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St. Philomena Catholic School in South London is on its way to an investigation after urging its schoolchildren—some as young as 11-years old—to sign a petition opposing civil marriage in the U.K. Details follow.
The pressure for students to sign the anti-gay petition came after the kids were forced to watch a homophobic presentation.
According to PinkNews:
A student at St Philomena’s Catholic High School for Girls in Carshalton voiced concerns to PinkNews.co.uk that pupils from 11 to 18 years of age had been “encouraged” to sign the anti-equality pledge by the school’s headmistress.
Responding on the school’s behalf, the Catholic Education Service said St Philomena’s itself had designed the presentation which is said to have encouraged minors to add their names to that campaign.
It confirmed the presentations for all age groups had consisted of the Archbishops’ letter and ended with a slide displaying the Coalition for Marriage’s website and the words: “Sign the petition."
Katherine, a sixth form student, described the presentation to Pink News. "In our assembly for the whole Sixth Form you could feel people bristling as she explained parts of the letter and encouraged us to sign the petition.
“She said things about gay marriage and civil partnerships being unnatural. It was just a really out-dated, misjudged and heavily biased presentation. A few of us in my year are buying Gay Pride badges to pin on our uniform and thought about staging a Stonewall coup by posting the ‘Some people are gay – get over it’ posters around school. Most importantly though, there are several people in my year who aren’t heterosexual – myself included – and I for one was appalled and actually disgusted by what they were encouraging. After all, that’s discrimination they were urging impressionable people to engage in, which is unacceptable.”
The British Humanist Association has reason to believe St. Philomena's presentation and petitioning is a violation of the law.
"Pink News’s article highlights that the CES’s actions likely broke the Equality Act 2010, which prohibits discrimination against pupils based on their sexual orientation," the BHA writes in a statement. "The BHA believe the CES’s actions likely break sections 406-7 of the Education Act 1996, which forbids ‘the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school’, and requires balanced treatment of political issues. This law was successfully used in 2007 to stop schools showing Al Gore’s climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth, without also explaining scientific errors in the film.”
“This action by the Catholic Education Service is absolutely outrageous," adds BHA Faith Schools Campaigner Richy Thompson. "Not only might this break equalities legislation, it also breaks laws against political partisanship.
And homosexuals are the ones most often accused of indoctrinating!
(Source and image: Pink News)
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