Editor’s note: This story contains graphic sexual material. 

Resources provided by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) have been found to promote the gay lifestyle and sexual perversion and promiscuity. Blogger Blazing Cat Fur found that the TDSB linked to a website promoting masturbation and casual sex called www.positive.org, which is run by the Coalition for Positive Sexuality. Blazing Cat Fur’s post ignited media and online coverage of the school board’s actions, as well as a legal complaint from a pro-family leader.

On one page Blazing Cat Fur noted, the authors of the positive sex website write, “Women have sex with women, men have sex with men, women have sex with men – and sometimes the best sex is with yourself!” It then provides a list of advice, including masturbating with vegetables or other objects, showering with someone else, bondage, oral sex, having sex in front of mirrors, acting out sexual fantasies, masturbating with someone else, and viewing pornography. These are described as “safe and fun ways to get off, which you probably won’t learn in school.” Yet the TDSB is encouraging teachers to share the website with students who ask questions about sex and sexuality.

The American-based site also provides advice for youth getting an abortion, warning that a minor may need to get consent from her parents first: “If you think they’ll be supportive, definitely tell them.” If there are consent or notification laws, the site advises calling an abortion facility to get a “judicial bypass” or going to a state without consent laws. The authors assert, “Any reason we have for choosing abortion is a good reason. These are our bodies and our lives. No one has the right to force us to have a baby, or to punish us for liking sex.” They then warn women not to go to “bogus clinics like Crisis Pregnancy Centers”, which are “run by anti-abortion groups and will try to scare you out of having an abortion.” According to the site, “abortion has few risks. It can involve some cramping, and light bleeding afterward.”

The website’s promotion of masturbation with vegetables caused a massive outcry at the end of September. “The intent behind this page of resources was to provide sexual health information that’s not covered as part of the curriculum for those that are interested,” board spokesman Ryan Bird said in a statement. Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College, wrote to the attorney general of Ontario asking for criminal proceedings against the TDSB. “It’s crude, vulgar, corrupting kids and the police should be brought in,” McVety told the Toronto Sun. Shortly afterwards, the TDSB removed the link, along with at least 10 other links. Board trustee Sam Sotiropoulos told the Toronto Star that many parents and community members “are just dismayed that this type of information…is actually linked through our public website.”

Blazing Cat Fur has also uncovered a poster reportedly hanging in junior high schools saying “Love has no gender” with a collection of multi-coloured hearts and stick figures promoting different relationships, including two girls, two boys, and threesomes. Board spokesman Ryan Bird denied that the poster promotes polygamy: “The reason for depicting two women and one man was meant to show that a person can be attracted to more than one gender.” Another poster claims, “There are no rules for being a boy or a girl” and shows a collage of images of boys and girls supposedly defying gender stereotypes. Three of the boys are shown wearing dresses.

Yet another discovery of Blazing Cat Fur was a curriculum document titled Rainbows and Triangles, intended to challenge “Homophobia and Heterosexism in the K-6 Curriculum.” The 2006 edition suggests various activities to promote the gay lifestyle, such as setting up a table or bulletin board to celebrate the “contributions of LGBTQ individuals,” researching famous homosexuals, inviting gay writers or artists, and having an “anti-homophobia education moment” all as a daily part of morning announcements that would provide students with information about the contributions of homosexuals.

In another section of Rainbows and Triangles intended to counter homophobic name-calling, the authors of the document suggest looking up terms such as “male,” “female,” “husband,” and “wife” in the dictionary. “The definitions are often so blatantly offensive and stereotypic that they create a small sensation when read aloud, thus challenging children to rethink their own definitions,” says the resource.

Following this is a lesson plan created in 2002 about teaching children in Grades 1 to 3 about Pride Day. The resource recommends that two 45 minute sessions be spent on the lesson. As background, “students should be familiar with the different family configurations and the important values that all families share” and that they be introduced to the terms “lesbian,” “gay,” and “bisexual.”

As an activity, the document suggests, teachers may discuss the word “pride” and tell children that Pride Day is when homosexuals, “celebrate with their families and each other.” Moreover, teachers may choose to explain what the different colours in the rainbow, “a symbol of diversity in the gay and lesbian community,” signify. Other suggestions including reading Gloria Goes to Gay Pride or cutting out a photo of the Pride Parade from the newspaper. Teachers are also encouraged to review family groupings, which include “nuclear, extended, single-parent, same-sex, divorced/separated families,” and divide children into groups to draw pictures of different types of families. There is also a prompt to create murals or collages of important family celebrations such as “birthdays, Lunar New Year, Pride Day, Caribana.”

Kathy Shaidle commented on the instruction at her blog Five Feet of Fury: “You realize of course that this sexual grooming of little children in Toronto’s public schools will receive 0.01% of the news coverage previously devoted to sexual abuse by Catholic priests?”