By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
CORDOBA, SPAIN, February 17, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Maimonides Institute of Secondary Education in Cordoba, Spain has announced plans to sue the pro-family organization Cordoba Educates in Freedom for accusing it of teaching bestiality in its “Education for Citizenship” course, a claim the school emphatically denies.
One of the main news sites that initially reported the story, InfoCatolica (Catholic Information) has issued a retraction after learning of the denials by the school administration, as well as a “faithful Catholic” teacher at the school who assured them that the charge was false.
LifeSiteNews also reported the accusation in a previous story, but noted that the school had made a somewhat ambiguous denial. However, the school's rejection of the story no longer appears ambiguous, and no corroborating evidence has been forthcoming since the story appeared.
The accusation was first published on the internet by Professionals for Ethics (PPE), which reported that Cordoba Educates in Freedom (CEF) had made the claim that a teacher at the school, in a class for 13-14 year-olds, had stated that “nature gives us sex so that we can use it with another girl, another boy, or with an animal.”
Professionals for Ethics claimed that the statement was made during an Education for Citizenship and Human Rights (EpC) class, which is opposed by the group. EpC is a mandatory program imposed on all schools, public and private, by the socialist government, which requires pro-homosexual and socialist indoctrination of students.
InfoCatolica observes that the accusations had credibility because so many other accounts of sexual perversion being taught to students in EpC classes have been confirmed.
According to the local newspaper El Dia de Cordoba, students at the school have supported the staff and have held a rally during class time to protest the claims.
“He did not say that in the class, nor on the side, and furthermore, we haven't even treated the topic of sex yet” in the EpC course, student Carlos Garrido told El Dia de Cordoba. Another said that the accusation was “a shame and an outrage” because the EpC course at the school “still hasn't arrived at the topic of sexuality.”
PPE has not removed the story from the website and has not published a retraction. Moreover, both InfoCatolica and El Dia de Cordoba say they have been unsuccessful in obtaining further explanation of the story both from PPE and CEF, although InfoCatolica states that it will continue to give credence to stories published on the PPE site.
InfoCatolica said it laments the lack of coverage given to the Maimonides Institute's denials of the charges.
“It is sad, very sad, to confirm that the only medium that both reported the news and the denial by the director of the IES (Institute for Secondary Education) has been InfoCatolica—at least as far as I know,” writes Luis Fernando of InfoCatolica. “We are not doing much of a favor for the cause of the parent objectors of EpC if we give the impression that 'anything goes'….it is our obligation to be fair and to give a complete rendering of all of the existing accounts regarding a fact in question.”
“What has happened, whoever is right, should not discourage the parent objectors from continuing to struggle to defend the right of their children to be educated in conformity with their values and not in conformity with an indoctrination imposed by the government,” Fernando adds.