Homosexual Penguins 2: The Leftist Strikes Back

Remember the government-funded "academics" whose great contribution to modern life was to promote homosexuality, by, among other methods, publishing and promoting books about homosexual penguins? I wrote about it back in March.

Well, the Northern Echo has an interview with Dr Elizabeth "Thick Lizzy" Atkinson, the post-modernist cretin responsible for this colossal waste of public money:

Dr Elizabeth Atkinson, 48, of Sunderland University, is the director of the No Outsiders project, which uses books such as King & King in an effort to combat homophobic bullying. The two-year project - which is halfway through its first year - is being run in 14 primary schools in the South and the Midlands, with plans to expand it nationally.

Yes. Why read them Enid Blyton, when you could brainwash them?

Sitting in a cafe in Newcastle, Dr Atkinson says she doesn't mind that the project has attracted such vehement opposition - it's all part of the wider debate. "To be attacked is a sign of recognition that you are doing something to change the world and the job of education is to change something for the better," she says. "Fair enough if I'm attacked for changing the world for the better - so be it."

Note to Thick Lizzy: the purpose of working in education is not to change the world for the better (something which you certainly aren't doing anyway). Astonishingly enough, it is to - wait for it - educate! And, by the way, that doesn't mean the same thing as 'indoctrinate'.

And can't you just hear the sanctimonious tone of this woman's voice? "I'm changing the world for the better", forsooth! I can think of many, many people doing rather more towards that end than her, and bragging about it rather less.

"We knew when we started this that the Christian groups wouldn't like it because they don't like homosexuals. It wasn't surprising."

Does anyone else get the impression that she doesn't like Christians?

The £568,000 research project has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

As I said last time: that means it's been funded by the taxpayer. That's us, folks!

It is led by Dr Atkinson, reader in social and educational inquiry [not quite a Regius Professorship is it? - FR], and her colleague at Sunderland University, Renee DePalma, in conjunction with Exeter University and the Institute of Education in London. The aim is to help primary school teachers develop their own school-based projects to combat homophobic bullying. Those projects can use books, such as King & King, or they can be arts or theatre based. But, says Dr Atkinson, it is not about teaching four-year-olds about sex.

"It's got nothing to do with sexual activity, it's an equality issue and a human rights issue," she says. "It's no more talking about sexuality if you've got two princes falling in love than if you have a prince and a princess falling in love. If they raised questions about sex between a prince and prince you would use the same appropriate language as if they'd asked about the prince and the princess.

"But children as young as four are quite aware that there are gay relations. If they turned to a teacher and said 'oh it's a gay dad', it's a quite straightforward acknowledgement for a teacher to say 'that's right' and leave it at that."

One factor behind the scheme, she says, is about recognising that some children do not have heterosexual parents. "If there's somebody with two mums, who comes from this loving family background, but discovers that there's nothing which reflects her life, she may find that she has to be silenced for fear of not appearing to be normal."

Is there any evidence that what Thick Lizzy calls "homophobic bullying" actually takes place? When I was at school, we did actually have a boy whose mother had left his father for another woman. He seemed to be treated pretty much as everyone else, despite the absence of gay penguins enriching our lives, and expanding our wicked, prejudiced, minds.

In any event, a homosexual coupling is far from being the ideal family background for any child, and depicting it as such is simply misleading.

"That silence is imposed on her [by whom? - FR] from the age of three or four, not at 12," she says."If you leave it until secondary school to address those issues you've left it too late because children are already living with the expectations of how girls should behave and how boys should behave. All it takes is to understand that being different is part of normality."

Ooh, how very post-modern. And utterly meaningless.

That normality, says Dr Atkinson, can be reached with help from the books.

Okay, now it just sounds like a sales pitch.

After burbling on a bit, Thick Lizzy continues:

"Section 28 led to the continued marginalisation for children and adults who did not fit into specific norms," says Dr Atkinson. "What repealing Section 28 has done is make it possible for that group of people to have their human rights recognised. It's no good saying we're going to have equality but there's going to be an exception. There should be no exceptions."

Yes. Right, wrong, good, bad. Why discriminate between them? All judgements are just evidence of prejudice, etc, and the facts that homosexual relationships are less stable than heterosexual ones, or that children benefit from having both a mother and a father should just be cast to the winds. After all, why let the facts get in the way of promoting liberal ideals?

This is not simply a question of protecting innocent, and unfortunate, children from bullying because of the dubious lifestyle choices of their parents. For a start, as I said above, there is no evidence that "homophobic bullying" is a problem. Rather, this is an attempt to make children think that homosexuality is a normal, and a good, thing, entirely equal to heterosexuality. And that is simply not the case.