Weatherman Protection Program

Recent news accounts have been full of expositions of the views of William Ayers, the Illinois professor and former Weatherman whose role in the career of Barack Obama has been the subject of hot debate. A photograph of Ayers standing on the American flag in an urban alleyway has been widely circulated. It dates not from the perfervid 1960s anti-war era when passions spilled over into violence perpetrated by the Weathermen and other radical groups, but to 2001 when Ayers posed for the cover of Chicago magazine. At that time, Ayers served with Senator Obama on the board of an education reform group called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). Given the mission of the CAC and Ayers’ current role-not as a protestor but as an educator-his views on the classroom deserve more attention.

Writer Linda Harvey has brought some of those views to light in an article detailing a book Ayers endorsed called Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue About Sexualities and Schooling. The book is a collection of essays that advocate such things as “risky teaching,” “including (homo)sexualities” (sic) in elementary school, and helping children “question the categories and rules that have formed them.” The book was published in paperback in 1999. Ayers apparently has an easier time saluting the Rainbow Flag than the red, white, and blue.

Tony Perkins heads the Family Research Council. This article is excerpted from the Washington Update that he compiles for the FRC.