Texas School Board embraces porn novel
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
by Adam McManus
Andrea Yates in Houston claimed she was depressed when she drowned her five kids face down in the bathtub.
Debra LaFavre, the 25-year-old blonde Florida teacher, claimed she suffered from a bi-polar condition that prompted her to repeatedly sexually assault her 14-year-old student.
And John Hinckley became obsessed with child actress Jodie Foster in the 1976 movie "Taxi Driver" which inspired him to shoot President Reagan in 1981 in order to win her affections.
It seems as though the more bizarre the crime, the wackier the claim of mental illness.
With that in mind, I wonder what malady afflicts the five fools on the Judson School Board in Live Oak, Texas who voted last month to reinstate a pornographic novel called "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood for our minor children.
I've got some suggestions:
* "We-have-no-backbone" syndrome.
• "We've-lost-our-minds-and-our-souls" disease.
•
Or how about this one?
• "Foxes-guarding-the-henhouse" disorder.
•
Maybe we should all contact the American Psychiatric Association and see if they can't officially register these ailments. Or at least for this motley crew.
Just listen to the lunacy of Judson's vice president Richard LaFoille on March 23rd. After hearing 30 students speak in favor of reading this sexually explicit and violent trash, LaFoille caved. He said, "I don't see how we can ban this book. You kids want this book, I'm going to give it to you."
Excuse me? I beg your pardon?
Most kids prefer Snickers over spinach and Cheetos over chicken. So what? We're the ADULTS here! This is not about winning a popularity contest with the zit-covered, lust-crazed demographic. It's about doing what's right! Period. Even in the face of the liberal teacher's union.
The battle began when KSLR listener Cindy Pyo, the mother of Judson High's 11th grader Peter, objected to the decision of Jennifer Cullen to assign "The Handmaid's Tale" last fall. She told The San Antonio Express-News, "I have a responsibility to the country and our community to speak up for the values that will strengthen our society."
To his credit, Dr. Ed Lyman, the Superintendent, immediately agreed with Cindy's assessment that the book was terribly inappropriate. So he pulled it from the curriculum, vetoing the recommendation of a values-challenged committee of teachers, students and a parent.
Lyman told The Express-News that "he found some of the descriptions in the book too sexually explicit for high school students and that 'the tone of the book does not support, in my opinion, the effort by our state Legislature to encourage abstinence outside the bonds of marriage."
How ironic that the district has legitimately strict policies prohibiting students from wearing t-shirts sporting profanity, yet the school district assigns those very same students a book to read that features the "f" word repeatedly. It makes no sense.
Sadly, Dr. Lyman was overruled last month by his own board, in a lopsided 5-2 vote of moral reprobates.
Instead of selecting classics like Shakespeare or Dickens, they chose the trash like Atwood.
Instead of "To be or not to be, that is the question" of Shakespeare fame, our kids are now reading passages like this one in "The Handmaid's Tale" from page 118: "Sometimes the movie she showed would be an old porno film, from the seventies or eighties. Women kneeling, sucking p****** or guns, women tied up or chained or with dog collars around their necks, women hanging from trees, or upside-down, naked, with their legs held apart, women being raped, beaten up, killed. Once we had to watch a woman being slowly cut into pieces, her fingers and breasts snipped off with garden shears, her stomach slit open and her intestines pulled out."
How uplifting. How inspiring. Yeah right!
"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness." (Isaiah 5:20)
Is this the best we can do for our kids? Clearly not. Is this the worst we can do? Pretty close. Parents should be outraged.
Yet, Judson School Board member Johnny Harris, one of "the perverted 5", told the Express-News, "I believe in this day and time you can't shield children from the realities of the media they're exposed to. We have access to much more harmful material by turning on the TV or the radio."
Come on now Johnny! Just because some kids watch the moral sewage on MTV and sneak into R-rated movies -- both of which are outside your control -- that does NOT legitimize your decision to place another piece of sewage on their plate, at school no less, courtesy of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars!
When KSLR listener and Judson High School alumnus Enrique Montalvo e-mailed "the perverted 5", Don Terrell wrote back saying, "I recommend you run for school board so that you may inflict your desires on the community."
Inflict your desires? Sounds like Don is "inflicting his desires" on the children and the community right now. And that's not a good thing. Perhaps Enrique or you might consider running against these clowns. We need true men and women of integrity, who will integrate their love for the Lord in their decisions on the school board. Not a bad idea at all. If you run, I will endorse and support your candidacy on my talk show.
At the bare minimum, parents should expect that the school officials will be morally neutral -- teaching the children to read, write and
do arithmetic -- with not one whiff of a political agenda.
In an ideal world, it would be nice if the teachers actually demonstrated an interest in supporting the values of the parents. But, I think, far too often, the public school today ultimately seeks to undermine and corrode the Judeo-Christian values of the parents. No wonder Christian parents are pulling their kids off the deck of the sinking Titanic of government-run leftist schools, placing them in private Christian schools or homeschooling them instead.
It strikes me as rather freaky that the same school system which requires parental consent for a student to view a PG-rated movie, doesn't feel far more obligated, morally speaking, to insist upon parental consent when pushing such sadistic, Hustler-Magazine-type
fare.
Not surprisingly, The San Antonio Express News didn't have the guts to print some sample excerpts of the objectionable passages. Like this one from page 104: "I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings, I can stroke myself, under the dry white sheets, in the dark."
Instead, they gave us this misleading headline on March 24th: "Novel solution in Judson: Board reinstates sci-fi book." Like we're
talking about the transcript of "The Twilight Zone" or something.
How about calling a spade a spade? "Judson School board votes 5-2 to reinstate pornographic book." That would be slightly more accurate!
The Express-News did get one thing right. The summary of the book itself. "'The Handmaid's Tale,' published in 1985, tells the story of an environmentally blighted United States after a coup. Civil war rages as a fundamentalist Christian regime revokes all women's rights and presses the few who remain fertile into sexual slavery as breeders, called handmaids, for infertile couples."
Can you imagine the uproar if, instead of an oppressive Christian coup, America's downfall had been led by fanatical Muslims, complete with frothing at the mouth? Now that would have crossed the line for the same liberals who are now defending the anti-Christian "Handmaid's Tale." It would have been too politically incorrect, especially post 9/11.
Believe me. More than a handful of parents would have filled the Judson School Board meeting room if Muslims had been the focus of a twisted, sadistic and pornographic trash novel such as this. Rev. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan would have swooped into the Alamo City in their Lear jets, trampling any poor Live Oak citizen between them and the nearest TV camera.
The fact is that, if anything, Christianity elevated women's rights.
Before Jesus, women were viewed as property. But when Jesus had to perform His most extraordinary miracle, the resurrection itself, He chose to appear first to women, who at that time were not allowed to be legal witnesses.
And it was Paul who wrote in Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
While it is true that a parent is allowed to request a substitute book in place of any book in the curriculum that they might find objectionable, the unfortunate aspect of this tale is that there was not the slightest indication by Jennifer Cullen, the teacher at Judson High School who assigned the book, nor Judson Principal Brad Williams nor the School Board itself to the parents in written form that the book in question would be so bad it would make porn king Larry Flynt blush.
When Cindy Pyo first heard that the book had been assigned, she did request, and was granted, a different book for her son Peter to read, namely Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." But why weren't all the parents made aware of the sexually explicit, graphic content of "The Handmaid's Tale" ahead of time so they could decide whether or not it would be appropriate for their child.
One parent named Claude, who had been out of town during the initial brouhaha, was livid when he discovered his 11th grade daughter Jennifer was half-way through reading this filth. At the moment that she brought it to his attention, he expressed utter dismay. Imagine the sense of betrayal and righteous anger in the heart of a legitimately protective father.
When School Board member June Adair called in to my talk show on 630, KSLR Radio, she indicated that while five other members had unfortunately voted to approve "The Handmaid's Tale" for the curriculum, it was still, at the end of the day, up to the discretion of Jennifer Cullen, the Judson High teacher, whether or not she assigned the book at all!
The teachers, who sat together in the first several rows of the April 20th meeting, all shook their heads side to side, tisking with disapproval, as parent after parent -- many of them KSLR listeners -- spoke out against "The Handmaid's Tale." How arrogant! How condescending!
The San Antonio Express-News, in their predictable patronizing way, wrote that "if books, plays and short stories presented characters without blemishes — and life without hardships — the great libraries of the world would be warehouses for the innocuous." Pleeease!
No one, least of all Cindy Pyo, the initial Christian who objected, is of the opinion that all books have to present characters without blemishes or life without hardships. The Bible itself is filled with colorful characters and life that has plenty of hardships. But there is a vast difference between compelling, dramatic stories and perverted, twisted content which will further desensitize our children more than they already are now.
Paul's admonition in Philippians 4:8 is as applicable today as it was the day he wrote it: "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable -- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy -- think about such things."
"The perverted 5" of the Judson School Board would do well to think through the truth of that Scripture.
TAKE A STAND ACTION STEPS:
1. Ask these five Judson School Board members to put "The Handmaid's Tale" back on the agenda in order to hold another vote during which they could vote to the right thing and remove it from the list of approved texts. Richard Lafoille, richlafoille@yahoo.com; Joan Ohnheiser, dohnh@prodigy.net; Johnny Harris, joltinj24@juno.com; Don Terrell, Do3nterrell@aol.com; Mario
Salas, msalas7831@satx.rr.com
2. Thank the two brave Judson School Board members for taking a stand for decency and voting against the porno book "The Handmaid's Tale: Rick Maas, RMAAS@satx.rr.com; June Adair, sixsons04@yahoo.com
3. Thank Dr. Edward Lyman, the Superintendent of Judson Schools, for initially pulling "The Handmaid's Tale" even though he was ultimately overruled by the 5-2 vote of the Judson Board: elyman@judson.k12.tx.us
4. Contact the Judson High School principal Brad Williams and ask him to use his influence to pull "The Handmaid's Tale": brwilliams@judson.k12.tx.us, (210) 945-1100, 9142 FM 78, Converse, Texas 78109.
5. Send a letter: Judson Independent School District, 8012 Shin Oak Dr, Live Oak, TX 78233, call 210.945.5100.
6. Thank Cindy Pyo for her leadership: cpyo65@yahoo.com
7. Get the video "Let My Children Go"" http://www.exodusmandate.org/
8. Read the book "The Harsh Truth About Public Schools" by Bruce Shorrt.
© McManus 2006
Adam McManus hosts a weekday afternoon radio show called "Take A Stand" on AM 630, KSLR in San Antonio, Texas from 3-6 p.m. central. If you’d like him to speak to your group or you’d like to react to this column, call Adam at (210) 344-8481 ext 132 or e-mail adam@takeastand.net. Join 5,800 people and sign up for his weekday
e-mail alert about upcoming guests, critical articles and action steps to make a difference, go to: http://www.TakeAStand.net and listen live at http://www.kslr.com |
