Two days ago I wrote a piece about a shocking assault on toddlers by the folks at Early Childhood Australia. I alerted people to the nefarious agenda these guys have, which in the eyes of many basically amounts to little less than child abuse. That article has already been shared over 1000 times. See here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2016/03/06/when-the-wicked-target-our-children/
Ordinary Australians were rightly outraged, and many have spoken up, so much so that the ECA has already been forced to put out a lame press release trying to downplay all this. They are obviously feeling the heat, back-tracking, and in major damage control. But they can’t get off the hook that easily.
None of the quotes from the original Herald Sun article were repudiated or denied for example. How could they when the folks at ECA in fact said those things? And one simply has to check out their website to see that they have been running with this stuff for years. There is nothing we find in the HS article that goes against anything they have been pushing for decades now.
AJEC Vol. 35 No. 1 March 2010
In this issue:
-Tomboys and sissy girls: Exploring girls’ power, agency and female relationships in childhood through the memories of women
-Kiss and tell: Gendered narratives and childhood sexuality
-The tug of war: When queer and early childhood meet
-Gay mothers and early childhood education: Standing tall
-A review of gay and lesbian themed early childhood children’s literature
-(Re)marking heteronormativity: Resisting practices in early childhood education contexts
Let me simply offer some juicy quotes from this issue. It is utterly shocking stuff. Consider this from the opening editorial:
This special edition of AJEC is one small opening to troubling normalised practices in early childhood, enabling often-silenced conversations located on the borders to enter the mainstream. We hope that, through engaging with the articles, early childhood education moves one step closer to becoming a site of inclusion, hope and possibility for all.
For those not in the know, all this is code word for rejecting traditional morality, biologically-based male and female differences, and heterosexual marriage as both a norm and an ideal. The folks at ECA seem to hate all this, and are pushing the hyper radical agendas of the homosexual lobby, the gender benders, the radical feminists, and the sexual revolutionaries.
Consider the rest of the articles. The ‘tomboy’ article is all about another activist code word: “diversity”. It concludes:
Early childhood educators can play a critical role in providing young children with a supportive environment in which they can express and explore different performances of gender, including those that sit outside heteronormative socio-cultural norms. Supportive adults and an inclusive learning environment are highly significant to the health and wellbeing of young children who choose to take up non-normative performances of gender. Such a flexible and supportive environment is also important for all children, including those who conform to gender norms. This sends a strong message to children about appreciating diversity and difference rather than fearing it, and validates children’s choices to do gender differently if they so wish.
And check this out from the ‘kiss and tell’ article. It says that gender is not “biologically fixed, coherent and stable” but instead is a “social and relational construction,” and then concludes:
If children are in the process of creating their own theories about sexuality, and if these theories maintain normative understandings of sexual relationships, then should adults find ways to engage with young children in order to challenge this heteronormativity? If so, then we have a responsibility to engage with children differently about their sexual knowledge. Opening up, rather than always closing down, spaces in the curriculum for children’s gender and sexual knowledge to be heard, valued and considered is one definite way to begin this work. Until the early years begins to take young children’s views about gender and sexuality seriously, such work will continue to be regarded with suspicion.
Yeah, I am suspicious alright – suspicious of adults with radical agendas trying to make innocent children into their own sleazy image. The ‘tug of war’ article is all about the need to push the homosexual agenda from as early as possible in schools, and support those who are teaching it. It concludes:
The story of Jeannie highlights the continued need for more equitable teaching spaces in both early childhood and teacher education. To achieve this, it is the responsibility of teacher educators to break down the isolation that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender preservice teachers face. In some cases this means developing networks and resources to link other queer preservice teachers, especially those studying in regional locations.
The ‘gay mothers’ article is all about the evil of “heteronormativity” once again – the belief that heterosexuality is normal. This must be fought and resisted all the way the author insists:
Seventeen gay women from 12 lesbian-parented families were asked about their own and their children’s experiences in a variety of early childhood education settings. The findings, which are discussed in terms of a theory of heteronormativity, describe the steps the women reported they needed to take to prepare their children to cope in a heteronormative world. I conclude that, despite seemingly supportive legislation, this group of gay mothers felt it necessary to protect their children from heteronormativity and to prepare them for coping with discrimination.
It concludes:
Heteronormativity permeates every aspect of our lives. The gay mothers in this study were very aware that they did not fit the ‘norm’ and they worked carefully to preempt difficulties that could arise for their children. Most of the mothers were open about their family composition from the outset of the relationships with the teachers. The mothers felt they had to present a consistently positive face to the early childhood centre and to the world to prepare their children for the discrimination they were likely to face.
The ‘review’ article is all about how great it is that ‘diversity’ is on the rise and ‘heteronormativity’ is in decline:
Much has occurred in the area of early childhood children’s literature in the past two decades. The early books were mostly published by alternative presses and sold in alternative gay, lesbian and feminist bookstores. Word of them spread from person to person….
The most recent decade of early childhood children’s literature is growing from these seminal works. With the increased visibility of gays and lesbians in society, books have become more nuanced in their storylines. Same-sex parents have now gone from main characters to supporting characters as our children take the leading role. Mainstream publishers are increasingly taking on stories that involve same-sex couples and queer themes, particularly in the area of gender variance. Books with gay and lesbian people are becoming more diverse, showing people with disabilities, multiracial families, and girls and people of colour in the role of main character.
The final article is yet another attack on the sin of heteronormativity. It concludes this way:
Glenda MacNaughton writes, ‘… children cannot develop if they are living in a society where they and their families face oppression, inequality and injustice. It touches and constrains the children as deeply as it touches and constrains their families’ (2001, p. 72). Building from here, we argue that the injustices and inequities of the (hetero)norm constrain teachers too, encouraging and rewarding us when we construct and promote (knowingly or not) versions of the world that seek to marginalise and obscure knowledge, concepts and understandings of alternative options to heterosexual sexuality. In early childhood education, as this paper has shown, we see this occurring in everyday events and interactions shaped by dominant discourses of the nuclear family, of risk and danger, and of innocence and developmentalism. Silencing understandings of diverse forms of sexualities through over-reliance on these dominant discourses leads to continued investments in heternormativity. ‘Risktaking’ will be required for investments of a different kind. As Robinson (2005a) states, risk-taking ‘should be a thoughtful process involving individual agency and community responsibility in the pursuit of a different but positive future for ourselves, children, their families and future generations’ (p. 186). It is hoped that this paper’s (re)marks on heteronormativity assist such processes.
Um, are you starting to get the message here? On and on it goes. Read it for yourself. The simple truth is, the ECA is fully following the dangerous radicalism of the anti-family sexperts and activists. Indeed, they seem to fully run with the harmful claims of people like Alfred Kinsey. They even regurgitate his oft-repeated line that “Children are sexual beings from birth,” as they say here: http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/shop/product/childrens-sexual-development-webinar/
Kinsey was a monster and child abuser and should have been locked up for his sex crimes. Yet the ECA seems to be fully in step with folks like him and their agendas. See my discussion of Kinsey here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2005/01/15/kinsey-con-job/
And other resources pushed by the ECA are all in the same vein. FamilyVoice Australia has just put out a press release on all this:
FamilyVoice national director Dr David Phillips is concerned about material from Early Childhood Australia (ECA), which claims children are sexual beings from birth. A training presentation obtained yesterday from the ECA website supports claims in journalist Susie O’Brien’s article that ECA advocates sex education for toddlers. “Entitled ‘Children’s Sexual Development’, the presentation claims that babies and toddlers masturbate for pleasure,” Dr Phillips said. “It claims that children masturbate and look at nude pictures in their early school years. The presentation also discusses gender identity and cross dressing, encouraging teachers to provide attractive dress up clothes for boys as well as girls.” Dr Phillips said most parents would be horrified by the content of ECA’s presentation. “Helping preschool children to learn about themselves and their body should be the sole responsibility of parents. I call on state education ministers to review all material produced by Early Childhood Australia.”
Absolutely. It is time we expose these radicals for who they really are. This is a war on children, on families, on morality, on decency, on biology, and society. It is time to get real with such harmful activist groups.
http://www.fava.org.au/news/2016/early-childhood-program-claims-children-are-sexual-beings/
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