The British Museum is to offer “sex and relationship education” to children, using a series of sexually explicit exhibits.
Beginning today, officials at the museum will put on workshops for children as young as eleven on topics including pornography, homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexualism.
Director of the British Museum Hartwig Fischer told The Times: “We run a sex and relationship programme that works much better in museums where you have objects that you can relate to and where it is easier to talk about these things.”
‘Sexual obsession’
Laura Perrins, Co-Editor of The Conservative Woman, said parents should “guard against” pupils being sent to the lessons on class trips.
She warned that the idea had been devised by “sexually obsessed radicals” who want to “expose other people’s children to pornographic images and sex toys”.
“It falls completely in line with state-promoted, value-free, amoral sex education which probably is contributing to making a lot of our teenagers pretty miserable”.
Referring to the exhibits on display, she also noted that “ancient Rome and Greece was a very nasty place for women and children”.
Indoctrination
The programme received criticism from as far afield as the US, with President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Dr Albert Mohler saying the museum was attempting to foist a particular worldview on children.
let this be a warning to all of us
Dr Mohler said, “an awful lot of parents in Great Britain are going to be sending their children to the British Museum believing that they’re going to be seeing great paintings, Egyptian mummies, and also the famous Elgin Marbles from Athens, but that’s not actually all the children will be seeing”.
Remarking on The Times’ description of the exhibition, Dr Mohler added that it was so explicit, he could not bring himself to describe it in his radio blog.
Timeframe
Pupils will be directed to view several exhibits including the Warren Cup, a Roman drinking vessel which depicts men having gay sex, and the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, a supposed symbol of transsexualism.
Museum Director Fischer claimed that the classes were part of the museum fulfilling its “civic mission”.
The British Museum’s classes begin on Thursday and will run to 15 October.