UPDATED: A Christchurch high school has explained a pamphlet it used in sex ed class saying "death and hell" awaits those having gay sex was supposed to be used to highlight an extreme view of religious opinion. The pamphlet handed out to year 11 students at Papanui High School also says unmarried women are "cheap prostitutes" and "wicked fornicators". It was created by the American-based Bible Baptist Publications. A mother of one the of the students complained to the school, stating “While my daughter has married parents at home, she is not heterosexual and having to read, as part of school work, ‘God’s word is very clear and simple. The ONLY sexual activity which God accepts is that between a MAN AND HIS WIFE. Anything else is known as fornication, adultery, sodomy or bestiality, all of which are sins in the sight of God’ is potentially damaging to her self-esteem, something which I understand is of high value as part of Health Class.” She adds “it's this kind of rubbish that destroys anything good (ie social justice) that Christianity attempts to achieve.” After discussion with the school, the mum who complained, Lydia Clark, says the school has since explained the pamphlet was only used in a section on ‘views on sexuality’. “It was used because the sex ed teacher found it underneath her car window wiper at the local mall car park, and as it was something obviously being pushed in the school's community she wanted to show it to the children as an extreme view of religious opinion," she says in a post clarifying the situation on Secular Education Network's Facebook page. “Unfortunately where this all went wrong, was she had a planned discussion/critical evaluation to take place as part of this lesson which would have presented this a lot differently than how it came across to my daughter, but she was sick on the day of the lesson and left the pamphlet and ten questions with the reliever teacher, who didn't do the discussion part. If the discussion had taken place immediately following, I think this would have mitigated the situation a lot.” Clark says the school stressed it was not a case of anybody trying to push their religious belief on the children, which she is satisfied is the case. She says it's also agreed not to hand out such contentious material on a day a reliever is on. The original story hit the headlines this morning and has been shared widely. Clark says she told the reporter "there was not a juicy story there and asked her not to print the story". However she hopes it all has a silver lining of stopping other schools making the same error of judgement in using this pamphlet "so hopefully something good has come out of it".
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Sunday, 17th May 2015 - 11:20am