A Canadian teenager has taken her complaint about sex education at her school right to the top – filing it with the Human Rights Commission after having abstinence-only lessons delivered to her at school by a Christian anti-abortion group.
Emily Dawson, from Edmonton, Alberta, was 17 at the time of the lesson, and she said that it was: ‘Basically shaming the girls and making them gatekeepers and meanwhile making it sound like the boys had no impulse control.’
She added that questions about same-sex relationship from her fellow students were immediately shut down: ‘I have a friend who’s a lesbian and she was asking what would happen if she didn’t wanna stay abstinent and then the educator said, “We’re not here to talk about that.”’
Her mum, Kathy Dawson, tried to get her taken out of the class, but she was told Emily had to take part in the course to pass her studies. So Kathy joined her daughter on the second day of the lessons, and was horrrified. She told CBC: ‘And when I found out it wasn’t science based, it was value-based, I was really shocked.’
The Pregnancy Care Centre, which is affiliated with Care-Net, a US-based anti-choice movement, was hired by the Edmonton Public School board to give two days of lessons to students. But the group’s religious affiliations and mentions of faith-based attitudes towards sex bothered Kathy, because Emily’s school was meant to be secular: ‘I don’t want them in a secular school.’
‘They may have a spot in the Catholic school... because they are faith-based. My issue isn’t with them... because it’s such a wide variety of families going to [public] schools, let’s leave the science to the school and the values to the parents.’
Michael Janz, a trustee and deputy chairman of the Edmonton School Board says that the lesson was completely legit: ‘Our administration have looked into this in the district and they’re confident that students in Edmonton public schools are receiving the sex education set by Alberta Education.’
However, the Alberta Human Rights Commission has accepted the complaint and will investigate.
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Picture: Ada Hamza
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.