Home > Homosexuality, Sex Education > The next big thing in sex-ed: the evil of heterosexism

The next big thing in sex-ed: the evil of heterosexism

October 17th, 2012

by Carolyn Moynihan

If you were worried about sex education classes that encouraged sexual relations between teenage girls and boys, you might now have something even more serious on your plate: indoctrination of kids against “heterosexism”.

A report in the Australian Daily Telegraph today reveals that a programme teaching that it is wrong to regard heterosexuality as the norm for relationships is being piloted in 12 schools in the Australian state of New South Wales. There’s a similar programme in the state of Victoria. Academics and sexual libertarian groups such as Family Planning have had a heavy hand in them.

The target of these programmes is not just anti-gay discrimination and bullying but something much more radical — what the theorists of the sexual diversity movement call “heteronormativity”. Training for teachers in the Proud Schools scheme advises them to “focus on the dominance of heterosexism rather than on homophobia”. Watch out for that other h-word.

The program defines “heterosexism” as the practice of “positioning heterosexuality as the norm for human relationship,” according to the Proud Schools Consultation Report.

“It involves ignoring, making invisible or discriminating against non-heterosexual people, their relationships and their interests. Heterosexism feeds homophobia.”

The pilot programme, which is costing AU$250,000, is to be “made available” to non-government schools, according to a statement made by the NSW education minister, Adrian Piccoli, last year. The minister seems to realise he is on shaky ground with this scheme as he has tried to distance himself from it this week, pointing out that it was launched under a former (Labour) government.

Daily Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine gives further details of the Proud Schools programme in a blog entry. She says it includes “celebrations of diversity for students” and “embedding discussion of sexuality and gender diversity into the classroom”.

The Victorian “Safe Schools Coalition” programme, she says, “holds that gender and sexuality are not fixed but fluid concepts. Students are taught not to think about gender and sexuality in a ‘binary’ way, as in male/female or gay/straight, but as part of a continuum of choices.”

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