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Education Minister Liz SandalsLianne Laurence / LifeSiteNews

TORONTO, September 8, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) — Ontario Minister of Education Liz Sandals has broken a promise made to parents earlier this year when she assured them they maintained the absolute right to withdraw their kids from the updated and controversial sex-ed. She is now saying that individual school boards can take that parental right away if they have a policy in place that allows them to do so.  

When asked explicitly by a reporter today if there are portions of the sex-ed that parents will not be allowed to opt out their children from, Sandals replied: “As I said, the individual boards have their policies and the individual boards will make decisions consistent with their particular policies.”

Today is the first day of school when many boards begin teaching the updated sex-ed for the first time.

The news comes days after the province’s second largest school board declared a new policy that parents will not be able to opt their kids out of portions of the course dealing with homosexuality and gender identity.

“Where the work in the classroom is about inclusion—whatever form that inclusion may take—any of the protected grounds in the Human Rights Code—we will not provide religious or any other accommodation,” stated Peel Director of Education Tony Pontes last week.

Instead of defending the rights of parents over their children, Sandals appears to be defending school board policies such as Peel’s.

When asked by another reporter if she has any directives for school boards that have a large number of parents who want to withdraw their children from the sex-ed, she replied: “No, each board is responsible for its own program, for it’s own policy around withdrawal and accommodation. … Boards will have somewhat differing policies based on their own experience of what are the issues in their own particular communities.”

Sandals’ statements are different from the ones she made at the beginning of the year when she was trying to sell the sex-ed to parents.

In February as Sandals unveiled the updated sex-curriculum to huge uproar from thousands of parents, she attempted to belay their concerns by assuring them that they had the right to opt out their kids.

“It’s actually in the Education Act that a parent has the right to withdraw their child from content they don’t want their child to receive,” Sandals said in an interview with National Post at that time.

Numerous parents from a diversity of ethnic and cultural backgrounds are concerned that the curriculum will sexualize their children and destroy their natural innocence by teaching explicit sexual content from the earliest of ages. Young children are taught to name genitalia and given explicit details about reproduction, masturbation, and homosexual practices. Homosexual households of two moms or two dads are presented as normal and natural. Critics say the curriculum is based on sexual ideology, not on genuine science.

While the Liberal government has done its best to portray the sex-ed as coming from a thorough consultation with parents, Postmedia Network has discovered through a freedom of information request that the entire process was what it called all “smoke and mirrors.”

The freedom of information request found that of the 4,000 parents the Liberal government promised to consult via an online survey, only 1,638 respondents — less than half — were tallied.

The questions parents were asked in the survey were broad and did not focus on any specific curriculum content. At no part in the consultation did parents lay eyes on the proposed curriculum.

The survey asked parents to agree or disagree with benign statement such as: “It is important that curriculum is reviewed and updated regularly to keep up with the changing skills and knowledge children and youth need to thrive in today’s world.” Or such as this: “It is important to me that the school curriculum supports students in having the knowledge and skills that allow them to make healthy, safe and informed choices.”

The only question that approached tackling the content of the curriculum stated: “I believe that the school should teach my child about both the risks of sexual activities and about ways to make safe and healthy choices regarding their sexual health.” Only 59 percent of parents “strongly agreed” with this statement.