Editor, The Smithfield Times:

The “adult” video produced by Isle of Wight County public schools celebrating LGBTQIA+ is really inappropriate for viewing by our children. If your readers have not seen it, just type https://youtu.be/vu4Tqo5mMHk into your “google machine” and I think you’ll agree that our tax-funded government school system has absolutely no business creating and disseminating such a production.

“LGBTQ” is nothing more than a preferred sex act, in my opinion. It is neither a “lifestyle” nor an “orientation” but simply just another way for humans to engage in sexual activity. Under Virginia law it was formerly termed “sodomy” whether oral, anal or otherwise. And I think “bestiality” is still forbidden here.

I fully agree that LGBTQ relationships can express love, commitment, friendship and all other human emotions. But so do all other of our natural relationships. So-called “LGBTQIA+(etc., etc.)” individuals have been a part of society since the human race began. Everyone knows they are in our schools, military, government, neighborhoods, family, indeed all walks of life and sectors of human society. This is accepted and is NOT an issue, nor is it a “problem” to be solved by our school administration. It’s just a fact of human life.

Being of military background, one of my favorite “war stories” was told by Bill Mauldin in his Pulitzer Prize-winning World War II memoir. In a paragraph on homosexuality in combat, he wrote about an infantry platoon that had a “queer” (the “Q” in LGBTQ) in it. Half the guys avoided him and the other half wanted to share a foxhole with him! Diverse sexual behavior is nothing new in human history. Indeed, the ancient Greeks wrote much about it.

But private sexual activity is NOT something we should be celebrating and encouraging in our public schools.

However one expresses oneself sexually is an intensely private act between, or among, consenting individuals. And it must never be promoted in our public schools — especially among impressionable children.

The subject of sex between and among children is one that must be left exclusively to the parents, in the privacy of the home, and must never be the purview or responsibility of the government at any level. Especially through our legally mandatory tax-funded education system.

 

Albert Burckard

Carrollton