Warwickshire Pride, Warwickshire’s self-styled “primary LGBT+ organisation”, has lashed out at its local county council and other “bigots” after a sex education programme, incorporating transgender ideology and explicit sexual imagery, was scrapped following threats of legal action by the Christian Institute. Warwickshire Pride has now launched a petition calling for the “All About Me” programme to be restored and for an apology to be issued to “trans people”.
Last Friday, Warwickshire Pride issued a petition calling for the All About Me programme, including a “Trans Toolkit”, to be restored in Warwickshire primary schools after it was abandoned in April.
At the time, the LGBT pressure group stated that it was “deeply saddened and frankly outraged” by Warwickshire County Council’s decision, and also excused it of “transphobia”.
However, a spokesperson for the Christian Institute, which, following an outcry by parents, was instrumental in opposing the programme, has said:
“Parents were right to be concerned about this material, some of which was inappropriate for young children and did not comply with the law on Relationships and Sex Education. This appears to have been recognised by Warwickshire County Council which ordered a review and then rightly decided to withdraw the programme.”
They continued: “As one parent said following the decision to ditch the programme: ‘This is not before time. My wife and I were deeply troubled by the explicit nature of some of the All About Me materials – and the ideology underpinning them. We don’t want our children being taught about masturbation, explicit sexual content or experimental transgender ideas in school’, and another added, ‘These materials were never suitable for children’.”
The Christian Institute added that it was their “hope that before a replacement programme is introduced, great care is taken to listen to local parents and children and take on board their concerns”.
“All About Me”
The All About Me programme, which promote the use of graphic sexual imagery divorced from any references to marriage, encouraged children as young as six to masturbate.
Moreover, the programme, intended for 200 primary schools in Warwickshire, included a number of false claims, including the assertion that gender “can be best understood as being a spectrum”. It also said that “transgender children have the right to use whichever toilet or changing room they feel most comfortable using”, and that parents should not be informed if their children were sharing overnight accommodation with a member of the opposite sex.
As one mother said at the time:
“The equal rights of girls are simply discounted and disregarded in this guidance. If they express any discomfort about a male coming into their spaces, the girl is presented as transphobic and told to go and change somewhere else. It’s outrageous and defies the Equality Act 2010.”
Safe at School
Dr Tom Rogers, SPUC Education Outreach Manager, commented:
“Warwickshire County Council, along with other local authorities and the Government, must now listen to the voice of parents who are far better placed to know what is in the best interests of their children than LGBT pressure groups. Indeed, the fact that this particular group in question would brand loving parents ‘bigots’ for trying to prevent the blatant sexualisation of their young children shows what dangerous extremists they really are.”
Dr Rogers continued:
“This is why it is so important that parents must have the final say. SPUC Safe at School is therefore supporting the call of concerned parents for the Government to delay the implementation of compulsory RSE until the legally required school consultations with parents, severely hit by the coronavirus lockdown, have been allowed to take place. We are also calling for a full parental right of withdrawal from this subject to be reinstated so that such consultations are truly meaningful, and that the rights of all parents who refer to handle this very personal area of their children’s upbringing themselves be respected.”