The schools in Acushnet have received a “flood” of calls, according to them, about an article in our August issue which brought to light the Workshop which was presented by one of their teachers at Fistgate. As a result, the Superintendent of schools in that town has libeled our newspaper in remarks he made in Saturday’s edition of the New Bedford Standard-Times. We print the response from our publisher, Attorney J. Edward Pawlick.

Supt. Harold Devine and Standard-Times Lie to Acushnet
Gay Agenda at Ford Middle School Disturbs Residents

On Saturday, August 5, the Standard-Times printed a libelous article, “Acushnet school chief rips ‘scurrilous’ article.” 

It was responding to an article in our newspaper, “Gay ‘Agenda’ Promoted in Acushnet’s Middle School.”

The Times quoted Supt. Harold Devine as saying that our story was one of the most “scurrilous” articles he had ever seen. But the Superintendent did not dispute anything we said. He is a politician who is attempting damage control. It appears that the principal of the Ford School, John Tavares, is a person with integrity who is trying to do what is best for the children at his school. The reporter for the Times told me he had been told that Tavares was on vacation and he must talk to Devine. 

The story in the Times had many words such as “scurrilous,” “anti-gay,” “grossly misrepresented,” “zealots,” etc. But none of the facts in our story were questioned, because they are accurate.

The teacher from the Ford School, Christine Hoyle, who hosted a Workshop at the Fistgate scandal, told the Times  she “never mentioned the Ford Middle School during her presentation.” But the polite answer to that question is, “So what?” That doesn't answer whether she is teaching the homosexual agenda to her students in Acushnet. It is beside the point. Here is what the program for the conference said:
 
 

The fact that Hoyle tried to hide the name of her school is not anything that is positive for her or refutes anything we wrote. (It merely corroborates that she was trying to stop the residents from knowing what she was doing.) Fistgate was sponsored by the homosexual organization, GLSEN, in cooperation with the state at Tufts University on March 25 but it did not become known to the public until we exposed it in our May issue. We hesitated before reporting the gross, graphic language that the teachers used at Fistgate, but there is no other way to tell the parents what is being taught to children as young as 12-years-old by Gov. Cellucci’s education department.

Hoyle told the Times that we “grossly misrepresented” the intention of the diversity unit at Ford Middle School and the Workshop she presented on March 25th. But she never told where or how our article misrepresented anything. She didn't deny that she told the Workshop attendees how she manipulated her students into asking for a homosexual to speak at the session on “tolerance.”

Dr. Devine said that we were completely wrong and we only printed “the truth as [we] would like it to be.” But he never cited anything we printed that was wrong. He said that we used Acushnet “as a convenient pawn,” but we did not pick Acushnet. It was picked by Ms. Hoyle. We merely reported what she said. Dr. Devine also said he was contacted by us, but we have never contacted him.

We Agree with Parent

One unidentified mother told the Times that she thinks it's “fantastic” if the prejudice class teaches children not to “pick on anyone because they're different.” And we agree with the statement from that mother. But there's a big difference between teaching tolerance and promoting a lifestyle.

Does anyone know if Dr. Devine has offered to share with any parents the video that Hoyle played at Fistgate which shows what she taught her students? Does she still have that video? Is it true that she is teaching her pupils that because homosexuality was practiced in Greece, it is a good lifestyle? We haven't heard a denial. Is she also teaching the old rubric that 10% of the population is homosexual even though almost everyone agrees that the figure is between 2%-3%? 

What is on that video? And who should be allowed to see it? If it is ever shown to parents, will it be “cut” before they see it or will the full version be shown? Will Dr. Devine say that it would violate the privacy of the children to show it? If so, how did Hoyle show it to the homosexual activists at Fistgate?

Standard-Times Is Inaccurate and Intolerant to Christians

When the reporter, Aaron Nicodemus, talked to me on the day before his story appeared in the Times, he said he was “new.” He didn't have much time because he had to write the story for the Saturday paper. He did not have a copy of our paper and was depending upon printouts from our Internet site. I expressed surprise that he couldn't find a copy of our paper since we had mailed over 225,000 of them to the area.

This may explain why Nicodemus referred to us as a “newsletter” when we are a newspaper with a much higher distribution than his, although his is one of six daily papers in Massachusetts that are owned by The Wall Street Journal. (Our distribution probably exceeds the total of all six of their newspapers in Massachusetts.)

Although I told him that his newspaper, the Standard-Times, was responsible for the birth of Massachusetts News, he did not report that fact even though he wrote in his article that parents wanted to “know more about the Massachusetts News.”

I told him that the Times had published an article on October 20, 1998, with the headline, “The long, sorry history of Christian bigotry continues unabated.” The first paragraph said, “There's no bigot like a Christian bigot. I think I may have read that some place, but if not, I will gladly take credit for it. When it comes to bigotry, Christians have the copyright.”
The article blamed the Christian community for the death of the homosexual in Wyoming, Matthew Shepard, who was killed by psychopaths who then went back to the bar and tried to kill a heterosexual man the same night. The article went on and on with a diatribe against Christians. I wrote a polite letter to the publisher of the Times and then to the Wall Street Journal conglomerate, Ottaway Newspapers in New York. I was sure the Times  would print a correction, but, instead, they printed a worse article a few weeks later. (They printed another such diatribe against Christians earlier this year.) A few Catholic priests wrote to the Times in protest, but no one else seemed to be bothered. (There was not a peep from the Anti Defamation League although they seem to have a thick dossier on me.)

I told the reporter that two years ago I sold my group of newspapers for lawyers which I had founded in 1972, known as Lawyers Weekly. They were the bible for lawyers in Massachusetts and six other states and had a national edition also. They were reaching over 30% of the lawyers across the country with our analysis of the law and they were recognized as the leading newspaper for lawyers in the country.

I told him that the article against Christians in the Times in October 1988 appeared almost immediately after I started a website for Massachusetts. My goal was to tell a different point of view than was being printed by the three big companies, which were only out for large profits. (These are the Wall Street Journal group, the 135 papers owned by Fidelity Investments and the NYTimes/Boston Globe/Worcester Telegram conglomerate.) When I saw the anti-Christian article from his newspaper in 1998, I could not believe that the charges that they had printed were true. After a few months of research, it was obvious that they were not. 

But even more important, I discovered by January 1999 that the schools in the state were telling vulnerable children who thought they were “different” that they were “homosexual.” They would send these children to activists who would teach them the mechanics of homosexual sex. So I printed a 28-page rebuttal to the Times article and mailed it to leaders around the state.

But I had grossly underestimated the ultra-liberal establishment in Massachusetts and their power. There was to be no intelligent discussion of this issue. They came after us with force and fury. They so distorted our message that in June 1999 we decided we had to start our own print-newspaper because there was no other way to tell the truth to the citizens.

Their agenda is still based on the premise that there is a “gay gene,” even though the Boston Globe totally changed its mind within a few weeks of our publication in 1999 and agreed that there is no gay gene and homosexuals can and do change. (But they did not give any credit to us for their change.) The mantra of the establishment ultra-liberals still is that homosexuals are born that way and it is the job of the schools to identify them and help them bond with “their own kind.” Anyone who disagrees with that agenda is a bigot and a homophobe.

 But most citizens don't know about that agenda or agree with it. They know it is unfair to tell every child who feels “different” from the others that he is a homosexual, and they don't want teenagers to be encouraged to be sexually active. We did a telephone poll last December of 600 Massachusetts residents in which 92% of the citizens said that teenagers should not be encouraged to be sexually active, whether heterosexual or homosexual. 

Although the Ford Middle School is not encouraging sexual activity of which we are aware, one teacher who attended the Workshop says, “This is clearly desensitization to morality and the law.” The Boston Globe is defending what was done at Fistgate and has advised mothers they should be teaching “the mechanics of sex,” both heterosexual and homosexual, to fifth and sixth graders in cooperation with the schools, as we reported on the front page of our August issue.

 Dr. Devine brags about his “34 years as an educator.” While he was still in college, I was responsible for hiring the Superintendent of a 10,000-pupil school district in Pennsylvania Dutch country, where I was an elected member of the autonomous School Committee and Chairman of the Teachers Committee.

Fistgate Scandal In A Nutshell

• Should teenagers be encouraged to be sexually active as was done at Fistgate?
• Has the homosexual community violated our trust? Are they taking money that is supposed to be for violence and HIV prevention and using it instead to promote sexual activity by teenagers?
• Is the state teacher, Margot E. Abels, who was terminated as a result of the scandal, correct when she told the Boston Globe that what was done at Fistgate (by her and other homosexual activists) is “absolutely sanctioned by the department [of education]?” She said, “It’s standard….The department has always given us its full support – until now.”