How To Really Screw Up A Child

Today's Guardian reports that...

The plans to make personal, social and health education (PSHE) compulsory from the age of five, published yesterday, include a clause allowing schools to apply their "values" to the lessons and another allowing parents to opt their children out on religious grounds.

It means that all state secondaries in England - including faith schools - will for the first time have to teach a core curriculum about sex and contraception in the context of teenagers' relationships, but teachers in religious schools will also be free to tell them that sex outside marriage, homosexuality or using contraception are wrong. Sexual health campaigners warned that such an approach could confuse teenagers, but Catholic schools welcomed the move.

Let's think about this for a second. At the kind of age we're talking about here (secondary school), some may be starting to feel a bit confused about their own sexuality, and questioning whether they might be gay (or, indeed, already feeling pretty certain about it). I don't know about you, but I can't think of many things that you can more easily do to them at that point to really fuck them up, potentially for years into the future, than to tell them, as part of the lesson that is supposed to be telling them how to deal with these developments in a mature way, that there is something wrong with them, that to act on their thoughts and feelings would be "sinful".

If their parents have sent them to a faith school, then they might not be likely to find much sympathy at home. What they are taught and what their friends think about these issues is enormously important. In that situation, what these plans are likely to produce is a whole load of unhappy and repressed young people.

Of course, we all know this; society has increasingly recognised the importance of being supportive of people finding their true sexuality, and the damage that some parents can do by rejecting their children in this situation.

But of course, religion is special. Belief in the sky-fairy entitles you to abuse your children without reproach; indeed, the government will go out of its way to allow you to fucking well INSTITUTIONALISE this abuse. (Am I succesfully expressing how angry this makes me?...)

Amazingly enough, as Costigan remarked this morning, the Daily Mail has managed to take precisely the opposite tack. This is what passes for an argument on the other side of this debate:

Simon Calvert, of the Christian Institute, said that 'pressing the virtues of homosexuality' could lead to more experimentation, which could be 'harmful' to children.

He said: 'What we don't want to see is vulnerable young people being exploited by outside groups which want to normalise homosexuality.

'If this guidance purports to force faith schools to teach things which go against their faith then it is profoundly illiberal and must be resisted at all costs.'

It reminds me of Al Franken's line about the US religious right's argument that gay marriage "undermines" traditional marriage, as if he was going to be walking down the street one day, see a gay couple who'd just got married, and think "Well, gee, that does look pretty good, I shall leave my wife immediately."

I mean, come on, "pressing the virtues of homosexuality"? As in, "not telling people that being gay means they're sinners"? How many of our "vulnerable young people" are these "outside groups" (read: filthy homos seeking more recruits) really going to turn gay by simply not filling their heads with bigotry handed down by the sky-fairy?

Oh, and a pre-emptive warning to any nice religious types who want me to make more effort to separate them from "the Christian Institute": go and give Simon Calvert a fucking great slap from me, and I'll consider it.