Calls for compulsory sex education in Scotland have been heavily criticised by a Scottish Conservative MSP and a Free Church minister – who described them as ‘indoctrination’.
A petition by sex education lobby group ‘Sexpression:UK’ calls for all schools in Scotland to be compelled by law to teach children about issues such as homosexuality and transsexualism.
The group made a case for statutory sex education when they met with MSPs at Holyrood’s Public Petitions committee on Tuesday.
Harmful
Speaking to The Herald newspaper this week, MSP Jackson Carlaw criticised the recommendation.
He said: “I would worry that there was a received wisdom as to what was correct and that anyone who perhaps took an alternative view would be told they are wrong”.
A columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail called on the Scottish Conservative Party to “take on the latest, distinctly sinister proposals for sex education in Scotland’s schools”.
Harmful
Free Church minister Revd David Robertson, who is also Director of the Solas Centre for Public Christianity, said that such a regime would be an “absolute breach of human rights”.
He said it would cause children “to be ‘educated’ in a particular sexual philosophy, which is contrary to the wishes of their parents and ultimately harmful to the child”.
Revd Robertson described the idea as a “Trojan horse” which will be “used to indoctrinate our children into the particular sexual ethics and philosophy which Sexpression regard as right”.
Wholly unsuitable
In August, The Christian Institute raised serious concerns about the Liberal Democrats’ plans to force schools to deliver lessons on sex and relationships to children as young as seven.
The Institute’s Director Colin Hart warned that: “Under the Lib Dems’ dangerous plans, sex education would be centralised and power would be taken away from school governors.
“It would be put in the hands of groups that promote the use of resources which are wholly unsuitable for young children.
Inappropriate
“Groups that have a track record of promoting gratuitously explicit and inappropriate materials want to force these lessons on schools when there is simply no need, and in a way which does more harm than good.”
A coalition of LGBT organisations and sex education campaigners, including Peter Tatchell and Stonewall, are pushing for compulsory sex and relationship education in England.
They are lobbying to include LGBT material in a statutory sex education curriculum.