Note: To sign a petition to stop Ontario's graphic sex-ed curriculum, click here.
TORONTO, Ontario, March 12, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – If Ontario’s lesbian Premier thought winning a majority government last summer meant she could simply foist an explicit sex-ed curriculum update on school-aged children without truly consulting parents, she was dead wrong.
Tens of thousands of parents across Ontario from a diversity of cultural backgrounds are now accusing Wynne of getting between them and their children by forcing on families a sex-ed curriculum that life-and-family critics say is too much too early and contains a not-so-hidden agenda colored by homosexuality.
Numerous petitions on a variety of platforms calling on the premier to put an end to the curriculum have been signed by thousands upon thousands:
- LifeSiteNews – 58,700 signers
- Parents As First Educators – 54,300 signers
- Protect our Kids, Ezra Levant – 5,500 signers
- Add an Opt-Out Clause to new Sex Ed Curriculum – 5,450 signers
- Campaign Life Coalition – 2,100 signers
- HOWA Consumer Rights Protection – 1,170 signers
- STOP Ontarios Radical Sex Ed Curriculum NOW – 1,100 signers
- Stop the new sex-ed curriculum – 240 signers
- Institute for Canadian Values, Charles McVety – unknown
Thousands of parents are also banding together on social media sites such as Facebook to stop the curriculum from coming into their children’s schools. There are plans for a protest at Queens Park on April 14, a week-long parent and student school-strike in May, and a potential lawsuit to stop the implementation of the sex-ed.
Social media groups include:
- Parents Against Ontario Sex-Ed Curriculum – 2,530 members
- Coalition – Say NO to Ontario Sex- Ed – 2,535 members
- My Child My Choice – STOP AGE INAPPROPRIATE SEX ED – 1,900 members
- Parents & Students on strike: one week no school – 1,865 members
About 200 parents met in a Brampton, ON, community venue on Saturday to discuss what they thought was “unsuitable” for their children in the updated sex-ed. The meeting was organized by the Home Owners Welfare Association, a group working to protect the rights of immigrant communities.
Attending the meeting were Liberal MPPs Harinder Takhar (Mississauga-Erindale) and Harinder Malhi (Brampton-Springdale).
“There are some issues in the curriculum, I agree,” Malhi told participants at the meeting. “I wasn’t taught these things and I turned out okay. I do see the issue, I do see the concerns.”
Takhar urged parents to compile a list of concerns they have with the curriculum and forward it to the premier’s office.
Lou Iacobelli, a retired Toronto Catholic District School Board teacher, spoke at the event warning parents about what the curriculum actually contains and called for a referendum on the sex-ed.
“We’re asking for a referendum,” Iacobelli told Mississauga’s The News after the meeting. “This curriculum is not age appropriate.”
A similar meeting was also held on Saturday in Windsor, ON, where parents raised concerns about their children's safety and innocence. A number of parents stated at the meeting that they are now exploring the option of private schooling and even home schooling.
Ally Carter said that the new sex-ed has helped her and her husband to decide to send their children to a private school. “We disagree with the perspective and what is age appropriate. My six-year-old isn’t ready for this,” she said.
“There are a lot more people concerned about this then people think,” said Tracy Walls, who has three of her boys in the public system, to The Windsor Star. “They don’t speak up because they don’t think their voice matters.”
New Canadian Media ran a story at the end of February about how immigrant parents believe the sex-ed undermines their parental role.
“We feel that our role as parents [is] being undermined and this is one of the problems… they are going ahead as if we didn’t exist,” said Firas Marish of Oakville, ON. “The goal is to protect our kids and we appreciate that move and we support it, but what we are seeing doesn’t serve that goal.”
Last week Ontario’s Coptic community rejected the sex-ed curriculum, saying Christian parents were “under attack” by a government that is “attempting to abduct the parenting responsibility from parents and to force a way of thinking on children without regard for Christian beliefs, morals and values.”
“The Holy Bible in Proverbs 22:6 says ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’ This is truly a responsibility that each Christian parent takes to heart,” Bishop Mina, the Coptic Orthodox Bishop for Mississauga, Vancouver and Western Canada, wrote.
Despite the massive outrage, Wynne continues with her plans to roll out the updated sex-ed for the 2015 school year, leaving parents with the bitter realization that they are being entirely ignored.
Find a full listing of LifeSiteNews' coverage of the Wynne government's explicit sex ed program here.
