Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Feb. 20 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh repeats numerous unsupported claims regarding laws about gays and education that is essentially one huge invocation of the Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy.
Unruh highlighted "Massachusetts father" David Parker, who accused teachers of "indoctrinating his 5-year-old son in the homosexual lifestyle." Parker has been in a dispute with Massachusetts schools that began according to Unruh, "in the spring of 2005 when the Parkers then-5-year-old son brought home a book to be shared with his parents titled, "Who's in a Family?" The optional reading material, which came in a 'Diversity Book Bag,' depicted at least two households led by homosexual partners." Parker has been a cause celebre ever since, highly sympathetic to his side and denigrating or ignoring entirely any contrary view.
(Columnist Kevin McCullough even claimed in a June 2006 WND column that "10 ... thug-kins" who were "recruited ... to participate in angry anti-Parker demonstrations outside the school" allegedly "grabbed David Parker's 7-year-old son, dragged him behind the corner of the school, well out of sight from school officials, and proceeded to punch him in the groin, stomach and chest, before he dropped to the ground when they then kicked and stomped on him." in fact, the fight was with one other child, not 10, it was over who got to sit where in the cafeteria, and the school district noted that "following the incident the boys were observed arm in arm at school and subsequently the child who was hit went to the house of the child who hit him for a play date.")
Unruh devotes pretty much the entire article to Parker's anti-gay attacks. They never explain how a book that states the simple fact that there is such a thing as homosexual couples equals "indoctrinati[on] ... in the homosexual lifestyle," yet Unruh repeatedly quotes Parker using the word,i.e., "Teachers are being postured to have a constitutional right to coercively indoctrinate little children."
Of course, it wouldn't be an Unruh article if he didn't deliberately distort that California law on gays and schools, and he doesn't disappoint. This time around, he falsely describes the law as "requiring indoctrination that not only is pro-homosexual, but also affirms bisexuality, transsexuality and other alternative lifestyle choices," offering no evidence that this is, in fact, the case.
Indeed, Unruh gives Parker a free pass, permitting no one to respond to his claims, even his Godwin's Law-like assertion (something Unruh is quite familiar with) that "if homosexuality and bisexuality can be taught by public school teachers to children as young as age 5, there is virtually no topic, up to and including Nazism, that educational precedents would not allow to be taught to young children."
