Welsh Govt airbrushes ‘male’ and ‘female’ out of new sex ed curriculum

The Welsh Government is under fire for attempting to sideline biological sex in its new sex education curriculum.

The ‘Relationships and Sexuality Education Code’ avoids terms such as “male” and “female”, and only mentions “women” in reference to previous legislation.

The code contains mandatory teaching for children aged three to 16 years old and parents have no right of withdrawal.

So wrong

The code was approved by 42 votes to 16 in the Senedd after just 30 minutes of debate, something Laura Anne Jones MS called an “insult to the Senedd, the parents, teachers and children across Wales” given “there is so much wrong with the code in its current form”.

She added: “It is ridiculously confusing, dangerous to limit using gender, and strikes me as a Government more concerned in promoting ideology than teaching our children facts and protecting them.”

a Government more concerned in promoting ideology than teaching our children facts

Concluding her speech she warned that “there remain many glaring and obvious omissions in these documents, and it’s highly confusing in content and is not fit for purpose”.

‘Screams woke’

Jones was supported by Senedd colleague Darren Millar, who accused the Welsh Government of “trying to disguise a controversial set of ideas over which there’s a great deal of debate as some sort of settled catalogue of truths that all pupils in the country should be taught”.

He said: “The code is very heavy on respect, but it’s clear that that respect does not seem to extend to many Christians”, members of other faiths, or anyone “whose views may be at odds with those espoused by the Welsh Government.

“The evidence suggests that the code and the draft guidance have been influenced heavily from a particularly woke ideological viewpoint, and the draft guidance in particular screams ‘woke’.”

Stonewall-influenced

The Christian Institute’s Education Officer John Denning said: “It’s incredible how little is said about male and female in a publication that purports to be about the teaching of sex education. It’s easy to see the influence of Stonewall and other pro-trans groups.”

In October, Gower MP Tonia Antoniazzi accused the Welsh Government of promoting transgender ideology by adopting a misleading interpretation of equality law championed by controversial lobby group Stonewall.

She was responding to the Stephen Nolan investigation which found the Welsh Government’s Equality and Diversity policy adopted Stonewall’s interpretation of the Equality Act which replaces gender with ‘gender identity’.

The code’s statutory guidance does require schools to “provide a range of views on a given subject”, including “a range of other faith and non religious views on the issue”.