Gender identity theory to be taught in Grade 8,
homosexuality in Grade 5

An estimated 300-500 people attended the anti-sex ed rally at Queen’s Park on Sept. 21. 2016

In what pro-family advocates are blasting as a “broken promise,” Ontario Education Minister Lisa Thompson announced March 15 that the government will be instituting a sex-education curriculum that exposes children to the topics of “gender identity” and “consent.”

“Our plan will modernize the classroom, will protect the future of our education system, and will ensure Ontario’s students acquire the skills they need to build successful lives, families and businesses right here in Ontario,” Thompson declared at a news conference in Toronto.

The plan raises the high-school class size cap from 22 to 28, bans cellphones in class, and includes a new math curriculum. But its most controversial elements are its provisions to teach children about “consent” in Grades 2 and 3, and “gender identity” in Grade 8, instead of Grade 3 as it was under Kathleen Wynne’s sex-ed curriculum. Classes about homosexuality will be taught in Grade 5 instead of Grade 3. Lessons about abstinence, cannabis, and body image will also be taught.

To address parental concerns, the province said that parents would be able to opt their children out of the sex-ed lessons, but the full curriculum will not be available for review until its planned May release. It’s slated to take effect in September. Yet Thompson told reporters during the press conference that gender identity theory would be “mandatory” in Grade 8.

“Thompson’s announcement that the anti-scientific theory of gender identity will still be taught in elementary schools is appalling, and represents a broken promise to the parents of Ontario, and to PC voters in the last election,” Campaign Life Coalition national president Jeff Gunnarson said in a press release. “Parents, voters, and even party delegates told Doug Ford loud and clear they do not want the fraudulent theory of gender identity taught at any grade – ever.”

Tanya Granic Allen, executive director of Parents as First Educators and a former candidate for leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, said that Thompson’s press conference provided “official confirmation that ‘gender identity theory’ would be an official part of the 2019 Ford/Thompson curriculum,” and that, “this is the first time that Thompson confirmed this publicly.”

Granic Allen said Thompson has long signaled that gender identity theory was allowed to be taught even after the curriculum was supposedly repealed by the Ford government and that Thompson and the Ministry of Education have said that teachers were allowed to use the 2015 Kathleen Wynne sex-ed curriculum as they saw fit. Granic Allen said, “Ontario teachers are free to teach whatever they like, and at any grade, regardless of what any curriculum says,” because of Thompson’s statements at Queen’s Park and legal submissions to the courts and Ontario Human Rights Tribunal.

The inclusion of the new sex-ed topics contradicts Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s repeated campaign promise that he would “respect parents by repealing” his predecessor Kathleen Wynne’s controversial 2015 sex-ed curriculum.

“Why is a supposedly ‘conservative’ government planning to teach children a lie – that being a boy or a girl is unrelated to your biological reality?” CLC political operations director Jack Fonseca asked. “Aside from being a total disregard for science, it is dangerous to children. It destroys their reality testing and their ability to discern solid truth. It can also produce psychosexual confusion in the minds of the young, which in turn, makes children more vulnerable to sexual predators.”

Fonseca continued that the opt-out provision was insufficient because it would make children “feel ostracized when they have to leave the class or stay home on certain days,” and that the fairer approach would be to simply “let those who believe in it, teach it to their own kids at home.”

Gunnarson called on Ford to fire Thompson and intervene to ensure the Wynne plan he promised to end doesn’t simply return in a modified form. “If Ford is to keep his coalition of small-c conservatives together for the next election, or for higher political ambitions in the future, he must not allow Thompson to cause him to betray his promise,” he warned.

Most of the material in this story originally appeared March 15 at LifeSiteNews and is used with permission.