Opinion
UK set to ban sex ed for young children amid parental backlash against LGBT indoctrination
From LifeSiteNews
There is undoubtedly a backlash against LGBT ideology unfolding in many Western countries, the source of which includes many ambivalent towards LGBT lifestyles but who are still uncomfortable teaching the ideology to children.
In March, podcaster Joe Rogan paid tribute to his favourite teacher. His seventh-grade science teacher, he noted, “was a brilliant man and he taught me about wonder. I think about that guy all the time.” But now, Rogan said, teachers are frequently fixating on issues of sex and gender. “I don’t want that gang of morons teaching my children about biological sex or gender,” Rogan said, adding that Drag Queen Story Hour is unacceptable for kids. “I don’t want you teaching them about any of those things.”
Instead, he suggested, teachers should focus on history, and math, and… all the things teachers used to focus on.
Rogan’s position on sex education is significant not only because he is the most popular podcaster in the world, but because he has achieved his success because he is a microcosm of the average adult. He is largely libertarian in the “live and let live” sort of way that saw a huge public opinion shift in favour of same-sex “marriage,” which Rogan supports; he is not religious; but he is still very uncomfortable with the full-scale sexualization of our education institutions and the insertion of gender ideology into public school curriculums across the board.
Rogan is something of a bellwether on these issues – he articulates the sort of common sense that many people hold but cannot articulate (or are too fearful to).
The “silent majority” is not a moral majority, but they are uncomfortable with the vast, swift social changes we have seen unfold over the past decade. Much of the backlash against gender ideology and increasingly explicit and instructional sex education in schools comes not from Christians – there are simply not enough of us – but from people who do not have moral objections to LGBT ideology, but do not want it taught to children. In short, most people are fine with adults doing whatever they want to, but they still believe that these behaviours and lifestyles are the purview of adults, not children.
That is why we are beginning to see government action on public school sex education even in the post-Christian United Kingdom. According to a recent BBC report, the U.K. government is planning to ban sex education for children under the age of ten, including a ban on any content about gender identity. Teachers’ unions, predictably, have pushed back, insisting that the proposed plan is “politically motivated” and that there has been no issue with inappropriate material. That claim is laughable; parents have been protesting the LGBT curriculum and other explicit materials for years now, and school staff have frequently responded by accusing them of various phobias.
According to the BBC, the “statutory guidance on relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) – which schools must follow by law – is currently under review. The government believes clearer guidance will provide support for teachers and reassurance for parents and will set out which topics should be taught to pupils at what age.” Sex education is not “typically taught until Year 6,” when children are 10, and “parents already have the right to withdraw” their child, although this has proven difficult to do.
Sex education has been mandatory for older students since September 2020, and the “government strongly encourages schools to include teaching about different types of family and same-sex relationships.”
This curriculum – referred to as “relationships education” – is compulsory and parents cannot remove their children.
The BBC notes that parents have been demanding changes in order to protect the innocence of children, while educators are insisting that the content is necessary because children are exposed to this information online anyway and that it is important for “trusted adults” to contextualize that information. That is the crux of the issue here that few are openly addressing: educators want to “contextualize” this information from the perspective of a pro-LGBT worldview, while many parents do not want this material taught at all because they fundamentally disapprove of the LGBT ideology itself.
There is undoubtedly a backlash against LGBT ideology unfolding in many Western countries, but it is important to recognize the source of that backlash. Although Christians and other religious objectors are certainly part of that backlash, their numbers are not large enough, in most places, to force government action.
The growing discomfort we see in polling data is thus far more likely to be of the Joe Rogan variety – we should live and let live, but we should also let kids be kids. As the U.K. government’s proposed guidance highlights, this means that there will be changes, but not significant ones.
LGBT ideology will still be compulsory for later grades, and state schools will still be teaching state dogmas.
Things have only gone from bad to worse for the global Electric Vehicle industry. And that’s a problem for Canada, because successive Liberal governments have done everything in their power to hitch our cart to that horse.
Earlier this month, the Trump Administration rolled back more Biden-era regulations that effectively served as a back-door EV mandate in the United States. These rules mandated that all passenger cars be able to travel at least 65.1 miles (and for light trucks, 45.2 miles) per gallon of gasoline or diesel, by the year 2031. Since no Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicle could realistically conform to those standards, that would have essentially boxed them out of the market.
Trump’s rolling them back was a fulfillment of his campaign promise to end the Biden Administration’s stealth EV mandates. But it was also a simple recognition of the reality that EVs can’t compete on their own merits.
For proof of that, look no further than our second bit of bad news for EVs: Ford Motor Company has just announced a massive $19.5 billion write-down, almost entirely linked to its aggressive push into EVs. They’ve lost $13 billion on EVs in the past two years alone.
The company invested tens of billions on these go-carts, and lost their shirt when it turned out the market for them was miniscule.
Ford’s EV division president Andrew Frick explained, “Ford is following the customer. We are looking at the market as it is today, not just as everyone predicted it to be five years ago.”
Of course, five years ago, the market was assuming that government subsidies-plus-mandates would create a market for EVs at scale, which hasn’t happened.
As to what this portends for the market, the Wall Street Journal argued, “The company’s pivot from all-electric vehicles is a fresh sign that America’s roadways – after a push to remake them – will continue to look in the near future much like they do today, with a large number of gas-powered cars and trucks and growing use of hybrids.”
And that’s not just true in the U.S. Across the Atlantic, reports suggest the European Union is preparing to delay their own EV mandates to 2040. And the U.K.’s Labour government is considering postponing their own 2030 ICE vehicle ban to align with any EU change in policy.
It’s looking like fewer people around the world will be forced by their governments to buy EVs. Which means that fewer people will be buying EVs.
Now, that is a headache for Canada. Our leaders, at both the federal and provincial levels, have bet big on the success of EVs, investing billions in taxpayer dollars in the hopes of making Canada a major player in the global EV supply chain.
To bolster those investments, Ottawa introduced its Electric Vehicle mandate, requiring 100 per cent of new light-duty vehicle sales to be electric by 2035. This, despite the fact that EVs remain significantly more expensive than gas-and-diesel driven vehicles, they’re poorly suited to Canada’s vast distances and cold climate, and our charging infrastructure is wholly inadequate for a total transition to EVs.
But even if these things weren’t true, there still aren’t enough of us to make the government’s investment make sense. Their entire strategy depends on exporting to foreign markets that are rapidly cooling on EVs.
Collapsing demand south of the border – where the vast majority of the autos we build are sent – means that Canadian EVs will be left without buyers. And postponed (perhaps eventually canceled) mandates in Europe mean that we will be left without a fallback market.
Canadian industry voices are growing louder in their concern. Meanwhile, plants are already idling, scaling back production, or even closing, leaving workers out in the cold.
As GM Canada’s president, Kristian Aquilina, said when announcing her company’s cancellation of the BrightDrop Electric delivery van, “Quite simply, we just have not seen demand for these vehicles climb to the levels that we initially anticipated…. It’s simply a demand and a market-driven response.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney, while sharing much of the same environmental outlook as his predecessor, has already been compelled by economic realities to make a small adjustment – delaying the enforcement of the 2026 EV sales quotas by one year.
But a one-year pause doesn’t solve the problem. It kicks the can down the road.
Mr. Carney must now make a choice. He can double down on this troubled policy, continuing to throw good money after bad, endangering a lot of jobs in our automotive sector, while making transportation more expensive and less reliable for Canadians. Or he can change course: scrap the mandates, end the subsidies, and start putting people and prosperity ahead of ideology.
Here’s hoping he chooses the latter.
The writing is on the wall. Around the world, the forced transition to EVs is crashing into economic reality. If Canada doesn’t wake up soon, we’ll be left holding the bag.
Just in time for Christmas, the Liberals make a deal with the Bloc that will suppress religious expressions of belief
(The Rewrite will return to its usual format in 2026. In the meantime please enjoy this republication of Peter Menzies’s take on Bill C-9 and its threat to free speech and freedom of religion. And, please, have a Merry Christmas)
If you want to get some sense of what life in Canada could be like if the federal government’s new hate speech law passes, check out Finland.
There, Päivi Räsänen, a medical doctor and Member of Parliament, and Bishop Juhana Pohjola of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland are awaiting the verdict of their third hate speech trial – all for the same issues – since 2019.
The prospect of a similar future “Bible Trial” now hangs over Canada thanks to the minority government’s openness to making a deal with the Bloc Quebecois to get Bill C-9 – An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places) – passed.
Already contentious, the contemplated amendment that would remove the current protections for sincerely held religious belief, could very well stifle the ability of Christians, Muslims, Jews and others to freely refer to their most sacred texts.
As the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops puts it: “the removal of this provision risks creating uncertainty for faith communities, clergy, educators, and others who may fear that the expression of traditional moral or doctrinal teachings could be misinterpreted as hate speech and could subject the speaker to proceedings that threaten imprisonment of up to two years.
“Eliminating a clear statutory safeguard will likely therefore have a chilling effect on religious expression, even if prosecutions remain unlikely in practice.”
Rasanen, Finland’s former Interior Minister, was charged under a section of the Finnish criminal code titled “war crimes and crimes against humanity” after jointly publishing a 2004 pamphlet with Pohjola that described traditional religious views on marriage and sexuality. Also involved were a 2019 live radio debate and a Tweet in which she questioned a decision by Finland’s majority church, the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church, to formally support a Helsinki Pride event.
Both she and Pohjola were acquitted at their initial trial and, again unanimously, upon appeal. The prosecution, determined to get convictions, then took the case all the way to Finland’s Supreme Court, where the third trial wound up on Oct. 30. At the time of writing, a verdict is pending. The accused face up to two years in prison if convicted.
Given that a total of six judges have, so far, not been convinced thay quoting Bible passages constitutes a hate crime, that level of punishment seems unlikely. But as Rasanen has written “the greatest danger is the threat of society-wide censorship and the crushing effect on freedom of speech and religion. A judgment against me would open the floodgates to a broad ban on the public expression of religious views or other beliefs and the threat of modern book burnings.”
While that may alarm those of us who still adhere to increasingly old-fashioned views on freedom and liberal democracy, there’s no doubt that the move to suppress religious expression – and some of its very unfashionable concerns regarding sexuality – has a strong fan base.
Quebec, where a crucifix inexplicably remains mounted in the National Assembly, appears particularly keen on this approach. Its Bill 21 banned the wearing of religious symbols or clothing by certain public employees and is now being extended to daycare workers and others. Its “burka ban” also insists a person’s face must be uncovered when receiving public services and is making it illegal to pray in public without government permission.
Prompted by the mass Islamo-Leftist coalition demonstrations that have occupied Montreal’s streets for the past two years, it seems unlikely that one would be busted for bowing one’s head to commune with the Almighty while sitting on a park bench. But the fact that it might be possible could just be enough to discourage one from doing so.
This is why the Bloc Quebecois is so keen to assert its leverage within a minority Parliament and stands ready to assist its passage if the exemption (“if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text”) within current hate speech legislation for people sincerely motivated by their faith is removed.
Indeed, Bloc leader Yves-Francois Blanchet believed he had a deal but that the Liberals, led by a regular attendant at Roman Catholic Mass – Prime Minister Mark Carney – “fear a backlash” and may try to find another dance partner. That hesitance, according to Blanchet, may have motivated the suspension of a (Dec. 4) House of Commons Justice Committee.
Conservative MP Andrew Lawton also wondered on X if the committee was putting the bill on hold, stating “The Liberal chair of the Justice Committee says he cancelled today’s Bill C-9 meeting so MPs could “regroup.” He refuses to say whether he’ll call next Tuesday’s meeting.”
The deal now appears to be locked in, although Justice Minister Sean Fraser promised concerned faith groups he would hear them out over the winter.
Meanwhile, the very idea that the exemption might be removed has lit up Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who, already opposed to Bill C-9 because of its restrictions on free speech, declared that it would “criminalize sections of the Bible, Qur’an, Torah and other sacred texts.”
I don’t know that it would. But it could. And that should be enough to alarm all those who believe in a God greater than the state. Just in time for Christmas, or whatever our politicians call it these days.
We note with sadness the passing Wednesday of Peter Arnett, whose work will be remembered vividly by those old enough to recall the first Gulf War and CNN’s hey day.
A New Zealander and later American too, Arnett made his name in war zones reporting for Associated Press, beginning in Vietnam. He won a Pulitzer prize for his sins, experienced controversy and lived to be 91. He tried and that’s all you can ask. Farewell, faithful servant.
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(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner. This commentary originally appeared in Epoch Times Canada)
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