News

December 12, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Two members of the French National Assembly, the country’s lower legislative house, are asking for a formal inquiry into the growing influence of “gender ideology” on the French educational system and other institutions.

Virginie Duby-Muller and Xavier Breton, both members of France’s more conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, are expressing concern over the influence of an ideology imported from the United States, that “consists in saying that man and woman are interchangeable,” in the words of Breton.

In their written request, the two ask for “a true accounting of the lines of penetration of this theory throughout our country: policies towards small children, education, school instruction, university instruction, the rights of women, the rights of the family, social rights, administration, justice.”

“The consequences of theory of gender represent a certain disruption of our social contract that French people have the right to know about,“they add.

The theory of gender, also known as “gender ideology” or “gender identity theory,” claims that one’s gender can be distinct from one’s physical sex.  Those who advocate this view in the ideological realm claim special rights for “transsexuals,” who claim their real sex is different from that indicated by their genitalia.

The ultra-liberal American Psychiatric Association (APA), which has de-listed a variety of sexual orientations as mental illnesses, including pedophilia (unless acted upon with a child) and bestiality, still regards “transgenderism” as a mental illness.

Although some media sources have claimed that the APA is on the verge of declassifying transgenderism as a mental illness, Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychiatrist who heads the committee carrying out the revision for the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, says that he is merely proposing a change of name to “gender dysophoria.”

“I’ve seen a lot of banner headlines referring to the ‘removal’ of gender identity disorder from the manual,” Zucker told LifeSiteNews.com in an exclusive interview published last Friday. “I’m not sure that is entirely accurate. The name has been changed, and I think there’s also been perhaps a shift in the way the diagnosis is being conceptualized, where there’s a greater focus on the incongruence between a person’s desired gender and their somatic sex.”

Terms derived from gender ideology are increasingly finding their way into laws and even constitutions internationally, where “discrimination” on the bases of “gender identity” is forbidden.  They are also finding their way into educational materials, where students are seldom, if ever, told that transgenderism is a mental illness.