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Parents protest radical sex-ed curriculum

TORONTO, September 19, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — After his five-year-old son came home from senior kindergarten last April to report excitedly that his teacher “told me I could marry a boy if I want to,” Naveed Bahadur was “shocked” and his wife left in tears.

But the incident is hardly an isolated one, says Jack Fonseca, political strategist for Campaign Life Coalition.

“I’ve lost track of the number of parents who have told us that their kids have been given lessons with alternative sexual lifestyles and gender identity theory woven into the material, even at the kindergarten level,” Fonseca told LifeSiteNews.

Too often, however, parents are intimidated; they don’t want to expose their children to ridicule or their family to possible harassment as “homophobes” or ignorant rubes who fear sex, he said, so they don’t speak up or take action.

“Parents can’t get discouraged — they need to keep up the pressure,” Fonseca said, adding that it’s important for concerned parents to come to the September 21 rally at Queen’s Park.

Ontario’s MPPs need to be reminded that the controversial sex-ed curriculum will be a ballot-box issue in the 2018 provincial election, he said.

5-year-old “fixated” on idea he can marry a boy

In Bahadur’s case, the father of one quickly took action, taking his objections to SK teacher Tara Jamieson, then to principal Kiri Karailiadis of Blake Street Public School, next to Toronto District School Board Superintendent Mike Gallagher and finally to TDSB trustee Jennifer Story.

Bahadur’s chief concern was that his son was too young to receive this information and that the Liberal government’s official sex-ed curriculum document had led him to believe that same-sex relationships were not supposed to be introduced until Grade 3, he told Jamieson in an email he shared with LifeSiteNews.

His son — who is now enrolled in a private school — came home “quite fixated with the idea that a boy can marry a boy,” Bahadur wrote. “This also left him with many questions for us and to be honest we weren’t prepared for them. We are his primary caregivers and such topics should have introduced to him by us first and then to him at school — at a later age.”

But he was also upset because “teaching a child that a man can marry another man and be treated equally is different from telling the same child that he himself can marry another man if that makes him happy,” Bahadur wrote.

“Teaching students tolerance and acceptance of all people or discussing different types of families is commendable but is far different from teaching them that they could love and marry whichever gender they want.”

Parents should know what was or will be discussed

Jamieson responded by email that the lesson took place because another boy came to school wearing nail polish that day, so “we had the discussion that everybody has the right to be however they wish to be, so long as it doesn’t injure anybody else.”

The discussion quickly became one of ‘“relationships/marriage,” and “so to make everybody feel safe and important, we broached the topic with the mindset that as long as you’re happy, you can love and have a family with whomever you choose,” she wrote.

Bahadur also met with Karailiadis briefly, but dissatisfied with her response, he then approached Gallagher and Story.

Story dismissed Bahadur’s concerns curtly in an email that Bahadur shared with LifeSiteNews: “This is now part of the Ontario curriculum. (Not to mention that I support wholeheartedly our kids developing an understanding of and appreciating (sic) for the many of the configurations of relationships and family, including same-sex ones.)”

For his part, Gallagher conceded in an email that classroom discussions of sensitive topics at that age should be more general, or if possible, delayed until the teacher can speak to the parents.

But Bahadur remained dissatisfied. He wanted Blake Street Public School to inform other parents about what happened, he told LifeSiteNews, because he understood “that certain topics were off limits until Grade 1 or 3.”

“Why can’t parents be told that topics of same-sex marriage are discussed with four and five year olds if the topics are brought up by students?” Bahadur asked Gallagher in an email, which he shared with LifeSiteNews. “Why not be transparent?”

Parents’ rights as primary educators under attack

Fonseca pointed out that CLC’s detailed analysis of Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne’s sex-ed curriculum shows that it sexualizes children at too early an age and robs them of their innocence.

But the individual teachers also have the power to teach any of the controversial sex-ed lessons earlier than the grade indicated in the Liberal government’s curriculum document, Fonseca told LifeSiteNews.

“It’s a little known fact that teachers are given very wide latitude by the Ministry of Education to teach sex-ed lessons earlier, if they want to,” he said. “The grades indicated in the Wynne/Levin document are merely ‘recommendations.’ This fact makes the curriculum all the more age-inappropriate.”

Moreover, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario’s leadership appears to have fallen into lockstep with the Wynne government’s sex-ed agenda, observed Fonseca, pointing to the ETFO’s magazine VOICE as proof of the union’s radicalization.

The Spring 2016 issue of VOICE features an article on “All-gender cabins and their place in trans-inclusive places” and the Summer 2016 issue features an article on discussing privilege, which focuses on the gender spectrum and transgenderism, as well as an article, and an advertisement, encouraging members to “Teach PRIDE: Inclusive spaces start in our classroooms.”

“The Wynne sex-ed curriculum purports to introduce alternative sexual lifestyles by Grade 3, but teachers can take it upon themselves to introduce it at any age, and in any subject,” Fonseca said. “Parents have to be warned about the moral reprogramming agenda that the teachers’ unions have for their kids.”

With their rights under attack by the Liberal government, radicalized teachers’ unions, a persuasive LGBTQ lobby, and a biased media, it’s essential parents don’t lose heart and that they keep up the pressure, Fonseca said.

He urged all concerned to attend Wednesday’s Queen’s Park rally, organized by the Canadian Families Alliance, to protest sex-ed. “Parents, wake up. You have to protect your kids.”

Queenie Yu, independent candidate in the recent Scarborough Rouge River by-election, and Brad Trost, potential candidate in the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race, will be among the event’s speakers.

For more information on the September 21 rally at Queen’s Park, which will run from noon until 2 p.m.,  go here, and on Facebook, here.  Information on buses traveling to the rally is available here.

The CFA has also created a downloadable package of rally signs that parents can have printed at a 16″ x 24″ size.