Plans to include homosexual and transgender content in the WA curriculum are a form of “child abuse”, according to the WA president of the National Civic Council Frank Lindsey.
According to a report in The Sunday Times, a draft of the Guidelines for Supporting Sexual and Gender Diversity in Schools, which will be distributed to schools later this year, recommends ensuring homosexuality is a part of the curriculum.
The recommendations provided by the guidelines, which the WA Equal Opportunity Commission and the State Education Department formed, are designed to address homophobic and transphobic bullying.
“As best we can, we should endeavour to protect children from experiences they are not mature enough to handle,” Mr Lindsey said.
He added that if the recommendations were implemented in WA schools, there could be a number of repercussions.
“One of the aims of those advocating this indoctrination of children will be to expunge words such as wife, mother, husband or father from everyday usage and essay writing on the grounds that such words reflect thought crimes of monosexism and heterosexism,” he said.
“It is not difficult to imagine that those advocating this proposed indoctrination of children will threaten the withdrawal of government funding to non-government schools should they fail to implement ‘suitable’ changes to their curriculums.”
Associate Dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family Nicholas Tonti-Filippini told The Record governments and educators needed to recognise that sex education does not work.
“If the goal of sex education is to improve the behaviour of children and young people so that they behave in ways that are not going to put them at risk, sex education is ineffective in the main,” he said.
“The kinds of factors that affect young people and their behaviour is not the formal sex education program, but… a whole range of things to do with their social context.”