An alliance of parents and educators who say they wish to highlight “the inherent risk” in upcoming inclusion of gender ideology and porn in the sex education curriculum in schools, have distributed 150,000 leaflets on the issue to parents over several weeks of campaigning.
Spokeswoman Jana Lunden said that: “leaflets have been distributed to 150,000 mothers and fathers across the country and the campaign is still running.”
“Despite enormous public pushback, Norma Foley signed off on these changes to the curriculum which include teaching gender ideology as a fact,” she said.
Ms Lunden, founder of the Natural Woman’s Council, said that a letter was sent to all schools last month by a coalition of groups, including the Parent’s Rights Alliance, the Irish Education Alliance, and Lawyers for Justice Ireland, urging schools “to opt out of this programme as their duty is to safeguard children, and no risk assessment [regarding the new curriculum] was completed to our knowledge”.
She said that mothers and fathers also have the right to opt their child out of SPHE lessons, though she said that this should be a last resort “as the child will be removed from the classroom.”
“Needless to say, the children who are taught gender ideology and exposed to sexually explicit material will be discussing this with their peers,” she said.
“We urge all mothers and fathers to take direct action in two ways: 1) writing to their school principal to Opt Out and 2) writing to their school Board of Management. If the schools get enough public pushback, we hope the principal will uphold their duty to safeguard children and entirely opt the school out of these changes, which will sexualise and indoctrinate children,” she said.
Ms Lunden said that the leaflets continued to be funded through a crowd-funding effort, and that another 20,000 had now been ordered due to demand.
The Coalition said it “strongly opposed gender ideology being taught as fact to school children”.
“Gender Identity is defined in the draft curriculum as ‘a person’s felt internal and individual experience of gender, for example, cisgender, transgender, non-binary, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned to them at birth’,” the Coalition said.
“The curriculum is teaching children to refer to people who ‘identify’ as their biological sex as ‘cisgender’, as though girls and boys should no longer exist. It is full of ideas and terminology associated with the transgender movement which we believe will confuse children with the potential to cause psychological damage,” they claimed.
“Teachers are aware that children and teenagers often struggle with changes that happen to them during puberty. They may feel uncomfortable with their bodies and suffer from lack of self-confidence. Through the proposed curriculum they will be taught that, rather than learning to be comfortable with who they are and biological sex they were born with, they should question whether they should choose to identify as a different gender,” the campaign said.
The leaflet, seen by Gript, says that teaching gender ideology as fact may “distress children who may not conform to gender stereotypes. If a boy is feminine or a girl is masculine, it does not mean they were born in the wrong body.”
STORM OF PROTEST
The changes to the curriculum have led to a storm of protest with campaigners saying that thousands of parents made their objections known through a public consultation, but that their views were ignored.
The inclusion of gender ideology in the SPHE curriculum has been described as potentially harmful to children.
New draft SPHE textbooks for first year students in school which tell children they are ‘cisgender’ if their biological sex has been assigned at birth, have been described as “misleading” – and as presenting a “theory that is not supported by scientific evidence”.
Women’s groups and parents are urging parents not to purchase the schoolbooks – while a leading psychotherapist has said that it was “concerning” that material was being offered “without a preface that highlights that all this is based upon a theory that is not supported by scientific evidence”.
The Irish Education Alliance previously told Gript: “There is now mounting evidence that confusing children and rushing to affirming any conflicting feelings about gender can set children on an irreversible path and cause harm. Look at the Tavistock scandal. Schools have a responsibility to children.”
“Parents should refuse to buy these books and schools need to really think about the potential for harm to children,” Jana Lunden said.
“My message to parents is not to buy these books – and tell the school why you are not buying them, because they are parroting an unscientific ideology,” she said.
Leading psychotherapist, Stella O’Malley, who examined the section from the educate.ie SPHE book said that “while it is clear that the SPHE is making an attempt to offer an unbiased account of the gender theory belief system, it is concerning that they offer this material without a preface that highlights that all this is based upon a theory that is not supported by scientific evidence”.
However, Education Minister Norma Foley said that the new SPHE curriculum reflected the “lived experience of students”.