The Australian Chrisitian Lobby has announced it will launch a major campaign against the Safe Schools Coalition program that aims to prevent same-sex attracted and transgender students being bullied schools.
Hundreds of schools across the nation have signed up to the program. Safe Schools Coalition aims to creating positive and inclusive school communities that are free from homophobic and transphobic bullying and discrimination. The program allows schools to access professional development for staff and resources for the whole school community.
In an audio discussion between Wendy Francis, ACL spokesperson in Queensland and the organisation’s Executive Director Lyle Shelton, concern was raised over the material contained within the program.
Ms Francis said the program has little to do with bullying and promotes a radical sexual agenda in schools.
“It goes way beyond anti-bullying and I found it hard to find anti-bullying information in this program. I had to really search for where its talking about anti-bullying because the main thing its doing it actually promoting a really radical sexual agenda.
“It’s in over 4oo schools in Australia at the moment, over ten percent of these are actually primary schools, and some of the language that is used was not actually allowed on the Queensland parliament website, because we decided to run a petition, the Queensland parliament has an e-petition system, and we ran a petition there. The wording was actually censored by the clerk of the parliament.” Ms Francis said.
Lyle Shelton, the organisation’s Executive Director said the program was sharing extreme information about sexuality that most parents would be wanting tell their kids themselves, not wanting schools to encourage sexual experimentation.
Mr Shelton said the program contained information that told young girls that might think in their minds that they are boys to do things to try to change their gender like binding their chests.
“I had never heard of this practice until I saw the so called safe schools material.” Mr Shelton said.
Ms Francis said chest binding was an extremely dangerous practice, highlighting that the Minus 18 website warns that it is a potentially lethal practice. Ms Francis said she was concerned that the federal government may be liable for the death of a child following the programs instructions.
“They describe different ways to bind your chest, and they even say you’ve got to give yourself a break because it will hurt, and it will restrict your breathing, And we’re talking to young girls here who are developing, and it causes lifelong damage to their chests. To the shape of their breasts and to their anatomy.
Mr Shelton said that as a father he was angry that chest binding was being promoted by the federal government in schools and he was surprised that more people were not “up in arms” about the issue.
Aside from participants discovering the practice of chest binding, Mrs Francis said she was also concerned about the way participants were learning about sexually transmitted infections.
“They say, ‘So an STI is not as terrible as you may have expected, in fact it’s not terrible at all’.” Ms Francis said. “We’re talking 80,000 new cases of Chlamydia in Australia, that causes infertility, it causes kidney disease, it’s very terrible.”
Mr Shelton said an image of a boy dressed in girls clothing on the program’s website was shocking and encouraged people to cross-dress at school.
“If we don’t think that that boy dressed in a dress is going to be bullied, then we’ve got rocks in our heads.” Ms Francis said, “So we’re talking about setting somebody up to be bullied in an anti-bullying program, it makes no sense at all.”
Ms Francis said the material used by the Safe School’s Coalition was dangerous and called on people to complain to their local member of parliament.
The Australian Christian Lobby are not alone in their criticism of the program, Family Voice Australia has previously run a petition calling for the program to be cancelled.
Family Voice said the program promotes gender blurring, and they would like to see it replaced with a program that provides guidance on how children can; “develop into healthy men and women”.
Nationals commit to senate inquiry into the Safe Schools Coalition
The Christian lobby group has also welcomed The National party’s commitment to refer the program to a senate inquiry.
“This is clearly not the sort of thing any responsible government should be promoting in primary and high schools,” Mr Shelton said in a media release. “No child should be bullied at school but school was not the place to promote radical gender theory.”
The Nationals Federal Council meeting passed a motion last week that read: “That this conference calls on the federal government to refer the future of the safe schools coalition to a Senate committee for a full inquiry and report”.
The National Party and the Safe School’s Coalition were contacted for comment.
OIP Staff
top image:Stock image YayMicro – creatista
26th September 2015 – additional information about the Safe Schools Coalition was added to the article to provide greater context.
