As French President Francois Hollande returns home from a three-day state visit to the U.S., he may be wishing he had stretched his visit out for a few more days. Lord knows Hollande will not be given a hero's welcome back home. As the fallout from his handling of his private life continues, the president's handling of France's public life stands in equally bad repute: France's unemployment rate (12 percent and climbing) threatens to overtake Hollande's popularity rating (19 percent and falling). Yet, just when affairs could not get any worse, they did: Last month France discovered that the government was covertly teaching boys to become girls, and encouraging school children to question their sexual identity.
Or so ran the rumors, which first surfaced at the end of January. As they expanded via text messages and tracts, they became more expansive: gay teachers, it turned out, most often led these classes, in which they also encouraged their young charges to masturbate. Moreover, a government minister had declared that France's children belong to the state, not to their parents. Urged to protest this pedagogy of perversion -- labeled by its critics as "gender theory" -- parents kept their children home: by the end of January, grade schools across France reported high levels of student absenteeism.
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