World leaders remembered the victims of the Holocaust a few weeks ago during the 60th anniversary of the liberation of a Nazi death camp.

During World War II, 1.5 million people, including Jews and homosexuals, were killed at Auschwitz. In all, more than 6 million Jews and several million non-Jews perished in Nazi death camps.

In Washington, D.C., the Museum of Tolerance provides graphic accounts of the atrocities committed by the Nazis.

Ironically, while the remembrance was taking place, James Dobson of Focus on the Family issued a “gay alert” because of suspicions that a video (We are Family), featuring SpongeBob SquarePants, was “gay propaganda.”

Dobson cited the research of an apparent expert in decoding gay encryption, who said the terms tolerance and diversity are code words for the gay agenda.

Of course, SpongeBob cannot be gay. The Los Angeles Times reports that sponges are asexual.

After Jerry Falwell’s comments that a Teletubby was gay, it was really no surprise.

But, far more serious, was the first act of new Department of Education secretary Margaret Spellings: sending a letter to PBS chastising it for using public money to create a cartoon with lesbian characters.

PBS receives federal grant money under the federal Ready-to-Learn program. The program helps young children learn through television.

The video is an episode called “Sugartime,” part of “Postcards from Buster” featuring an animated bunny named Buster on a trip to Vermont, a state having state-sanctioned same-sex unions.

The education secretary objected to “Sugartime” because it features two real lesbian couples, but the focus is on farm life and maple sugaring.

Spellings told PBS that parents would not want children exposed to such lifestyles.

“Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in the episode,” Spellings wrote in a letter sent to Pat Mitchell, president and CEO of PBS.

“Congress and the Department’s purpose in funding this program certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children.”

Politically, Spellings may have felt compelled to say something about the video as a pre-emptive strike. Conservatives objected to her nomination as education secretary because, ironically, she had infuriated them before when, during an interview, she indicated that the term “family” includes “alternative families, too.”

Under federal law, schools may not engage in bias based upon gender. The department, under the Clinton years, indicated that federal anti-bias law regarding gender applies to GLBT youth and college students as well.

A federal appeals court ruled last year that schools must take reasonable measures to protect gay students. Failure to do so will result in damages.

Yet, despite court rulings and the department’s own advisory to schools, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has not been helpful to GLBT students and teachers.

Teachers and students complain that the OCR will not process their complaints.

Under federal law, schools must comply with federal anti-bias laws protecting students and faculty from bias based upon race, gender and sexual orientation bias.

Ideally, the OCR helps the parties settle their differences. But when the OCR finds that a school fails to comply with the federal anti-bias laws, the DOE has the power to deny a school federal funding.

So when the OCR gets involved, school officials react quickly.

If OCR doesn’t get involved, there is no federal threat of losing funds.

As education secretary, Spellings needs to get the DOE to take a proactive role in reviewing complaints of all forms of bias taking place in our schools. Regardless of whether a child or teacher complains of bias because of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, the DOE must get involved.

Secondly, the education secretary, rather than condemning a project that teaches young children respect for “all families,” should be funding those exact projects.

The reality is that before children are taught to hate others (because of race, sexual orientation, etc.) it’s important to teach them that “hate” is wrong.

That’s the lesson of the Holocaust.