Michael Farris

Brainwashed Shock Troops

HA Editorial Team12 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on July 17, 2013.

Michael Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association and probably the most visible Christian homeschool leader, is fond of calling his generation the Moses Generation and my generation the Joshua Generation. Christian homeschooling parents, he says, removed their children from the perils of Egypt (aka the public school system) and educated them in the wilderness (aka homeschooling them) in order to send them forth to conquer Canaan (aka take America back for Christ). This really is the entire point of Christian homeschooling (as opposed to homeschooling done by those who may or may not happen to be Christian but do not have religious motivations for homeschooling). This is also why Farris’s daughter started NCFCA—to train Christian homeschool youth in argumentation and debate in an effort to prepare them for their assault on “the world.” In that light, I recently saw an interesting comment left on a Homeschoolers Anonymous post:

The idea that someone thinks that they can find really bright young people, teach them exceptional skills of debate and argument, and then unleash them upon the world as adults while still controlling their thoughts and attitudes is nothing short of insane. Young people have been growing up into adults who reject the authoritarian views imposed upon them for literally centuries. Why does this group of fundamental Christians – who often behave abusively to that self-same group of bright young people – think that they are exempt from the questioning and breaking away process that all young adults do as they grown into independence?

Because they believe they have completely brainwashed their young people into absolute loyalty to The Party as part of their training/indoctrination. Like the Uruk-Hai coming from the spawning pits below Isengard, they were raised and indoctrinated to be living weapons and nothing more.

Why do they think they are exempt from their best and brightest living weapons breaking away? Divine Right, of course.

My father spoke at my graduation. It was a homeschool graduation held at a local church, of course, and each father presented his son or daughter and gave a short speech. I was preparing to begin university the following fall. In his speech, my father said that many people had questioned his wisdom in sending me off to a secular university, asking whether I was ready for that. His response, he said, was that the real question was not whether I was ready to attend that university, but rather whether that university was ready for me. His confidence in my performance disappeared over the following years as I did indeed become “corrupted” by my time at university, and halfway through college my father launched into a tirade against me in which he brought up his remarks at my graduation and told me, his voice full of emotion, that those who had warned him against sending me off to a secular university had been right, and that he wished he could go back and undo that.

What happened?

Put simply, the commenter quoted above is right.

It is completely unreasonable for Christian homeschool parents to think that they can train up ideological clones whom they can train in debate and argument and then unleash upon the world without at least some of them going rogue or asking questions they shouldn’t. If these parents limit their children’s interaction with the world outside of their religious communities and avoid teaching their children critical thinking skills, creating ideological clones is simpler. But if you’re going to train them in argumentation and debate and then send them out into the world to wage ideological war on your foes, well, that’s more complicated. My parents equipped me with the very tools that ultimately led me to think my way out of their mindset, and meeting and getting to know people in “the world” meant that I realized the portrayal of “the world” my parents had given me growing up was wrong and extremely backwards. The system my parents constructed around me, in other words, was built with an internal weakness.

Why, then, did my parents have so much confidence? The commenter quoted above does have a point when referring to divine right—my parents believed that they were right, that their ideology was sound and true and demonstrably so. They therefore assumed that if they equipped me with Truth, that would be enough.

That I might grow up to disagree with them on what is true and what is not wasn’t really a concern, because they believed that the truth of their beliefs was completely obvious to anyone with eyes. When they would talk about people who “left the faith,” they would always attribute it to some sin—the person just wanted to have premarital sex, or to be able to be selfish and not care about others, or what have you. In their conception, it was never a disagreement about fact that led people once saved astray, but rather fleshly desires—because the truth of their beliefs, they were certain, was manifestly obvious to anyone and everyone.

There was something else, too, something more related to Christian homeschooling. My parents believed they had hit upon the perfect formula for raising children who would never fall astray. They believed this because this is what they were told by the books, magazines, and speakers of the Christian homeschool world. And they had done everything on the list from keeping me from friends who might be bad influences to teaching me with curriculum that approached each issue from a Christian perspective. This, quite simply, is what I consider the number one reason my father said what he did at my graduation. He was convinced that he had produced a culture warrior, following the proper formula and all of the proper advice, and that I was, in a sense, infallible—that I couldn’t possible go wrong.

But what was I, really?

I was chock full of apologetics arguments and conservative talking points, but utterly without lived experience or any real understanding of the arguments against the ideas my parents had taught me. After all, I’d never really interacted with people with different ideas or beliefs and my parents provided me only with straw man versions of opposing arguments in order to then knock them down. I’d grown up in an echo chamber and was happy contributing to that echo chamber, but I had no experience stepping outside of it.

I wasn’t a culture warrior. I was a teenage girl who thought she knew everything and wanted very much to please her parents.

His Quiver Full of Them: Jeri Lofland’s Thoughts

HA Editorial Team12 Comments

His Quiver Full of Them: Jeri Lofland’s Thoughts

Jeri’s post was originally published on her blog Heresy in the Heartland. It is reprinted with her permission. Also by Jeri on HA: “Generational Observations” and “Of Isolation and Community.”

Decades ago, I cross-stitched a scripture motto for my parents from Psalm 127, the favorite psalm of large families.

“Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.”

The psalmist goes on to say: “As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them…”

The term “quiverfull” is now used as both a noun and an adjective to describe a theology and lifestyle that glorifies human fertility while maintaining that God will provide the resources to raise as many children as he allows a couple to conceive. Contraception is held to be “playing God” and a violation of the command to be “Be fruitful and multiply”. The ideal Quiverfull couple are always open to “more blessings”, regardless of financial situation, health concerns, housing limitations, or needs of existing children.

I’m not certain when my parents decided that contraception was immoral. As a high schooler, Mom was an advocate of zero population growth and intended to adopt rather than bear children. A few years later, she graduated from a strict Catholic nursing school and married my dad. I was born a year later, my brother two years after that, and so on for the next 20 years.

Mail would arrive periodically from the Couple to Couple League and my parents had a couple of books by Catholic authors John & Sheila Copley explaining the practice of abstinence and/or breastfeeding as a means of birth control. Of course, even “natural family planning” (NFP) sounded too much like the evil “Planned Parenthood” so it was usually referred to as “child spacing”. Somewhere along the line my parents abandoned NFP (turns out it’s not all that effective at preventing pregnancy!) and the babies began to come even closer together.

Certainly Mom was influenced by Mary Pride’s 1985 book The Way Home, a story of the author’s journey from feminism to what she calls “reality”. Mary had just three young children when she wrote the book, in which she blasted away at contraception, lingerie, Marabel Morgan’s The Total Woman, and even Christian schools.

“All forms of sex that shy away from marital fruitfulness are perverted. Masturbation, homosexuality, lesbianism, bestiality, prostitution, adultery, and even deliberate marital barrenness–all are perverted.”

“Since the word used for female is connected so strongly with the idea of nursing babies, whereas it has no connection at all with the idea of sexual activity, I believe that God is saying here that when women exchange their natural function of childbearing and motherliness for that which is ‘against nature’ [that is, trying to behave sexually like a man], the men tend to abandon the natural sexual use of the women and turn to homosexuality. When men stop seeing women as mothers, sex loses its sacredness. Sex becomes ‘recreational’, and therefore the drive begins to find new kicks.”    (Mary Pride, The Way Home, 1985)

(Pride’s position against family planning was more extreme than even the Catholic Couple-to-Couple League’s, prompting a correspondence between her and John Kippley, president of CCLI, and leading Pride to grudgingly endorse NFP in some situations in her sequel to The Way Home.)

Pride went on to birth six more babies and became a powerful force in the new homeschooling movement. My mom used to share The Way Home with all her friends and donated it to church libraries when she could. (When she encouraged me to read it, I was confused. Especially by the story about the lady wearing saran-wrap. Sexually naive young women raised in patriarchal, homeschooling isolation were definitely not Pride’s target audience.)

Mary Pride’s views fit rather well with the teachings of Bill Gothard–a middle-aged bachelor who handed out plenty of sexual and parenting advice at his seminars and encouraged couples to have surgeries to reverse previous vasectomies and tubal ligations. One of Gothard’s books informs us, “Labor in childbirth… was given to the woman for her spiritual benefit…” and points out that the God of the Old Testament “cursed several women by closing their wombs.” Attendees of Gothard’s conferences learned to associate infertility with God’s judgement. A full quiver, on the other hand, was a sign of God’s favor, a spiritual status symbol.

In 1990, a Nebraska couple published A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ. In this book, Rick and Jan Hess (homeschooling parents of ten) invite the reader to imagine a world where no one has ever had more than two or three siblings, effectively eliminating many historical figures. This exercise concludes with visualization of a future where enormous families are normal and God provides spacesuits for a missionary family moving their brood to evangelize a colony on the moon. My parents had this book, probably purchased at an IBLP seminar and still available on Gothard’s website.

Then there was Nancy Campbell’s occasional magazine for moms, Above Rubies. Nancy is a fierce promoter of anti-feminism from her compound in Tennessee. Her website includes multiple articles by women who felt guilt and regret over “the biggest mistake” of their life. After they repented, they went on to expand their families by four, five, six more babies. What mistake is reversed by more pregnancies? An abortion, perhaps? No, as it turns out, the biggest mistake of these women’s lives was a tubal ligation. Nancy also sells a book, A Change of Heart, encouraging couples to have surgeries to reverse both vasectomies and tubal ligations.

Vickie Farris, whose husband Mike is president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, homeschooled their ten children and lived to write a book about it. She encourages other women to reject birth control methods and embrace motherhood. Quiverfull women like Farris, and Michelle Duggar of “Nineteen Kids and Counting”, have built their lives on the mantra “God won’t give anyone more than they can handle”, sometimes phrased as “What God orders, he pays for”.

My parents were opponents of both birth control and sterilization. They even encouraged some of their friends to have reversal surgeries, resulting in many more babies. My mom had eleven children over 24 years, including ten [unassisted home]births. Pregnancy was not easy for her–she often referred to herself with the phrase from St. Paul, “a living sacrifice”. She spent most of my childhood breastfeeding, diapering, potty-training, and homeschooling on top of that. I understood that this was not culturally normal, but sought to convince myself that God was pleased with this self-sacrifice. I spent my teen years watching my mom’s body swell and deflate, and changing thousands of diapers.

In my twenties, as I waited for my turn to become a wife and mother, I quietly ticked off how many children I could have in x years. I may have been ideologically persuaded that contraception was wrong, but I didn’t want to spend twenty years lactating either. When I got impatient for God to bring me a husband (no boyfriends on the horizon), I consoled myself by guessing how many fewer children I would bear in a shorter window of fertile sexual activity.

Fortunately, when I did get married, my husband and I quickly began to realize that many aspects of Quiverfull thought and practice were contradictory to our values. Not before taking NFP classes from a Catholic certified trainer, though. When we got pregnant anyway, we were told the method worked fine–we’d just had sex when [it turned out!] we were actually fertile. Well, what do you know?

I think my relationship with the Quiverfull movement finally ended a few years ago as I was perched on the end of an exam table in my doctor’s office. Looking up from my chart, she compassionately observed, “You’ve been raising kids for a long time,” and I burst into unexpected tears.

These days, stories of ex-Quiverfull moms and their “quivering daughters” are multiplying on the Internet like rabbits in the spring. The fruit of the movement has not turned out to be sweet; we deal with health problems, poverty, anxiety, depression, PTSD, eating disorders, cutting, sexual abuse, emotional incest, and divorce. (You can read far more than you want to know at the Homeschoolers Anonymous blog.)

In spite of these firsthand horror stories, Quiverfull continues to enjoy wide support in America and is gaining traction in other nations. Earlier this year, the BBC reported on the movement’s growth in the United Kingdom. You can listen to more, including scary-sounding clips from Nancy Campbell, here.

Meanwhile here in the States, Hobby Lobby and Catholic hospitals gnash their teeth over their employees’ rights to use birth control. Texan teenagers are taught that contraceptives don’t work. (The result? Texas has more than 10% of America’s teen births.) And TLC continues to profit from shows like “Nineteen Kids and Counting”, promoting Quiverfull ideology to some unsuspecting viewers.

The show should include a disclaimer: For your own safety, don’t try this at home.

A Brief History of Homeschool Speech and Debate

HA Editorial Team21 Comments

A Brief History of Homeschool Speech and Debate

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

******

“There is warfare. We are soldiers. We have weapons.”

~Shelley Miller, NCFCA Oregon State Representative, 2013

*****

As we embark on our Resolved: series, you will see a lot of acronyms being thrown around. I figured it would be helpful for those unfamiliar with the homeschool speech and debate world to see a brief summary of what those acronyms mean. The following history of the key organizations and individuals is important to keep in mind as a general context for reading the posts this week.

HSLDA Debate

Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) began a homeschool debate league in 1996. Christy Shipe (then Farris), the daughter of HSLDA’s chairman and co-founder Michael Farris, started the league when she was a senior at Cedarville University. The goal of the league, according to Michael, was “to improve your child’s reasoning powers, clarity of thinking, and ability to stand for the truth of God’s word.” Whereas competitive forensics sees the skills of forensics as ends in themselves, homeschool debate sees them as means to a larger end: “to help homeschoolers address life’s issues biblically, with God’s glory, not their own, as the focus.”

The very first national tournament was held in October 1997 at Loudoun Valley High School in Purcellville, Virginia. Christy Shipe was the tournament organizer. The debate team from Cedarville, of which Shipe was a part, played a crucial role in the beginning. Deborah Haffey, Cedarville’s debate coach at the time, was influential in Shipe’s love for debate. HSLDA’s original debate teaching materials featured Haffey. And the very first homeschool debate summer camps — as far as I can remember — began at Cedarville, via the university’s Miriam Maddox Forum, led by Haffey, Jonathan Hammond, and later Jeff Motter.The final round of HSLDA’s first national tournament, by the way, took place a separate venue than the rest of the tournament. It occurred at the 1997 National Christian Home Educators Leadership Conference in front of 400 home school leaders from 44 states. It was judged by Michael Farris, Deborah Haffey, and Bob Jones University’s debate coach, Dewitt Jones.

NCFCA

After five years past, the homeschool debate league had grown significantly. HSLDA decided that the league should become a distinct entity from itself. So the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association was created in 2000, co-founded by Christy Shipe and Teresa Moon. The association’s original seven-member board of directors included: Shipe, Moon, Todd Cooper, Michael Farris, Skip Rutledge, Deborah Haffey, and Terry Stollar. NCFCA’s stated goal is “is to train students to be able to engage the culture for Christ.” From the very beginning, NCFCA had a significant amount of in-fighting, resulting in a rapid burning-through of its leaders. Todd Cooper, NCFCA’s original president from San Diego, was booted almost instantaneously. My father, Terry Stollar, became the second president, and resigned after significant disagreements with the board. The first two presidents — as well as Moon, who served as Director of Forensics — all hailed at some point from California, which is interesting considering what I will later mention about “Region 2” and its split from NCFCA. Mike Larimer took over the presidency after my father. Teresa Hudson is NCFCA’s current president.

While debate was primarily the focus when the league was under HSLDA, NCFCA branched out significantly in their more diverse inclusion of speech events. As of today, NCFCA includes two types of debate — Policy and Lincoln-Douglas — as well as a variety of speech categories — biographical narrative, oratory, persuasive, duo interpretations, humorous interpretations, apologetics, extemporaneous, impromptu, and so forth.

CFC/ICC

Crucial to the growth of both HSLDA debate and later NCFCA was Communicators for Christ (CFC). David and Teresa Moon began CFC in 1997. Teresa was also the personal debate coach of many of NCFCA’s original “legends.” In the early days, the Moons traveled around the country, from state to state in their motor home, with a team of student instructors — later termed “interns.” As CFC taught speech and debate to other homeschool parents and students, it served as a “feeder” of sorts into NCFCA.

As CFC’s popularity grew, Teresa expanded CFC’s focus from homeschoolers to Christian schools in general. She refashioned the for-profit CFC into the non-profit Institute for Cultural Communicators (ICC). Today, ICC continues its CFC tours, but also offers “a variety of programs, events and teaching materials designed to help all Christian students, from all educational backgrounds — public, private and home — [to] become ‘cultural communicators’ — people who can impact their culture through excellent communication of the truth.” ICC’s stated goal is “to provide support and guidance to Christian schools, churches, and community education programs as together we train well-rounded communicators.”

A crucial concept about ICC’s goal is embodied in their “Flood the Five” conferences. The premise of these conferences is that only 5% of Americans are “ready” and “willing” to command any sort of public platform. So ICC “is committed to coaching Christian speakers to flood that 5%.”

HSD

HomeschoolDebate.com (HSD) was created by Andrew Bailey, an NCFCA alumni. HSD is an online forum for competitors, alumni, parents, and coaches from all over the country to connect. HA’s Nicholas Ducote was a board administrator on HSD for four years, and also owned the site (after Bailey and McPeak moved on) for two years, from 2007-2009. I myself used HSD significantly to market Plethora, my research book series, from 2001-2005.

HSD features threads on the current year’s debate topics, on homeschool league politics, on ideas for improving debate skills, and — well, and everything else. Some of the most popular threads on HSD in the past had nothing to do with speech or debate. The most popular threads were the “Just For Fun” and “Controversy Corner” threads, where us homeschool kids would argue about everything from free will versus predestination to that year’s presidential candidates. We would also create role-playing games and fictional stories about each other, projecting fellow competitors into soap opera storylines or superhero graphic novel contexts. HSD was, and continues to be, extraordinarily popular. When competitors would actually gather in person at national qualifying tournaments or the national tournament itself, it was always a highlight to meet in person these people you would socialize with digitally for the year prior.

HSD became a microcosm of some of the speech and debate world’s important developments: the promotion of evidence and research books, the promotion of summer camps, the connecting of alumni with current competitors to pass on both competition strategies and life lessons, and a channel for graduates to help younger kids work through questions about faith and humanity. HSD was also the starting place for the Great BJU Protest of 2009.

The Great BJU Protest of 2009

In 2009, NCFCA announced that the National Tournament that year would take place at Bob Jones University. This caused an outcry from many competitors on account of BJU’s extreme legalism and history of institutionalized racism. Some competitors believed the board made a poor decision that could hurt the image of both Christianity as well as homeschooling. This issue was also exacerbated by two other issues: how NCFCA allegedly ignored California’s previous suggestion of Irvine as a location, and how the previous year NCFCA also held a national tournament event at a Shriner’s Temple. Going from a Shriner’s Temple to a place popularly conceived as racist and small-minded infuriated quite a few people. As early as March of 2009, months before the tournament happened, members of HSD were considering how best to address this — some suggesting a boycott of the tournament, others suggesting petitioning the board to change the location, and others suggesting wearing stickers or walking silently out of the opening ceremony when BJU would give their “come to BJU!” talk.

In the end, a petition was sent to NCFCA leadership to change the location. Mike Larimer, then-president of NCFCA, gave what one of the protest’s organizers called “an expected non-response.” But the petition picked up when alumni from all around the country started showing overwhelming support for the protest. (I myself proudly signed the petition, though I was long graduated from the league. Standing up for what you feel is just and right is what this whole training was about!) As support for the petition ballooned, and word got out that protestors were planning a “walk out” of the opening ceremony, the NCFCA regional coordinator of Region 8, Lisa Kays, did something highly controversial. Kays sent an email to all the other regional coordinators. In her email, she demanded (1) that any competitors from her own region that signed the petition must immediately remove their names, and (2) ban anyone that is unwilling to remove their name from competing at the National Tournament.

Yes, you read that right. Lisa Kays, one of the heads of NCFCA leadership and who is now on the board of ICC, wanted to ban people from the National Tournament for speaking up against legalism and racism. As one of the protest’s organizers said at the time, “I am incredibly saddened to see this. This is nothing less than strong arm tactics against a very legitimate and very respectful protest.”

As it turns out, this protest organizer was not the only one who was saddened by this tactic.

STOA

In 2009, after years of strained relationships between the leaders of Region 2 (primarily California) and the national leaders of NCFCA, secession happened. Due to differences in governance philosophy, the structure of tournaments qualifying students for Nationals, and allegedly how certain NCFCA leaders (mis)handled the BJU Protest, California broke from the homeschool forensics union. A new speech and debate league was formed, STOA — which is not an acronym but a reference to ancient Greek architecture. While there are several accounts discussing STOA’s split from NCFCA in 2009, and while the official date is listed everywhere as such, it seems that the original genesis of STOA as an organization began in 2008, as evidenced by STOA’s original blog post dating back to August of that year. This split was announced on HSD in July of 2009 with the title, “California secedes from NCFCA. NO JOKE!”

The original leadership for STOA were Lars Jorgensen, Scott York, Marie Stout, Jeff Schubert, and Dorr Clark. Lars Jorgensen, who was the NCFCA regional coordinator for Region 2 since 2004, was the one who officially announced the split on August 10, 2009. STOA’s goal does not differ significantly from NCFCA’s: “to train Christian homeschooled students in Speech and Debate in order to better communicate a biblical worldview.”

*****

As of today, there are two homeschool speech and debate leagues: NCFCA and STOA. HSLDA continues to sell speech and debate material geared towards these leagues. Many of the original movers and shakers are still involved. Christy Shipe is still on the board of NCFCA. Teresa Moon continues to run CFC and ICC. Lisa Kays, one of the key players attempting to shut down the BJU protest, is on ICC’s board. Scott York continues as president of STOA.

And most curiously, a lot of us competitors who frequented the HSD forums a decade ago still frequent that forum to this day. There’s something about HSD that feels like home.

When Michael Farris Threatened To Send The FBI After A Homeschool Kid

HA Editorial Team18 Comments

When Michael Farris Threatened To Send The FBI After A Homeschool Kid

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

*****

“Once upon a time, long before Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook, there was a web blogging service called Xanga.”

~NBC, June 2013

******

It was the beginning of December last year when the words lit up my computer screen like lights on a Christmas tree:

“PATRICK HENRY COLLEGE CHANCELLOR MICHAEL FARRIS THREATENS TO SUE QUEERPHC!”

I had no idea what QueerPHC was. But I knew Patrick Henry College. It was that college I thought about going to back when I competed in NCFCA. Honestly, apart from a few friends from my debate days going to PHC, I hadn’t given as much as a passing thought to PHC in the years since.

In fact, I probably would still be unaware of happenings at PHC — still unaware of the existence of QueerPHC — if it were not for Michael Farris.

So in a sense, I need to thank Michael Farris for bringing QueerPHC to my attention. If Farris never threatened to sue the group, I — like a lot of people, probably — wouldn’t have known anything about it.

But threaten to sue he did. And that is why I am writing this story.

A little background information:

In July of 2012, a group of Patrick Henry College alumni got together and created a blog. Their very first blog post was on July 3, where they said:

“This is a collaborative blog produced by several Patrick Henry College (PHC) students, current and former. We, being a group of people, do have varying opinions and beliefs, but one thing we do share in common is our desire to help and encourage other Patrick Henry College students, current and former, in any way that we can.”

The purpose of the blog was to provide education and information about LGBT issues, because PHC itself did not offer such education and information:

“Patrick Henry College does not offer courses in Queer Studies, Sex Ed, or Gender Equality. However, these are issues that are of pressing importance in our culture today and are of importance to us personally. We hope to use this blog to provide information on those topics that are taboo at PHC.”

For the next few months, Queer PHC posted about a variety of issues, all without any public disturbance from PHC itself. The pseudonymous writing team of Kate Kane, Captain Jack, and Alan Scott wrote about growing up queer, people denying the existence of LGBT people, ex-gay therapy, and how the student newspaper, Patrick Henry College Herald, addressed homosexuality issues.

But then the proverbial shit hit the metaphorical fan.

Over the first weekend in December, Michael Farris, the college’s chancellor, used his own Facebook page to contact Queer PHC and threaten them with a lawsuit:

Photo from Queer PHC.
Photo from Queer PHC.

Text is,

This page is in violation of our copyright of the name Patrick Henry College. You are hereby notified that you must remove this page at once. On Monday we will began [sic] the legal steps to seek removal from Facebook and from the courts if necessary. In this process of this matter we can seek discovery from Facebook to learn your identity and seek damages from you as permitted by law. The best thing for all concerned is for you to simply remove this page.

Find another way to communicate your message without using the term ‘Patrick Henry College’ in any manner.”

The problems with what Farris said and did are astounding. Not only is this a completely nonsensical interpretation of copyright law, not only is it slightly outrageous that Farris would pretty much threaten to “out” the individuals behind the group, but Farris used a personal Facebook page to communicate a legal threat on behalf of an entire college. Did he consult with the college’s board before making a legal threat on behalf of the college? Did they approve of the Facebook message? (Were they even aware of it beforehand?) These are important questions, especially considering what happened next.

What happened next was the Streisand effect. So incomprehensible was Farris’ strategy of internet bullying and censorship based on false legal issues that his threat suddenly exploded — Gangnam style — across the Internet.

On December 3, New York Magazine immediately scooped the story. Then the local newspaper. Then a flurry of bloggers, including Libby Anne at Patheos. Then Inside Higher Ed. Then the Chronicle of Higher Education. Even the New York Times picked it up.

Of course, as soon as the controversy started (and probably once the PHC board realized what a bizarre and inappropriate action Farris had undertaken), Farris recanted — this time through a public comment on Queer PHC’s status:

Photo from Queer PHC.

But it was too late. The PR damage had begun.

When I heard about Farris threatening a perfectly legal Facebook group with an unfounded, frivolous lawsuit, I was floored. What better way to damage the credibility and reputation of not only PHC, but the homeschooling movement, by using abusive techniques like threatening fellow professed Christians with erroneous legal action? Not only fellow professed Christians, but your own former students?

But something about what Farris did to Queer PHC didn’t feel surprising. In fact, it felt familiar.

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. But I was having a sense of deja vu.

Eventually, it struck me. And I went searching through my vast archive of saved emails from my old Hotmail account. And I found it.

In the early 2000s, when all of us homeschool speech and debate alumni were either still in high school or just beginning college, we socialized on Xanga. Xanga is to social media what Grandmaster Flash is to rap: really, really old school. Created in 1999, Xanga was around before Facebook, even pre-dating when most of us were on Myspace. Xanga was kind of like an public online diary: you could make posts, like other peoples’ posts, and subscribe to other people to stay connected. And that was about it.

(And yes, if you’re morbidly curious, my Xanga is still up. So feel free to search my teenage angst and amateur attempts at poetry, philosophy, theology, and public diary-writing for evidence you can use against me in the future.)

I created my Xanga profile on March 18, 2004. Most of my close friends from NCFCA and CFC had Xanga accounts as well. As this was really the beginning of social media, there weren’t really any parents using Xanga. It was primarily a teenage activity.

After a few months, two separate individuals created parody Michael Farris accounts. One was created on May 28, 2004. The other was created on July 26, 2004. (As you can see from these links, the accounts have since been scrubbed clean.) I don’t really remember much from the later account that was created, but I remember the first one because a friend of mine made it. It was clearly marked as a parody account, did not attempt to impersonate Farris to deceive anyone, and wasn’t even “offensive.” While a lot of us debaters were “punks” in one sense or another, we were still conservative Christian homeschoolers. So my friend’s parody account of Michael Farris did not involve things like dick jokes. I remember Fake Farris’s posts being along the lines of “I AM MICHAEL FARRIS AND OMG HOMESCHOOLING WILL SAVE THE WORLD!!!”

You know, immature attempts at ironic comedy that failed miserably. But again, nothing that even came close to slander. Nor identity theft. As it clearly stated it was a parody account, it didn’t even violate Xanga’s technical terms of use.

In 2004, on Xanga, you could “subscribe” to other peoples’ accounts. This would be the equivalent of “liking” or “following” a Facebook page today. Since I was one of the only people that used my real name on Xanga, and I was subscribed to the michael_farris parody account, I was the only person that Farris could recognize to contact about the account.

Oh yes, he contacted me about the parody account! Perhaps I just got ahead of myself. In 2004, Michael Farris — President of Patrick Henry College — was apparently monitoring what high school homeschool debaters were doing on a social media site. And as soon as he saw a parody account of himself, he went into militant mode.

On Wednesday, July 28, 2004, nearly a decade before he employed erroneous legal threats against Queer PHC, Michael Farris emailed me. In another way that this parallels the QueerPHC debacle, Farris contacted me with his official “PHC Office of the President” email address. The following is a screenshot of what he said, along with the text:

Screen Shot 2013-06-21 at 1.50.00 AM

Text is,

From: “PHC Office of the President” <president@phc.edu>

To: <suavedrummerboy@hotmail.com>

Subject: Ryan is this you?

Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 17:17:34 -0400

Ryan,

This is Mike Farris–the real one from Patrick Henry College.

I see you as a subscriber to a xanga website named Michael_Farris. Your posts there seem to indicate that you know who this is who is running this.

I just went through a difficult time shutting down another xanga site called “michaelfarris”.

I am prepared to take civil and criminal legal action against this person. Identity theft is a crime. It is also subject to civil action (if for no other reason) than it violates Xanga’s terms of use. I want your acquaintance to save himself a lot of legal grief.

Here’s what he needs to do. Delete absolutely everything from the site. Then, send me the password to the site so that I can take control of it so that neither he nor anyone else can ever steal my identity in this manner again. If he does this I absolutely promise I will take no action of any kind against him. If he does not do so (and do so promptly) I will go after him with vigor.

It may seem funny to some, but it is not funny in the least to me. I will turn this over to the FBI if I have to. But seems it seems pretty obvious that this person is or was an NCFCA debater I wanted to try to quietly end the problem without the need for drastic measures.

Can you help?

Mike Farris

Yes, almost a decade before Michael Farris tried to bully and threaten Queer PHC with a frivolous lawsuit because he didn’t like what they were doing, Farris also threatened a Christian homeschool kid with civil and criminal action — even going so far as to invoke the FBI. As if the FBI would’ve given a @#$% about some kid’s Xanga account in 2004. But we were young. We had no idea. I was terrified. I immediately told my friend. He was terrified as well. What Michael Farris hoped to accomplish — using inaccurate legal concepts to coerce a highschooler into turning over the account information to a perfectly legal parody account — was successful.

A decade later, Farris apparently still uses the same tactics.

The funny thing is, this email I received would’ve likely slipped away into oblivion, covered by the dust of my long-forgotten memories. But in the same way that Queer PHC’s existence occurred to me because of Farris’ threat against the group, my remembrance of the email was likewise resurrected. To some, the very fact that I am bringing it into the open might seem petty and vindictive. But I do not reveal it for those purposes.

I am publicizing this email because of the trend I have repeatedly seen from the leaders of the Christian homeschooling movement. I am remembering the censorship employed by NCFCA leaders when forensics alumni, coaches, and students attempted to protest BJU’s history of institutionalized racism. I am remembering a personal censorship, which I will talk about next week during our Resolved: series. I am remembering how Farris went after Queer PHC. I am remembering how HSLDA chose to block former homeschool students from its Facebook page for speaking up about abuse during our #HSLDAMustAct campaign.

What I experienced a decade ago, what Queer PHC experienced last year — these are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a problem: the problem of how this movement chooses to interact with its whistleblowers. It has groomed us to “take back the culture.” Yet when we try to do so, the movement suddenly realizes “the culture” we want to take back is not the Evil Candyland of Liberalism, but our very own home — homeschooling itself.

If you are not toeing the line, if you question the movement’s assumptions, if you even dare to make parody accounts — the movement wants to shut you down and silence you. And Michael Farris led the way, is leading the way, by the choices he made and continues to make.

Considering Farris’ railings against Obama’s “tyranny” as of late, I cannot help but wonder: how exactly does bullying and censorship of young people demonstrate the ideals of freedom?

Grassroots in Education: A History of the Modern Homeschooling Movement in America, Part 3, By Katy-Anne Wilson

HA Editorial Team7 Comments

Grassroots in Education: A History of the Modern Homeschooling Movement in America, Part 3, By Katy-Anne Wilson

Katy-Anne Wilson describes herself as “mommy to four public children who are or will be sent to public school (so thankful for special education programs).” She is about to graduate college with a degree in writing and sociology. This post was originally published on her blog on August 11, 2012, and is reprinted with her permission.

*****

In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

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Right Wing Conservative Politics

"These fundamentalists are now unhappy with the public school system that was a Christan fundamentalist initiative in the first place."
“These fundamentalists are now unhappy with the public school system that was a Christan fundamentalist initiative in the first place.”

Christian fundamentalists consider America to be a Christian nation founded by Christians and on Christian principles. The Christian fundamentalists are highly involved in political activism, and their workforce is made up mostly of stay at home wives and mothers. (Gaither 2009, p. 337). Cooper and Sereau state that parents who homeschool are more highly involved in politics than parents of children in public or private schools, and they are involved by voting, contributing money, contacting officials and attending rallies. (Cooper & Sereau 2007, p. 122). They also say that homeschool families are politically savvy and have used an intense political commitment to advocate some real change in society on the issue of homeschooling. These families are very well organized and have lobbied for their rights. (Cooper & Sereau 2007, p. 125)

Coleman (2010, unpub.) claims that the religious fundamentalist homeschoolers are also politically motivated and intend on solving the culture wars through political platforms. She further says that the Christian fundamentalist homeschooling crowd are now a very strong and powerful political force. (Coleman 2010, unpub.) The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) which is run by Mike Farris fights for the rights of fundamentalist Christian homeschoolers.

These homeschoolers also have their own college to accept homeschooled children called Patrick Henry College.  And many a high school or college aged Christian fundamentalist homeschooled child finds themselves being involved in political activism for the conservative religious right. The religious right also successfully infiltrated the Republican party in the 1980’s and have been strong in their political involvement ever since. (Dowdy & McNamara 1997, p. 168).

Cimino and Lattin (1998, p. 137) claim that the religious right is heavily involved in wanting to make America into a Christian nation and therefore push their fundamentalist ideals onto everybody. Many of these fundamentalists are Christian Reconstructionists, a movement which advocates bringing back many of the Old Testament laws and living a life based strictly on the Bible. There are, however, some Christian fundamentalists who do not advocate reconstructionism but rather they fight for “traditional values” or “family values” which is where the culture wars come into the picture. (Cimino & Lattin 1998, p. 137)

Conclusion

The Ideologues see homeschooling as a major way to wage the culture wars and gain political clout, trying to get America to live by traditional white, Protestant, fundamentalist values. These fundamentalists are now unhappy with the public school system that was a Christan fundamentalist initiative in the first place. Many homeschool their children in order to teach them their own ideologies. If they can have lots of children and indoctrinate those children well enough into their belief system, they’ll have a new generation to carry out their plan as they will believe the same thing their parents did. If they sent their children to public school their children would be taught a different worldview and would have much less chance of growing up to be a right wing, conservative, Christian fundamentalist.

Although there are plenty of secular families who homeschool, this paper focused on the religious right, the Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals, because they make up the bulk of the homeschooling modern homeschooling movement and have certainly had the most influence. These people homeschool in order to wage a “war” on the culture, wanting to change American society into a Christian society based on Biblical values and rules, as interpreted by the religious right and not necessarily by what the Bible actually says.

It is very important for American society that they realize the magnitude of what is going on here. The Christian fundamentalists basically took over an entire movement and rallied their own crusades for homeschooling, so that they can pass these same ideologies on to their children whom they hope will repeat the pattern. Their goal is to infiltrate further into the political arena, in order to fight the culture wars. If Americans want to be sure that they won’t be executed for being homosexual or for having an affair, or live under other such laws, they had best keep a close eye on the actions of the conservative right wing Christian homeschoolers and not underestimate their influence.

End of series.

*****

References

Carper, J, & Hunt, T 2007, “Chapter 9: Homeschooling redivivus,” Dissenting tradition in American education pp. 239-264 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. Education Research Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 13 August 2011.

Coleman, R.E. 2010, Ideologues, pedagogues, pragmatics: a case study of the homeschool community in Delaware County, Indiana, Masters thesis, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana.

Cimino, R & Lattin, D 1998, Shopping for Faith: American religion in the new millennium, John Wiley & Sons, New York.

Cooper, B & Sureau, J 2007, “The politics of homeschooling: new developments, new challenges”, Educational Policy, 21, 1, p. 110-131, Education Research Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 13 August 2011.

Dowdy, T.E. & McNamara, P.H, 1997 Religion north American style, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Gaither, M 2009, ‘Homeschooling in the USA: past, present and future’, Theory and Research in Education, 7, 3, pp. 331-346, Education Research Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 13 August 2011.

Goldfield, Abbott, Anderson, Argersinger, Argersinger, Barney, & Weir 2001, The American journey: a history of the United States, 2nd edition, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Klicka, C.J, 1995 The right choice: the incredible failure of public education and the rising hope of home schooling: an academic historical, practical and legal perspective, Noble publishing associates, Gresham, Oregon.

Michael Farris’ Strange Allies

HA Editorial Team10 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Sarah Jones’ blog Anthony B. Susan.  It was originally published on May 13, 2013.

Michael Farris, chairman of the Homeschool Legal Defence Association (HSLDA) and president of ParentalRights.org, has established himself as a leading figure in the Christian homeschool movement.  His suspicion of the state and his emphasis on parental rights–his definition of liberty.

In my last blog post, I published documentation of homeschool parents’ reactions to revelations of abuse within the Christian homeschool movement. The themes revealed — anti-statism and a consuming, passionate belief that parents know best — reflects in micro the message Farris so effectively peddles at the national level.

These concerns make for some strange bedfellows, as a close examination of ParentalRights.org’s list of allied organizations reveals. Allies include AbleChild, an anti-psychiatry organization affiliated with the Church of Scientology, and Glenn Beck’s Black Robe Regiment. Several allies erroneously link vaccines to autism. These allies include the Canary Party, an anti-vaccination group. Given Farris’ belief that parental rights are absolute, even divinely derived, his alliance with organizations that lobby for the end of state interference in private affairs is not a surprise.

However, the other entries on this list of allies reveals a new facet to Farris’ parental rights advocacy. Nine allies lobby for fathers’ rights, either explicitly or under the guise of ‘parental alienation syndrome’ or ‘shared parenting.’ Superficially, these sound like benign causes. Nobody sane wants to deprive fathers of their rights, or alienate children from their parents. Shared parenting sounds entirely fair–and in many cases, it is.  But further research reveals another, more sinister reality. The overlap between the fathers’ rights movement and men’s rights activism has been well-documented by a variety of media sources. Both are often referred to as the ‘domestic abusers’ lobby’ and with reason. The leaders of Fathers and Families, listed as one of ParentalRights’ allies, actively lobbied against the passage of the Violence Against Women Act.

According to the members of Fathers Unite, another ParentalRights ally, the judicial system systematically discriminates against men in divorce and custody proceedings. This is a common complaint of men’s rights activists. According to the Fatherhood Coalition, yet another ally, this amounts to nothing short of a war on fatherhood itself.  And let’s not forget Farris’ association with Doug Phillips of Vision Forum, an organization that explicitly promotes extreme female submission and discourages the higher education of women. The enemies here are mothers, and by extension, a judicial system that supports them unconditionally.

So why would Farris ally himself with these groups? After all, he supports parental rights, and mothers are parents. The healthy families Farris promotes are, presumably, also free of domestic violence. His alliance with this movement therefore appears to be totally contradictory. But for those of us who grew in conservative Evangelical and fundamentalist families, the reason is obvious: Farris allies with these groups because the only rights he really seeks to preserve are father’s rights. His primary interest is the protection of the patriarchy. No fault divorce, the Violence Against Women Act, and current custody laws threaten paternal supremacy. Farris fights for limited government because the state’s interference in domestic affairs usurps the role his movement assigns to fathers. If Farris and allies succeed in their goal of establishing parental rights as a constitutionally recognized right, the cultural hierarchy he seeks to protect will be successfully embedded in federal law.

And let’s be clear: that is their ultimate goal. Homeschooling is merely a means unto an end.

Michael Farris’ unusual allies are further evidence that he, and the organizations he has founded, have no intention of addressing abuse within their ranks. They can’t. If they acknowledge that abuse is a problem, then the limitations of the cultural hierarchy they promote will become publicly evident and will become more difficult for them to successfully argue that it is superior to mainstream alternatives. Failures in leadership typically demand a change in leadership, and the patriarchy cannot sustain this. If homeschool parents are truly concerned for the well-being of children, it is therefore in their best interest to separate from Michael Farris, HSLDA and their allies.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has more information on the men’s rights movement.

Connecting Homeschooling and Religious Abuse

HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Heather Doney’s blog Becoming Worldly. It was originally published on April 1, 2013.

I was asked a very good question by a homeschooler recently and figured I’d answer it here as well, expanding on it a little bit. The essence of that question (as I understood it) was “Why are you including homeschooling in your discussion of religious abuse? Aren’t those two separate things that you’re mistakenly combining?”

I guess the pattern and argument for why I include them together is very clear to me but I can see how most people would likely view them as two separate things. After all, abuse in a religious context can certainly occur without homeschooling ever being in the picture (Ex. See Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal), and homeschooling can be done without ever even having religion involved, not to mention religious abuse. Homeschooling and child maltreatment based on extreme (and in my opinion pretty warped) interpretations of Christianity (what I’m calling “religious abuse” for the sake of simplicity here) certainly do not have to be connected, and obviously curtailing the former would not stamp out the latter. So why would I be talking like this, like they’re connected? Is it because I am mistaken, somehow conflating factors, or because in some ways they really and truly are?

First off, let me say that I too wish that the issue of religious abuse could be decoupled from homeschooling (which I think is a legitimate and respectable educational option), but I don’t think it can be done as it currently stands. They have become intertwined.

I think that there are some important links and patterns that once recognized, change everything, but if I don’t highlight the pattern of what I see, I imagine it’s easy to conclude that I am just mistaken or generalizing based on my own personal experience. As it is, it’s also easy for me to assume that others will automatically see this system and to get frustrated when people don’t. Then I remember that everyone’s lived experience is a bit different and that I have also read and researched a heck of a lot on this topic in addition to having the lived experience of growing up in it. Additionally, I had six years of training (bachelors in political science and master’s degree in public policy) that taught me how to use certain tools, methods, frameworks, and analysis techniques. So here’s my “policy nerd” reasoning:

If you look at the individual or family level, homeschooling looks like a mishmash of various styles based on personal choice, varying from family to family. The pattern is not very apparent (and I would reach the same conclusion that these are two separate topics) but if you look at it at a system level the situation becomes stark (and to me very disturbing).

Homeschooling started out as a way to “liberate” children from authoritarian and rote desk-based learning, but leadership of the movement has been hijacked and become the main socio-political apparatus of a fringe group that has some very extreme practices and aims and has grown very politically powerful due to this takeover of homeschooling leadership. I mean just look at what kind of stuff the HSLDA advocates for with its dues money and the radical bent of its leaders. For brevity’s sake I will only list five things:

(1) They have said that “everyone” should have the right to homeschool, not making formal distinctions for convicted abusers or others who would not pass a background check or ever be seen fit to teach other people’s children.

(2) They have advocated for what is essentially a dismantling of the child welfare system and an expansion of parental rights in a way that essentially amounts to “ownership” of children, as opposed to simply having and carrying out a duty to raise and protect your offspring.

(3) They have called for a parental rights amendment to the United States constitution essentially saying that parents should not have checks or balances from outside entities. They ignore and paper over the unfortunate yet widely known fact that not all parents are fit or have their children’s best interests in mind and that absolutely awful things can and do happen when there is no mechanism to discern or intervene when things have gone wrong within a family.

(4) The HSLDA has funneled homeschoolers’ dues money and aptitude for activism and volunteerism into fielding political candidates such as Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Todd Akin and supporting others with similar radical socio-political agendas. (This has not just been about homeschooling deregulation either. These politicians’ records and agendas regarding family planning, women’s rights, gay people’s rights, religious freedom, and rape have been clear.)

(5) HSLDA fearmongering and political activism has helped them keep their coffers full and our nation awkwardly keeping company with only Somalia and South Sudan when it comes to not ratifying the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The whole recent debacle with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was similar.

So at first this stuff just seems weird, right? I mean why might homeschooling have anything to do with gay people or rights for the disabled or the idea that ordinary children should being treated like actual people deserving of similar protections to any other American citizen? Well, the short answer is it certainly doesn’t need to (well, except that homeschooling might be a desirable option for a disabled kid, or that homeschooling in certain circumstances is used to protect children). The thing is, if you are a fearful conspiracy theorist who also believes that you are the new set of God’s chosen people and you must “take back” our nation so that everyone can adhere to the most fundamentalist interpretations of biblical law, apparently these things have a lot more in common with homeschooling than first meets the eye. Homeschooling is one of the main tools to be used in this agenda. Additionally, if you believe in this stuff, you also think that all the “unbelievers” are out to take your homeschooling away and there is a good chance they are being led by Satan himself in an effort to do so, and as such they must be fought hard, smashed into the ground. If you look at the world this way, the crazy stuff suddenly makes perfect sense. The odd political advocacy goals of the homeschooling leadership suddenly make sense too.

I think Anderson Cooper’s incredulity at Michael Farris and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities issue properly expresses what a normal person’s perspective might be when encountering this form of extremism, but the fact is we need to understand it and we also need to do something about it.

Things that normal homeschooling parents might want (opportunities for seamless and easy transitions into and out of public schools, the ability to participate and use public education resources on an “a la carte” basis, assistance with academic subjects that are not their forte, structures that make sure homeschooling kids at least know as much as their public school counterparts and are being given due credit for it, and an option for their kids to join local school sports teams) are not being advocated for by these people. The fringe doesn’t want these things. They want total control over children’s minds, bodies, and souls for their “holy” fight.

Under their leadership, homeschooling is not an educational choice. Instead it is pushed as being a lifestyle but it is really about using people as a culture wars tool. You soon learn that it is ultimately not about having a happy family life but rather about fulfilling “duties” with hope of rewards for it in heaven. I am not even going to get into how certain pastors and homeschool leaders are getting rich and powerful leading this movement. I will say that homeschooling of this sort is ultimately not about the children except that they are seen as tools in this crusade and so that is why it is seen as good to have or adopt as many of them as possible. They are weapons of sorts. This is so bad for children. I cannot overstate how bad this is for children (even when they seem to obey with a smile all the time).

This is why so many grown kids from this movement have totally rebelled against it and anything that even remotely looks like it and why others stay in, don’t question, and operate essentially as automatons working towards the objective. It hurts people in different ways and it’s why the former fundamentalist homeschool kids I know joke about whether someone “is still drinking the kool-aid” or not. It is why so many of us have “health problems” stemming from the years of being threatened, coerced, and told we were not measuring up to being what our parents were told they needed to craft us into if they were “Godly.” Yeah. Like that wouldn’t leave almost anyone with some issues.

I know plenty of homeschooling families definitely don’t buy into this extreme worldview and in fact are just as horrified by it all as I am. They just want to educate their children as best as they are able and enjoy family life. They don’t have some rabid agenda that requires building an “army.” They are more normal than that. The problem is that the crazy is louder than them, so the crazy gets heard and they get ignored or just lumped in and expected to put up with the crazy, as infuriating as that is.

So the bottom line is that an extreme fringe wing of the Christian religious right has taken over the homeschool movement leadership and continues to mold homeschooling as they see fit. They have turned something that was meant to liberate children into something that is often horribly oppressive. This is why the two issues cannot be decoupled – homeschooling is successfully being used as a powerful tool by these people, no matter how many kids their power grab disguised as “advice” hurts.

Anyway, I’m hoping this helps explain why both the religious abuse and homeschooling components are connected, and why I find that discussing them in tandem, with caveats, is the best approach to use when discussing this complicated issue.

I am not criticizing homeschooling as an educational option when I do this. In fact, I think this extreme fundamentalist homeschooling agenda is ultimately as toxic to “real” homeschooling (in all its various forms) as it has been to kids who grew up within this sort of damaging environment. If homeschoolers want to be associated with quality then they absolutely need to make sure they don’t sit back while people with extreme agendas claim to speak for them.

I think right now there is not much public awareness of these connections or how these extreme ideological agendas influence homeschooling (or our nation) as a whole, but in addition to needing to draw a distinction in motivations for homeschooling (and there are a wide range), there is also a huge need for responsible homeschoolers to “take back” the homeschooling movement leadership from the people who see it as a power and “culture wars” indoctrination tool rather than a way to give their kids the best skills and opportunities. I am not maligning homeschooling. I do not have a problem with homeschooling. I do have a problem with the current leadership of the homeschooling movement.

It is the real gorilla in the room.

Homeschoolers Are Out: An Introduction

HA Editorial Team10 Comments

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

*****

“You’re homeschooled? That’s gay.”

I was probably 5 or 6 when a neighborhood kid who attended public school first articulated the idea that me being homeschooled was “gay.” Of course, nothing about my parents’ decision to teach me at home had anything to do with homosexuality. Plus I’m straight. But that’s not what the kid meant, was it?

What that kid meant was that homeschooling was stupid, and stupid things are gay things, thus equating gayness with stupidity. That kid was also 5 or 6. I have not had contact with him since we played games in the middle of our quiet, suburban street in San Jose, California so many years ago. For all I know, he might now be an outspoken straight advocate for marriage equality, or even gay himself. His use of “gay” at the age of 5 or 6 was probably cultural, something he picked up on in school or maybe from a homophobic parent. Pop culture — then and and today — has often associated “gay” with negativity.

As an awkward homeschool kid who had occasional interactions with kids from public schools (we were allowed to play with them after school in our neighborhood), I always encountered one of two reactions from my friends: either (1) homeschooling was awesome to them because they thought it meant we just got to stay home and play video games all day, or (2) homeschooling was gay. I don’t really remember why they would think homeschooling was anything less than awesome (usually I would pretend that, yeah, we did get to play video games all day, just so they would think I was cool). But it’s possible they saw I was a total dork and deduced that, if total dorks are usually called “gay” and I was a total dork who was homeschooled, then homeschooling must be gay, too. That’s kid logic for you. (Ironically, many adults today still use kid logic.)

The numerous times I heard “homeschooling is gay” stick so lucidly to my mind because it was the first time I ever heard about “gayness.” It wasn’t until years later, when I learned from the conservative Christian homeschooling curriculum and worldview programs that homosexuality was evil and political nefarious, that I consciously thought about LGBT things. But from that one moment through probably half way through my undergrad program, both mainstream and homeschool cultures reinforced this idea that “gay” was synonymous with bad.

This idea, this deeply rooted hatred and desire to discriminate, is by no means unique to the conservative Christian homeschool movement. Yes, you have followers of Rushdoony who actively call for LGBT individuals to be stoned. Yes, you have people like Michael Farris who actively campaign against Prop 8 and the simple right of people of any gender to have a foundational relationship based on legal equality. But at the same time, it seems like almost every other day that I read some heartbreaking story of a gay kid in public school who was bullied to the point of suicide. Every time I turn on the radio I hear a hip hop star throwing gay slurs left and right.

The fact is, LGBT individuals face almost insurmountable discrimination and dehumanization on a daily basis. They experience this in their home life, in home schools, in private schools, in public schools, at work, and when they try to do something as simple as hold hands in public at a restaurant.

In creating this week’s focus on LGBT homeschool awareness, it needs to be clear that the pain and hurt that LGBT individuals experience happens universally. It is not unique to homeschooling. Indeed, with the significant amounts of bullying that these friends and peers of ours can experience in public schools, homeschooling can actually be a safe haven. Sex advice columnist Dan Savage minced no words that homeschooling as an educational option could save lives. When a gay 15-year-old boy from La Grande, Oregon hung himself earlier this year on account of being bullied, Savage noted that the boy, Jadin, had begged his parents to home school him to get him away from the cruelty. Savage said,

My heart breaks for Jadin’s parents and I don’t doubt that they’re filled with regret and I don’t want to make their pain worse. But I’m going to repost my advice for parents of bullied gay teenagers because there are other Jadins out there who haven’t harmed themselves but who may be at risk of doing so:

If you know your gay kid is being bullied at his school err on the side of overreacting. Err on the side of doing something drastic. Err on the side of turning your own life upside down. Because you don’t want to find out the abuse was more than your kid could bear when it’s too fucking late to do anything about it.

Straight parents: If you know your gay kid is being brutalized in his school and you’ve complained and it’s gotten worse, get him the fuck out of there. Homeschool him. Homeschool him and sue the school. Move away. Move someplace more tolerant. Move someplace better. If you can’t move away—or if you can’t move right away—send your son or daughter to live with relatives in another city, a better city…. And straight parents? Once you realize your kid is gay—which parents of gay kids usually realize long before their gay kids realize it themselves—take a long, hard look at the community in which you live. Take a long, hard look at the church where you worship. Take a long, hard look at the schools your kid will be forced to attend.

Then decide if staying put is worth your child’s life.

My heart goes out for Jadin, and for every kid that felt or feels so scared of being him or herself that suicide seems the only option. My heart goes out for all the kids that are hiding who they are, because of this fear. Savage makes a really good point, people: when our communities cease to be unsafe, we need to get out. When public schools cease to be safe for bullied LGBT kids, homeschooling can be an ally to the LGBT movement.

That  being said, many of us in conservative Christian homeschooling subcultures know that not all homeschooling communities are safe for LGBT individuals. Growing up gay or trans or even asexual in a world where the loudest voices demonize gay marriage and advocate stoning can be gut-wrenching and brutal. We who have been through this world know the horror stories: the kids that were kicked out of their homes, that were rejected by nearly everyone who knew them, that were forbidden from ever contacting family and friends again.

This week, Homeschoolers Anonymous honors the voices of our LGBT friends and peers. We are giving a platform to the stories of those homeschoolers who weathered the storm: the ones that are still terrified of coming out, the ones that have come out and experienced rejection, the ones that have come out and found acceptance, and the ones that are still processing everything and putting their selves’ pieces back together.

This week is for everyone that has felt different. The L’s, B’s, G’s, T’s, A’s, Q’s — ah hell, this week is for the whole alphabet of humanity!

Homeschoolers are gay. And so many other things, too. And all of us at HA — regardless of our identities and orientations — stand together in solidarity in the affirmation of each other’s humanity, beauty, and worth.

*****

Update, 05/21/13:

The heart and soul of this week’s LGBT homeschool awareness series is to stand in solidarity with our friends and peers of all sexual identities and orientations. I came up with the title, “Homeschoolers Are Gay,” based on consultation with some personal friends who are LGBT homeschoolers. The goal was to use a title that was inclusive, catchy, and poked fun at pop culture’s perjorative use of “gay” and tendency to otherize. That being said, a concern was raised yesterday that this title can feel alienating to some members of the LGBT community. And if even one person feels alienated, that is one person too many. The whole purpose of this week is to include everyone.

So, after further consultation with several of this week’s writers, I am choosing to rephrase this week’s series as “Homeschoolers Are Out.” I would also like to stress that, whenever I say “LGBT,” I am not limiting the week to those specific letters. All identities and orientations are welcome. I will be changing the main graphic for the series to reflect this rephrasing.

My sincerest apologies to anyone that felt excluded.

On another note: thanks, everyone, for the amazing support yesterday as this series begins. The stories we will be hearing this week are near and dear to my heart, as they are the stories of people I care about and love.

End Child Protection: Doug Phillips, HSLDA, and the 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit

HA Editorial Team62 Comments

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 By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

In 2009, an exclusively male group of conservative Christian leaders in the homeschooling world descended upon Indianapolis, Indiana. The event was the Men’s Leadership Summit. While its purpose was to draft a unifying vision for what they called “the Christian home education movement,” it included speeches on a variety of topics that were part of the vision.

These topics included the necessity of patriarchy: girls needing to have an entirely home-focused education,  the need to defeat “feminism” in homeschooling, and the concern that “the female sin of the internet” (framed as equal to “the male sin of pornography”) was blogging. Indeed, blogging could be the kryptonite to the homeschool Superman, the patriarchal Ubermensch. Men needed to take back their rightful place as head of their own households and as members of churches and homeschool groups through a new vision. Speakers at the summit claimed that, in doing these things, they could change the world. To the end of world-changing, submission of women and children was mandated and homeschooling was to be reframed as “discipleship,” the specific tool to accomplish world-change for generations to come.

This post is long and detailed and will include all of the information currently available about the Men’s Leadership Summit. This post will also focus on how this event’s goals transcended the narrow confines of entrenching Christian male superiority in the homeschooling world. In fact, it extended to their dream of ending public education entirely and and implementing their expansive conception of “parental rights.” It was at this summit that a former HSLDA attorney articulated a disturbing call: a call to end child protection as we know it. This call places the recent controversy between Libby Anne, the HSLDA, and Homeschoolers Anonymous’ #HSLDAMustAct campaign into an entirely new and much more urgent context.

A Brief History of the 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit

The Christian Home Educations of Colorado (CHEC) is a state homeschool organization founded in 1985. Directed by Kevin Swanson since 1999, CHEC hosted a “National Leadership Summit”  in 2006. This was a men’s only event, described by Generations With Vision as “a men’s leadership meeting…for home school leaders across the nation, in order to encourage home school dads to fully embrace the vision, and to launch a vision for the future of a movement.” There is nothing of particular interest on the Internet about this first summit. The same, however, cannot be said about its sequel.

In December 12, 2008, Kevin Swanson announced on the Generations With Vision blog a new summit, a “National Leadership Summit with Kevin Swanson, Doug Phillips, Chris Klicka, Voddie Baucham, Dr. Brian Ray.”

According to CHEC, this event — even though it was in another state — was officially hosted by the Colorado organization: “CHEC host[ed] a 2nd National Leaderhip Summit in Indianapolis.” It was allegedly co-sponsored by HSLDA, but I cannot find any verification of that from the little original source material that is available. The Men’s Leadership Summit had five headlining speakers, according to Generations With Vision: “Chris Klicka (HSLDA), Dr. Brian Ray (NHERI), Douglas Phillips (Vision Forum), Voddie Baucham, and yours truly [Kevin Swanson].”

Swanson believed this summit to be remarkable because, “We have [never], in the history of the movement drawn so many visionary leaders into one room at one time to discuss the home school vision.” Furthermore, he says, everyone is attending on their own accord, because they want to: “Every leader represented (including speakers) are volunteering their own time to this meeting.”

And what was the purpose of this historical summit of exclusively male homeschooling leaders? Swanson says, “The objectives of this 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit are first, to define a vision for the future of the Christian home education movement.” Not just a “vision,” though. There is another, more important objective of the summit: “the development of a Christian Education Manifesto statement.”

This, then, should be the most important, defining moment in the entire history of the conservative, Christian homeschooling movement. All of the movement’s visionary leaders will be there, he says, and they will be creating the movement’s very own vision and manifesto. As that is the explicit, publicized purpose of this summit, all these speakers — Klicka from HSLDA, Phillips from Vision Forum and previously from HSLDA, Ray from HSLDA’s NHERI, Baucham, and Swanson — will be attending to (1) create a vision and (2) create a manifesto.

It is curious, however, that — up until two days ago — I never heard of this summit. Even more surprising is that, apart from some serious digging, this seemingly most-important homeschooling summit of all time barely exists on the Internet. The website for the event, 2009leadershipsummit.com, no longer exists. There are no recordings, no mentions of this summit on Generations With Vision (save the one I just cited), or Vision Forum, or HSLDA. I had to go a good, old fashioned web archive service just to view archives of the original event website.

To save you the hassle of finding the right archive, I will detail what the now-expired 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit website said. But I will also provide links to the archived versions for your own perusal.

The 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit was held on March 5-7, 2009. It had a mission statement: “Defining a Vision for the Christian Home Education Movement.” The website’s home page explicitly stated the purpose of the event:

“In March of 2009, Christian Home Educators of Colorado will host homeschool leaders from around the country at a national gathering in Indianapolis. The Purpose? To lay out a vision for home education in the 21st Century.”

The About page of the website goes into further detail about the summit’s “vision”:

The homeschooling movement has entered challenging times . . .Challenging times require extraordinary leadership . . .Extraordinary leadership requires dynamic vision.

The time has come to define the vision. With the explosion of school choice and the increased accessibility of state-funded options for home educators, the time has come to define the vision that characterizes the Christian Home Education movement, thus unifying both national and state leadership and solidifying the vision for generations to come. As George Washington said at the Constitutional Convention, “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God.”

For Such a Time as This, in a Changing Political and Socio-Economic Climate . . .

Home education is poised to bear significant effects on the how we do education, economics, church, and politics in the years to come. As leaders, we feel it is important that we be self-aware of the direction we are headed.

The goal of the 2009 Leadership summit is to define a vision for the future of the Christian home education movement. Together, we must lay down a rock-solid, biblically-based vision for home education that will withstand the attacks of our current generation and preserve this precious vision for future generations. To accomplish this goal, we are assembling the key national leaders, authors, researchers, speakers and advocates who have framed the homeschool vision over the past generation (1979-2009).

Another objective for the leadership summit will be the development of a Christian Education Manifesto statement.

The speakers listed are identical to what Kevin Swanson said on the Generations With Vision blog: Chris Klicka, Doug Phillips, Voddie Baucham, Brian Ray, and Kevin Swanson.

Finally, the accommodations: As already stated, even though the Men’s Leadership Summit is “hosted” and “sponsored” by a Colorado organization, it is interestingly held in Indianapolis. Even more interesting is where: it is not held a normal convention center. Rather it is held “at the Indianapolis Training Center in Indianapolis, Indiana,” a facility “owned by the Institute for Basic Life Principles.”

Yes, the Men’s Leadership Summit was held at one of Bill Gothard’s IBLP/ATI training centers. Specifically: Indianapolis Training Center, 2820 N. Meridian St., Indianapolis, IN 46208. Although now that center appears to be a new IBLP project, the “Verity Institute,” a college created by Gothard and ATI’s Trent Thompson to “help students obtain a college degree without…losing their faith.”

So in 2009, an exclusive group of male homeschool leaders got together at a conference held at Bill Gothard’s training center, to be inspired by talks by frequent HSLDA guest Kevin Swanson, then-current (now deceased) HSLDA attorney Klicka, former HSLDA attorney Phillips, current HSLDA-affiliated researcher Ray, and Heritage Defense ally Baucham. And all of this was to culminate in one thing: a grand vision, or manifesto, for the future of what they themselves term “the Christian Home Education Movement.” And none of these organizations ever mention it happening.

Shall we take a look at what happened, then?

The “Manifesto” of the Men’s Leadership Summit

There is very little primary source material available for determining what happened. However, two bloggers — John Holzmann and Karen Campbell — have preserved a few items, which are extraordinarily important. 

A Manifesto for Christian Education

The first item is “A Manifesto for Christian Education,” which was handed out by Kevin Swanson at the end of the summit. That manifesto, as recorded by Campbell, is as follows:

A MANIFESTO FOR CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

The Basic Elements

First Proposition

The beginning of wisdom and knowledge in the education of our children is the fear of God.

The Worldview

All education assumes and presents a basic worldview, and Christian education is based on a biblical, God-centered worldview.

The Purpose

The primary purpose of education is to equip our children to live to the glory of God.

The Sphere

It is the family – not the state or the church – whom God has assigned the responsibility and attendant rights to educate their children.

The Teachers

Parents are the principal and primary instructors for their children.

The Content

The training in humility -and fear, faith and character is preeminent and inseparably integrated in the intellectual development of a child.

The Core Curriculum

The Word of God is the primary textbook for our children’s education.

The Summary

Therefore, we affirm that education is discipleship, and Christian Education is Deuteronomy 6:7. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. Deuteronomy 6:7

The main observation to be made about this manifesto is that, according to Swanson, education should utilize the Bible as its primary textbook. Not science books, history books, or mathematics books, but the Bible. Education equals discipleship. This demonstrates that education should not only be primarily religious, but — it seems — exclusively so. Children are also to be trained in “humility” and “fear.” And making one’s children humble and fearful is a task God has assigned not to state schools or private schools (or even church-based private schools) but to parents.

Cindy Kunsman from Under Much Grace has a good summary of this “Manifesto”: “I think it’s been another lesson in the wisdom of Solomon that there is nothing new under the sun, and there is nothing really new in patriocentricity and the Vision Forum driven CHEC…The MCE is essentially an outline of major points already contained in the Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy.” 

Transcripts of Swanson, Baucham, and Phillips presentations

The only copies of speeches from the Summit, that I can find, are preserved on John Holzmann’s blog. The Summit’s site is not up anymore; HSLDA, Vision Forum, and Generations With Vision do not have audio recordings or transcripts. At one point in time, there was a website — Resounding Voice — that sold the original audio recordings of the talk. (Resounding Voice is run by Joshua Erber, a homeschool graduate and Patrick Henry re-enactor.)

Holzmann purchased the recordings of the presentations of the Summit. He then linked to Resounding Voice so that others can also obtain the recordings. However, the links to the recordings now lead to “database errors.” And if you go on Resounding Voice’s website, there are no mentions of a Men’s Leadership Summit, there are no talks by Phillips or Ray or any of the speakers from the Summit, and — of especial note — there is not a single recording from Chris Klicka on that site in general.

So all we have to go off of to determine what was said at the Summit are presentations by Swanson, Baucham, and Phillips transcribed by John Holzmann. These presentations are divided into five parts. I will summarize Holzmann’s findings under each part’s link:

2009 Christian Home Educators of Colorado (CHEC) “Men’s Leadership Summit,” Part I

In Part One, Holzmann summarizes some of the themes throughout the conference: the Reformation; fathers are responsible for family discipline; homeschoolers should use “home discipleship not home education,” because “we out not be preparing our children for Harvard… but (instead for heaven”; gender roles via “biblical manhood and womanhood”; countering the rise of “feminism” in not just the culture at large but also within the homeschooling movement; the need to integrate religion into every school subject; the need to train daughters to be moms and supportive spouses, not leaders.

Of particular concern is this observation: “In an open forum Friday night, one of the participants at the conference asked three questions of Doug Phillips related to this obvious missing piece. One of the questions specifically asked for Phillips’ views concerning a woman’s ability to have a career in addition to being a great mom and a great spouse. Phillips’ response indicated that he believes it is unbiblical for a woman to have a career.”

Holzmann ends Part One with this: “Bill Roach, CHEC’s president, introduced each speaker at the Summit. According to my source, before he introduced Kevin Swanson for Thursday Evening Session I, he said, ‘This weekend is to define what Christian Home Education is and to strategize our next moves.'”

CHEC “Men’s Leadership Summit,” Part II–“For Such a Time as This — The 1000-Year Battle Over the Hearts and Minds of the Next Generation”

Part Two is Kevin Swanson’s speech, “The 1000-Year Battle Over the Hearts and Minds of the Next Generation.” Swanson begins his speech by referencing the Father of Reconstructionism, RJ Rushdoony, and then claiming that the “Pillars of Homeschooling” — Harris, Klicka, and Farris — were the foundation for what he is about to say:

Let’s thank God for the men and women who went before us–the R.J. Rushdoonys, the Gordon Clarks, the Cornelius Van Tils–who created the materials that we are using today. I’ve also read some great materials written by Gregg Harris and Chris Klicka and Mike Farris. These guys were writing things in the 1980s that we are saying today. . . .

We here, today, stand on the shoulders of guys who went before us 20 and 30 years ago who started The Reformation of the 20th Century.

Swanson then goes to detail the problems with our world, including gems such as, “Men are not being men.” He also then says that the “Manifesto” — which, remember, was the point of this whole thing? — was going to be “put off.” But it is still necessary, for some rather bleak reasons:

By the way, we are going to put off the publishing of the Manifesto. We’re not doing it this week, because we don’t think we have cultivated it enough. We’re going to give you an outline, a preview of that Manifesto…

I think it’s about time we had such a manifesto because, number one, education is falling apart in America. Our culture is falling apart. And the culture, the social system, is a derivative of the educational system. And the political system is a derivative of the social system. And it’s all falling apart… Our world is falling apart!

…Call it what you will, existentialistic, humanistic, materialistic, whatever it is, it is enveloping our culture, our academic system, our universities, our economic system. It is raging. And if our little children even get one little toe in that river, it will suck them through and [make] them join the millions upon millions of Christian children who have been taken into this river.

To Swanson, our world is on the brink of extinction. But not just any extinction. It is the exinction of “The City of Man,” as opposed to “The City of God”:

I think we’re coming to the end of an about 1000-year project of building the City of Man.The City of Man is built by the Cains of this world, the humanists, those that refuse to fear and love and worship the living God. It is their project. And this project has been worked on for the last 1000 years.

The root of this is that we, I guess, have not integrated God into every school subject:

Guys, if you teach science, if you teach chemistry, . . . don’t you dare to do it without stopping from time to time and saying, ‘. . . Children, let’s worship [the God who made these things]. Get down on your knees and worship the God who made these things.

…Universities haven’t taught that way in hundreds of years. I’ll tell you, that’s what’s ruining chemistry and biology and science in our modern age. It’s a scary thing what’s happening. You teach science without the fear of God for a hundred years, I fear what they will do to that science. They’ll destroy it.

Swanson’s solution, naturally, is the Christian home education movement:

God says, “I want you to teach your children My truth as you sit in your house. You see, I want you to take the truth, the reality, the absolute truths, the ethics of God, the laws of God, the perspectives of God, and teach them My worldview, My truth, in the womb of relationship.” And I say we call that discipleship.And that, brothers, is the Manifesto.We are going to bring back the relevance of God. We’re going to bring back worship, bring back confessions, bring back relationships in the education of our children.

…We need to call [Christians] to use words like discipleship and nurture. Stop talking schools with me. Don’t talk about education with me. Let’s not talk about home education and Christian education, Christian schools. Let’s talk about discipleship. Let’s talk about a focus on faith and character. Let’s focus on the discipling of a child.

…So, brothers, let’s restore the concept of discipleship in our homes and in our families. Let’s take the arms of those little children and say, “Let me lead you to Jesus. Let me teach you about Christ.” Let’s nurture them in these relationships. Let’s nurture them in the algebra class. Let’s disciple them in the chemistry class. Let’s worship God in the physics class. And then we’ll shock everybody when we begin confessing our sins in the geography class.

That’s education!

CHEC “Men’s Leadership Summit,” Part III – “The Battle for Faith and Family”

Part Three is Voddie Baucham’s speech, “The Battle for Faith and Family.” Baucham begins by identifying himself with the family-integrated church movement, which is a movement, he explains, that is “committed, absolutely committed–in our structure, in our doctrine, in our practice, in our philosophy–to a very simple principle: we look men in the eye and say, “I double-dog dare you to disciple your family and we are not going to do anything structurally to put a net under you. It’s your job.”

Baucham then lists off all the normative statistics that so many of us in the homeschooling world grew to fear: how few Christians “possess a biblical worldview,” how few Christians say there is absolute truth, how the youth today are disenfranchised from Christianity, and so forth. And the zinger: “We are currently losing 70 to 88% of [the youth] by the end of their freshman year in college!”

Baucham says that questions people, including Christians, have about homeschooling — like “What about socialization?” — are rooted in evil:

They all ask the same questions. It’s a running joke in the homeschool community because nobody asks any other questions. And their questions all go back to certification, permission, and instruction. Why? Because they’re Marxist, secular humanists to the core disguised as Christians. That’s why. . . . The homeschool movement is now rife with parents who do not know their roles; do not have a vision for their families; are afraid to lead.

And then there is his ending:

When [people] say they can’t do [some]thing, I say, “You racist, you!”

And they look at me: “Wha-?!??”[

And I answer,] “If I took you to Africa or Asia or South America, and we preached the gospel and some people got saved, you’d spend two weeks there and find one of the guys with God’s hand on him, and you’d say, ‘Now, you’re the pastor and this is your church.’

“But you’re saying that God is not good enough for you. –You racist!”

CHEC “Men’s Leadership Summit,” Part IV – “A Vision for the Family”

Parts Four and Five are the most important to this exploration. They are the speeches from Doug Phillips, an HSLDA attorney for six years and the director of Vision Forum. Phillips begins his first speech, “A Vision for the Family,” by identifying the other speakers as his comrades:

They are my paisanos. They are men that we have had the privilege of being in many battles together, traveling around the country and sharing a synchronous message. Our hearts are linked together.

Phillips thus begins with identifying his message as synchronous with the messages of Swanson, Baucham, Klicka, and Ray. And what is this message? The heart of it is that his version of God is the beginning of knowledge:

The fear of the Lord not only gives us wisdom and knowledge, but it is true faith that tells us to believe when all the empirical data seems to be pointing us in the opposite direction. We must believe what God says when you cannot taste, touch or smell the victory, simply because God said it.

Phillips believes this is important because, he, like Swanson, sees our current time as an apocalypse due to very specific events:

You and I are presiding over the worst international cultural apostasy of the West in more than a thousand years. There [have] been terrible wars, terrible evil. Horrible things have happened…

Never have we had major nations, major cultures that once claimed to be Christian, fundamentally questioning whether marriage is one man and one woman for life…

It is on your watch, it is on my watch that the sodomites are redefining marriage in our land. Never before in history. First time…

More professing Christians want to thwart the womb, to pervert the natural function of the body, to separate life from love, than don’t. First time ever….

This is a judgment on our land. It’s not that America is about to have judgment; it’s that America is in the midst of judgment. This is a judgment. It is perverse. It is evil. It is wrong. And where is all this pointing to? The family!

…these judgments and horrors are the product of our worship of the false gods of our day, our idolatries . . . of self, of materialism; philosophical idolatries: evolutionism, social Darwinism, feminism, statism, Marxism, and hundreds of -isms…

In contrast to all this evil, Phillips brings up Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar as shining role models: “Jim Bob just radiates Christ.”

CHEC “Men’s Leadership Summit,” Part V – “Visionary Fathers”

In his second speech, Doug Phillips brings it all home. This is where Phillips sets forth his vision for the future of the Christian home education movement:

One of the most important things we can do is to have God’s panoramic presentation for us, looking at the past, standing in the present, with our eyes focused on the future. This is a critical component of preparing the next generation for leadership.

What does this future look like?

It involves a future where men take the reins of homeschooling back from women:

The birth of the modern homeschool movement gave us a generation of mighty ladies–ladies that fear the Lord, ladies that wanted to see great things happen to their families, ladies that walk beside their sons and their daughters and their men as well. But it was predominantly a woman’s movement.

Something must be done, before… we become like Massachusetts?

If we do not continue to grow and advance further on toward where God would take us next, we will become worse off, we will become like Massachusetts, like Boston, like New England, which, having had the glory and the blessing of the Gospel, ultimately rejected it and became one of the darkest places imaginable.

The solution is heavier doses of ideology:

Is every homeschooler that goes through a state conference getting a heavy dose of vision and presuppositional apologetics in the area of education? Because if they’re not, we are actually training them to be apostate…

I remember a day when we talked about fundamentals. And we need to be speaking about them again.

…Every subject from math to history needs to be reformed to incorporate distinctively biblical presuppositions about facts and the interpretation of facts.

…We should be explaining to people that mathematics makes no sense in an atheistic universe. We should be telling them that Genesis 1 is the very first primer on basic arithmetic…

And now begins Phillips’ comments that are particularly concerning for those of us in the homeschooling community that are trying to represent moderate voices as well as stand up to child abuse:

We need to realize the state has zero jurisdiction in education. None!

….We understand that the core problem with Child Protective Services is its existence.

…At the end of the day, the problem isn’t simply Child Protective Services to get better; it is eliminating it altogether.

…It is the fathers who have a duty of lovingly leading their family, and fathers, not moms, will be overseeing the home education discipleship of their family.

…the movement within home education circles of creating an androgynous educational system where we view boys and girls as having the very same outcomes of careerism and world independence is contrary to the principles of the Word of God, which teaches that we should be training our daughters, ultimately to prepare themselves for the assumption . . . –and the assumption is, they will be married, they will be keepers at home.

…if we are not willing to talk about this, what it means is, we have been usurped by feminism.

Phillips at this point references Chris Klicka:

I’m quite confident that Chris [Klicka], my brother in HSLDA, . . . We all stand unified in recognizing that the greatest threats are not legal. Those are real and they have to be addressed, but they are not the biggest ones.

And then Phillips veers into something entirely bizarre:

We will lose this movement and this work of God, men, if we do not govern our households. And that means lovingly shepherding our wives. The less you love your wife and the less you shepherd your wife, the more you create an open door for the female sin of the internet. The male sin of the internet is pornography. The female sin of the internet is gossip-mongering…

…We don’t live in the type of communities where our wives tend to go from house to house gossiping. They tend to go from blog to blog gossiping. And they spend their day going from blog to blog gossiping. And some of you are letting them.

…The world is watching. When the lesbian, feminist, transgender publishing house Beacon Press decided to release their exposé this month on families that believe in large households, they knew exactly who to go for. Go to the internet assassins. Go to the blogosphere gossips and get the information to denounce and divide the homeschool movement directly from the wives who live on the internet, gossiping 24/7.

Phillips ends his speech by calling for casting out from the homeschooling movement those who disagree:

The homeschool movement can no longer tolerate, it can no longer handle, unassociated Christian members that are simply not willing to be part of formal biblical associations.

Why? Well, because of anthrax:

If we ever find ourself in a state of martial law; if somebody puts anthrax in one of our major water supplies; if there is a suitcase nuke, which is opened up in a major city, we could very well see panic break out.

So there you have it: the agenda of the 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit. Karen Campbell provides a helpful summary of what the “Manifesto” would look like based on the presentations:

1. Destroy the entire government-run school system and abolish Child Protective Services.

2. Reject and bring an end to church-based or church-run schools.

3. Reject college or any training for daughters that might lead to them being outside of the home.

4. Kick out homeschoolers that are not willing to be part of formal biblical associations.

5. Ensure mothers are not leaders in their homes and protect them from women internet bloggers who see godly womanhood in a different light and who speak out against patriocentricity.

HSLDA’s Doug Phillips on the CPS

In light of the recent controversy between Libby Anne, HSLDA, and Homeschoolers  Anonymous’ #HSLDAMustAct campaign, I’d like to refocus now on what Doug Phillips said at the 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit:

….We understand that the core problem with Child Protective Services is its existence.

…At the end of the day, the problem isn’t simply Child Protective Services to get better; it is eliminating it altogether.

Doug Phillips, a former HSLDA attorney, explicitly called for the destruction of child protective services as they currently exist. This should concern not only the homeschooling community, but also the entire United States. Phillips’ call did not go unnoticed. In fact, Karen Campbell — in writing recently about the #HSLDAMustAct campaign — references this fact:

I am not surprised in the least that this has been the posture of HSLDA. In 2009 they co-sponsored the Homeschool Leadership Summit where one of the goals listed in their manifesto was to get rid of Child Protective Services which I discussed in this podcast series on august 15 and 21, 2010. From the first time I saw that on the list, I was dumbfounded. While I do not believe the government is the solution to all of society’s ills, I do believe there are times when it must step in to protect children who are genuinely being abused. I know many godly parents who do understand this and have become involved in the foster care system in order to provide good homes for little ones in these situations. But to me, the message HSLDA is sending is that protecting the rights of parents to homeschool trumps protecting children (any children) from abuse.

Unlike Karen, I was sadly surprised to read Libby Anne’s series on the relationship between HSLDA and child abuse. While I grew up in the “Christian home education movement” and am intimately familiar with the fears we homeschoolers had of the CPS, and while I witnessed first-hand a lot of abuse experienced by fellow homeschoolers, I was oblivious to the specifics of the relationship. I never knew, for example, that HSLDA was moving from homeschool advocacy to the dismantling of some of the cornerstones of our child welfare laws: anonymous tips, mandatory reporting, and mainstream definitions of child abuse. I never knew the details of the Michael Gravelle case — that he had a history of abuse, and later divorced his wife after he assaulted her — and I did not know that Scott Somerville, an HSLDA attorney, called Gravelle a “hero.”

It is in this context of sad surprise, then, that I encounter the words of Doug Phillips and others at the 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit. Phillips, an HSLDA attorney (though not any longer, since he left HSLDA to run Vision Forum), made a direct threat against child protection and advocated a dystopian —almost Orwellian — dream of what homeschooling can “achieve” for him and other adherents to Christian patriarchy.

Doug Phillips spoke of wanting to gut the egalitarian goals of our society and destroy child protection as we know it.

Does Doug Phillips Speak for HSLDA?

When you have a national event like the 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit, it is difficult to determine how like-minded the speakers are. I remember that, during the California Home Education Association (CHEA) conventions that my dad ran in the Bay Area when I was a kid, there would be speakers of all sorts of ideological leanings. I particularly remember Reb Bradley, a courtship proponent, mercilessly tearing into Jonathan Lindvall, a betrothal proponent, for being “extreme.” Of course, everyone at these conventions shared a common vision for conservative Christian homeschooling. But doctrinal disagreements were everywhere.

But here is the difference between CHEA conventions and the 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit: CHEA conventions did not explicitly state their purpose was to create a grand, unifying vision and manifesto for the entirety of the Christian home education movement. The speakers attending did not agree to that; the speakers attending did not constantly reference each other as ideological comrades; and the speakers attending did not have their speeches mysteriously disappear after the fact.

The question then arises, when Doug Phillips calls for the destruction of child protective services in the United States — or really, any of the other extreme positions he has — where does HSLDA stand on that?

This is particularly important with the CPS question right now. HSLDA has — to this day — not condemned another one of their attorneys, Somerville, for calling Gravelle (an incestuous child molester and self-appointed warden of his own caged children) a hero. Also, HSLDA has visibly chosen to target child protection laws instead of focus on homeschool advocacy.

To determine the relationship between Doug Phillips and HSLDA, the best thing to do is just look at what Doug Phillips and HSLDA themselves say. According to Vision Forum’s website, Phillips “served for six years at the Home School Legal Defense Association in multiple capacities including staff attorney and Director of the National Center for Home Education.”

Phillips was thus not only an HSLDA attorney. He was the Director of HSLDA’s National Center for Home Education, now called the Federal Relations Department and run by William Estrada, former director of HSLDA’s Generation Joshua program.

A quick search of HSLDA’s website shows a number of results for Doug Phillips. In 1992, Phillips was a legal staffer for HSLDA who traveled to Ontario to speak at one of Gregg Harris’ workshops. By 1993, he was the Director for Government Affairs for the National Center for Home Education, tasked with lobbying against things like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, “all child rights bills,” and corporal punishment restrictions. In fact, when President Clinton signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (which Michael Farris drafted), Phillips attended the signing ceremony in Farris’ place when latter could not attend.

In 1995, when the extraordinarily divisive controversy in the homeschooling community over H.R. 6 erupted, Doug Phillips was at the center. It was Phillips who received the alert from Dick Armey’s office. According to HSLDA’s timeline of the H.R. 6 situation,

Doug Phillips assembles the team of ten staffers to blanket Congress, personally delivering the letter to each of the 435 Congressional offices….Doug Phillips meets with Martin Hoyt, the Washington, D.C., representative of the American Association of Christian Schools, to discuss the dangers of the Miller Amendment… Doug Phillips meets with Horace Cooper and Dean Clancy of Armey’s staff to strategize on how to obtain broad support for the “Home School/Private School Freedom Amendment.” …Christopher Klicka and Doug Phillips hold a press conference in Houston, Texas, attended by 100 home school support group leaders and three television networks.

And if you read Phillips’ own account of the fiasco, he is almost entirely the one responsible:

I was the person who received the phone call from the office of Congressman Dick Armey alerting the Home School Legal Defense Association of a threat posed by bill H.R.6…I was given the honor of serving as Director of the National Center for Home Education…I launched a national e-mail alert and physically gathered a brigade of valiant home educators to descend upon the Capitol en masse.

If this was not clear, then: Doug Phillips was the man behind one of HSLDA’s most important legislative moments in their history of advocacy.

Also in 1995, Phillips worked alongside Farris and Klicka “with a broad coalition of pro-family groups, including Concerned Women for America and Eagle Forum, to ensure that the freshmen of the 104th Congress will fulfill their promise to completely eliminate the federal role in education.” 1996 saw Philips training homeschool lobbyists as well as featured in HSLDA’s Court Report as one of “The Dads of HSLDA.”

He also was part of HSLDA’s National Legislative Strategy Day. Along with Farris and Klicka, Phillips “briefed the home school leaders on the latest developments and strategies concerning a host of federal issues. The topics included the Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act, the national registry and identification system in the Immigration bill, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, abolishing the federal role in education, and the Careers Act.”

1996 seems to be the last year that Phillips appears as an HSLDA attorney. But since then, HSLDA has made zero efforts to distance themselves from his viewpoints. In fact, almost a decade after Phillips left HSLDA to run Vision Forum, he was still featured by HSLDA as a peer. In 2007, HSLDA referred to Phillips as one of “the nation’s top leaders.” Also in 2007, Chris Klicka received an award from Doug Phillips and Vision Forum for his homeschooling advocacy. In 2008, HSLDA says of him that he is “one of the most popular conference speakers in the nation today because of his ability to encourage, inform, and inspire.” In fact, HSLDA proudly sponsored a reception at an event where he was the keynote speaker.

The official relationship between HSLDA and Doug Phillips is thus one of continued mutual admiration. There are several debates online about whether this “official” admiration is real or not. I have heard rumors that HSLDA considers Phillips to be “radical” or “extreme,” or that leaders in HSLDA consider things like ATI and Vision Forum to be “cults.” But in terms of official statements that are publicly verifiable, at no point has HSLDA distanced itself from Phillips’ ideas, and in fact on many accounts they are the same: ending public education, keep their ideas of corporal punishment legal, and so forth.

If HSLDA really was concerned with preserving child protection services, they have made no efforts to counter Phillips’ call for ending the CPS — a call made at the exact same summit where HSLDA’s research guru Brian Ray and fellow HSLDA attorney Chris Klicka spoke at, the same Klicka that Libby Anne has so well documented as being zealously dedicated in his own right to dismantling child welfare laws.

Conclusion

It has already been pointed out by Kathryn Brightbill that what Phillips said about child protective services is a sentiment shared on many levels by other HSLDA attorneys:

HSLDA seems to be arguing that even parents who are already known to law enforcement and CPS as abusive should still be allowed to homeschool. And here is another article where Christopher Klicka argues that the child abuse prevention system is too aggressive. Here is Scott Summerville claiming that parents who withdraw their kids from school to hide abuse already have social services on their trail. No suggestion that these parents should be prohibited from homeschooling if they’re withdrawing their kids to hide abuse, just an assertion that CPS will be watching.I am unable to find an instance where HSLDA has indicated that they believe that abusive parents should be prevented from homeschooling.

Brightbill wonders whether this might be part of some overarching legal strategy on HSLDA’s part:

The only thing that makes sense to me is that HSLDA is doing what they’re doing with abusers as part of a well thought out legal strategy with the end game being the Supreme Court ruling that homeschooling is a fundamental right that is subject to virtually zero regulations…The idea that HSLDA would be using children who have been abused by their parents as pawns to expand the right to homeschooling is too horrific for me to really want to contemplate. But yet, it’s also the strategy that makes logical sense if an expanded fundamental right to homeschooling is the goal.

Whether or not this is HSLDA’s intention, here is what we know: Two HSLDA attorneys attended the 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit, which included some of the most dystopian, nightmarish language about the future of homeschooling that I have ever encountered. The evidence of this fact has almost gone entirely unnoticed, and all the original evidence apparently has vanished. At that conference, Doug Phillips, a former HSLDA attorney, called for the destruction of the United States’ child protection system. A then-current (now deceased) HSLDA attorney, Christopher Klicka, was there. He never repudiated Phillips’ statement, and his career indicates that he, too, desired a similar dismantling of child welfare laws. Another current HSLDA attorney, Scott Somerville, called Michael Gravelle, a child and wife abuser, a hero.

This is no longer about homeschooling. The vision and manifesto laid out at the 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit should surely worry anyone with a vested interest in countering the extreme voices in the Christian home education movement. Laid out were misogynistic, educationally neglectful, and frankly dangerous ideas. And as Heather Doney points out, “This kind of perverse ideology has hurt too many unsuspecting families, too many men, women, and children already, including my own family. ”

But also laid out there was a vision that entails a fundamental redefinition of how our society thinks about child abuse. That fundamental redefinition would have extraordinary ramifications for all children in this country, just not homeschooling children. That redefinition, articulated so explicitly by a former HSLDA attorney, has only been echoed and enhanced by other representatives of HSLDA through their own words and actions.

If HSLDA fundamentally disagrees with Phillips and fundamentally disagrees with Somerville’s choice of words, then now is the time for them to speak up. For too long their silence has been complicity.

“We understand that the core problem with Child Protective Services is its existence.”

This is no longer about homeschooling and child abuse in homeschooling communities. This is about protecting every child in this country.

25 Reasons To Sign The #HSLDAMustAct Petition

HA Editorial Team8 Comments

25 Reasons To Sign The #HSLDAMustAct Petition

Please sign the #HSLDAMustAct petition on Change.org!

Yesterday we issued a challenge to HSLDA to commit to taking concrete steps to address child abuse in homeschooling. Specifically, we called for HSLDA, the public face of American homeschooling, to launch a public awareness campaign to fight abuse within our homeschooling communities.

We have an official petition hosted on Change.org. Please sign it and share it with your friends in person, through email, and via social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

You might wonder, why should I sign this petition? To answer this question, we would like to share 25 reasons for doing so that were publicly posted on our petition’s page by signees. They come from all over, from California to as far as Germany. They are former homeschoolers, former employees and members of HSLDA, and homeschooling parents. These voices are growing by the day and they need to be heard.

So without further ado, here are 25 reasons to sign the #HSLDAMustAct petition:

*****

Sarah, UNIVERSITY CITY, MO:

This is important to me because I too was an extremely neglected and physically and emotionally abused homeschooled child.

Emily, APO, GERMANY:

As a former employee of HSLDA I am disheartened and sickened to hear of the child abuse cover ups and ignorning blatant neglect of children. This is deeply saddening to me.

Julie Anne, RICHLAND, WA:

Because it’s the right thing to do!

Jessica, BONNY DOON, CA:

I am a survivor of childhood abuse and worked in the field for years- My care goes deep, esp. when children are manipulated about the soul’s deep need to have a relationship with spirit, True Nature – God – by parents, ministers etc who use this need to abuse and distort children’s relationship with themselves, with God or no God.

Samuel, HUNTSVILLE, AL:

As a former homeschooler who did NOT deal with abuse firsthand, I DID witness how the “homeschool community” worked together to hide abuse that was occurring in families within its midst.

Ryan, SPRINGFIELD, OR:

Abuse happens everywhere, and this includes homeschooling families. HSLDA, the public face of homeschooling in the U.S., should make a public and principled stand against it.

Wesley, GRANADA HILLS, CA:

As a homeschooler who befriended children of two abusive homeschooling families, I know that these problems exist and must be addressed. Child abuse, both physical and (perhaps predominately) psychological, is a major problem in homeschooling circles and must be addressed. Parents who abuse their children do not deserve to be legally shielded from the state.

Matthew, COLORADO SPRINGS, CO:

I was a homeschooler, and I’m against child abuse!!!

Alessandra, ROANOKE, VA:

As someone who was homeschooled through highschool, and involved in HSLDA growing up, it’s important that whilst preserving the ability to homeschool, those involved in it not turn a blind eye to abuse and neglect. Fixing that problem needs to start from within the “homeschool movement.”

Mari, WATERTOWN, SD:

I was homeschooled which gave my parents numerous opportunities to abuse me. Homeschooling could be a great thing — but ONLY when it is done in a public manner and ONLY when parents are held accountable for their actions.

Sarah, OVERLAND, MO:

I am so torn about this. As someone who was homeschooled K-12 and homeschools my own children, I am a huge advocate for homeschooling rights and the ability to choose our own curriculum and such. But as a foster parent, I’ve seen abuse. I have friends who have suffered abuse. We cannot protect any abuser, and while I believe in “innocent until proven guilty”, we should not be allowing child abusers to continue homeschooling their kids when we would be fighting for removal of these kids for any other parent. I’ve seen abused kids going back to their abusers. I can’t imagine how it would feel if they were also allowed no escape from the abuser to even go to school. This is a very slippery slope as CPS is called for things like not vaccinating, but it does worry me when people don’t do basic doctor visits under the guise of “autonomy”. I know from experience that most cases of abuse are discovered at school and at dr visits. If we have nothing to hide, then we cannot be defending abusers.

Kierstyn, FREEPORT, ME:

As an ex-homeschooler raised in an abusive family who *are* still members of HSLDA, I’m tired of abusers being defended in court because “homeschooling” couldn’t possibly have anything wrong with it.

Chandra, FESTUS, MO:

It is morally repugnant and hypocritical that an organization that claims to defend parents right to educate their children (predominantly for religious purposes), will not address nor speak to the atrocities and abuses that occur because of the lack of oversight on parents who chose such an option. HSLDA, though in their statement has said, “We believe that every child deserves a healthy upbringing and that parents have the high honor and duty to meet that child’s needs;” will not define abuse, nor have they ever in their 30 year existence ever condoned or supported a piece of legislation that would provide protections for children and thereby recognizing that there are abusive (and even deadly) cases that have occured in the name of home schooling. In a country whose very freedom HSLDA touts, will not grant these same freedoms to the youngest and most vulnerable citizens of this great nation. It is time for a change. This is a human rights issue, and we will not be silent until we have seen such change take place.

Catherine, ALEXANDRIA, VA:

My parents abused me emotionally, physically, and spiritually for 18 years. Because I was homeschooled, they were able to do so constantly and could control every detail of my life. I’ve stayed silent for far too long, and there are many others who want to have a voice, but they are being silenced by their abusers–their parents. It’s time to shed some light on the dark side of homeschooling.

Hannah, MURRAY, NE:

As a former homeschooled student K-12 who was abused, I felt no protection and was told I should not report abuse to authorities, because my parents were told never to talk to CPS or the police by HSLDA. Now a mother, I realize the necessity of accountability for parents, including myself.

Kathryn, GAINESVILLE, FL:

As a homeschool graduate, I believe that it’s high time that HSLDA stop covering for abuse and neglect. It’s time for them to develop an abuse prevention program and to stop pretending this is not a problem.

Cheryl, ALEXANDRIA, VA:

I have spent the last 10 years of my adult life recovering from being given a tool box that does not fit in the world we live in. Scripture should never be used to oppress or to shield abusers. Stand up for the innocent, the children. It’s what Jesus calls us to.

Jai, CHARLOTTE, NC:

I was raised homeschooled. My parents were long time HSLDA members and all of us suffered severe spiritual abuse as well as mental abuse and the problems of the Quiverfull movement. I support this petition and ask that HSLDA school members in the definitions of abuse, child rights, and put forth a system for stopping it and reporting it when it occurs.

Shaney, AUSTIN, TX

As a former homeschooler, I’m appalled at HSLDA’s willingness to ignore, and even indirectly promote, child abuse. This needs to stop.

David, BEAVER FALLS, PA:

I was homeschooled and while I certainly did not live in fear of abuse, I also believe it’d be easy for negligent and abusive parents to go under the radar.

Scottie, TULSA, OK:

I have several friends and even family members who work with Child Protective Services. The information and advice HSLDA spreads in a nominal attempt to help homeschooling families defend their rights in reality only hurts their cause in the long run. Fighting CPS at every turn gives homeschoolers a bad name and makes it extremely difficult to investigate cases of actual abuse. HSLDA should be working WITH CPS and similar agencies to help root out ACTUAL cases of abuse whenever present, refuse to defend or speak well of parents who DO abuse their children, and recognize and communicate that some families SHOULD NOT homeschool their children, at least not without significan oversight and accountability.

Rachel, BLOOMINGTON, IN:

As a homeschooled child growing up, I bought the HSLDA line that Child Protective Services were out to take me and my siblings away from my parents because they were Christian homeschoolers. As a teen I read Michael Farris’s book, Anonymous Tip, which only cemented this fear. Teaching children that those who want to help them are actually out to hurt them is actually a tactic child abusers use to keep their victims under their control, and yet that is the message HSLDA gives to homeschooled children. For shame, HSLDA. For shame.

Naomi, FULTON, MO:

Even if 99% of homeschooling families were functional and happy, HSLDA must do something about the 1% where children are neglected and abused. To do otherwise is to be complicit with the crime and to send a message that HSLDA cares more about power than it does about children.

Scarlettah, LOS ANGELES, CA:

There are growing numbers of former homeschoolers telling of their abusive experiences enabled by the lack of internal and external awareness of and interest in keeping kids safe. There is a vacuum created when parental rights are preserved and elevated to the exclusion of children’s rights. Please work to protect these children, not just their parents.

Rebecca, LOS ALTOS, CA:

As a homeschooled student, I experienced and observed this problem first hand. My parents (and the rest of my homeschooling community) knew of at least one homeschooling family that had rather extreme abuse, but didn’t dare report it because of the message they received from HSLDA not to involve the government, lest it bring any additional oversight of homeschooling families. I believe that every child deserves to have their humanity respected and honored. HSLDA, stand up for children and stand up to abuse.

*****

Thank for your support thus far. Please continue to bring awareness to this crucial matter. Make your voice known on HSLDA’s Facebook page. Tweet HSLDA at @HSLDA with the tag #HSLDAMustAct.

Together, we can make homeschooling better.