Zombie Safe Schools program back from the grave

Despite promising to end the highly sexualised and inappropriate Safe Schools program, NSW public school students are still being subject to bizarre lessons about gender fluidity and sexuality, writes Miranda Devine.

• Penis tucking, bra padding as Safe Schools returns

Here we go again. The Safe Schools’ sexual indoctrination program for kids is the zombie course that never dies.

The NSW government promised to end Safe Schools in 2017 after an outcry from parents who didn’t want their children taught that gender and sexuality is fluid, heterosexuality is not the norm, and sex is arbitrarily assigned by a doctor at birth.

But all that happened is the fake-anti-bullying program went underground. Last month, NSW education bureaucrats sneaked the biologically inaccurate material back into teacher’s in-trays, to be used the following week on Wear It Purple Day.

Along with Safe Schools’ “resources” placed on the Department of Education website on August 21 was material from Minus18, a fringe organisation which leapt to notoriety in 2016 for providing instruction to children in penis tucking, chest binding and cross dressing.

Pro-Safe Schools organisation Community Action Against Homophobia protesting in Sydney.

In an unprecedented letter sent to teachers on August 28, Mark Scott, the head of the NSW Department of Education, endorsed the Wear It Purple promotional day.

It is “a day to celebrate diversity and promote the creation of supportive, safe and empowering environments for LGBTIQ+ people,” he wrote.

“I’m delighted to see that many of you have already committed to being part of the change”.

The letter was tacit approval of the re-emergence of Safe Schools.

All of this would have remained hidden from parents, if not for Mark Latham, the One Nation NSW leader, who managed to get behind the internet wall the department uses to send information to teachers.

He has provided The Daily Telegraph with screenshots of material identical to the old Safe Schools program.

Safe schools type resources for NSW classrooms

“All of Us” is billed as a “health and physical education resource” for teachers to indoctrinate students from Year 7 on about “gender diversity, sexual diversity and intersex topics”. It has been “developed jointly by the Safe Schools Coalition and Minus18”.

There are also new links to material from an American organisation, GLSEN, which gained international notoriety in 2000 when audio recordings were leaked of a workshop it held in Boston teaching children as young as twelve about the pleasures of “fisting”, sadomasochism and the use of “dildos”.

Another resource offered to teachers is “Resilience Rights & Respectful Relationships” for students from Prep/Kindy to Year 12. It teaches “positive gender norms in children”, echoing Victoria’s “Building Respectful Relationships” program, which tells children “gender is not fixed” but a “social construction”.

More safe schools information for classrooms.

Other resource materials include the old Safe Schools/Minus18 pamphlet “OMG, I’m Queer”, billed as an “introduction to sexuality and gender for young people”. It contains such passages as “penis-in-vagina sex is not the only sex and certainly not the ultimate sex,” and “It’s a total lie that all guys have dicks, that all girls have vaginas”.

“OMG My Friend’s Queer” features stories on “crushes and gaydar”.

“OMG I’m Trans” is a 40-page guide for teachers to support a student who wants to change sex. It says: “cosmetic surgeries such as nose or chin reconstructions are not subject to special restrictions” and “students may be considered a mature minor and able to make decisions without parental consent.”

There’s also a reading list for young students, including “The Gender Fairy”, “Are You a Boy or a Girl”, “But I’m Not a Boy” and “Jacob’s New Dress”.

Links are provided to “Rainbows in Schools”, a new volunteer group of parents and teachers formed in inner-Melbourne, which airily claims “increased homophobia and transphobia” since the same-sex marriage postal survey in 2017.

Links are provided to “Rainbows in Schools”, a new volunteer group of parents and teachers.

And in case there aren’t more important issues for students to worry about, there are promotions of another two LGBTIQ days of action for schools to observe, including “Trans Day of Visibility” and “IDAHOBIT, International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism and Transphobia”.

Teachers are offered “Simple ways to incorporate LGBTQ and gender-inclusive material across the curriculum”.

And on and on, ad infinitum.

Latham is calling on the Berejiklian Government to conduct an independent audit of the Education Department “to identity this material, remove it and live up to their 2017 commitment to get rid of Safe Schools in NSW.

“Mark Scott supported and authorised Wear It Purple Day and must take responsibility for the Safe Schools content distributed to teachers for use in the classroom,” he says.

“How can the Government say it banned Safe Schools in NSW if the Education Department is sending out guides showing teachers how to incorporate Safe Schools into the syllabus and classroom?”

We’ve been here before. The public made its voice heard. The government listened and made a promise.

Three years later, under a new Education Minister, Sarah Mitchell, it’s quietly reneged.

Miranda Devine is in New York for 18 months to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph