Sex education aims to open children’s minds

AFTER reading the letters (Western Mail, January 23) I decided to look at the proposals relating to sex education and personal relationships on the WAG website.

I then looked up reporting by WalesOnline about the subject. Both said that compulsory sex education is only a proposal, though the minister is minded to make sex education compulsory.

Sex education in primary schools will not be compulsory and at secondary level sex education should be integrated into the overall curriculum.

So it will be perfectly possible to substitute the mating habits of rabbits with human sexual reproduction in the biology curriculum.

The tricky bit comes with personal relationships.

At this point I must declare an interest. I am a Christian who holds the great second commandment, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” to be upheld. And like the first commandment, “You will love the Lord your God...” there are no caveats.

The purpose of the WAG proposals is to encourage children to explore, understand and in the process develop an understanding that all people, whatever their colour, religion or sexuality, are to be valued as equals.

So that using these measures, at least, we live in an equal society and not as Orwell put it, “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others” as we do now. It is not a devious route designed to criminalise parents and take away their children.

Neither is it a Marxist plan to indoctrinate our children.

To begin with Marx never taught sexual ethics.

For indoctrination to be successful, those who seek to indoctrinate never tell their subjects what is going to happen and how the indoctrination will be carried out. Consider this true story.

Two young people after a night out are going home on the bus.

They attract the attention of several 15-year-old boys who at first use taunts, then physically attack them.

Reaction: Shocking, the boys should be punished. But what thoughts pass through the mind when told that the two young women were lesbians?

Their only crime was to show slight affection towards each other.

The aim of education is to open people’s minds to the realities as well as the possibilities of our society.

It hopes to head off the confrontation that took place on the top of the bus.

We cannot close our minds or those of our children.

Dave Bevan Abergavenny