Over the past week, there has been a big controversy regarding a grade school in Maple Shade School District in Burlington County, New Jersey. A teacher recently sent home a letter to parents telling them that there was going to be a fashion show in which the history of women’s clothes could be modeled. All students were required to participate by dressing up in women’s clothes, even the boys. Some parents were, of course, upset and complained. This caught the eye of Warner Todd Huston, who wrote about it on Monday.

The cross-dressing day is to take place April 16 to coincide with the gay activist’s school event called “Day of Silence,” a nation-wide effort ostensibly meant as an anti-bullying program. However, the real purpose of the event is an effort to spread the homosexual agenda in our schools. Singer Lance Bass, who “came out” not long ago, is featured in one of the videos sent to schools to get kids interested in the event and several prominent gay groups are pushing the idea. The Day of Silence event was created by a gay advocacy group named GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network).

According to one parent on FaceBook, the district has been indulging a politically correct agenda for quite a while. In order to excise Christian references in the school, they’ve renamed St. Patrick’s day to “Leprechaun Day,” renamed Christmas to the “Winter Holiday,” and renamed Good Friday to “Spring Day.”

Parent Janine Patterson Giandomenico asks some salient questions.

How is dressing like a woman from any era going to teach him about history? Why not let him do a report, poster, or other project on this subject? If he was attending a vocational school in the field of textiles, women’s fashion, etc, then it would make sense. My son is adamantly opposed, and I don’t see how forcing my 9-year-old to cross-dress in front of the entire school body is going to teach him anything about Women’s History.

This is a pretty outrageous school event. Forcing grade school boys to dress up as women makes no sense whatever. Pushing the gay agenda while feminizing our young boys through a cross-dressing day? This isn’t your parent’s grade school celebration, for sure.

The school responded to the negative publicity and cancelled the event. The AP then wrote an article scolding Huston and defending the school.

Apparently, because the boys could wear jeans or pants, it’s really not that big a deal. Get it, homophobes? And so technically, they didn’t even have to dress as a woman, either!

The school even issued a letter “explaining” the whole thing. You can see the images here. I’ve left in the grammatical errors.

April 12, 2010

Dear Maude Wilkins Families,

March is National Women’s history month. The Advisory Council on Women in Burlington County sponsors a contest where Maple Shade schools have been the recipient of many awards. Maude Wilkins’ classes have studied the role of women in society over the decades and how their dress has changed with each role. The culminating activity for these lessons was to hold a fashion show to display the different eras of clothing. The fashion show was to be videotaped to submit our project for the awards.

I wanted to clear up any misconceptions about the clothing show. It was never our intention to have boys dress up as women. There are many different time periods that had women and men dressing in pants, suits, and even sweat suits. Students were just asked to dress as a time period, not a woman. The children were then being asked to identify their time period of dress.

At this time, we are cancelling the fashion show. The culminating activity for this project will ask all students to draw a picture of a person dressed in clothing from a time period of their choice. The time period must be noted on the project. The project will be handed in on Monday, April 19, 2010.

We apologize for any confusion or frustration this might have caused.

Sincerely,
Beth F. Norcia, Principal

This letter may perhaps be the worst CYA letter I’ve ever read. Parents only need refer back to the original letter sent out, which rather clearly stated that boys were supposed to dress up as women. They could wear pants, but they still needed to dress as women.

Dear Parents/Guardians,

Last month our students studied women in history. Every year we end the unit with a school wide activity. This year our culminating event will be a fashion show celebrating how women’s fashions have changed throughout the years. The fashion show will be on Friday, April 16, 2010. Attached is a packet of information describing different types of clothing women wore during different time periods. All students must participate in this activity as it will be an end of the unit assessment.

If your child is a young man, he does not have to wear a dress or a skirt, as there are many time periods where women wore jean pants and trousers. However, each child must be able to express what time period their outfit is from. Most of all, your child should have fun creating their outfit and learning about how women’s clothing has changed!

Sincerely,
Tonya Uibel

So the school’s position is basically that it’s A-OK to have a fashion show modeling women’s clothing because boys could wear jeans or trousers. This raises a lot of questions.

This fashion show was supposed to showcase how women’s clothing has changed over the years. Why have boys participate if they were going to dress as… well, boys? It seems like they’re still supposed to be representing women, even while wearing pants. So what were parents supposed to do then? Send their little boys to school with makeup on them? Jewelry? A Hannah Montana t-shirt and high heels? They might be wearing pants instead of a skirt, but it seems the intent was still for little boys to be cross-dressing. If they wanted boys to wear regular men’s clothing, then how would the fashion show be presenting women’s clothing throughout history? It seems like it would defeat the whole purpose, does it not?

On top of all this, it sounds like the fashion show would determine the grade each student received. So boys not only have to cross-dress, but they’re apparently being graded on how well they do it.

At best, this was a poorly executed school event, planned by thoughtless school officials who apparently couldn’t comprehend the possible controversy of telling parents their boys were required to cross-dress for a school event.

The school district is claiming that only the one parent complained, which is sad in and of itself.

It also quotes one poor little girl who couldn’t wear her can-can costume because of this mean parent who ruined it for everyone.

One third-grader, Elizabeth Heisler, said as school let out Wednesday that none of her classmates had seemed confused about whether boys were supposed to wear dresses. The cancellation of the fashion show means she doesn’t get to wear her red and black “can-can” dress to school on Friday.

The episode confounded her mother, Andrea Heisler.

“I would never think my son was going to come to school in an 1800s dress and petticoat,” she said.

I wouldn’t really trust the opinion of a mother who saw no problem letting her third-grade daughter wear a can-can costume out in public. Just so you know, the can-can was a dance that originated in the late 1800s featuring women lifting up their skirts and kicking their legs in the air, as well as provocative, suggestive body movements. I’m sure you’ve all seen the movie Moulin Rouge. Well, how many of you would want your eight-year-old girls emulating the prostitutes in that movie? Historically, can-can dancers usually were prostitutes, and performing the can-can was like a side act. In fact, it was commonplace for can-can dancers to do the dance without wearing underwear, so when they flashed their skirts… well, you can all imagine what was shown. Not exactly appropriate for an elementary school-aged girl, is it? This little girl’s mother was going to let her daughter basically wear a red and black hooker dress (see examples here). Not exactly the best example to use to bolster the credibility of this fashion show, is it? And again, maybe none of the male students thought they had to wear dresses. But if you’re dressing up like a woman, even in jeans, it’s still crossdressing. And no child should be forced to do that.

Despite the school’s lame attempt to whitewash the scandal, and the AP’s sneering at the controversy, this is wrong. Thank God there was one sane parent there who wouldn’t let her son undergo this warped social experiment. That’s exactly what this was, and it’s what thousands of schools across the country are doing. The feminization of our sons has got to stop. Many parents, though, are sitting here and looking the other way while their children are basically being brainwashed. It’s sickening. It’s the job of the parent to protect their children from this kind of gender engineering.

And yes, this is exactly why homeschooling is becoming so popular.

Cross-posted at The Green Room and Liberty Pundits.