Some think the passage of Senate Bill 5688 will do little more than cost Washington tax payers $30 million a year. Joseph Backholm, Director of the Family Policy Institute of WA, addresses the impact it will make in the public schools. Maybe this is the impetus families need to get their kids out of the schools. Still, I don’t wish this upon anyone’s kids. You can read more talking about points about Referendum 71 here and more editorials by Backholm here.
Now that Referendum 71 is going to be on the ballot, it is likely that you will have a conversation about it between now and November.
Moreover, if you oppose the effort to create equivalency between marriage and homosexual relationships you will face some variation of the following question, “how does it affect you in any way if two gay people who love each other have legal benefits?”
In one sense, of course, it doesn’t. It will not change my relationship with my wife in the least. However, it is simplistic to say that it will have no affect simply because it will not harm my marriage.
To see how your family will be impacted once there is no legal difference between heterosexual and homosexual relationship, simply look at what happened in Massachusetts public schools after same-sex marriage was imposed by their Supreme Judicial Court in 2003:
· In early December, 2003, the school attended by Brian Camenker’s child hosted a school-wide assembly to celebrate same-sex “marriage”. It featured an array of speakers, including teachers at the school who announced that they would be “marrying” their same-sex partners and starting families through either adoption or artificial insemination. Literature on same-sex marriage – how it is now a normal part of society – was handed out to the students.
· Shortly thereafter, the subject was introduced in middle schools. In September, 2004, an 8th grade teacher in Brookline, MA, told National Public Radio that the marriage ruling had opened up the floodgates for teaching homosexuality. A transcript of the entire interview can be read here. “In my mind, I know that, `OK, this is legal now.’ If somebody wants to challenge me, I’ll say, `Give me a break. It’s legal now,'” she told NPR. She added that she now discusses gay sex with her students as explicitly as she desires. For example, she said she tells the kids that lesbians can have vaginal intercourse using sex toys.
· By the following year, it was in elementary school curricula. Kindergartners were given picture books telling them that same-sex couples are just another kind of family, like their own parents. In 2005, when David Parker of Lexington, MA – a parent of a kindergartner – insisted on being notified when teachers were discussing homosexuality or transgenderism with his son, the school had him arrested and put in jail overnight.
· Second graders at the same school were read a book, “King and King”, about two men who have a romantic relationship and marry each other, with a picture of them kissing. When parents Rob and Robin Wirthlin complained, they were told that the school had no obligation to notify them or allow them to opt-out their child.
· In 2006, two families filed a federal Civil Rights lawsuit to force the schools to notify parents and allow them to opt-out their elementary-school children when homosexual-related subjects were taught. The federal judges dismissed the case. The judges ruled that because same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts, the school actually had a duty to normalize homosexual relationships to children, and that schools have no obligation to notify parents or let them opt-out their children! Acceptance of homosexuality had become a matter of good citizenship!
Some of you will see this as progress. Some of you will be horrified. Regardless, you now know one of the ways that these decisions will impact everyone.