Aussie family group stands up to LGBT program for 11-year-olds
An Australian Christian organization is warning school
principals to keep out of a federally funded Safe Schools program that is
pitched as anti-bullying but is actually promoting premature sexual activity
and transgenderism.
The Australian Christian Lobby says many of the 500 principals
who have permitted the Safe Schools program into their schools "are
probably not aware of what Safe Schools is really promoting and may be
unwittingly acting as agents for rainbow activists."
"We are in a battle for the innocence of our
children," ACL spokesperson Wendy Francis told LifeSiteNews. The program,
which was produced by an alliance of homosexual activist groups, is funded to
the tune of $8 million by the federal government. All state governments have
made it optional for each school, except for Victoria, which will require all
schools to teach it by 2017. The state of Victoria provided initial funding for
the Safe Schools Coalition.
Coalition national director Sally Richardson defended her
program for providing "schools with practical ways to foster a positive
school culture where students, staff and families of all sexualities and gender
identities feel safe, included and valued.''
She added that students at "safe" schools do better
academically and enjoy better mental health.
The program calls for four-year-olds to be read to from a book
called Gender Theory(written for
pre-schoolers), which begins and concludes, said Francis, with the words
"Only you know whether you are a boy or a girl. No one can tell you."
"This is rubbish," Francis said.
There is more: Safe Schools invites students to the Minus 18
website, where trans students are taught how to "pass" with practices
that "are anything but safe." For example, female students trying to
portray themselves as males are encouraged to bind their breasts, "a
practice which [the program] casually admits can kill." The would-be
females, meanwhile, are taught to "tuck" their penises between their
legs and their testicles into their abdominal cavities.
"Because you are compressing tissue, it can cause damage
and potentially even breakages to your ribs if done improperly," Minus 18
admits about binding. "If things go wrong with your ribs, it has the
potential to be lethal." Tucking, for its part, can cause fertility
issues.
Eleven-year-old male students are told to wear the uniform
dresses issued female classmates, which Francis condemned as a provocation,
since most Australian school uniforms favor shorts and rugby shirts for both
genders. Trans students are advised to post activist signs regardless of their
teachers' prohibition and, if blocked from the Minus 18 site by their school,
to lobby their teachers to have the block lifted.
Francis said Safe Schools is being sold as being against
bullying but is actually normalizing homosexuality and transgender behavior. It
implies that 10 percent of the population is homosexual when at most 2-3% of
males self-identify as gay and half that proportion of women consider themselves
lesbians.
"We don't want to see any student bullied for any reason,
including sexual identity," Francis said. But gender is far down the list
of reasons for bullying on surveys of students. "Body image is first at
38%, followed by marks, race, language, and then gender, which was given as the
reason just 6% of the time."
Why is a Christian group so concerned? "It's not just a
Christian issue," said Francis, "but Christians believe every child
is created in the image of God, and God made us male and female."
In contrast to the unquestioning acceptance shown gender theory
and transgenderism in Canada, there seems to be broader pushback in Australia
from psychotherapy, mainstream media, politicians – and school principals.
Typical of much news coverage, said Francis, was a clearly
hostile report in an Australian newspaper under the headline "Activists
Push Taxpayer-funded Gay Manual in Schools." It describes one lesson plan
in the program's All of Us teachers' guide that asks half of a class of 11-year-olds
to imagine they are 16-year-olds dating a same-sex classmate, while the rest of
the class imagine themselves in a normal relationship.
The article then cites Principal John Newton of the Scotch
College in Adelaide criticising the exercise as a "ham-fisted attempt to
change culture."
Francis said mental health professionals, meanwhile, had by no
means accepted gender fluidity. Many still regard trasngenderism as a mental
illness like anorexia. "When a girl believes she is fat and isn't, health
professionals tell her so, but when a boy believes he is a girl, they are
supposed to agree with him." Some politicians are also standing up to the
LGBT agenda, she said. One state senator, Cory Bernardi, had started a petition
against the Safe Schools program.
Francis speculates that Safe Schools is an effort to soften up
Australians before the plebiscite on redefining marriage that must be held by
early in 2017.
