Spain to reverse veto on sexuality classes

THE Spanish government has said it will overturn a veto for parents from the Right-wing Vox party that allows them to pull children out of classes teaching sexuality and gender issues.

Santiago Abascal, the Vox leader, claimed that the veto was necessary to prevent “the corruption of minors”, and that schools were teaching “erotic games to children under the age of six”.

After the regional government in Murcia agreed to the introduction of the veto, Spain’s Left-wing coalition government warned yesterday that the measure was illegal, and that it would enforce state schools’ rights to guarantee access to a diverse education, and told Murcia that it must reverse the policy within a month.

Murcia’s government initially sent instructions to the region’s state schools to ensure that parents could opt in or out of talks and activities that may “go against their moral principles” at the start of the present school year. But Vox later demanded that the policy become law in return for it supporting the regional budget for 2020.

Isabel Celaá, the Spanish education minister, warned that “children are not parents’ property”, and insisted that all activities and lessons in the school timetable were “compulsory and count towards evaluation”.

“The sons and daughters of homophobic parents have the same right as everyone else to be educated about respect, the promotion of human rights and being able to love whoever they want,” said Irene Montero of Podemos, Spain’s equality minister. The Leftwing Socialist-podemos coalition has promised to repeal Spain’s current education law, which, among other things, makes religion an official subject that counts towards pupils’ final grades.