Does RSE harm children?

The text of a talk delivered by Lynda at a Parliamentary Briefing in the House of Commons on Wednesday, 26th February.

Children at birth are an open book.  They need to learn – to absorb information that will prepare them for life ahead.  That’s what education is all about.  But also they need to be taught how to weigh different situations and make good decisions.    And sometimes, while they’re growing up, they make some very bad decisions – as every parent will tell you.  So they need to be protected.  From others, who might wish them harm, and from themselves.

I hope that much is agreed.  There is much in the RSE Regulations that is good and to be welcomed, for example, helping children stay healthy, and teaching them online safety…  But there are some areas that are of real concern – while it’s also becoming increasingly apparent that some groups are manipulating the Regulations to promote an agenda – an ideology – that has nothing to do with child protection, but is rather trying to normalise and embed new attitudes and values into society.

A few facts to start.  Despite all efforts teaching children how to avoid pregnancy, with mass provision of contraception and free access to the morning after pill, the UK still has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Western Europe.  England and Wales have the highest rate for teenage abortions in Western Europe.  STIs amongst teenagers are currently said by doctors to be at epidemic level, including not just infections like Chlamydia and herpes, but syphilis, gonorrhoea… AIDS.   In fact, according to a recent report issued by the Terrence Higgins Trust and the British Association for Sexual Health & HIV (BASHH), in 2018 there were nearly half a million STI diagnoses in the UK, while in the last decade cases of gonorrhoea rose by 249%, and rates of syphilis by 165%.  And most of these new infections – what are called a disproportionate number – were, they said, amongst young people and gay and bisexual men (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/syphilis-cases-at-their-highest-since-world-war-two/ar-BBZEM2o?ocid=se).

But to continue with the overview, according to police figures, rates for child-on-child sex abuse are soaring, with some cases involving children as young as 5.  And in the last decade there’s been a 4,500% increase in referrals for children seeking gender transitioning treatment.

What this says more clearly than anything else is that sex education policies over the last thirty or so years have not worked.   Most concerning of all, the new RSE Regulations, by and large, simply rehash more of the same tired old policies.  This approach will not just not work, but will increase the problems.

To illustrate why I say this, I’m going to look at two areas in detail.

First, STIs.    There are currently 30 identifiable STIs and the number is rising.  Back in the 1950s, very broadly, there were two – gonorrhoea and syphilis.  Rates of infection amongst teenagers were so low at that time as to be rated statistically unrecordable. Now, as we’ve seen, the majority of all infections are amongst young adults in the 15-24 age group.  Society has changed, certainly, but a major factor behind this rise has undoubtedly been sex education policy, which, from the ‘90s onwards, removed all idea of teaching restraint or ‘old-fashioned’ morality, adopting the line instead that, as all teenagers were going to have sex anyway, what they needed was to be taught how to avoid pregnancy, and how to have sex ‘safely’ – which meant putting on a condom.

That same approach holds good today, but children are actually being fed misinformation and lies.   For a start, condoms do not provide complete protection, and they will not keep children safe.  If used ‘perfectly’, they are said to give 98% protection, but it’s acknowledged that they’re very rarely used perfectly, so ‘expert’ use puts the protection level at 85%.   But children are not perfect, and they’ve very far from expert, so what’s the protection rate for them?  50% … 40%… lower?   But it’s not just this that’s the problem, because what children are also not being taught, is that for some of the current 30 STIs, a condom will give absolutely no protection at all – because the infection is not passed by bodily fluids, but by skin-on-skin contact.   Condoms give absolutely no protection at all against these types of infection.

Young people are also not being taught, under current programmes, that some of these infections are completely untreatable, and that others, such as gonorrhoea, are increasingly antibiotic resistant.  Which means that if and when they catch one of these infections, they may well have it for life, may become infertile, and it may in time lead to their premature death.

So what’s the priority here?  Teaching kids how to have sex, or keeping them safe?

The second area I want to look at is the promotion of gender fluidity from around 3 onwards, pushed by things like the No Outsiders and All about Me programmes.   The rationale put forward by activist groups such as Stonewall – and seemingly taken over wholesale by the DfE and Ofsted – is that children need to learn as early as possible the full range of diverse relationships in Britain today, so that they learn to be tolerant and inclusive.  Above all, they must learn not to bully those who are ‘different’ because of their sexuality.  According to official figures released by the ONS, LGBT bullying accounts for around at most only 4% of bullying, but you would think from the line being taken by Stonewall and some Government officials that pretty much the only form of bullying in schools is LGBT, and that the rest can be ignored.

Perhaps an even greater problem than this, however, is that children – being subjected from age three to the messages that they can change their gender, if they want, and that they may be homosexual, because they have a best friend of the same sex – are having to grapple with concepts that they cannot understand, and which prematurely sexualise and confuse them.

Is this just my personal view?  No, it’s not.  It is medically well established that children become aware of physical differences at around the age of 2.  But they do not develop gender identity till around 7.  Which means that teaching them they can choose their gender at 3, 4,5… which choice may not match their body, is forcing an ideological message onto them that they have absolutely no chance of processing or evaluating for themselves.   On any scale, this teaching is not age-appropriate.  It’s a social experiment, and it’s abuse.  And in all honesty, if we keep pushing this line, which is driven by an ideological agenda to embed the ‘new’, values in society, rather than by the desire to protect children and keep them safe, we can have no idea of the long term consequences – not just for them, but for society as a whole.

I wish I had time to talk about the effects of puberty blockers, being prescribed wholesale to children seeking gender reassignment; about the massive increase in child-on-child sex abuse cases, all too clearly resulting from too much information too soon; about 27% of teenagers now identifying as bi-sexual, because of the unremitting promotion of same sex relationships.  I wish I had time to talk about the latest figures for the rise in oral and anal cancers, directly resulting from the normalisation and promotion of these kinds of sex to young people.  But I don’t.

Instead, let me simply finish by saying we have to decide now whether our priority is child welfare – really protecting and preparing them for life in modern Britain.  Or subjecting them to the social experiment being pushed by groups like Stonewall.  I hope that the Government will urgently reconsider its approach, and amend its Sex and Relationships Education policy to prioritise child welfare and safety before it is too late.  Children are the future.  They deserve our care.

 

 

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