Another Brick in the Wall: Ontario's New Sex Education

The resistance against Ontario’s new sex-education revision is not letting up. Premier Kathleen Wynne announced the revisions in October 2014. They took effect September 2015. Officially called Health and Physical Education Curriculum, Ontario parents have resisted it from the beginning. Thousands protested at Queen’s Park in April. Local parents held a rally in Waterloo in June. Over 100 protests took place on multiple sites across Ontario in September. Parents from Thorncliffe Park Public School in Toronto pulled their roughly 700 children from that school for the entire month of September to protest the curriculum. Expressing solidarity with the Thorncliffe parents, parents province-wide pulled their children from school yesterday and gave notice to their principals that they oppose the new curriculum. In what must be a shock to the provincial government, parents have not backed down.

The concerns are plenty.

Many are concerned that children in grade 3 will be taught that gender-identity may be different from birth assigned sex, thus normalizing gender reassignment surgery and cross-dressing. Also in grade 3, the curriculum presents homosexuality as a wholesome choice and one of many proper ways to live. In grade 6, children will learn that masturbation is a pleasurable way to explore their bodies. In grade 7, children will learn about oral and anal sex. An explanation of anal sex will be given alongside an explanation of natural sex (vaginal sex as the curriculum calls it). The result is that natural sex, within marriage, and sodomy are seen to be morally equal. Also in grade 7, children will learn that pondering their gender identity and their sexual orientation is a good and normal part of growing up. In grade 8, students will be encouraged to keep a condom handy in case they need it.

Add to this the allegation that Benjamin Levin oversaw the drafting of the new curriculum. He is a former Deputy Education Minister and advisor to Premier Kathleen Wynne. In May 2015, Levin was sentenced to 3 years in prison for charges related to child pornography and counseling the sexual assault of a child. That a sex offender who preyed on children could have helped design this new curriculum only exasperates the suspicion that it is intended to weaken children's inhibitions and groom them for sexual exploitation.

All of this is alarming.

From a Christian perspective, adults possess the stewardship of shaping children’s consciences. We are to instruct them in what is wholesome and proper according to the standards of the Lord. Children left to themselves in any realm will typically move towards recklessness. Whether it be finances, diet, or sexuality, children require regular instruction to shape their consciences and mould their thinking. Without training they will gravitate to their most base and harmful impulses. The new sex-education curriculum will only sear their consciences, acclimatize them to embrace sexual perversion, and sow seeds of destruction into their impressionable hearts.

Ontario’s new sex-education curriculum is not morally neutral. It is inimically hostile towards Christianity, Christians, and Christ Himself.

Christian parents need to think carefully.

Many good people work hard as public school educators in this province. They take their responsibility seriously. They are sterling examples to us all. That said, this new provincially mandated curriculum only erodes our confidence in the entire system.

Christian parents will ask some serious questions. At what point is this type of education more predatory than helpful? How will you inform your children's consciences? How will you strike the balance between guarding their innocence and educating them about reality?

Some parents will decide to homeschool.

Some will enroll their children in a private school.

Some will utilize the public education system.

All families need to be aware of the issues and entrust their choices to the leading of God’s Holy Spirit.

Those parents who do have their children in public school should know they can opt out of all instruction that is contrary to their beliefs. Click here to download the opt-out form and instructions on how to opt-out.

The Scriptures tell us the world is a battlefield of ideas. Ideas regularly compete for the allegiance of our minds and the minds of our children. Guns and knives may be able to kill, but ideas can lead us to hellfire. Ideas originate from spiritual principalities. We do not see the forces of good or of evil. They are invisible. Ideas stem from invisible but compelling spiritual forces. They are planted in the mind where they grow to bear fruit. The Holy Spirit is the True Teacher Who we can trust. But Satan, ever the deceitful fraud, poses as a teacher and aspires to teach. The father in Proverbs recognized this. To his son, he portrayed the voice of folly as a preposterous and deadly counterfeit to the life-giving voice of wisdom. We must equip our children to discern the dialects they will hear: one being reptilian and the other heavenly.

Pastorally, my concern with the provincially mandated sexual-education curriculum is theological and spiritual. Only wholesome ideas should be sown in the minds of our church’s children, and those ideas should be given the proper environment in which they can flourish. We must protect children from the alluring charm of the great false teacher, Satan himself.

The new curriculum alienates Christians further from the elites who have beatified the endorsement of sexual proclivities as religious dogma. Not satisfied with the mere canonization of deviancy, now they want to catechize the kids in it.

It’s what Pink Floyd coined “another brick in the wall.” The establishment is fortifying, and decency is on the outside.

Masquerading as enlightened and progressive, the dialect is anything but. It has a serpentine twang to it older than Methuselah. "Your eyes will be opened," the serpent promised Eve. Our first parents didn’t recognize that twang, and to our detriment they also believed their new education wouldn’t kill us. They ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and we their children died with them. Now we hear the same dialect in a provincially mandated education for our own children. We recognize the false teacher's ancient hiss.

We must respond. We must be the parents. We don't need your sex education. Hey, false teacher, leave our kids alone.