(LifeSiteNews) — In March, podcaster Joe Rogan paid tribute to his favourite teacher. His seventh-grade science teacher, he noted, “was a brilliant man and he taught me about wonder. I think about that guy all the time.” But now, Rogan said, teachers are frequently fixating on issues of sex and gender. “I don’t want that gang of morons teaching my children about biological sex or gender,” Rogan said, adding that Drag Queen Story Hour is unacceptable for kids. “I don’t want you teaching them about any of those things.”
Instead, he suggested, teachers should focus on history, and math, and… all the things teachers used to focus on.
Rogan’s position on sex education is significant not only because he is the most popular podcaster in the world, but because he has achieved his success because he is a microcosm of the average adult. He is largely libertarian in the “live and let live” sort of way that saw a huge public opinion shift in favour of same-sex “marriage,” which Rogan supports; he is not religious; but he is still very uncomfortable with the full-scale sexualization of our education institutions and the insertion of gender ideology into public school curriculums across the board.
Rogan is something of a bellwether on these issues – he articulates the sort of common sense that many people hold but cannot articulate (or are too fearful to).
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The “silent majority” is not a moral majority, but they are uncomfortable with the vast, swift social changes we have seen unfold over the past decade. Much of the backlash against gender ideology and increasingly explicit and instructional sex education in schools comes not from Christians – there are simply not enough of us – but from people who do not have moral objections to LGBT ideology, but do not want it taught to children. In short, most people are fine with adults doing whatever they want to, but they still believe that these behaviours and lifestyles are the purview of adults, not children.
That is why we are beginning to see government action on public school sex education even in the post-Christian United Kingdom. According to a recent BBC report, the U.K. government is planning to ban sex education for children under the age of ten, including a ban on any content about gender identity. Teachers’ unions, predictably, have pushed back, insisting that the proposed plan is “politically motivated” and that there has been no issue with inappropriate material. That claim is laughable; parents have been protesting the LGBT curriculum and other explicit materials for years now, and school staff have frequently responded by accusing them of various phobias.
According to the BBC, the “statutory guidance on relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) – which schools must follow by law – is currently under review. The government believes clearer guidance will provide support for teachers and reassurance for parents and will set out which topics should be taught to pupils at what age.” Sex education is not “typically taught until Year 6,” when children are 10, and “parents already have the right to withdraw” their child, although this has proven difficult to do.
Sex education has been mandatory for older students since September 2020, and the “government strongly encourages schools to include teaching about different types of family and same-sex relationships.”
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This curriculum – referred to as “relationships education” – is compulsory and parents cannot remove their children.
The BBC notes that parents have been demanding changes in order to protect the innocence of children, while educators are insisting that the content is necessary because children are exposed to this information online anyway and that it is important for “trusted adults” to contextualize that information. That is the crux of the issue here that few are openly addressing: educators want to “contextualize” this information from the perspective of a pro-LGBT worldview, while many parents do not want this material taught at all because they fundamentally disapprove of the LGBT ideology itself.
There is undoubtedly a backlash against LGBT ideology unfolding in many Western countries, but it is important to recognize the source of that backlash. Although Christians and other religious objectors are certainly part of that backlash, their numbers are not large enough, in most places, to force government action.
The growing discomfort we see in polling data is thus far more likely to be of the Joe Rogan variety – we should live and let live, but we should also let kids be kids. As the U.K. government’s proposed guidance highlights, this means that there will be changes, but not significant ones.
LGBT ideology will still be compulsory for later grades, and state schools will still be teaching state dogmas.
