In arguing against a proposed gay
marriage bill in Illinois, Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family
Institute (IFI) said gays should be banned from teaching.
The IFI is among the at least nine
organizations forming the Coalition to Protect Children and Marriage,
the nascent coalition formed to lobby lawmakers against making
Illinois the 10th state to legalize gay marriage.
The
Illinois Senate will vote on the measure Thursday.
“Public schools will be hiring
teachers who are in legal 'homosexual marriages,'” Higgins
wrote at the IFI's website. “These teachers will put photos of
their homosexual spouses on their desks and talk about their
homosexual spouses to their students. Such images and ideas coming
from teachers whom children love and admire will powerfully shape the
feelings and beliefs of young boys and girls, particularly when such
images and ideas are reinforced countless times in other cultural
contexts. Such images and ideas will undermine what is being taught
at home.”
“Some will argue that schools are
already hiring teachers in homosexual relationships, so the
legalization of same-sex marriage won't change anything. They are
only partly correct. Although schools are, unfortunately, already
hiring teachers in homosexual relationships, once the government
recognizes homosexual unions as marriages, administrators and school
boards – particularly in elementary schools – will have the
social stigma that makes them reluctant to hire teachers in
homosexual unions knocked out from under them. And this, of course,
is the chief motivation for homosexuals to pursue same-sex marriage
when they already have all the benefits and privileges of marriage
through Illinois' civil union law.”
(Related: Laurie
Higgins denies the existence of married gay couples.)