UK council drops X-rated sex ed program for kids after Christian group intervenes
A controversial sex-ed curriculum that included lessons on masturbation, pornography and gender spectrum was dropped by a county council in England after parents and Christian activists protested.
Parents in Birmingham said the curriculum, called The All About Me, was too sexually explicit and inappropriate for children, the Birmingham Live reported.
The content "encouraged masturbation," an unhealthy view of porn, and "experimental transgender ideas in schools," the parents said.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Before the The Christian Institute intervened in behalf of parents and threatened to take legal action, the Warwickshire County Council backed the program and said it would help children cultivate "healthy relationships and to enable them to build positive and safe relationships as they grow and develop into adults,” the council said before dropping the program, Birmingham Live added.
The Christian Institute said the program materials "made no reference to marriage, contrary to national requirements." It also taught children that there are multiple genders and encouraged schools to allow students to enter bathrooms designated for the opposite sex.
"It also encouraged schools not to inform parents if their children would be sharing overnight accommodation with pupils of the opposite sex while on residential trips, and to conceal a child’s transgender status from their own parents — contrary to parental rights protected under the Human Rights Act 1998," The Christian Institute added.
One mother from Leamington Spa who did not want to be named told Birmingham Live that when the council's plans were made public she looked at the accompanying content online on a website called Respect Yourself and was "horrified."
"At first I thought it looked fine. Then I started to read it and some of it is really quite disturbing," she said. "I thought 'is this what the council is telling my kids, that porn is fine and there's no such thing as porn addiction?'"
Hundreds of people then signed a petition calling for the website to be taken down, an effort that proved successful. The Warwickshire County Council ultimately took the site offline and an independent review was launched.
Council documents show that the school's program is now being replaced with an “information and signposting offer to schools,” which will adopt the Department for Education’s new national materials and resources on sex education, which are still being developed.
“Warwickshire’s climbdown will come as welcome news to hundreds of concerned parents. The highly explicit imagery and one-sided ideology of All About Me has no place in Primary Relationships Education," said The Christian Institute's education officer John Denning, in response to the move.
“Schools are obviously facing a challenging time at the moment. But as soon as they can, they must consult with parents on a different approach to teaching RSE which complies with the law."
He added, “As with other teaching in state schools, it must be balanced, objective and critical, not pushing particular controversial views such as transgender ideology.”
Around the world what is known as "comprehensive sex education" has raised the ire of parents who do not want their children introduced and exposed to graphic imagery and transgender ideology. Particularly the idea that sex exists on a spectrum and is not binary, and that it's possible for children to self-select their gender apart from their actual biological sex, and that some people might be born in the wrong body.
In Washington state last month, parents and conservative legislators attempted to add dozens of amendments, all of which were voted down, to a sex-ed bill containing materials that many saw as inappropriate and a usurpation of parental rights.
