Bill O'Reilly did a segment last night (embedded below the jump) about a short film supposedly being shown in some California schools. It's a cartoon about a cross-dressing boy who has fun wearing his mom's bikini, part of a package of gay-friendly films being sent out to California schools that request them. Youth in Motion, the San Francisco gay activist group distributing the films, claims that over 250 schools have requested their materials; here's the map showing the schools; without naming the schools, there's no way to verify this.
Here, from the group's own website, is its description of the "Bikini" film featured on O'Reilly (you can see part of the film if you go below the jump and watch the segment):
Bikini
Lasse Persson 2005 7 min. Sweden
An animated musical, Bikini stars a young boy, dolled up in his mother's yellow swimsuit, who is afraid to come out of the locker room. With the encouragement of a pair of happy twins he emerges, but their lady friend would rather receive all the attention herself.
Set to the classic 1960 song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini," this short offers an entertaining take on finding the courage and acceptance to express one's gender with honesty and style.
That's one of several short films included in this unit sent to schools. You're also encouraged to download the "curriculum guide," which includes passages like this:
Gender Expression
Watch: Screen the short films eddie and Tomboy and pose the accompanying discussion questions (see page 12).
Discuss: Revisit the gender chart you created earlier. Do you need to revise the placement of certain terms or images? Is the class still able to define a "real man" and a "real woman?" Is there a growing gray area between these two genders?
Engage: Ask students to create a circle map or draw a picture of a perfectly gendered person--the ideal man or the ideal woman. Next, ask them to create a circle map or draw a picture of themselves (or use magazine images again to create a collage for each).
Ask students to consider the different ways they express their gender: In what ways do they conform to societal expectations for their gender? In what ways do they deviate from these norms? How does this challenge or change their definitions of male and
female, man and woman?
The curriculum guide that accompanies this stuff makes it clear that under California law, not only does a school not have to inform parents if it intends to show this material to schoolchildren, but parents are not allowed to remove their children from the classroom. Why? Because this is not intended as sex education (which does retain an opt-out provision), but "anti-bias training."
So: your California middle-schooler is shown the cute Swedish cartoon about a cross-dressing boy, and is asked in his classroom to consider ways he expresses his gender, and you, Mom and Dad, have no say in it. That's the law.
Where are we going with this? Why are we doing this? I agree with Bill O'Reilly, who said he wishes no transgender person any harm, and anyone who tries to harrass a transgender person should be strongly dealt with. But come on! You can teach basic respect and civility without getting into all of this advocacy. This is about imposing a radical cultural agenda on captive schoolchildren, and disempowering parents who might object. It is a hostile act toward traditional religious people and social conservatives, and ought to be seen as such -- just as a public school curriculum teaching gay kids that something is wrong with them should be out of bounds. Why do we have to bring the culture wars into public schools like this? No wonder people homeschool, or want out of public schools. Or want to leave California.