GLASGOW, June 21, 2005 (CWNews.com/LifeSiteNews.com) – Scottish parents will lose the right to withdraw their children from sex education classes under plans being considered by Glasgow school officials.
Glasgow city council is planning to take away parental choice in what it sees as an attempt to tackle teenage pregnancy rates in the city, which are among the highest in Europe.
The move has been condemned as “arrogant” and “outrageous” by the Catholic Church in Scotland and by parents’ groups. The Church maintains that the right to determine when children receive information about sexuality and what kind of information to impart rests solely with the parents.
The plan, recorded in minutes of a meeting of Glasgow Healthy City Partnership, claims that “opting out from sex education lessons should be treated no differently from seeking to opt out from any other part of the curriculum.”
Councilor Jim Coleman, chairman of the council’s community health and safety committee, told the Sunday Times , “Glasgow has got a terrible record on teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases and we are trying to come up with the new policies because the existing one clearly doesn’t work.”
But Eileen McCloy, who runs a parents’ campaign group, Not With My Child, said: “I am Catholic, and the Catholic Church recognizes that I am the principal teacher of my child. So I should be able to decide what is right, and what is not right for my child.”
McCloy, who withdrew her 10-year-old son from sex education classes last year because she considered some of the material too explicit, said: “They shouldn’t be allowed to take my right as a parent away from me. I think it’s very patronizing.”
She added, “A mother knows best what stage her child is at and what is appropriate. I don’t want to have a say in what they are taught in English or math, but in this most sensitive of areas, I certainly do.”
Peter Kearney, spokesman for the Catholic bishops of Scotland, said the proposal showed “outrageous ignorance” and “arrogant disregard for the rights of Catholic parents.” He said, “In the main, Catholic parents choose Catholic schools in order to avoid the worst excesses of the sexual health zealots in our health boards and in our councils who have done nothing over the past 20 years but make Scotland’s sexual health record one of the worst in Europe.”