Chapter 10: Beginning the Campaign

Drew had her annual physical at the end of May, and Frantz had her go to his Penn State clinic to have it done there. Several days following her physical, when the lab results were available, Frantz met with her to discuss what her exam and labs showed.

“First, Drew, you’re quite healthy—almost too healthy. You have very low body fat, however, since you’re what we’d term an elite athlete. I told you this last year, that females with low body fat often do not make enough sex hormones to begin menarche or have regular periods. But your physical signs suggested that you might have an elevated testosterone levels too, so we tested for that. You had delayed menarche—your periods only began two months ago, you told my PA—physician’s assistant. Also, your physical shows a small breast size, above average muscle mass for your age, a slightly above average amount of body hair, and—please don’t be embarrassed—a larger-than-average clitoris. These are some of the signs of an elevated testosterone level.

“Here’s some facts about the sex hormones. Women do have low levels of androgens—the male sex hormones—normally, those hormones are required for proper sexual development in women as well as men. But females have only about a tenth of the lowest normal male levels of testosterone. Your lab work showed a testosterone level of 92 nanograms per deciliter and the normal for women is 15 to 70. This isn’t a problem and it isn’t elevated enough for me to want to look for a cause like PCOS—sorry, that’s polycystic ovary syndrome, or another possibility is congenital adrenal hyperplasia. You don’t have the signs of an excessively elevated testosterone level, so I’m not concerned about any pathology. But your height—the long legs—and muscle mass, which give you your strength and speed, is a result of your elevated male hormone levels. You also told the PA that your breasts had finally started growing in earnest about five months ago.”

“Yeah, I’m an ‘A’ cup now. After my first period, it seemed like they just started growing fast. It’s super to finally have boobs. Sometimes the itching and tenderness is distracting though.”

“That’s very common but I wouldn’t know that from personal experience,” Frantz joked and they laughed. “Okay, Drew, your sports physical is done and you’re cleared to play till next year.”

“Thanks so much, Frantz. Connor and I plan to stay at your house this weekend, okay?”

“Sure, Drew. Anytime.”

The following Sunday, Drew and Connor met with Pastor Robertson. She had written up the incidents she had seen, and those related by Lydia, to give to him.

When they went into his study, they greeted each other warmly.

“Hello, my friends,” the pastor said. “We haven’t spoken in detail for months, since you began going to Etown High. Even though you’ve been attending church pretty regularly, you dash off after services.”

“Most Sundays are busy, Pastor,” Connor told him. “Sorry that we needed to run off.”

“It’s fine. How has your school and family life been? All good?”

“Oh yes, the Ritters are wonderful; God blessed us with His favor when we arrived here and you found Connor’s family,” Drew said.

Robertson beamed a smile at her. “My dear, are you becoming more spiritual through your worship?”

“Pastor, I’ve always been spiritual. I lived for extended periods in my campsite in the woods and would appreciate the peacefulness of nature. I had my mom’s Bible and would look for verses to comfort and reassure me. I would pray to God to let me experience some of nature’s peacefulness in my own life, and my prayers have been granted. And the Ritters are a spiritual family too. Connor and I are blessed by their becoming our guardians.”

“What lovely words, my daughter; they make my heart glad. And how are you both doing in school, if I may ask?”

“Drew and I are both doing very well, Pastor,” Connor answered. “It was wonderful to be going to a real school again; our interaction with, and the companionship of others our age, are very rewarding. I really like our school but there are clouds on the horizon. It’s because of that nemesis that’s followed us here.”

The pastor sighed. “Of course you refer to the Naked in School Program. I’ve followed the news of its adoption with real concern.”

“You’re so right in being concerned, Pastor,” Drew commented. “Connor and I have been planning a kind of civil disobedience that we’ve discussed with Mr Gelb to be sure that we’d not break any laws. And you and your pastors’ association can help us and other kids tremendously, we think.”

“How could we be of assistance? The legislature has already approved the schools to begin the Program in the fall and my colleagues have decided mostly on a reactive approach.”

“I thought of mobilizing the religious families. I’ve got a few pages written up that describe what typically happens in a school running the Program, all from my former school, so these are eyewitness descriptions. I’ve already told you about the stuff that Connor and I saw personally. Those are the molestations, assaults, and classroom humiliations we saw and that stuff happened just in the first week. Recently I spoke to a friend there, Lydia, and she told me that even though about nine months have gone by, the abuses continue to happen.

“Although the people running the Program are saying that its purpose is to help teens to mature and to expand their personal and sexual horizons, it doesn’t do that at all. Lydia told me her opinion of what the Program did for her. She told me that instead of the experience helping her, it turned her into a sex object and exposed her body to every sex-obsessed boy in the high school. And she said that its rules denied her—and everyone else who had to be naked too—the ability to refuse the kinds of touching that they found unacceptable and there was no respect given to them as people—they were treated as just sex toys to play with. They became targets. They had to do things that they’d normally totally refuse. That was Lydia’s opinion and mine too, based on my seeing just one Program week.”

“This sounds simply awful, Drew. So far, we Lutheran pastors have received very little guidance from the Conference of Bishops of the ELCA about how to respond to the Program, only to say that public nudity is a sin and that we should follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our teachings to our congregations.”

“Okay, maybe seeing more details about how abusive the kids and teachers can get will give you some ideas of how to respond. Here are some pages that describe some Program abuses. The first few list those that Connor and I saw; we told you about those before. Then I listed the ones that Lydia told me about. The abuses come in a few different areas: Sexual assaults, deliberate and unnecessary humiliation by teachers, and degrading treatment by the kids. The first few pages repeat the incidents that we told you about when we first met. The rest are events from our former school from mid-September to mid-April. Those start on the third page. You should start there.”

Robertson began to read the third page.

“The Program requires that naked kids use the locker rooms and showers of the opposite sex. A sophomore girl participant in gym was delayed by her teacher in going to the locker room because she was slow in running some punishment laps, so she was kept behind to finish them. When she went into the boys’ locker room, there were just three boys remaining there. They grabbed her, threw her down on a bench, and one of the boys tried to rape her. She was screaming for help and managed to twist herself away while kicking and biting the boy, so she was only slightly penetrated, not enough to completely tear her hymen. Her attacker came all over the girl’s crotch. When the second boy began to try to rape her, a gym teacher happened on the attack and he pulled him off the girl.

“The teachers were supposed to monitor the locker room but they didn’t. An investigation into the attack found that there was a detailed plot by a group of boys. Some would wait in the locker room for a vulnerable girl, while the others would provide a distracting diversion to keep the supervising teacher out of the locker room.

“The girl hadn’t received the school’s required quarterly birth-control/STD shot because she had gotten a serious allergic reaction to the first shot; she developed vision problems, dizziness and loss of coordination, and severe headaches. Those side effects were uncommon but well known to occur; 8 to 10 percent of women have some degree of allergy to the shot. The worst part of the affair is that the girl became pregnant; enough semen had gotten into her vagina, even though her hymen was mostly intact. The legal fallout from the attack has just begun.”

Robertson looked up from the pages, his face ashen. “This is terrible...” he began but Drew pointed to the sheets, so he returned to reading.

“Teachers are told by the Program officials to use the naked kids in their classes for demonstrations, as the above description of a three-session biology demo on page 2 shows. The demo in this case was in an art class. The teacher had decided to use a casting material to make a model of the interior of a girl’s vagina. After the casting had set, the girl experienced terrible pain as it was withdrawn. Not only did she wind up with abrasions in her vagina, she had a severe allergic reaction to the material and developed a urinary tract infection too. After her experience, the girl involved now refuses to go back to the school.”

“Another dreadful case,” the pastor murmured as he read that section. He went on to the next item.

“In the same class, the teacher attempted to make a casting of a boy’s erect penis. The boy was unable to get a sufficiently hard erection, so the teacher made him accept having oral sex and the boy was extremely humiliated by the difficulty he had in becoming erect. When he finally got erect, however, and the casting material was applied, he immediately lost the erection, and the teacher got angry and told the boy that he’d have to repeat his Program week. That boy now refuses to return to the school; the major probable reason is because the other kids began mocking him, calling him ‘Limp-dick, the boy who can’t get it up.’”

“And things like these really happen?” the pastor asked Drew in shock.

“Absolutely. You didn’t even read the next description, the one about the Reasonable Request, where two boys ganged up on a girl; one restrained her and the other finger-raped her. And Lydia, my friend from there, told me that the teachers aren’t letting girls with large bosoms wear a supporting bra when they run. She told me that running unsupported not only hurts, but it damages the breasts too ... I wouldn’t know, being just an A cup,” Drew smiled. “And they don’t allow boys to wear protective cups and she saw a boy get hit down there by an errant volleyball. They had to carry him to the nurse’s office; he couldn’t walk. Those examples are all listed on those pages.”

“I cannot imagine...” the pastor’s words trailed off.

“Yeah, it’s bad, right?” Connor asked. “That’s why we need to oppose it, even though there’s that law. Drew thought of civil disobedience, kinda like the anti-war demonstrators of the 60s and 70s. Churches played a big role in those, right? Preachers would condemn the war from their pulpits and mobilize their congregations for the protests.”

“Yes, I see, and that’s an excellent idea. Yes, I believe we can help, that is, my fellow ministers would assuredly preach against the Program. Ah, let me see ... yes, here’s what I can do. I’ll prepare a few sermons condemning the Program and share them with the clergy group, together with copies of the Program abuses you’ve given to me. I’ll have my first sermon ready for the middle of June and preach variations of it on alternate weeks until school begins in the fall.”

“Oh, that’ll be wonderful, Pastor,” Drew smiled. “We wanted to reach the kids and their parents in the local churches, so your idea is perfect.”

The spring term had ended now and Connor began his job, a high-school internship at the chocolate factory and Drew, at hers. She had gotten a job at the local frozen-custard shop. Since the shop was a supporter of the community sports program, she could schedule her hours to allow her to go to practices and games.

Two weeks later, they were in church, listening to Pastor Robertson’s sermon.

“My brothers and sisters in Christ, I have a solemn message this morning for you all. This week we all learned, to our very great dismay, that our country’s Supreme Court has upheld the vile law which permits schools to force our children to parade naked in its classrooms, hallways, sports fields, and in addition, our streets and shops. Our country is stripping our children not only of their clothes, but of their modesty, privacy, and morality.

“With this so-called ‘Social Awareness’ law, our government is perpetrating evil on our youth and on our families and community too. It requires our high schools to introduce an abomination of a school requirement called the ‘Naked in School Program.’ This very controversial social program—and controversial it certainly is turning out to be—is supposed to cure our youth—and I use ‘cure’ in a negative sense—to cure them of what the law claims is the ‘excessive modesty’ of teenagers. Well, my people, modesty is one of the cornerstones of living a righteous life, following biblical precepts. By forcing our youth into this program, the government is trying to separate our youth from their families and indeed, from their religious morality, and force them to commit one of the more egregious sins we are warned against by the Apostle Paul. I will return to that thought in a minute.

“The Program forces our children to strip off their clothes and walk around the school naked all week—they may only get dressed when they leave the school grounds but are exhorted to be naked outside the school as well. Children are forced to strip publically, in front of their peers, and if they attempt to resist, they are stripped by a teacher. My friends, I tell you that the Bible unfailingly speaks of clothing in terms of righteousness, while nakedness represents sin and its corresponding shame. In Revelation 19:8, we are told that the upright are clothed in fine linen, while the sinful are depicted in shame and in various states of undress. We additionally learn this lesson, for instance, from Revelation 3:17, ‘ ... buy ... white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen,’ and Ezekiel 16:37, where we read, ‘I will gather them against you from every side and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness.’ Unquote. I could cite many verses which teach us much the same thing.

“I mentioned modesty when I began this lesson. Modesty is a major and vital biblical precept and we can find God’s demand for us to be modest throughout Holy Scriptures. As we learn from 1 Corinthians 12:23, which states this precept very precisely and forthrightly, I quote, ‘And on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty.’ Unquote. This idea is also expressed very well by Revelation 16:15, ‘Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed.’

“God’s message is made clear. Our view of being clothed versus nakedness affirms humankind’s closeness to God and informs us of the proper way of godly living. Since the Program will force our youth to be publically stripped, this very action of forcing nakedness upon them exposes our children, families, and community to a path which falls away from God as far possible and continues that fall into great sin.

“The image of clothing as a symbol of God’s mercy and redemption can be seen throughout the Old and New Testaments, and the first appearance of this symbol is taught to us at the very beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 3:21: ‘Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them.’ This clearly shows that God, in His mercy, intends that His people be clothed. The interpretation of this verse is that clothing is designed to serve as an expression of God’s love and a sign of His mercy, protection, and grace.

“Genesis chapters 1 and 2 reveal God’s relationship with human beings. When we read these chapters, they clearly instruct us that God created human beings whose lives intimately join the spiritual and physical together: Spiritual, in that we have the capacity to worship, and physical, in that we bear God’s image. From the story of Adam and Eve, we learn that humans are not designed to live in isolation but are meant to form relationships with others. The relationship of the first couple also emphasizes the idea of companionship and mutual support, which is a fundamental aspect of human nature.

“According to Romans 12–13 and Ephesians 5–6, God created human beings as part of His entire creation, intending that we live actively in the world in trusting cooperation with each other. Trust is the essence of interpersonal relationships and becomes absolutely essential in sexual relationships. Sexual activity, without the trust, cooperation, and commitment of the partners involved, is sinful, because it’s destructive for everyone: the individuals involved, their relationships, and the entire community too. And when the sexual activity involves promiscuity, as the Naked in School Program requires, the children involved are inevitably and invariably drawn into sin.

“In Galatians 5:19–21, Apostle Paul preached, and this is just six of the vices he names, I quote, ‘The works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality ... fornication, licentiousness, orgies, and things like these. Now I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.’ Unquote. These vices Paul lists are the sins of the flesh, and our government officials not only plan to perpetrate them on our youth, they also plan to force our youth into performing them on others.

“The result of forcing our children into committing these sins is that the bonds of trust between those committed to a righteous life and other less-observant community members are severed, wreaking havoc on the fabric of the community, on the children’s families, and of course on the affected children as well. I tell you, my friends, that there’s no such thing as being ‘faithful’ to God or to one’s moral principles in a regime of forced sex.

“There’s nothing wrong with sexuality, but it has its proper place in our lives. It’s integral to those couples who have committed to a life with each other, to share in their physical contact, and to share in giving and receiving love. But sexuality also has its dark side, since its manifestations are so complex. Sexuality can result in either a joyful or a terrible experience. On the positive side, a couple’s joy in sharing their love can serve God by fulfilling his command to be fruitful, as we read in Genesis 1:28, and it will also serve the community at large by assuring stable familial relationships. So we see that in essence, sexuality expresses its powers at the polar, opposite ends of human experience; for the good in devotion, love, and security, or conversely for the evil in lust, exploitation, and callousness.

“Through the lessons of Genesis chapter 1, we infer that sexuality is God’s loving gift to humanity, but we all realize, with sorrow, that sin is present in all human endeavors and sexuality is no exception. When sexuality is expressed in an irresponsible or careless manner, or it’s deliberately intended to be forced or coercive, as is the design of the Naked in School Program, then this can lead the children, who are unwillingly conscripted, to immense harm. The Program actively promotes lust and self-gratification among those who are not themselves currently naked, loosening their morals and encouraging them to sin. As we learn from 1 John 2:16, I quote, ‘For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.’ Unquote. The ‘world’ here is the profane world, the world where sin exists.

“Expressions of lust and self-gratification cause great damage to the trust between neighbors—the children—and damage the children involved and their community—the school—too. Matthew teaches this very succinctly in his verse 5:28, quoting, ‘But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’ Unquote. Adultery isn’t applicable to children, of course, but Matthew’s message is clear despite that. Let me emphasize this point: where sexuality is concerned, there are no interpersonal relationships which can thrive, let alone survive, in the absence of trust. No relationship can flourish without both parties’ assurance of the trustworthiness and depth of their personal commitments.

“Finally, let me say this. Our children represent our future and you parents have a strong imperative to ensure their safety and well-being. And their safety outside the home is extremely important, not only because their physical well-being is of concern, but also because the psychological damage done to our youth if they’re sexually abused or molested can be terribly deep and long-lasting.

“Please take this message to heart and counsel your youth about their proper response when the Program arrives. There are sheets with the necessary information at the back of the chapel; share this information with your children and your friends, who may not heard my words. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”

After services were over, the pastor was so busy talking with all the worshipers that Drew and Connor couldn’t even get near him. When the crowd finally thinned out, Robertson suggested to the remaining people that they go to the social hall to continue to talk while they shared in a modest lunch. That’s when Drew had a chance to talk to him.

“Pastor, your sermon was wonderful!” Drew enthused. “It was perfect and hearing it, I felt the shock and outrage of people sitting near me.”

“Thank you, Drew. The folks who spoke to me afterwards said much the same thing. Most of my colleagues will have preached a similar sermon today; many of the thoughts in mine come from ideas we shared in the group.”

“Connor and I liked the handout you prepared too. How you summarized the abuse examples and then had the stuff about how the Bible says public nudity’s a sin, with all the quotes. And at the end, that being forced to be naked or even to see public nudity, violates a person’s religious freedom.”

“Yes, that flyer was also a product of our group. I gather that you have additional organizing plans, Drew?”

“Uh huh. We want to see if we can organize a strike. But first, Connor thinks that we should wait to see what the school does when they start the Program. If they just have kids who volunteer to get naked and no one’s forced, then we need to rethink how to respond to that.”