A recent document on homophobic bullying and church schools has been produced and endorsed by the Church of England Archbishops’ Council Education Division and the prestigious National Society.
Entitled Valuing All God’s Children (VAGC), it aims to ensure schools are ‘safe’ places for all youngsters, and does so through warning of the evils of homophobia, and offering a decalogue of far-reaching recommendations to the nation’s 5,500 church schools.
Vehicle for sex rights activists
However, given how the issues are framed, VAGC is an excellent vehicle for sex rights activists to embed an agenda in church schools which is antithetical to core Christian morality.
There are two positives. VAGC focuses on the horrific impact of school bullying and says, ‘Enough!’. It also affirms the traditional biblical understanding of human sexuality and that all sex outside heterosexual marriage falls ‘short of this ideal’.
However, even these positives are seriously compromised by the overwhelming preponderance of gay-affirming presuppositions and assumptions, and the lack of a proper critique of the LGBT agenda.
Exposing children to danger
A charitable summary of VAGC might be: ‘The church still believes in the sanctity of heterosexual marriage (for now) but realises that many others, some Christians included, don’t, so let’s agree to disagree, expose children who lack the cognitive and moral ability to evaluate such matters to a variety of ‘Christian’ and other views and lifestyles and hope for the best. Meanwhile we ensure schools are “safe and welcoming”, which means everyone is taught about politically-correct sexual orientations and relationships and the imperative to be “inclusive”.’
The usual sleight of hand
Indeed, by setting sexual orientation alongside characteristics such as race and ethnicity, VAGC reinforces the false idea that sexual orientation is fixed and that gay people are ‘born that way’ i.e. created that way by God. However, the Royal College of Psychiatrists has now changed the statement on homosexuality that it originally submitted to the Pilling Commission. The College now concedes that sexual orientation is not set at birth, nor is it immutable.
Moreover, in relation to the ‘safe’ mantra, there is far greater and more deadly risk facing adolescents via the risk of HIV infection (and other STIs) from experimenting in homosexual behaviour. What happened to the concern for ‘safety’ here?
No-one should suggest it’s wrong
In LGBT parlance, ‘safe and welcoming’ means no-one should suggest that homo- (or bi-) sexual behaviour is wrong as to do so might offend someone with this identity. In effect this means CofE schools will become ‘LGBT-affirming’.
Other problems of VAGC include: Its reliance on skewed and faulty ‘research’ commissioned by the powerful campaigning / advocacy group, Stonewall; an ignoring of the lion’s share of bullied youngsters, those bullied because of appearances and disability (three of the former killed themselves last year alone); its suggestion of graphic SRE materials such as ‘Living and Growing’ (p.61) which sexualises children aged 7-9 by showing them a video of a couple in the act of sex itself, i.e. soft pornography; and fulsome promotion of the key author’s own publications at the expense of other resources.
Sexual identity?
Moreover, VAGC endorses a trans agenda which foists the deception of ‘gender theory’ on children – which previous generations of young people did not have to endure – and which divorces bodies from gender and sex (‘Am I a boy, a girl, both, neither?’).
Finally, given the emergence of more extreme family forms (such as polygamy and polyamory), how can VAGC quote (p.28) Archbishop Tutu’s famous ‘Everyone is an insider, there are no outsiders’ with any credibility? Have the memos on these others all gone astray?
Though undoubtedly written with good intentions, VAGC is deeply problematic. Bullying concerns can and must be addressed, but not by this means.
