Right-wing activists are rallying behind Florida state Rep. Charles Van Zant, the GOP politician who warned that Common Core will turn children gay.
Van Zant pointed to Florida’s education contract with American Institutes for Research (AIR), a group that produces material focusing on LGBT youth. Those materials, however, are not part of the contract with Florida, and in any case it would be absurd to claim that LGBT-inclusive resources would “attract every one of your children to become as homosexual,” as Van Zant did.
In an email alert today, an alliance of Tea Party and Religious Right groups called the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition told its members to “thank Rep. Van Zant for his courageous stand” for “correctly call[ing] out AIR’s social engineering agenda.”
“Representative Van Zant was completely correct in his statements that AIR is promoting the GLBT lifestyle in children, and they are doing the same within families and churches,” wrote Dr. Karen Effrem, the coalition’s executive director. The group criticized “AIR’s blatant promotion of the GLBT lifestyle,” including its “full blown promotion of these sexual practices in families, churches, and society at large.”
Florida Eagle Forum also blasted AIR for having “a significant history of promoting identification of the GLBT lifestyle for children as young as seven years old.”
Raymond Johnson of Biblical Concepts Ministries wrote in a press release today that Van Zant “spoke the truth” with his Common Core comments and thanked him for standing “against the onslaught of the radical LGBT agenda.” Johnson cites a satirical Michael Swift essay about gay people using the schools to “sodomize your sons.”
I was in attendance at the Orlando education conference where FL State House District 19 Representative Charles Van Zant Spoke and I personally heard his entire speech. Rep Van Zants [sic] statements are true, he spoke the truth and I support Mr. Van Zant’s statements and also share his concern.
I have read the mentioned document and am sickened at the blatant, vile, wicked, and false LGBT propaganda AIR is promoting to teachers, parents and students. This document linked below is a clear fulfillment of the “Homosexual Manifesto” entered in the congressional record by Author Micheal [sic] Swift February 15, 1987. Stating in part,
“We shall sodomize your sons, we shall seduce them in your schools, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.”
I am outraged that Education Commissioner Pam Stewart would award a state funded contract to AIR. Commissioner Stewart, the state board of education and FL House Speaker Will Weatherford have continued to defend this outrageous and inappropriate contract with AIR.
I am publicly asking Commissioner Stewart and the state board of education to discontinue any business with AIR, and apologize for such a egregious error, or resign immediately.
We are grateful that Representative Van Zant raised concern making the public aware of this situation, hopefully through this attention we the people can help correct this wrong. BCM and conservative Christians will continue to support righteous leaders like Representative Van Zant that continue to stand for traditional, moral, family values against the onslaught of the radical LGBT agenda.
