From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

There is undoubtedly a backlash against LGBT ideology unfolding in many Western countries, the source of which includes many ambivalent towards LGBT lifestyles but who are still uncomfortable teaching the ideology to children.

In March, podcaster Joe Rogan paid tribute to his favourite teacher. His seventh-grade science teacher, he noted, “was a brilliant man and he taught me about wonder. I think about that guy all the time.” But now, Rogan said, teachers are frequently fixating on issues of sex and gender. “I don’t want that gang of morons teaching my children about biological sex or gender,” Rogan said, adding that Drag Queen Story Hour is unacceptable for kids. “I don’t want you teaching them about any of those things.”  

Instead, he suggested, teachers should focus on history, and math, and… all the things teachers used to focus on. 

Rogan’s position on sex education is significant not only because he is the most popular podcaster in the world, but because he has achieved his success because he is a microcosm of the average adult. He is largely libertarian in the “live and let live” sort of way that saw a huge public opinion shift in favour of same-sex “marriage,” which Rogan supports; he is not religious; but he is still very uncomfortable with the full-scale sexualization of our education institutions and the insertion of gender ideology into public school curriculums across the board.  

Rogan is something of a bellwether on these issues – he articulates the sort of common sense that many people hold but cannot articulate (or are too fearful to). 

The “silent majority” is not a moral majority, but they are uncomfortable with the vast, swift social changes we have seen unfold over the past decade. Much of the backlash against gender ideology and increasingly explicit and instructional sex education in schools comes not from Christians – there are simply not enough of us – but from people who do not have moral objections to LGBT ideology, but do not want it taught to children. In short, most people are fine with adults doing whatever they want to, but they still believe that these behaviours and lifestyles are the purview of adults, not children. 

That is why we are beginning to see government action on public school sex education even in the post-Christian United Kingdom. According to a recent BBC report, the U.K. government is planning to ban sex education for children under the age of ten, including a ban on any content about gender identity. Teachers’ unions, predictably, have pushed back, insisting that the proposed plan is “politically motivated” and that there has been no issue with inappropriate material. That claim is laughable; parents have been protesting the LGBT curriculum and other explicit materials for years now, and school staff have frequently responded by accusing them of various phobias. 

According to the BBC, the “statutory guidance on relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) – which schools must follow by law – is currently under review. The government believes clearer guidance will provide support for teachers and reassurance for parents and will set out which topics should be taught to pupils at what age.” Sex education is not “typically taught until Year 6,” when children are 10, and “parents already have the right to withdraw” their child, although this has proven difficult to do. 

Sex education has been mandatory for older students since September 2020, and the “government strongly encourages schools to include teaching about different types of family and same-sex relationships.” 

This curriculum – referred to as “relationships education” – is compulsory and parents cannot remove their children. 

The BBC notes that parents have been demanding changes in order to protect the innocence of children, while educators are insisting that the content is necessary because children are exposed to this information online anyway and that it is important for “trusted adults” to contextualize that information. That is the crux of the issue here that few are openly addressing: educators want to “contextualize” this information from the perspective of a pro-LGBT worldview, while many parents do not want this material taught at all because they fundamentally disapprove of the LGBT ideology itself. 

There is undoubtedly a backlash against LGBT ideology unfolding in many Western countries, but it is important to recognize the source of that backlash. Although Christians and other religious objectors are certainly part of that backlash, their numbers are not large enough, in most places, to force government action. 

The growing discomfort we see in polling data is thus far more likely to be of the Joe Rogan variety – we should live and let live, but we should also let kids be kids. As the U.K. government’s proposed guidance highlights, this means that there will be changes, but not significant ones.  

LGBT ideology will still be compulsory for later grades, and state schools will still be teaching state dogmas. 

Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016

From LifeSiteNews

By David James

Critics argue the legislation, enacted under the guise of increased security, ramps up government surveillance and control, with no accountability mechanisms for public sector misuse.

The Australian Parliament has passed the Digital ID Bill 2024 and Digital ID (Transitional and Consequential Provisions) Bill 2024 which, it claims, will provide “certainty” for the expansion of the existing Australian government digital ID system.

The move is being presented as a way to improve “privacy and security” for people when interacting online by “verifying” users’ identities. The government claims that the legislation will reduce fraud and other malpractice by private actors, but the bill says nothing about the public actors, the government. The implication is that that the public sector will never do anything wrong with its increased powers, raising the suspicion that it is yet another move by state and federal governments to increase surveillance and control over the lives of citizens.

Australia is a paternalistic society and there is no mechanism to hold the executive branch of government accountable – indeed the possibility is rarely raised. There is thus nothing to stop more intrusions into people’s privacy by the government.

Commenting on the passing of the bill, Queensland Senator Malcolm Roberts from the One Nation Party said that, while the voluntary system has been presented as a measure for security and convenience it could lead to significant privacy breaches, cyber-attacks, and government overreach. He described it as a potential attack on Australians’ “freedom, privacy, and way of life,” especially if it eventually becomes mandatory.

Roberts pointed to the Digital ID bill, the Online Safety Act, the Identity Services Verification Act, and the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill as elements of what looks like a coordinated plan by the federal government “to identify, punish and imprison anyone who resists this slide back into serfdom.” In the initial inquiry into the Digital ID bill, he said, the Human Rights Commission “drew attention to the lack of protection of privacy and human rights in the bill,” but it was ignored. Roberts added that the bill is very similar to legislation being implemented in other Western nations.

A significant proportion of the Australian population has concluded that politicians and the public sector cannot be trusted and that they fail to scrutinize their own actions. As if to underline this unaccountability, the Digital ID bill was passed using “tricks used to stifle debate and public discussion,” according to former federal senator Craig Kelly. He said on X (formerly Twitter) that the way the bill was passed was “contrary to precedent, the spirit of the Constitution and [the] Westminster tradition.”

“Labor introduced the Digital ID in the Senate (the House of review) instead of the House of Representatives,” Kelly wrote. “Then they guillotined debate in the Senate. And in House of Representatives, Labor shifted debate to the Federation Chamber where the Liberals put up token resistance with only one Liberal MP and two National MP’s bothering to speak on the Bill – and they didn’t even try any amendments to protect privacy or to try and safeguard against it being made compulsory.”

The aggressive government actions during the COVID crisis have shown just how abusive Australian politicians and the public sector can be, and how few ways there are for citizens to protect themselves. The restrictions on free speech, free movement, and freedom of thought were extreme.

The government mendacity continues – at a time when federal laws against “disinformation and misinformation” are being debated. There is constant propaganda in government-funded media outlets about what an effective job was done against the “pandemic” by pursuing lockdowns and mass vaccination. It is false; there was no pandemic. The Australian Bureau of Statistics found that 2020 and 2021 had the lowest number of deaths from respiratory diseases since records have been kept.

The federal government, in a statement, is giving the impression that the move is merely a way to protect vulnerable Australians, to give certainty for providers and services, and to provide transparency in order “to build public trust.” But what is not said is more important than what is said. There is no mechanism for Australians to redress wrongs committed by the government.

What should happen is something that has never existed in Australia: the establishment of a way for Australians to hold the public sector accountable and stop their governments becoming a menace, as occurred during the “pandemic.” Unless public servants are at risk of being penalized, or at least of having their actions constrained, there is a strong likelihood that fears about the Digital ID Bill will ultimately be realized.