Religious parents from the Canadian province of Alberta say they are gravely concerned about new legislation which a government spokesperson has said would ban schools from teaching aspects of traditional sexual morality as part of their curriculum.

A spokesperson for the province’s Education Minister, Thomas Lukaszuk, told news website LifeSiteNews last week that faith-based schools and homeschooling families would not be able to teach that homosexual behaviour is a sin as part of their courses.

There is a dispute as to whether the ban extends to homeschools.

Mr Lukaszuk told Canadian newspaper the Edmonton Journal on Monday that the Act did not “interfere (in) what families discuss or not discuss in their homes”.

He said: “From a legal perspective … those concerns — even though real in their hearts and their minds — are not substantiated in the Act. There is no intention to ever infringe on their rights.

“They do not have to change their homeschooling practices in any way. Whether they’re homeschooling children or not, we as government would not step into people’s kitchen and tell them what they can or cannot discuss.”

However Paul Faris, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, says the controversy highlighted the fact that the law needs to be amended to avoid misinterpretations by other government officials or future governments.

“While we applaud the government for repudiating the earlier remarks, we would prefer that they simply change Bill 2 to clearly steer well clear of interfering in homeschoolers’ private lives,” he said.

“From my perspective, the fact that they’ve repudiated the previous remarks is somewhat cold comfort because the government clearly doesn’t even know what their own position is on this,” he added.

Homeschoolers, including HSLDA and the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA), are alarmed over section 16 of the bill, which requires schools, including homeschoolers, to “honour and respect” the controversial Alberta Human Rights Act that has been used to target Christians and others who believe in traditional marriage.

In the past Christians, such as Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary and Red Deer pastor Stephen Boissoin, have been targeted under the Act for espousing Christian teaching on homosexuality.