- David Kurten
Don’t let Cultural Marxists win sex education battle
In the current relentless push to normalise transgenderism and same-sex parenting to the youngest of primary school children, dissenters to the new normal are smeared and discredited for being intolerant and non-inclusive. A recent article on the subject entitled ‘Don’t Let Bigots Win Sex Education Battle’ draws the obvious inference: if you dissent, you are a bigot to be fought and silenced.
This has sparked a conflict as inevitable as it is striking: the progressive liberal elite has turned on Muslims. The coalition of the minorities assumed by the cultural Marxist Left has collapsed like Humpty Dumpty.
The flashpoint is Parkfield Community School, a secular school not far from the centre of Birmingham attended by over 98% Muslim children. The trigger is the so-called ‘No Outsiders’ program which is ostensibly promoted as teaching the requirements of the Equality Act 2010, and promoting tolerance and inclusivity.
This sounds eminently reasonable to busy parents who do not have time to peruse the lesson content of this and other anti-bullying programs like Educate and Celebrate or CHIPS (Confronting Homophobia in Primary Schools). Such programs however, often provide material which deliberately and knowingly undermine traditional family values.
The progressive liberal elite has turned on Muslims.
The school regulator Ofsted has decreed that it expects schools to teach about LGBT relationships, and that the teaching material of these programs are age-appropriate for primary schools. The majority of parents do not agree however, and their rights as primary educators of their children are being dismantled and destroyed.
Books like My Princess Boy and worksheets like ‘The Genderbread Person’ confuse children about gender, and are already widely used in ‘Relationships’ lessons in primary schools. Other books like King and King and Mummy, Mama and Me attempt to normalise same-sex relationships and same-sex parenting to very young children against the wishes of vast numbers of parents.
Parents and grandparents across the country can already see the confusion which has been sown in children’s minds. Over the last 10 years, there has been a 4,000% increase in children being referred for gender dysphoria. These children are pumped with puberty blocking hormones to prevent their natural development, before being given cross-sex hormones at a later age which render them sterile. Despite the fact that the majority of boys and girls with gender dysphoria naturally desist, the numbers keep on increasing as gender confusion lessons begin in ever more schools.
The consensus among adults is that other adults should be free in the privacy of their own homes, but you ‘don’t mess with our kids’. Yet that is exactly what is being perpetrated by the progressive liberal elite who have successfully infiltrated and taken over many of the nation’s once-noble institutions, including our educational establishments.
One of the ‘anti-bullying programs’ available in primary schools states its aim is to ‘smash heteronormativity’. This goes well beyond countering bullying and unkindness among children. It means consistently and frequently presenting models of families other than the traditional family of a mother, father and children, and presenting unscientific nonsense about gender as though it were true.
It is a simple fact that there are two sexes: male and female, determined by anatomy and chromosomes, but children are to be taught that there are dozens of genders which you can pick and choose from when you get out of bed in the morning. You can be a girl on Monday, a boy on Tuesday, a mermaid on Wednesday, butch on Thursday and end the week as an androgynous alien. This is highly confusing to children who need stability and boundaries, and have the right to learn scientific facts and the values of their parents.
The irony is that in the drive for ‘diversity’ and ‘difference’, there is no room for difference or diversity in thought: everyone must submit and agree to the new progressive creed that it is a given good for 4-year-olds to learn about fringe adult sexual ideologies. In programs like ‘No Outsiders’, people of faith and social conservatives are the new outsiders, their rights to bring up their children according to the tenets of their faith abolished.
Ofsted is helping to push the LGBT agenda on young children against the wishes of parents. In an interview last weekend with the BBC, Ofsted’s chief Amanda Spielman attempted to minimise the strength of opposition from parents across the country, stating that the objections to LGBT lessons are only happening in a very small handful of schools. pointing the finger at the ‘most conservative elements’ of particular faith groups. The evidence indicates the exact opposite. There is grave concern across the nation.
One of the ‘anti-bullying programs’ available in primary schools states its aim is to ‘smash heteronormativity’.
From September 2020, ‘Relationships Education’ is to be compulsorily enforced in all primary schools, and ‘Sex and Relationships Education’ made compulsory in all secondary schools in England. This is one of the most un-conservative policies ever implemented by a so-called Conservative government.
The consultation on compulsory LGBT-inclusive Relationships and Sex Education attracted a huge 11,164 responses. A ‘large proportion’ were firmly opposed to its introduction and the withdrawal of parents’ rights to remove their children from these classes and 64% said that the content was not age appropriate, but they were simply ignored.
A letter from the Values Foundation to Education Secretary Damien Hinds calling for him to respect the rights of parents to bring up their children according to the tenets of their faith, which is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, attracted over 140 signatures from leaders and experts across the political, religious and professional spectra. Over 430 objections were submitted in objection to the statutory instrument which will make it law, which was published on 25th February and is currently making its way through Parliament.
There is some truth in Ms Spielman’s words however: very few schools or teachers will put their head above the parapet and disagree with the LGBT lobby, let alone stand up for traditional family values. This is not through choice, but fear. Dissent to the LGBT agenda in schools is met by crushing punishments. Schools have been failed or put into special measures by Ofsted for refusing to teach young children about transgenderism. Orthodox Jewish schools have particularly suffered. Teachers have also been disciplined, suspended or fired for not dissent. In Oxfordshire for example, a brilliant young Christian Maths teacher was suspended and then fired for ‘mis-gendering’ a girl who wanted to be known as a boy.
In this culture of fear, most keep quiet. Teachers and headteachers have mortgages to pay and families to feed. They cannot afford to be found guilty of wrong-think or thought crime, and the draconian measures utilised to discredit and dis-employ a few scapegoats, are enough to keep others in silent fearful compliance.
Yet there is a growing backlash against the attempts to sexualise and confuse the youngest of our children. This is a seminal moment for the future of education in our nation. The state is attempting to usurp the role of parents as primary educators of their children, and to prevent them from passing on traditional family values through the generations.
As the liberal edifice of identity politics begins to crumble under its own intolerance and incoherence, it is time for a new coalition of parents, grandparents, Christians, Jews, non-Islamist Muslims and other social conservatives to emerge who will re-establish the traditional Judaeo-Christian values upon which this nation was founded.
Never has there been more of a need for the courageous to stand up to the bullying tactics of the illiberal elite which is confusing and harming our children. Our schools, our children and our nation do not need Ms Spielman’s liberalism; they need muscular conservatism.
(David Kurten is a member of the London Assembly)
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