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Heath to Confront Biased ‘Civil Rights Team Project’ in Maine 4/2/2003 Christian leader seeks six men to hold the state accountable
Christian pro-family leaders in Maine are preparing to confront a student “diversity” conference known as the Civil Rights Team Project, charging that the taxpayer-financed program promotes homosexuality and alternative spirituality.
Mike Heath, executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, says he plans to alert the state attorney general that he and several volunteers will attend the upcoming statewide Civil Rights Team Project conference and monitor it for bias. Heath said he also plans to distribute alternative information to the assembled students on a Christian understanding of tolerance and morality. “I’m looking for six good men,” Heath said. “And we could use help from some ladies, too.”
The Civil Rights Team Project – funded through the Maine attorney general’s office with a $500,000 grant from the state – is holding a statewide conference April 15 in Portland, Maine’s largest city. High school and middle school students (“Civil Rights Teams”) from across the state will be bused in.
The Project recruits students to confront “incidents of bias and prejudice” at their schools. Its training materials, some of which have been obtained by Culture & Family Report, are heavily weighted to a homosexual activist interpretation of “prejudice,” equating the acceptance of homosexuality with racial harmony.
The Civil Rights Team Project also promotes syncretism, a melding of religious beliefs, according to Heath.
Pro-family observers fear that the Civil Rights Team Project guides students to view the Biblical understanding of homosexuality (i.e.; that it is sinful) as prejudiced. The program recommends homosexual activist groups such as the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) as resources for students while ignoring pro-family groups like the Civic League.
In West Virginia, an imported copy of the Maine program was recently shut down by the state attorney general after its extreme pro-“gay” bias was exposed by Kevin McCoy, president of the West Virginia Family Foundation and state director of the American Family Association of West Virginia.
Not sitting back
Heath told Culture & Family Report that he will inform the attorney general, Steven Rowe, that he will be bringing several men to the Civil Rights Team Project conference and that, as concerned Maine taxpayers, they will be attending – and taping – some of the sessions. Heath said he may hold a press conference at the event and is already in discussions with several lawmakers who are troubled by the blatant bias of the project.
Evidence of the one-sided agenda of the Civil Rights Team Project is easily available on its website. The following liberal-left organizations are recommended as resources for “school administrators, faculty, Civil Rights Teams, students and community members who are interested in learning about civil rights, bias-motivated harassment, diversity, hate language and school climate”:
¨ GLSEN
¨ ADL – Anti-Defamation League
¨ Educators for Social Responsibility
¨ Southern Poverty Law Center
¨ Seeds of Peace
¨ Teaching for Change
¨ United Against Hate
A disclaimer states: “By listing these resources, the office of the Attorney General does not intend to endorse the views of any particular organization.”
Heath said he was intrigued by GLSEN’s inclusion in the resource list, and pointed to a speech in 2000 in which GLSEN Executive Director Kevin Jennings used what could be considered “hate language.” Speaking at a New York City church, Jennings used the “F”-word to describe his attitude toward religious conservatives (he also called them “hard-core bigots”) who oppose homosexuality. See the CFI report by this author, “When Silence Would Have Been Golden.”
Pro-homosexual and liberal speakers
More evidence of the Civil Rights Team Project's pro-homosexual and liberal bias is found in the list of speakers for the April 15 event. One of the workshop speakers for high school students is Peter Rees, addressing “The Psychology of Prejudice.” The following is a description of the session from the Civil Rights Team Project website:
A Google.com search of Rees reveals that he was a key speaker at a 2002 event put on by the Northern Lights Metropolitan Community Church (MCC). The MCC is a homosexual-led denomination that teaches that homosexuality is a gift from God and attacks the historic Christian and Biblical teaching that homosexual acts are sinful. Rees spoke three times at the MCC event, including giving a talk on a “community organizing” model for groups “concerned with peace, justice, and the environment” – a model that “became the engine for gay rights organizing, as well.”
Another of the Maine Civil Rights Team Project conference workshops – for both high school and middle school students – is titled “Outright & GLBTQ Youth.” GLBTQ stands for “gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning.”
The session, led by Sage Hayes of Outright, is described as follows:
Young gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered folks will share their life experiences, more about their identities and answer all sorts of questions you may have. We’ll talk about stereotypes, how hate-language feels and also how to create a safer environment for all students, regardless of their differences. This is a presentation for all students who are curious to learn more about GLBTQ issues, specifically issues affecting GLBTQ youth and straight youth who support them.
There are no sessions at the April 15 conference about instructing students in how to have more tolerance and understanding of students who have moral or faith-based objections to homosexuality, nor are there any sessions planned that teach about the numerous, serious medical consequences of homosexual activity.
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