower. He finally reached the point that he had to do something even if it did no good–even if he would die without accomplishing anything–which he eventually did.

Would there be some point where I would do the same? I’d say more. But it might be misconstrued in a public forum.

Similarities that stand out:

“Better ending than mending. The more stitches, the less riches.”
Soma the miracle drug.
Sexualization of society–especially children.
“History is Bunk”.
The formation of a caste system.
“What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.”
No family ties.
The Feelies.
Outlawing real classics.
Predictability of life.
Everyone must be protected from any suffering at any cost.

Of this list, those that aren’t a current reality are being worked on exigently.

Here’s the irony of my life:

As a civil engineer, my job is to create things that separate us from nature (the wild). Basically, I’m to design civilization. Yet, I’m working on making my life closer to that of John the Savage.

I’ve moved out to the country.
I home school.
We’ve had several home births.
I want to live off the land.
A bunch of other things I’m not going to mention in public.

If we see this pattern continue. I’m going to either be whipping myself, or put on a reservation.

Your references to Brave New World reminded me of an interview Aldous Huxley did with Mike Wallace in which he said that all of the mechanisms for running a totalitarian society, like his book illustrated, were already in place. And that was before color tv, the internet, or the research that has been done into influencing human behavior in the last thirty years.

I think the most important thing we can do as parents is to be free thinkers ourselves, and teach our children how to think for themselves. We need to point out the intended message of the media we experience, and limit exposure as much as possible.

Clearly, Kevin Jennings was put into his position exactly because of his status in the Gay rights community. Obama’s speech to the Human Rights Campaign made it very clear, he is with them in the effort to normalize their lifestyles, and the classroom is the front line of the struggle. We need to fight the changes whenever we can, and debrief our children each day so as to correct any errors they may have been taught in class.

Like you said, it’s not about “anti-discrimination” – it’s about teaching children to be just like them.