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Dear Editor:
The Michigan State Board of Education (SBE) has issued a Statement and Guidance on Safe and Supportive Learning Environments for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ) Students.
This guidance statement encourages Michigan schools to include LGBTQ topics throughout the curriculum, including in social studies, English language arts, creative arts, health education and sex education.
It encourages schools to include high interest LGBTQ books and media in their libraries. Schools are also encouraged to review their computer-filtering software to ensure students have access to LGBTQ information.
If a school were to adopt the SBE recommendations, students would be allowed to use restrooms and locker rooms according to their gender identity. They would also be allowed to participate in PE classes and intramural sports in accordance with their gender identity.
Teachers would be asked to address LGBTQ students by their chosen names and the pronouns that correspond to their gender identities. However, when contacting parents, school staff would be asked to use students’ legal names and pronouns corresponding to students’ sex at birth. This would tend to keep parents in the dark regarding their children’s perceived sexual identities.
The SBE guidance statement recommends that professional development opportunities on issues affecting LGBTQ students be offered to all staff and board members, including coaches, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and janitors.
Our tax dollars should be used to serve the best interests of all our students. We should not pay to create a protected class status for LGBTQ students.
The Michigan Constitution says that religion, morality and knowledge are necessary to good government, but this guidance statement tosses aside our religious beliefs and our morality. It is political correctness on steroids, and it has to stop.
Two and one half percent of the population has chosen to live a lifestyle in opposition to the gender given them by God. And they want 97.5 percent of the population to also defy God by condoning and supporting their lifestyle. With
regard to worshiping false gods such as sex, the late Mrs. Billy Graham is quoted as having said, “If God doesn’t punish America, He’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”
The SBE will vote on this Statement and Guidance May 10, 2016. Please ask them NOT to approve it.
Michigan State Board of Education, P.O. Box 30008, Lansing, MI 48909, 517-373-3900, whistonb@michigan.gov or jcaustin@umich.edu.
Laura Krentz,
Rothbury
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