September 23, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Days after the Italian lower house passed the country’s “anti-homophobia” law, the country’s leading homosexualist lobby group, Arcigay, appears to be testing the legal waters.
Together with The Omphalos Association and Arcilesbica Perugia, Arcigay has launched a complaint, called a “denunzia,” of “homophobia” that they allege was committed during a religious education class at the Liceo Classico Mariotti, a university preparatory high school, in the Umbrian town of Perugia.
According to the complaint, made to the National Anti-discrimination Office of the Ministry for Equal Opportunities, the teacher handed out a questionnaire to students asking them to rank from 0 to 10 the gravity of sinfulness of a list of activities, including, “Selling drugs, pollution, war, terrorism, murder, contraceptive methods, abortion, premarital experiences [that lead to] AIDS infection and homosexuality”.
In a media release, The Omphalos Association said the questionnaire gave “a judgement … which was not posed in a neutral manner” because it assumed that the behaviours listed incurred “guilt”.
Click “like” if you support TRADITIONAL marriage.
“The questionnaire, in our opinion, was at best done very badly, and at worst was biased and provoked the pursuit of extremist and discriminatory arguments.”
“If the teacher’s intent had been to assess the pupils' perception towards socially relevant issues, as we read the statements of some high school students, it would have talked about ‘themes’ and not ‘blame’.”
One student spoke to local media, denying that the questionnaire was anything more than a teaching exercise, saying, “This school teaches us not to despise homosexuals or anyone else.”
In the class in question, the student said, “each gave his opinion” on the various items listed, “and the professor did not criticize those who gave a vote equal to 0 for homosexuality or infanticide or manslaughter or similar things! He was silent listening to his pupils compare their opinions.”
The student added, “You are really bad people! You have attacked a professor who had no intent beyond letting us compare [issues].”
The school’s dean said the questionnaire was in “total compliance with programs and ministerial directives” and had been published by an academic sociology journal ten years before. The dean said the complaint was nothing more than an “empty attempt at [political] exploitation”.
“You want to take this incident and force a certain type of interpretation. These deductions are rather artificial and subjective and arbitrary and appear, as ever, to have been built on nothing.”