Marin County, just north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge, is one of the most affluent counties in the nation, with a median home price of $529,000. Home to U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, it's also one of the most liberal. When Californians voted overwhelmingly for Proposition 22, placing the state on record against same-sex "marriages," Marin was one of only four counties to buck the tide.

Even so, Marin has its relatively conservative enclaves. Drive to the northernmost city of Novato (population 47,000), with its lower home prices and family-friendly atmosphere, and you'd think you were in a typical modest-sized American town. So when Greg and Lisa sat down to dinner one evening in late February and asked their fourth-grade son, Kenny, to tell them about his school day, they weren't ready for what they heard.

"We had an assembly today," Kenny said. "We learned that there are all kinds of families," including "two mommies" and "two daddies." He also shared some of the words he'd learned for the first time that day: homosexual, lesbian, faggot.

Kenny wasn't the only child to bring home such a report. All the second- through fifth-graders at Pleasant Valley School had been called to an assembly, where they learned slogans like "I'm gay and it's OK," reinforced by various skits-like one in which Rapunzel cut her hair and ran away with her girlfriend. The show made an impact. "Daddy, am I a lesbian?" one third-grade girl asked. "I like girls better than boys." The group behind the assembly bore an innocent-sounding name, Cootie Shots. But it turned out to be an offshoot of Fringe Benefits, a theater group that gets public funds for "tolerance of diversity" performances in high schools and middle schools throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District. Now the group is targeting much younger kids, because-in the words of a longtime Fringe Benefits booster, Steven Hicks of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) of Los Angeles-"It is imperative to begin addressing these issues in the elementary schools as early as possible."

Lots of parents were upset at the show and at the fact that they hadn't been given any warning. Lots of them complained to the principal and the superintendent, though so far to little effect. But few of them, including Greg and Lisa, would let their real names be used for this story. In Marin County, as one resident said, "Traditional-minded folk stay in the closet if they don't want to be known as hatemongers. People who don't live here just don't know what it's like."

Marin County isn't unusual, however. The Golden State is being swept by a lavender wave, as gay activists overrun classrooms statewide. And if parents and churches don't mobilize fast, that wave just might sweep the country.

Coup d'etat

It's not that Californians themselves are overwhelmingly pro-homosexuality. They proved that as recently as March of last year, when Prop 22 (14 simple words: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California") passed with more than 60 percent of the vote.

But homosexual activists have made substantial gains in the past two years. They lobbied for a series of bills, mostly aimed at schools, which the Democrat-controlled Legislature passed and Democratic Gov. Gray Davis signed without hesitation. The new laws bar discrimination based on "sexual orientation" not only in public schools, but in any private and religious schools that accept state money. They charge teachers with identifying students with tendencies toward "hate violence," sometimes based on no more than routine verbal insults (aka "hate motivated incidents"). They call for revised curricula to "foster appreciation" for diversity and discourage discriminatory attitudes and practices. They provide for K-12 access to "supplemental resources to combat bias" including "gender or sexual orientation" and require "tolerance programs."

In conjunction with the new laws, California's liberal Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin formed a 36-member advisory task force to translate them into state Education Codes. The task force-though billing itself as a champion of diversity-showed little diversity in its makeup. It was stacked with gay activists and sympathizers affiliated with such esoteric groups as Older Asian Sisters in Solidarity (OASIS) and Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center (LYRIC) as well as more "mainstream" outfits like GLSEN and the National Education Association Gay and Lesbian Caucus.

On April 11, 2001, following months of closed-door meetings, the task force presented its recommendations in a 21-page report. Going the Legislature a few miles more, they included:

• Surveying children to probe their attitudes about homosexuality.
• Integrating pro-homosexual and pro-transgender (yes, transgender) messages into "all" curricula, including science, history, language arts and even math.
• Creating new policies "to reduce [the] adverse impact of gender segregation . . . related to locker room facilities, restrooms and dress."
• Posting "positive grade level appropriate visual images" that include "all sexual orientations and gender identities" throughout the school.
• Using taxpayer dollars to establish Gay-Straight Alliances on campuses, put all school personnel through extensive and "ongoing" sensitivity training, pay for a media blitz, "provide rehabilitation to perpetrators" of discrimination and appoint a person in each school to monitor implementation of the new programs.

Karen Holgate, director of policy for the pro-family Capitol Resource Institute, says it all adds up to large-scale indoctrination.

"They clearly want all of our children to accept homosexuality as a positive, normal, healthy lifestyle, regardless of what their parents or the Bible or their churches might say," Holgate told Citizen. "They're pitting the school and the state against the values and beliefs of parents."

'There is no truth!'

Homosexuals didn't wait for a legislative mandate to begin pressuring schools. Efforts began in some cities several years ago.

In Novato, for example, a Diversity Advisory Committee has for several years been working on a revised curriculum, which it submitted to the school board in April. If the plan is approved (a vote was pending at presstime), then starting this fall, Novato elementary schoolchildren will celebrate diversity with supplemental materials like the slick pro-homosexuality film That's a Family.

Local parents complain they've been blindsided. Though as state law required they were notified that they could review the curriculum in the weeks prior to the school board vote, only a few weeks' notice was given-and many parents reported they went to the administration building only to be told That's a Family had been checked out, meaning that no copies were available for public review.

One mother-who said she wished she could give her name but "my husband is an educator and we just can't take the risk of speaking publicly"-saw That's a Family and found it "disturbing." She noted that it exposed young children to everything from lesbian households to children raised by grandparents because of parental drug abuse-but "not one was an intact heterosexual family." She said she tried to speak with a school board member, who brushed her aside as naive: "Well, it sounds like your child has never had a kid in their class with two mothers."

And what's happening at the elementary level is just a prelude to what's going on in California high schools.

On April 9, Novato High students were subjected to a survey by the Gay/ Straight Alliance. The questions ranged from "How many times a day do you hear the word 'faggot'?" and "Do you have any gay or lesbian friends?" to "Would you attend a meeting of the Gay/Straight Alliance?" and "What is your sexual orientation?" Neither the purpose of the survey nor what would be done with the results were made public.

Once again, state law notwithstanding, parents weren't notified. And by this age, their sons and daughters weren't likely to share many details with them.

"I didn't think of it," 17-year-old Jason told Citizen. "It wasn't that out of the ordinary. People are always trying to push this agenda at school. Every classroom has a poster that says 'No Room for Homophobia.' "

The same day on a different front 25 miles north, Santa Rosa High School kicked off Holy Week with a "Week of Diversity." Parents were notified of 82 workshops to be held Tuesday through Friday but not of Monday's raunchy kickoff assembly, featuring a group of students from Novato's San Marin High School who call themselves Sex 'n' Stuff. According to a substitute teacher who was present, the group's performance included "vulgar sex scenes" and everything from "sexual molestation, rape, unwanted pregnancy, HIV, anorexia" to "kids being killed by drunk driving, fighting and . . . suicide."

A few dozen parents who attended workshops themselves were appalled at what the kids were being taught-for example, that some people come out of the womb in the wrong body, that being gay is nature's response to an overcrowded world and that almost all of us are really "transgenders."

At one point, a workshop even made it clear what organizers' real target was. In a skit about creating a "hate-free world," a parent reported, "Hatred is expressed by a person who role-plays being a believer in a book (which she reads every morning and especially on Sundays), and it is that book that gives her the right to hate and put others down as lesser beings. She also says the book contains the truth; other students yell out, 'There is no truth!' Everyone knew which book she was referring to."

Yet in the eyes of at least one observer-attorney and veteran family advocate Scott Lively, president of the Pro-Family Law Center in Citrus Heights, Calif.-the event did have a perversely religious character.

Watching a parade of homosexual students tell their coming-out stories, Lively noted that "the only comparable experience I've seen has been in church settings where people have testified to how Christ changed their lives. Only here the 'savior' was identified as the 'gay' community."

Shut up

Students who read the Bible aren't the only ones facing intimidation in schools paid for by California taxpayers.

Ask David Lapp, a physics teacher at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley. Lapp heard grumbling from students required to attend politically slanted assemblies staged by leftist student clubs-events where, Lapp said, "students, some as young as 14 years old, are being, in my opinion, indoctrinated."

After a National Organization for Women Club assembly during which teenage girls advocated abortion rights, Lapp voiced his objections in the school newspaper, only to be met with a student protest labeling him (among other things) "racist." The school administration seemed to find it all rather embarrassing, yet made no effort to shake the students from their conviction that some groups are more deserving of tolerance than others.

Or ask moms and dads who've sought to exclude their children from "diversity" programs-an option being presented by pro-family groups that are distributing opt-out forms to parents across the state.

Carolyn Neff, a West Hills mother of two, heard about the opt-out forms on a March Focus on the Family broadcast. She promptly ordered the forms for herself, gave one to a friend and passed others on to local mothers who asked for copies.

A few days later, Neff says, she got a call from the principal of Pomello Drive Elementary School, who accused her of hatred, intolerance and inflammatory remarks. The principal said she would not be allowed to speak to other parents at the school, and when Neff cited her right to free speech, the principal said she would have to exercise it on the sidewalk away from the building.

"I just wanted to be the messenger," Neff says. "People can do what they want once they have all the information."

But information is dispensed selectively in Golden State schools these days-to students, parents and teachers.

Novato's teachers are sent to Los Angeles for two days of Tools for Tolerance training offered at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum. Trainees experience emotionally compelling reproductions of prewar Germany and Holocaust scenes, as well as more modern situations like sitting in a diner listening to "hate radio," which leads to a man's murder.

Just about every group possible is represented as a victim of oppression-Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, seniors. Yet one group is omitted: Christians, who are portrayed not as victims but as victimizers.

In one film about a man who spent years as a neo-Nazi, the name of the church he attended during those years was prominently displayed, as though Christianity went hand-in-hand with his bigotry. During another presentation, a teacher described a school district meeting on the plight of homosexual parents and alleged that Christians had heckled the speakers. (Confronted later by someone from the same district who'd heard a different story, the teacher admitted, "Oh, they [the Christians] didn't really say anything, but they just sat there and looked like they wanted to.")

Wake-up call

The parental response to the pro-homosexuality campaign may be late in coming, but there are signs that it just might develop into a significant counterforce.

"I can tell you that since the [March] Focus on the Family broadcast, thousands of calls have been going in to the department of education, legislators and the governor," Holgate said. "We know this because we've been hearing from people in all those offices and from the parents, too."

Those legal opt-out forms, developed by Lively and fellow attorney Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation in Escondido, Calif., are finding their way into circulation and being downloaded from numerous Web sites, including that of the Capitol Resource Institute (see "Take Action").

"This form will become a standard tool for parents to protect their children from harmful sexual matter in the California public school system," Lively predicted. "Every parent should have it."

"We're hearing from a lot of folk not only in California, but lately from other states, too," Holgate said. "They're looking to adapt the form in their own states, and we're encouraging that."

But groups like Capitol Resource aren't stopping at helping children escape pro-homosexuality schools. They're trying to reverse the trend.

"Parents need to tell their state legislators to repeal all of these laws that violate our rights and beliefs," Holgate said. "We need to tell the people we elect, 'We want you to pass laws that support families and their values, not undermine them.'"