'Safe Environment' Programs Began As Pro-Homosexual Propaganda
The recent national mandate to “all bishops” from Teresa Kettelkamp, director of the USCCB’s Office of Child and Youth Protection, has rekindled the controversy over the “safe environment” programs mandated by the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, adopted by the bishops in 2002.
As The Wanderer reported two weeks ago, a forceful response to Kettelkamp’s directive came from Bishop Robert Vasa of the Diocese of Baker, Ore. Bishop Vasa published a column in the diocesan newspaper entitled, “We Need Answers.” The bishop said that, until he had those answers, he would be inclined to ignore Kettelkamp’s mandates.
One of Bishop Vasa’s central questions addressed the origins of the “safe environment” programs. “Where do these programs come from,” he asks.
The bishop might be startled to learn the answer.
From their very inception, “safe environment” programs were diverted from any mention of homosexuality.
When Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Neb., suggested in 2002 that the bishops conduct a study of the causes of the scandals, his motion did not even get a second. When the John Jay Study, commissioned by the bishops, reported in 2003 that over 80% of the crimes committed in the scandals were “homosexual in nature,” the bishops buried it like a hot potato.
When Frank Keating, the head of the bishops’ own National Review Board, compared the stonewalling bishops to the Mafia, he was unceremoniously dismissed at the insistence of Los Angeles’ Roger Cardinal Mahony. Gov. Keating, however, refused to apologize. “Eventually, it will all come out,” he predicted, and sure enough, in October 2005, Mahony’s chancery finally released a heavily redacted version of the personnel files that he had spent millions of diocesan dollars keeping from prosecutors and lawyers for abuse victims.
According to the limited information in the released documents, over two-thirds of the parishes in the Los Angeles Archdiocese at one time or another harbored criminal homosexual priests.
When then-USCCB President Bishop Wilton Gregory lamented in 2002 that “it is an ongoing struggle to make sure the Catholic priesthood is not dominated by homosexual men,” his warning went into the USCCB memory hole.
When Dr. Brian Clowes published a landmark article in the Homiletic & Pastoral Review, Child Molestation by Homosexuals and Heterosexuals, analyzing the bishops’ own John Jay Report, the USCCB ignored it. Perhaps that profound silence can be attributed to Dr. Clowes’ finding that homosexual priests were hundreds of times more likely to abuse children than heterosexuals.
For years, most of the information and analysis regarding the relationship of abuse and homosexuality has been widely available, but homosexual activists have bitterly complained, calling anyone asking the question a “homophobe.”
Most bishops certainly wanted to bury the issue, hopeful that they could “put the scandals behind them.” On the practical level, most chanceries have studiously ignored the issue of homosexuality as they have set up their “safe environment” programs.
As a result, these chanceries have adopted intrusive programs aimed primarily at the laity — fingerprinting, background checks, “required reporter” regulations, and waivers of liability. Moreover, programs feature indoctrination about the problem of sex abuse among families (but not among clerics). In adopting that approach, the programs tend to reflect Arlington, Va., Bishop Paul Loverde’s allegation that “sometimes parents are the abusers” more than they do Bishop Bruskewitz’s demand for an investigation into the causes of the clerical abuse scandals. Moreover, they totally ignore Bishop Vasa’s urgent call, “We need answers.”
Bishop Vasa’s call for answers has, so far, been studiously ignored by the USCCB. And, of course, Bishop Bruskewitz was ignored by his fellow bishops in Dallas at the 2002 meeting that adopted the Charter. Why? Perhaps because the answers reflect the central role of pro-homosexual propaganda and its champions in the genesis and implementation of the “safe environment” programs.
This point was made abundantly clear by Paul Likoudis in his 2002 book, Amchurch Comes Out: The U.S. Bishops, Pedophile Scandals, and the Homosexual Agenda, in which he predicted that the clerical sex scandals then breaking would lead the bishops to promote homosexuality.
One episode backing Likoudis’ case was the presentation of Bill Kummer at the 1998 meeting of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries in Rochester, N.Y. There, Kummer boasted how, for 20 years, as a homosexual activist working in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, he had been able to “contaminate” — his word — Catholic schools.
Kummer, wrote Likoudis, “proudly boasted that some Catholic high schools in his archdiocese have gay student clubs, survey students on their ‘homophobia,’ publish queer newspapers, have queer literature in their libraries, and even permit same-sex couples to dance at their high school proms.
“In just three years under his direction, Kummer gloated, Catholic high schools have adjusted their curricula to include gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered ideology in most classes, including history, literature, science, religion, and even math.”
In this remarkable address, Kummer also related how he had been able to manipulate Archbishop Harry Flynn into pushing the homosexual agenda in the archdiocese, and how parents who objected to Kummer’s agenda were frustrated in their efforts. This story is reported on pages 92-95 in Likoudis’ book, available from Roman Catholic Faithful, P.O. Box 109, Petersburg, IL 62675-0109; phone 217-632-5920.
“Safe Environments”
Whether the bishops know it or not, their programs have their origin in efforts that began in the 1990s. The pro-homosexual campaign was led by the left-wing, pro-abortion, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in primary and secondary schools nationwide, and by “GLBT” activists on college campuses, to make schools and college campuses “safe environments” for “gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning” (GLBT) students.
Those who share Bishop Vasa’s curiosity about these programs’ origins should peruse the ACLU’s web site. There the purposes of its “safe environment” program are made perfectly clear.
“The program is simple: It offers school officials a way to educate themselves and all teachers about the harmful effects of homophobia [sic], and to develop skills to address it. The focus of the program is a workshop for teachers and administrators on how to create a safe environment for everyone, but especially for young people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, questioning their sexual identity, whom others perceive as gay, or who have gay or lesbian family members.”
The ACLU site boasts that it has trained thousands of public school teachers and administrators. For the occasional sane teacher or administrator who might object to such pro-homosexual indoctrination, the ACLU site delivers a not-so-subtle warning to “homophobes”:
“Too often,” the site explains, “we hear about schools that tolerate a hostile environment where students harass others whom they perceive or know to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered. These school environments not only expose administrators to legal liability, they violate students’ rights to a safe and peaceful campus where they can learn without unnecessary distractions.”
Since the late 1990s, CNN, the Cable News Network, has carried dozens of reports linking “bullying” in grade and high schools to anti-homosexual behavior. Last month, CNN continued this emphasis, reporting on a study alleging that one-third of all bullying in schools is anti-homosexual. Such “scholarly findings” open the schoolhouse door for the ACLU and the GLBTQ indoctrinators; equally important, they automatically brand any practicing Catholic who objects as a “homophobe.” Their intention is to silence any moral opponents of pro-homosexual propaganda, not only in schools, but everywhere.
It should be noted that that Teresa Kettelkamp’s recent mandate sent to all bishops resonates with a variation on the ACLU theme. In her “memo to all bishops,” Kettelkamp slights parents who want to teach their own children about sex, a right which the Magisterium has always respected. When it comes to public school programs like those advocated by the ACLU, however, Kettelkamp is favorable, exempting any and all children who receive such programs from the burdensome requirements that her memo demanded of all other Catholic families.
The ACLU’s pro-homosexual efforts on the public school level have equally aggressive counterparts on college campuses. “Safe Zone,” the most prominent among them, is featured on hundreds of college campuses. “‘Safe Zone’ is a nationwide program on school campuses to provide a safe environment for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) students,” reads a typical flier from Chico State University in California.
The “Safe Zone” programs appear to conform perfectly to the principles that the ACLU encourages in public schools. On inspection, one finds that efforts against “bullying” are merely a small part of the “Safe Zone” program; the overall movement represents an effort to establish a pro-homosexual “thought police” on every campus in the country, with the help of “allies” within the faculty and administration.
“There is a trust [with allies],” said one “Safe Zone” leader. “No assumed heterosexuality. No assignments assuming a husband and wife and kids.”
“Safe Zone’s” attack on heterosexuality is rather reminiscent of the assertion by Jennifer Alvaro, who once served as the director of child safety for the Arlington Diocese. “Your children are safer with homosexuals than with heterosexuals,” she told diocesan religious educators.
One might think that Mrs. Alvaro’s remark was an aberration for a Catholic official, but “Safe Zone” now thrives on several Jesuit campuses throughout the United States. For example, the web site of Georgetown University explains that “the Safe Zone program was created in 1998 to assist gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) students in identifying allies in the Georgetown University community who can provide resources, referrals, and support on a wide variety of issues.”
But doesn’t the program’s celebration of homosexuality conflict with Catholic teaching? Evidently not. As the web site explains, “Safe Zone Allies go through a training process that provides them with a background of the potential problems and questions that GLBT students may face. They learn ways how [sic] to handle students’ concerns in a sensitive and caring manner that is consistent with the University’s Jesuit identity.”
The “Safe Zone” program at Georgetown, as well as its counterparts at other Jesuit universities and hundreds of other American college campuses, constantly stresses the “safe environment” theme. The Georgetown web site continues, “Participation in the Safe Zone Program gives faculty, staff, and students the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to creating a safe environment and a safe community for all people.”
Indeed, Georgetown’s “Safe Zone” allies include dozens of faculty members and several campus ministers.
A constant theme among both the “safe environment” and “Safe Zone” programs is the classification of moral opposition to homosexuality — even if it is only verbal — as a “hate crime.” Given the likelihood that the bishops chose their “safe environment experts” from the graduates of such programs, it is not all that surprising that many bishops and priests who defend homosexuality in the priesthood and the chanceries treat their critics like criminals – as by requiring that parents get fingerprinted and have criminal background checks.
A Crash Course
Given that “safe environment” programs have such dubious origins, orthodox bishops might want to check with their “child safety experts” to see whether they learned their trade from the ACLU and the “GLBT” crowds. The USCCB and the Arlington chancery have already stumbled because they failed to adequately review the qualifications of appointees like Kettelkamp and Alvaro.
“We need answers,” wrote Bishop Vasa. If bishops begin to conduct such an inquiry, they might find it necessary to give their chancery and USCCB bureaucrats a crash course in the moral teachings of the Catholic Church.
The syllabus might well include at least one session on why the ACLU and “GLBT” crowds despise the Pope, the Catholic Church, and Catholic morality.
This item 6649 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
