CROSS-DRESSING DAY

The Illinois Family Institute (IFI) received a troubling report yesterday of a grade (and middle) school in Carrier Mills that held an “Opposite Sex” Day in which students were encouraged to come to schools dressed as members of the opposite sex. At least one outraged mother pulled her children out of Carrier Mills-Stonefort Elementary School (kindergarten through 8th grade) after being informed about the cross-dressing day. Carrier Mills is about 45 minutes east of Carbondale.

One school staffer reached by IFI said the school had no radical agenda but was just looking for “something silly for the kids to do.” But Laura Stanley, who has several children at Carrier Mills, was hardly amused. “This is not what I want my son taught at school,” she told me. “Kids are already getting so many confused messages from the culture. Do they need to be further confused about sexuality?”

Stanley said that when she came to the school to sign out her children, she saw one boy wearing a pink mini-skirt that went right up to his behind. Had a girl been wearing the same dress, she said, it would have been a violation of the school dress code.

“This is as wrong as wrong can get,” she told IFI. “When is enough enough?”

Some male students stuffed their shirts to create mock breasts, according to Stanley and an employee of the school who opposed the special day and also spoke with IFI.

The school employee, who requested anonymity, said many students did not dress in opposite sex attire, but added that school administrators asked students to bring in a canned good for charity if they chose not to cross-dress.

Stanley said that after parents complained last year about a similar cross-dressing day, she was given the impression by Principal Charles Parks that it was a mistake and it wouldn’t happen again. Then she received the letter announcing this year’s identical event.

I tried to call Parks but he did not return my call. Nor did Superintendent Richard Morgan .

IFI informed the American Family Association Radio Network about the story, and AFA Radio will air a report on Carrier Mill’s “Opposite Sex Day” this week. AFA reporter Jim Brown told me that Parks refused to answer questions about the cross-dressing day.

Even if the school’s administrators did not set out to advance a gender-confusion agenda, we agree with Mrs. Stanley that telling youngsters to cross-dress–in school of all places–is just plain dumb. Kids are already steeped in false and unnatural sex/gender messages–with female pop stars kissing each other for kicks and “transgender” activists suing schools for the “right” of boys to come to class in a dress. In such an environment, the last thing we need is for schools to promote more confusion about the sexes and gender roles.

In addition, some homosexual men testify that in their youth that they practiced or were allowed to practice gender non-conforming behavior. That’s one reason why transvestites (cross-dressers, usually called “drag
queens”) are such a visible part of the homosexual male world.

If you still doubt that there is a VERY organized and aggressive “transgender” agenda that encourages the elimination of gender norms, visit Gender PAC’s website at www.gpac.org (WARNING: THIS IS AN ANTI-FAMILY WEBSITE THAT IS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR CHILDREN) and get educated on the political/cultural forces that are working to promote aberrant sexual and gender behaviors in this nation.

And guess what? Gender PAC is extremely active with youth across the nation.

Peter LaBarbera, formerly the executive director of Accuracy in Academia, now heads the Illinois Family Institute, www.illinoisfamily.org.