The French Government is to introduce a compulsory sex education programme for children aged six and over based on radical “gender theory” ideas.

Gender theory teaches that the differences between men and women aren’t natural but are purely the result of historical and social forces.

According to Julie Sommaruga, member of the French National Assembly’s Cultural Affairs Committee, the purpose of the new course is to “replace categories such as sex (…) with the concept of gender, which (…) shows that the differences between men and women are not based on nature but are historically constructed and socially reproduced”.  

However, Italian MP Luca Volontè, President of the Christian Democrat delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has put down a question in the Assembly asking the Council’s Committee of Ministers to examine the Bill.

In particular, he has asked the Committee, which is the Council of Europe’s decision-making body. comprising the foreign affairs ministers of the member states to reaffirm “that teaching must be objective and that, in a democracy, the State must not seek to manipulate children’s minds” and “that parents, and not the State, are the educators of their children”.  

In a letter sent to chief education officers in January, the French Minister for Education, Vincent Peillon, said that the government had decided to focus its effort to change mentalities on young people.  

In his view, the purpose of school is to “remove students from all forms of determinism, whether familial, ethnic, social or intellectual”.

Currently, work is being carried out to determine the precise content of the course.

In a December 2012 report, the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs recommended that school should start the “fight against gender stereotypes … at the earliest possible age”, deconstruct the “ideology of complementarity” between the sexes, and replace the words “boys” and “girls” with sexually neutral terms such as “friends” or “children”.  

School should prevent the process of “gender-based differentiation” and children’s psychosocial internalisation of their sexual identity, the report said.

In a statement, Mr Volonte said that the course “has no basis in science”.  

He said “[F]or the very large proportion of the population who do not adhere this ‘gender theory’, it (the course) constitutes indoctrination.  

“It endangers children’s psychological equilibrium and parents will be faced with a dilemma: they will have to explain to their children that they must not believe everything they are told at school, but that they have to keep quiet about it so as not to be at odds with the official ideology.  

“If such a curriculum is implemented, it will be a blatant violation of children’s best interests and parents’ natural rights.”

Mr Volonte pointed out that the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights “acknowledges that ‘the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society’ (Art. 16.3) and that ‘parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children’ (Art. 26.3)”.  

He said: “In ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, States undertook to “have respect for the liberty of parents (…) to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions” (Art. 18.4).  

“Even more explicitly, the European Convention on Human Rights states that ‘in the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions’ (Protocol, Art. 2).”

Mr Volonte has also requested the Committee of Ministers to outline what action it will take “to ensure that the content of this curriculum is not indoctrination, but, on the contrary, that it is objective and respects children and parents’ rights”.