Tonight I'm glad to bring you a perfect example of how the National Organization for Marriage, arguably the largest, most dangerous, and most well funded anti-gay group, lies about LGBT individuals. If you haven't been following the story, a school district in Erie, Illinois has banned materials from the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network. Here is NOM's writeup.
This is a key part of NOM's strategy for promoting the intolerance of LGBT. They seek to drive fear into the misinformed with fantastic tales about how LGBT are gaying up their schools and attacking their children. To hear NOM tell it, GLSEN's tactics are akin to putting male strippers in every classroom.
The actual story? GLSEN distributes and promotes a wide variety of materials and initiatives from No Name-Calling Week and Ready, Set, Respect! to anti-bullying kits and materials to help teachers connect with LGBT students to books about how some students have two moms or two dads.
It's not about there being a "gay-friendly way to teach math," as NOM claims, it's about reaching out to kids who might face exclusion and ridicule because their family structure doesn't match with "social norms." NOM doesn't like these initiatives because they want those children to feel like there is something wrong with them or their families, otherwise LGBT individuals become demystified and people realize that there's actually nothing wrong with us at all.
A key component to the rapidly changing public opinion on Marriage Equality has been the increase in the number of individuals that have a close friend that is LGBT. However this works counter to NOM's goals, so they attempt to push LGBT individuals and those who are raised by LGBT individuals back into the closet so intolerance can continue to spread through fear. Right now misinformation and fear are the only things holding LGBT back. The better a job we can do at heading these things, and the spread of these things off early, the better off we will be.
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