By Dr Julie Maxwell
I first became involved with FET 10 years ago when I became concerned about the explicit nature of sex education in schools and the lack of teaching about marriage and its importance for stable families. Our late Director Norman Wells was a huge support to me when I tackled first my children’s school and then the County Council trying to raise awareness of the inappropriate nature of what was being taught in schools. Norman advised me and gave me information about legislation enabling me to challenge the teaching although I was sadly unsuccessful.
The battle continues, and the situation 10 years on is far worse. The underhand introduction of gender ideology into schools has further undermined the family, marriage and even biological facts, as well as the “sex-positive” agenda which normalises porn, underage sex and abusive sexual practices. There seem to be a constant stream of new organisations infiltrating schools and trying to brainwash our children and young people.
So why have I become particularly concerned by the issue of gender ideology and transgender and why is it so important for FET?
There are many studies that show that children do better when raised by both their biological parents and that this is most likely when those parents are married before the children are born. Marriage therefore needs to be strengthened and prioritised by individuals, society and government in order for children and future societies to flourish.
Education is also a vital means by which children, and consequently society, flourishes if this education is done properly and supports families, rather than undermining them and taking responsibility away from parents.
You may think it is somewhat of a leap from this to transgender however my experience is that it is currently a pretty central issue.
At the heart of marriage is a biological reality – men and women are different. The majority of marriages will result in children produced as a result of this biological difference and the coming together of a man and a woman. Women’s bodies are designed to carry a child for nine months and then to feed and nurture them, fathers are therefore needed to provide support for their families (in the short term at the very least). These are biological realities and should be seen as positive not negative.
Sadly, so many in our society would like to erase differences between men and women and declare that all differences between men and women are just societally imposed gender stereotypes. Clearly there have been over the years many negative gender stereotypes and people have been forced into roles and prevented from doing things because of their sex. This is clearly wrong but to deny the existence of biological differences and the resulting natural preferences is equally wrong and damaging.
Gender ideology goes one step further however and proclaims that we all have a “gender identity” and that this could be different from our biological sex (or the term often used “sex assigned at birth” implying that the people “assigning” it could be wrong). This is being taught in schools to all ages including the very young and is leading to much confusion for both staff and pupils! Many schools are being advised by Stonewall and using resources such as those provided by Pop ‘n’ Olly, which presents ideas such as gender being a spectrum, as biological fact. The Department for Education has spent over £600,000 of taxpayers’ money on Stonewall schemes in the past four years.
Undermining parents
Another aspect of the current picture is the undermining of parents. A common narrative amongst those in the LGBTQ+ community is that parents don’t understand and if they don’t immediately agree with and actively encourage a child or young person’s identity then they are being harmful. This leads children and young people to go behind their parents backs.
There seem to be communities of other young people and adults ready and willing to affirm them and encourage them to go against their parents. Even more concerning is the all-too-common scenario of schools agreeing to use a child or young person’s preferred name and pronouns and present as the opposite sex to their biological sex without informing parents and sometimes continuing despite parents objections.
In my opinion, gender ideology is a significant danger both to the welfare of children and to the stability of families and needs to be challenged in every way that we can.
For further information see Dr Sharon James speaking about the impact of gender ideology on children at our annual conference 2021.
Skip to 1 hour 15 minutes on the YouTube video to see Sharon James speak.