The LGBT rights agenda is now embedded in several hundred primary and secondary schools.

This is through well-funded programmes such as Stonewall’s ‘School Champions’, various SRE [sex relationship education] and literacy curricula like CHIPS: Challenging Homophobia in Primary Schools. With a passion to make schools ‘safe’ for distressed LGBT kids and LGBT families, Stonewall and allies claim the moral high ground and shame (or coerce) dissent into silence.

Just accepting people

Jesus just loved and accepted people – so Christian youngsters tend to make the most zealous LGBT advocates. Indeed, church leaders appear oblivious of the moral sea change in the beliefs and behaviours of many Christian kids, a shift all the more insidious because it is in plain sight to those with eyes to see.

That so many youngsters are personally ‘exploring’ their own sexuality, thanks to ubiquitous pornography, certain kinds of SRE, ‘out and proud’ gay mates, incessant cyber and media propaganda and family deficit and dysfunctionality, is yet another factor. If I think I might be gay I will be far more likely to endorse gay rights, and with that gay sex. What matters after all is love!

Plight of the disapproving

The disapproving, those now labelled ‘anti-gay’ bigots, struggle to hold privately what to them feels like increasingly awkward views. If they are emotionally insensitive enough to voice them in public, they are silenced, shunned, even punished. No tolerance for ‘hate-filled’ discrimination anymore. Even Christian mates side with gay ‘victims’. For the more savvy, it is simply ‘Whatever’!

Though there is still some wiggle room and not all kids have been brainwashed, the room to dissent shrinks by the day while the devout find themselves increasingly uneasy. Their views may be ‘biblical’, even straight from Jesus himself, but given this set-up, who wants to own them in public now? So how do our church leaders respond?

A censored Jesus

A popular approach of UK evangelical churches to this issue is to shun controversy while focusing on ‘gospel love’. This approach is essentially free of ethical demands, and foregrounds PC [politically correct] positives while leaving the controversial bits, such as homosexuality, for later.

This approach has legitimacy. Love is foundational for and constant in all we do, but the approach is neither sufficient nor comprehensive.

Problems with this approach include firstly the privileging of Christ’s death and resurrection in such a way that his life and teaching, with their explicit and implicit ethical demands, are eclipsed. Our rendition of Jesus himself must now be censored!

Secondly, this approach presupposes an adherence to a traditional Christian sex ethic which is rapidly vanishing among even the devout. Those who claim to affirm this ethic keep turning the volume down (or off!). Steve Chalke has many still-closeted allies in ‘solid’ churches. Many more are simply no longer sure or deduce that it must be a matter of little significance.

Andrew Walker notes transitional stages from orthodoxy to ’progressivism’: relativising the issue becomes being uncertain about it, refusing to speak publicly about and then being indifferent to it. Next comes acceptance, agreement then requirement.

Thirdly, this approach fails to factor in the new ‘normal’ of many evangelical youngsters marinated now in all things gay. Those with dog collars and institutional buffers are somewhat protected. They seem too busy, stressed, pre-occupied with pastoral care and internal church issues and/or lack elemental curiosity to discover the depth of the rot, the extent of the loss. Something of a ‘don’t-ask-don’t-tell’ policy could be operant, even at a subconscious level.

A narrow focus on ‘gospel love’ runs the danger of falling foul of the dictum: ‘What you win them with is what you win them to.’

The nadir

With compulsory LGBT rights in school, we are very much on the back foot. Church leaders still tacitly trust the educational system in the main. That Mrs Jones, the head, is a practising Christian or that the vicar can still take the odd assembly, encourages false optimism and ignores the new sexual Blitzkrieg. The sad fact that Mrs Jones has been ‘got at’ by Stonewall ideology, the core content of which is inimical to orthodox Christianity, has not registered. Of course the vicar is welcome if he avoids controversial matters; however, what about when values clash?

Because the church ducks culture or politics except for PC matters like sex-trafficking, members are at the mercy of professional ‘expertise’, which may be why there is so little Christian awareness of or engagement with these ‘anti-homophobia’ programmes.

‘Changing the world’

Elly Barnes’s ‘Educate and Celebrate’ is an example of one such programme which has impacted hundreds of schools. Its popular CHIPS curriculum challenges alleged homophobia so all can feel ‘safe’. Other goals later emerge: ‘Remind the children they are changing the world’, and so they are. Owen of Howletch Primary (2015) gets it: ‘Love is two lesbians being proud of who they are… Love is a force of nature growing/It’s two magnets pulling two men together’ [sic].

CHIPS is sold as part of the language/ literacy curriculum, which means there is no parental opt-out, unlike SRE. Based on a beautifully-illustrated literary series, CHIPS is a classy, creative, compulsory exercise in de-sensitisation/indoctrination/grooming for children from four.*

In CHIPS we find exercises such as mock same sex marriage rites in class for eight-to-nine year olds: ‘Would we say these two people can get married but these two people can’t? Of course not! What do we think in our school about gay people getting married (we say it’s ok!)’ We also find the promotion of, say, cross-dressing (My Princess Boy); LG relationships and parenting (Mommy, Mama and ME) and Gay Pride (This Day in June).

Unintended (?) consequences

CHIPS teaches that ‘gay is when two people who are the same gender love each other’. It fails to distinguish between different kinds of ‘love’, thus opening children to the possibility of being sexualised and groomed. Oblivious to rudiments of child development, CHIPS predisposes children to think they are gay: ‘I love my [same sex] best friend so must be gay’. Of course they love their mates, but it has nothing to do with being gay! We are hearing anecdotal accounts of the above now.

This erotic emphasis thus prematurely foregrounds and magnifies sexuality as a core aspect of identity. What madness is this?

Exposing the fraud

I am appalled by all bullying and believe in ‘toleration’ and pluralism but this is not that! Vital concerns about bullying are cat’s paws for LGBT demands. The most common causes of bullying are physical appearance and disability. Three children allegedly killed themselves in 2013 alone on the former account; where was the outrage?

Moreover, LGBT ‘inclusion’ fails on even its own terms. What about all the children from polygamous (think Islamic) or even ‘throuple’ (recall the Green Party’s Natalie Bennett’s remarks) families, say? Barnes actively discriminates against the post-binary (along with other still-closeted sexualities and relationships) and must be called on it. This argument works – activists hate it, for it exposes the set-up.

In fact, this was never really about respect, ‘inclusion’ and ‘safety’. CHIPS’s goal is to brainwash immature, vulnerable children to promote an adult agenda, that of gay civil rights and sexual relationships. They are unequipped to engage at any more than a naïve, concrete-thinking ‘Love is good, gay is love, gay is good, YEAH!’ level. That participation in Pride is encouraged gives the game away. And for those unaware of what happens at Pride, especially after the BBC has stopped filming, it is not just ‘little bits of naughty fun’.

Conclusion

Gay has been sold to the world as the new black, and those who oppose it are seen as ‘racist’. This is the world our children now inhabit.

Part II of this article develops ways forward

*The entire series can be downloaded here: http://www.ellybarnes.com/chips-lesson-plans-and-activities/