KINDER'S COMMENTARY: CULTURE WAR'S BATTLEGROUND HAS MOVED TO THE CLASSROOM

Over the last five years, conservatives have written and spoken of a "culture war." That is to say, not a war over whether we prefer classical to country music, or modern to pre-modern art. Rather, when we use the term, we mean what the Germans call kulturkampf , or a war over the meaning and nature of the culture in which we live.

This is emphatically a war declared by the left on what until recently were unchallenged, mainstream traditional values. Many who hadn't realized what was at stake earlier perhaps began to awaken to the stakes four years ago when we learned of "Piss Christ": a crucifix submerged in a vat of the artist's urine, paid for by your tax dollars, through the National Endowment for the Arts. That this was a vicious violation of democratic civility can hardly be denied. Defenders of "Piss Christ"-style art can be unmasked as the frauds they are by asking what would be their reaction to the identical submergence of a photograph of Mohandas Gandhi or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.

I wish what follows weren't true, but it is nonetheless necessary to say that much of the culture war is being fought out in America's public schools. Evidence abounds, the latest in the form of a gay video for school children that is being distributed to schools nationwide.

"Essential viewing," gushes Carolyn Sheldon, president of the American School Counselors Association. "I just can't recommend it highly enough." Says the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Caucus of the New Jersey Education Association (NEA), it is "compelling ... incredibly inspiring ... creative." They're thrilled about "It's Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School," a video produced by Helen Cohen and Debra Chasnoff. Chasnoff has earlier made a film called "Choosing Children," whose theme promotes the raising of children by lesbians.

"That theme," writes Robert Knight of the Family Research Council in the Weekly Standard, "is repeated in `It's Elementary': On Mother's Day, youngsters in one class are introduced to a pupil's two lesbian moms. There is no mention of the missing father."

The video is intended for elementary schools as early as the fifth grade, perhaps earlier. Knight cites a Madison, Wis., first-grade teacher who voices a comment dripping with her contempt for parental rights in the upbringing of children: "If parents are allowed to have their children opt out of gay and lesbian units, what will happen when we teach about Dutch culture or African-American history? It scares me."

If parents are allowed ... !

Knight warns us: "The American School Counselor Association is carrying the video in its new catalog mailed to schools counselors nationwide. ... The film also credits People for the American Way, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the California Teachers Association's Gay and Lesbian Caucus, ... and many other foundations and individuals. The National Endowment for the Arts helped out ... in 1996."

Knight concludes: "`It's Elementary' has already been screened in Colorado Springs, San Francisco, New York, Montgomery County, Maryland, Salt Lake City and other locations. It will probably come to a school near you if you don't do something about it."

For three years now, I have been arguing that the very survival of public education as we have known it is at stake. Responsible authorities will either summon the moral courage to police their own domain, or the movement toward private and home schooling will reach flood tide. More and more parents aren't taking any chances with the only education their children will ever have.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.