A disturbing email went out to my school’s electronic bulletin board today. Presumably it went out to every school in the district. The message included two attachments giving details about an alternative sexuality conference on the UNLV campus on November 14 which will feature a series of workshops. Are these workshops meant to help educators with their personal lives? No, nothing like that. Is it to assist them in avoiding the creation of a classroom environment where teasing and bullying of homosexual students might occur? Partly.
But the most unnerving thing about this conference is the inclusion of sessions meant to instruct teachers in training students “to get involved with the LGTBQ community in order to effect positive change. We will look at already established youth LGBTQ community groups, recent movements and types of youth activism.” Is this serious? Is UNLV actually promoting, and CCSD tacitly allowing, public teachers preparing to indoctrinate young people in alternative sexual lifestyles, to the point where these children will be encouraged to go out into the community and advocate for them?
This is beyond political. “Sex ed” is controversial enough for some, but this goes way over the line of what any school environment could possibly, reasonably do. I can’t imagine what a powder keg of outrage will explode if any CCSD teacher actually tries to implement any of the “strategies” put forward at this conference.
There is no real contact information on the fliers. Going to the web site given, however, does yield a name and phone number, though no official university organization is directly named.
Both attachments to the email are below, completely unedited. I stress that they’re unedited because they’re so poorly written (yet another reason to be upset by them!). Check out the middle box on the left side of the first flier: it has at least half a dozen basic writing errors.
Perhaps the organizers of this event should spend less time trying to turn local teens into sexuality activists and more time practicing basic writing skills.
Gently Hew Stone 