As the nation's conscience, Jim Wallis, with his group Sojourners, has implored Wall Street to "repent" of financial sins great and small (SoJo Mail, April 29, 2010). He bemoaned "… how parishioners were mistreated, cheated and damaged by current banking practices. Many clergy strongly favor protecting consumers from predatory financial practices … in order to protect people from fraudulent, misleading and abusive practices."
Oddly, Wallis, self-proclaimed "evangelical" minister, didn't ask for repentance for one economic sin committed by Goldman Sachs and other firms I recall with horror. Possible housing and securities' mischief aside, charitable donations made by Goldman and other financial giants paint a far different ideological picture.
Goldman Sachs has been a major donor to GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.
GLSEN is the child-corruption network birthed by Obama "safe schools" czar Kevin Jennings. Jennings, following his Harvard degree, detoured into radical activities after a few years of teaching. He became involved with the revolutionary group ACT-UP in the late 1980s. He wrote about one incident as a teacher where he apparently condoned sex between a teen boy and an adult male ("One Teacher in Ten: Gay and Lesbian Educators Tell Their Stories," 1994, first edition, Alyson Publications, Boston, pp. 24-25). He wrote the foreword to a compendium of essays called "Queering Elementary Education," which is just as sleazy and outrageous as it sounds. (Domestic terrorist and Obama-pal William Ayers wrote an endorsement blurb for the same book in his capacity as an education-school academic.)
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While GLSEN claims a high-minded platform of anti-bullying, no name-calling and anti-discrimination, the reality is much different – and the devil is truly in the details.
From a small start in the early 1990s, GLSEN's aggressive "gay" activism has paid off. GLSEN's reported total revenue in 2008 was over $12.7 million. One big factor has been the support of greedy capitalists.
Corporate America and Wall Street have blessed Jennings' baby. Goldman Sachs is listed in the GLSEN annual report under donations between $100,000 and $249,999 in 2008. Goldman sponsored and Goldman executive Susie Scher co-chaired the inappropriately titled GLSEN "Respect" banquet on May 19, 2008 (page 5).
Goldman is not alone in its generosity to the group that promotes sexual deviance to children. Other big donors include Cisco Systems, IBM, Time Warner, Morgan Stanley and the Morgan Stanley Foundation, Citigroup, Fidelity, Lehman Brothers, The Bank of New York, Wachovia, American Express and Eastman-Kodak.
The current co-chairs of the GLSEN board of directors are Deborah Dagit from Merck & Co. and Tony Tenicela from IBM . Other corporate representatives on the GLSEN board hail from Disney/ABC Television, Cisco Systems, HBO, Aon Consulting, Geocities, Wells-Fargo and KPMG.
Let's review what activities these business and banking giants are funding. GLSEN tutors students in how to form and join school-based "gay-straight alliances," clubs that encourage kids to express and celebrate homosexuality, bisexuality and cross-dressing and to consider objections to be "homophobic" and the cause of violence. For example, one suggested activity for GSA members is to "identify anti-LGBT biases in your school." Students are told that GLSEN has identified four school climate categories: hostile, resistant, passive and inclusive. Students in such clubs develop divisive attitudes toward traditional marriage and morality, with special antagonism toward Christianity and Christians.
But bigotry is not the only GLSEN product. The "Book Link" on the GLSEN site lists resources the organization recommends to "support" students. I reviewed selected books from the list and found jaw-dropping descriptions of grade-school masturbation, student porn use, explicit teen heterosexual and homosexual episodes, gender-bending, homosexual hook-ups via the Internet and sex between underage teens and adults. All were described either positively or neutrally, as if this conduct is typical, manageable, legal and low-risk.
For those of us who are Christians, there is the additional concern about the false and hostile portrayal of traditional Christianity in many of these novels. The student reader is indoctrinated by neatly packaged heresy claiming homosexuality is actually approved by original Scripture and that current objections by believers are motivated by hate or ignorance.
Anti-bullying campaigns by GLSEN proclaim the notion that only blanket approval of "GLBT" lifestyles will end student harassment. The truth is that such incidents are punished regularly without the intrusion of the thought police, and traditional values are not the cause of violence. You would never know this, however, in reviewing the GLSEN concept of the "safe" school (now inserted into the U.S Department of Education through the Jennings' appointment), which is any school free from objections to, or warnings about, homosexuality or gender confusion.
GLSEN is working to establish homosexual clubs even in middle and elementary schools. They believe no one should object if a grade schooler wishes to become "transgendered," that is, little Josh decides he wants to be called Jenny and wear girls' clothes. Wall Street apparently concurs. Where are the hearings on this outrage?
All this is occurring simultaneous to the ongoing reports about the HIV/AIDS epidemic among male youth. HIV among males aged 13 to 24 who are having homosexual sex rose an average of 12 percent each year for five consecutive years.
Of course, it's highly doubtful we will ever hear Jim Wallis call for repentance of these actions by the business sector. He has written that, for him, "gay" rights is a "justice issue" (page 229 of his book "The Great Awakening"). But many heartbroken parents and exploited adolescents may not see all that much justice going on here.
So Wall Street and corporate America do have some apologies to make. But perhaps that will have to wait for a different round of hearings, some in this world and some in the next.
Linda Harvey is a radio talk-show host and president of Mission America, a Christian pro-family organization.