Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group Thinks Christians Shouldn’t Allow Gay People to Teach Their Kids

An anti-LGBTQ hate group in Illinois is calling on Christian parents to pull their children out of school if their child has a gay teacher.

Laurie Higgins, a writer and self-described cultural analyst for the Illinois Family Institute, denounced the presence of LGBTQ people in the classroom in a Wednesday op-ed posted to the organization’s website.

“Christian parents should not allow their children to be trained up by adults who don’t recognize and respect the immutability and profound meaning of sexual differentiation,” Higgins writes. “Christian parents should not allow their children to be trained up by adults who believe that inclusivity and compassion demand the affirmation of sexual perversion or confusion or the relinquishment of physical privacy.”

The writer calls out a number of LGBTQ teachers by name, claiming that these individuals use the classroom to push their agenda.

Higgins singles out a teacher (whose name will be excised from this story) at Illinois’ Deerfield High School for posting a link to an article from the U.K. website Pink News on Donald Trump’s appearance at the October Values Voter Summit. That event, a who’s-who of the country’s most homophobic figures, is sponsored by the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Institute.

“Why isn’t this the lead story on national news?” the gay teacher wrote. “[Trump] endorses this hate group and supports legalized discrimination. Horrific.”

“[The] government employee posted his feckless, pernicious comment on his Facebook page where anyone with a Facebook account can see it, including former, current, and future students,” Higgins responded. “Presumably some of them are theologically orthodox young people.”

Higgins also criticizes the professor for teaching an essay by Tony Kushner, the Pultizer Prize-winning playwright behind Angels in America, in the classroom.

The conservative commentator further takes aim at a gay teacher at Oak Park and River Forest High School for circulating a meme in which former president George W. Bush is compared to a chimpanzee. The graphic was called “Evolutionary Theory.” She also claims that the lecturer has posted photos of Che Guevara and Karl Marx to his “official school web page.”

Higgins also criticizes Peoria’s Public School District 150 for inviting a speaker from Central Illinois Pride Health Center to give a presentation to students on LGBTQ inclusion. Entitled “Sexual Orientation and Gender Stereotypes,” the talk was given to 8th graders.

“What is never discussed in the lesson is whether the beliefs of the ‘LGBTQ’ community are objectively true or good,” she says, referring to the training as “infamous.”

The right-wing writer also calls the Pride Center employee, who identifies as a transgender man, a “lesbian who masquerades as a man and is ‘married’ to a woman.” Throughout her op-ed, Higgins repeatedly refers to same-sex unions as “marriage” in quotation marks, indicating her belief that marriage equality is counterfeit.

She even labels the Oak Park professor’s relationship “faux-marriage.”

Calling LGBTQ teachers “taxpayer-subsidized propagandists,” Higgins believes that she has a solution to the problem: Christians should have their own schools.

“Churches must begin today to create affordable schools for their church families,” she writes, writing that private education is out of reach for many couples with children. “Churches should view the education of children in their flocks as a mission field, with mission funds going toward making disciples of them.”

She adds that “no matter how nice they are,” LGBTQ teachers “cannot properly educate children.”

Higgins ends by stating that keeping kids enrolled in public schools amounts to flesh-eating. “Churches should start the recovery and rebuilding project now,” she says. “We’re very late. Some of our children are cannibals.”

The Illinois Family Institute, which is based in Carol Stream, has been labeled a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. On its website, the organization calls for the repeal of all laws offering nondiscrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The IFI also opposes children being adopted by same-sex couples, as well as LGBTQ-inclusive hate crime laws.

Terms like “gender identity” and “transgender” are also referred to in quotation marks.

Photography:Three Lions/Getty Images