About 800 people gathered at the National Boxing Stadium in Dublin 8 yesterday evening to attend a parents information event organised by Christian Voice Ireland (CVI).
The event, which was hosted by All Nations Church Pastor John Ahern, was brought about in response to concern about the new SPHE curriculum which will commence in schools this September.
The Social, Personal and Health Education curriculum will teach transgender ideology as fact, which includes teaching children that they can be ‘a boy, a girl’ both, or neither’, while encouraging them to make presentations about transgender or non-binary celebrities and about how to avoid ‘inappropriate language’ and ‘bullying’.
Speaking at the event Barrister Grace Sullivan pointed to aspects of the curriculum where children will be asked to make presentations and describe how they can be supportive of trans identifying individuals and how to give advice “for how people can show support for those treated unfairly because of the way they express [gender]”
Sullivan said that children were being taught how to “teach” and defend trans ideology with the material containing ‘promotion’ of LGBTQIA advocacy groups like TENI, BelongTo, and GLEN,
“This material goes into the territory of normalising this particular worldview,” she said, adding that support for this view was referred to with words like “diversity” and “inclusion” while opposition to it is referred to with terms such as “bullying” and “hatred”.
She said that the teaching on gender “goes beyond biology” and endorses an “internal subjective definition” of what gender is talking about sex being ‘assigned at birth’ along with topics including; attraction, expression, and anatomical sex.
Sullivan also pointed to what she called the normalisation of pronoun use and the ‘modification of speech’ reading a paragraph from a school textbook which stated that the use of preferred pronouns can support a person’s “sense of identity and create a more respectful and inclusive environment.”
“Some individuals may feel uncomfortable if their pronouns are not respected, similar to how one might feel if their name is not used correctly, understanding the importance of pronouns can promote greater empathy and foster positive interactions among people of different gender identity,” it said.
Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín spoke of how the mainstream media is creating a scenario where people are led to feel that they are in the minority with their opposition to gender ideology being taught to children when in fact, he said, this is the view held by the majority.
“Most polling that’s been done has shown that the majority of parents think it’s wrong that children in primary school are being taught about transgenderism,” and believe they should have “a right to choose the ethos of the school that they’re sending their kids to,”
Tóibín quoted Prof. Dónal O’Shea who told the Oireachtas that the government is being “brainwashed by activist organisations and the HSS is being brainwashed by activist organisations as well,”
He also pointed to incidents where he said teachers had been instructed not to use the words ‘mother and father’ as these were considered “non-inclusive” terms and were also discouraged from addressing children with phrases like ‘boys and girls’.
Gript editor John McGuirk highlighted the recent publication of a senior cycle SPHE curriculum pointed to page 14 of the document which outlined its purpose as being “combat harmful attitudes around gender”.
He criticised the document’s lack of definition on what ‘harmful attitudes around gender’ are, referring back to Grace Sullivan’s presentation as providing some clues.
“What they mean by a harmful attitude toward gender is the idea that I cannot, tomorrow declare myself a woman,”
McGuirk said that when the government speaks about wanting to combat harmful attitudes around gender, what they actually mean is, “they want to convince teenagers that anyone who says a man cannot become a woman is wrong and is saying something harmful,”
“That is the objective of the new sex education curriculum,” he said adding that the passing of time would bring about a situation where generations of kids would be endowed with a belief that men can become women “with the snap of a finger and vice versa” and that the objective was to make people who dissent from this view “functionally extinct”.
Pointing to the role of NGOs in the contents of the material he said organisations like TENI and BelongTo are responsible, and that they along with 15 other LGBTQIA organisations are in receipt of taxpayer funding.
“The government hands over money to these activists , the activists tell the government what to do, and if you criticise them eventually it’s going to be hate speech,”
McGuirk said this was all part of a plan which ‘goes far beyond sex education’ to turn denial of what children will be taught in school into a criminal offence.
Pastor John Ahern said that the teaching of transgender ideology as fact is “offensive” to not only Christians, but also Muslims and Jews, as well as people of no faith who simply don’t believe in it.
“That’s a big problem because it’s not respectful or inclusive to us as Christians” he said adding that it amounted to the “sexualisation and politicisation of education”.
“I have hundreds of kids in my church and so many different nationalities and they’re all really concerned about what they believe is indoctrination,” he said
[T]he reality is our kids are being told one thing in church on Sunday and, you know, irrespective of its Protestant, Catholic Evangelical, I mean, they’re being told one thing on a Sunday and something different than a Monday and that’s a big problem,” he said
“I honestly think that apathy is is unforgivable in light of what our children are facing” he said
Ahern continued saying that his experience as a pastor ministering to people had led him to discover that “toxic people don’t respect boundaries.”
Regarding the changes to the curriculum, he said, “the government have not only crossed the boundaries but they’re actively subverting our rights as parents by promoting this ideology in schools, you see there have always been traditional boundaries and healthy society and one of them was that kids were protected from things that were deemed to be inappropriate or harmful,”
A recording of the full event can be viewed here.