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By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, Latin America Correspondent

NEW YORK, June 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Latin American health officials and United Nations bureaucrats have agreed to continue implementing “comprehensive sexuality education starting in early childhood” throughout the region, including instruction in the use of condoms and anti-“homophobia” training, at the recent meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in Jamaica earlier this month.

The meeting's primary purpose was to reaffirm and promote the “Mexico City Declaration on Sex Education,” formulated last year just prior to Mexico City's International AIDS Conference in August 2008.

The Declaration urges the implementation of “comprehensive sexuality education starting in early childhood,” which, it claims, “favors the gradual acquisition of information and knowledge necessary to develop the skills and attitudes needed for a full and healthy life as well as to reduce sexual and reproductive health risks.”

“Comprehensive sexuality education” is a term used by anti-family groups to denote programs that present a morally neutral, purely physical approach to sex education that instructs teens and even children in the use of artificial birth control and abortion, and presents unnatural sexual practices as normal and acceptable.

The declaration also claims, in conflict with leading scientific authorities, that “Scientific evidence demonstrates that comprehensive sexuality education, including HIV/STI prevention methods – such as the correct and consistent use of male and female condoms…neither accelerates sexual debut, nor increases the frequency of sexual relations.”

Dr. Jose Antonio Izazola L., Director-General of Mexico's National Center for HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control, gave a PowerPoint presentation in which he endorsed the Mexico City Declaration and particularly its goal of reducing “by 75 per cent the number of schools under the jurisdiction of the Ministries of Education that have failed to institutionalize comprehensive sex education” by 2015.

He also stated his goal of “Fighting against stigma, discrimination: homophobia.”

According to the meeting's program, published on line by the United Nations, other speakers and attendees included representatives from the governments of Brazil, Uruguay, and Honduras.

Related Links:

Mexico City Declaration of 2008

Regional Ministerial Meeting on HIV and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean Statements and Presentations

Related LifeSiteNews Coverage:

Indian Government: Sex Education “Has Absolutely No Place” in Our Schools – It “Promotes Promiscuity”

Major Study Reveals Overwhelming Bias of “Comprehensive” Sex Education 

Abstinence” or “Comprehensive” Sex Education? 

Mexico Introduces Graphic Sex Education; Catholic Bishops in Outrage