The current demonising of the Hungarian government by the EU over the issue of sex education in its schools brings into sharp relief some facts that demand our closest attention. Even ex-justice minister Owen Bonnici excoriated Hungary in local media on what he terms its defiance of human rights.
Here we have two major issues. Firstly, we are facing a virulently aggressive campaign by LGBTQ activists to impose their agenda on society; and secondly, we have the much more serious assault on the sacred right of parents to educate their children as they deem fit.
The imposition of sex education curricula that disregard the beliefs of parents and Christian heritage lie at the vanguard of this radical liberal ideology which aims to introduce children in the earliest grades to graphic sexual topics, teaching them that there are numerous so-called “genders”, and treating fornication, masturbation, and homosexuality as normal, acceptable sexual practices.
This LGBTQ agenda is openly hostile to the fundamental rights of parents and the family. To claim that those who oppose this agenda are homophobic is profoundly unjust and dishonest. We were always taught to respect everyone’s dignity irrespective of their gender, sexual orientation, social status and nationality.
The LGBTQ agenda and its promotion of gender ideology has been branded in Poland as a mutation of the atheistic communist ideology that attacked traditional morality. Even in Malta, we have witnessed the top-down introduction of laws advancing the LGBTQ agenda without even the decency of serious public debate. Thankfully, countries like Poland and Hungary are standing up to the bullying of the handsomely paid apparatchiks of the EU.
Above all, it is the right and duty of parents to educate their children. It is not the role of the state. The state is only responsible to empower and enable the parents to fulfil their vocation.
The timeless principles that govern the role of parents and the state had been most clearly spelt out by the Catholic bishops of Wales and England in 1929. These principles articulated the proper relationship between school and state. For good measure, these fundamental principles were enshrined with utmost clarity in the Church document Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, published over 35 years ago on March 22, 1986. It states unequivocally that the teacher is always acting in the place of the parent [in loco parentis], never in the place of the state [in loco civitas]. Totalitarian governments, in their attempt to brainwash future generations, have always denied and abused the educational rights of parents.
This is even more critical in the sensitive field of sex education. Anyone who bothers to follow the outcomes of sex education campaigns should have the honesty to face the truth. The result has been the trivialisation of sex, the promotion of promiscuity and the dissemination of contraceptives, resulting in increased sexually transmitted disease, unwanted pregnancies and abortion.
Christians in particular have a duty to wake up and see where all this gender ideology is leading to and stand up to the EU against the sexualising of their children. They have a right and obligation to defend their God-given responsibility to transmit authentic values of human dignity to their children.