29th July, 2015
The Australian Christian Lobby is calling upon the Federal Government to defund an $8 million schools’ program which it says promotes "radical sexual experimentation and gender theory".
The ACL is also calling on state education ministers to remove material from the Safe Schools Coalition of Australia from schools.
Wendy Francis, child safety spokeswoman for the ACL, has highlighted numerous concerns with the material found on the SSCA website including "explicit" information promoting homosexual sex and "chest binding" for girls who think they may be boys.
"No-one wants kids to be bullied at school for any reason but the Safe Schools material is promoting radical sexual experimentation and gender theory," Ms Francis said in a statement released on Tuesday. She described the SSCA program as "clearly much more than an anti-bullying program".
Sally Richardson, the national program director for the Safe Schools Coalition Australia, has told Fairfax Media that the organisation had chosen "not to comment on issues that fall outside the focus of our program". "Our focus is on challenging the bullying and discrimination of the LGBTIQ community within the school setting".
The SSCA says on its website that it provides schools with access to a range of tools, resources and support for school communities which aim to "improve safety and inclusivity for same sex attracted, intersex and gender diverse students, their families and teachers, while taking a zero-tolerance approach to homophobia and transphobia in the school community".
The program, which draws on a model developed in Victoria, is currently available in a number of states including Victoria, South Australia, and New South Wales
The ACL has launched a petition on the Queensland Government’s e-petition website calling for the rollout of the program in that state to be stopped. It claims that the "extreme sexual material" contained in the program "denies children the right to their innocence" and "has no place in our schools". It had attracted 5,481 signatures at the time of writing.
~ www.safeschoolscoalition.org.au
– DAVID ADAMS
