  OST AMERICANS WOULD agree that freedom of conscience ranks among our most cherished liberties. As such, the state should protect this particular right by almost any means necessary and reasonable (especially for citizens).
In California, an initiative has been undertaken to get a ballot before voters to determine the propriety of Christmas music in California public schools. Within the measure is a clause that would require schools to notify parents 21 days before the specified tunes would be played or performed so that students can opt out of being exposed to such material.
Those having embraced a rigorous interpretation regarding the separation of church and state will applaud the measure as a enlightened compromise as these voices will be among the first to point out that, in these swinging days of free thought, not everyone embraces the Christianity espoused by these Yuletide harmonies. One must ask then would the exponents of the unsullied conscience be as outspoken in defense of those wanting to be excused from exposure to more progressivist causes and material.
Absolutarian relativists claim that, in order to ensure the scholastic neutrality of the classroom, not even a whiff of religious material can be permitted to waft across young impressionable minds. That might be what is claimed in theory, but the reality falls far short as an exclusionary objectivity is applied only to Christianity with other worldviews and religions actually imposed upon students.
Any rational person will admit that, in order to have the most comprehensive understanding of the world possible, one must have an understanding of religion as one of history's most influential motivating forces. However, there is a point at which education becomes advocacy.
For example, it has already been stated that even if authorized, traditional Christmas music will be categorized as quasi-subversive in nature as one has to admit exposure to these lyrics could potentially alter the very spiritual identity of those exposed to them. However, such caution is not exercised in regards to Islam.
According to a WorldNetDaily.com story titled "Islamic studies required in California district" posted 1/2/02, students there are required to learn about this prominent world religion. However, students were not going to be doing this via the traditional social studies methodology of reading a standard text detached in tone about the tenets of this system of belief and its impact upon the world in terms of history, geography, and culture. Rather, the curriculum required students to live out Islam. This was to be achieved by having students memorize Koranic verses, praying in the name of Allah, adopting an Islamic name, and staging a pretend jihad.
Wonder if the name Nadal Malik Hassan mmmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmmm is available with students able to pretend to shoot up an army base. When one takes all this into consideration, the above lesson plan sort of looses its grade school charm, doesn't it?
Mass death brings up yet another disturbing point. According to Islamic teaching, all one has to do to become a Muslim is to say with conviction that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.
Parents need to seriously investigate if this is one of the Islamic phrases being chanted in the public schools where an accommodationist approach to the study of Islam has been adopted, and if it has, parents need to be quite insistent as to having their children removed from the program even if it means withdrawing from the particular school all together. For you see, to a sizeable percentage of Muslims around the world, one is justified in murdering someone that apostasizes or leaves the faith.
To many, this may seem like theological nitpicking on the scale of debating how many angels can dance on the head of a needle. However, should we, with little resistance, be giving these fanatics another reason with a straight face to kill Americans?
Numerous Muslims will insist that their faith does not condone the slaughter of innocent people. They just don't tell you that their definition of innocent is much narrower than ours. Never has an insincerely or regretfully sung Christmas Carol resulted in anyone's death.
The hypertolerant will sneer that this extremism of either Christians wanting everyone to sing Christmas tunes or Islamists demanding students recite the Koran and even miss recess as a simulated form of Ramadan fasting are shortcomings inherent to the traditional religious mindset irrespective of the belief system in question. However, the agnostic reprobate can't resist to impose their belief on everyone else either.
To both the pagan who sees the natural world as God and the materialist who believes in nothing beyond the natural world, there is nothing as important as the reproductive pleasure cravings we all posses and know as the sex drive. Since it is claimed that there is no absolute truth in these particular worldviews, the "is" automatically becomes the "ought" and however the libidinous impulse manifests itself is acceptable upon the particular social context. Therefore, those wanting a world with the fewest taboos possible have a vested interest in convincing the greatest number possible to this perspective.
And unlike the Christian and even the Muslim for all that matter, this persuasion is not so much for the benefit of the soul of the person whose mind the adherents of these respective outlooks are out to change. Rather those trapped in lives of carnal destitution are so wracked by personal guilt that they cannot bear the thought of others disapproving of their individual predilections. That is why students cannot be permitted to privately make their own decisions about what we are continually reminded are private decisions.
When it comes to matters of traditional religious belief, the secularists believe that children should not be exposed to theology until they reach maturity. However, when it comes to conjugal relations, indoctrination is suppose to commence nearly the first day of kindergarten.
In June 2009, a California school district approved a mandatory homosexual appreciation curriculum. As part of the curriculum, five year olds will study a book titled "And Tango Makes Three" about two "gay" penguins that hatch an egg together. They name the chick "Tango" because "...it takes two to make a Tango."
This propaganda will cause mental damage that will take years to undue if it can be done so at all. Likely contrary to the mantra of the illustrated tractate, these were not the two that made Tango.
Like it or not, a male and a female penguin had to copulate together in order for little Tango to be brought into existence. All the two penguins in the story can do is raise him.
Do four and five year olds really need to be exposed to the intricacies of human relationships and reproduction? Most can barely tie their own shoes.
The lessons learned about the biological impossibility of a child having two parents of the same sex and what ought to be a legal impossibility as well since two unmarried people shackedup should not be permitted to simultaneously adopt the same child will not stop in kindergarten. They will be expanded upon from year to year as the student progresses through the statist school system.
In the first grade, according to WorldNetDaily, the book "Who Is A Family" will dupe students into believing that "in our school and our community there are many different kinds of families that provide love and care to each other. Remind the students that all family structures are equally important."
Do these "equally valid family structures" include fundamentalist polygamist Mormons? Does this also include radical Islamist families where the fathers murder their daughters in so-called "honor killings" for exhibiting such proclivities towards harlotry such as wanting to pursue higher education and not wanting to wear burlap bags over their faces? After all, even if we find these practices abhorrent, it must be reminded they fall under the rubric of "all" family structures being equally valid.
Technically, a number of the social arrangements being promoted as such aren't even families. But Western society has become so unhinged morally that only the most daring are publicly willing to enunciate these observations.
A family consists of a married man and women and any children that might result from their fecund union or any children such adults united together might adopt. If one is feeling especially innovative and cutting edge, one might be able to expand the definition to include the unmarried propagating offspring via fornication.
However, no matter how much we might want it to be so, the non-biologically related unmarried adult residing in the home with the actual parent is not part of the family. They might be the concubine or harlot of the adult residing in a particular domicile, but they can only be a friend or acquaintance of the child not all that different in terms of relationship than the next door neighbor.
Even if the laws are altered to let anyone live anyway they want with all the accompanying tax breaks and even welfare handouts to which they claim they are entitled, it will not be enough. The consciences of those living in manners contrary to both theology and biology are so pricked that they will not be content letting you simply put up with the iniquities they have wrought but also compel you to applaud and embrace these appalling decisions.
Fourth graders will be required to read an essay titled "My School Is Accepting -- But Things Could Be Better". Along with this assignment, elementary students will be required to define "gay", "lesbian", and "LGBT". By the way, to the pure of mind, that acronym is not a reference to a deli sandwich.
About all children need to know about human reproduction at that age is that babies somehow grow inside women's stomachs. My grandfather didn't know what the word "pregnant" meant until after he got married in his early 20's and he came from a family of ten kids that lived on a farm. Things might not need to be that hushed over, but neither does everything need to hang out in the open classroom either.
As part of the curriculum, students will be extended the opportunity to learn of the warped affections of Elton John, Ellen Degeneres, Christina Aguilera, and Lance Bass. Are we going to also learn about the preferred bodily orifices of other historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson's alleged bout of jungle fever?
In all likelihood, his name won't even come up in class. Familiarity with the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and third president might fortify students against the efforts to deprive them of their liberty.
In their preparation for world conquest and hegemony, do Red Chinese pupils sit around discussing what celebrity likes what hole? Maybe if American students spent less time on these frivolities, educators would find the traditional 180 day school year sufficient and no longer need a reason to threaten an extended academic calendar.
It is claimed such acculturation (more accurately indoctrination) is necessary to prevent bullying. However, wouldn't a generalized policy of don't make fun of anyone at school without bogging down young minds with things that would make even grown adults blush and giggle in mixed company be enough?.
Familiarity breeds contempt. Though social engineers might try their hardest, human nature is pretty set within established parameters and as such these educators might end up stirring up the very animosities this ideological indoctrination is suppose to prevent.
Whether this contraindicated outcome is what is actually desired or not could be open to debate. The state benefits even more when the results are the opposite of peace and understanding as activists believe they are then justified in calling for additional restrictions on speech and thought.
Isaiah 5:20 warns, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" American society is swiftly approaching the point of no return when those that run our educational institutions would rather the nation's children be acquainted with the most shameful of deeds and desires rather than the noblest of truths that have inspired the highest of ideals for millennia.
Frederick Meekins is an Internet columnist. He holds a BS from the University of Maryland in Political Science/History and a MA in Apologetics & Christian Philosophy from Trinity Theological Seminary. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Practical Theology through the Master's Graduate School Of Divinity in Evansville, Indiana. Frederick's research interests include Worldview Application, Christian Apologetics, The Implications of Aberrant Theologies & Ideologies, Futurology, Eschatology, Science Fiction, Terrorism Studies, Environmentalism, Education Policy and America's Judeo-Christian Foundations. Frederick is also an ordained Non-Denominational Minister and listed in "Who's Who In America" and in "Who's Who Of Emerging Leaders". Media inquiries can be directed to: americanworldview@hotmail.com. His books "Yuletide Terror & Other Holiday Horrors" and "Provide For The Common Defense: Thoughts Concerning The Nation's Enemies" are available at http://stores.lulu.com/fmeekins. His blog, The Epistolizer, can be found at http://epistolizer.blogspot.comMore columns by Frederick Meekins
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