French school textbooks which promote the idea that a person’s ‘gender’ is the result of upbringing and society 
rather than biology have been slammed by French politicians.
The controversy is similar to one that took place here some years ago when a programme called ‘Exploring Masculinities’ was introduced into Irish schools which said ‘gender is a social construct’.
Richard Maille, a French MP with the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, has written a letter to the education minister Luc Chatel, signed by 80 other MPs, warning that ‘gender theory’ has no place is scientific schoolbooks.
One of the textbooks suggests that “biological sex identifies us as male or female, but that does not mean we can qualify ourselves as masculine or feminine. We develop our sexual identity throughout our lives.”
The MPs say that gender theory rejects the biological definition of people as male or female, and instead focuses on people’s homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual or transsexual orientation.
The Catholic Church has also attacked the theory. A prominent Vatican consultant on health and family issues, Monsignot Tony Anatrella, says that gender theory is “no more than a conceptual scheme that has nothing to do with science; it’s barely an opinion”.
The Church in France has published a pamphlet, “Gender, the Controversy”, which is a collection of essays written by various theologians, warning young people about the risks of gender theory.
It warns that gender theory proposes a “paradigm shift that questions sexual differences that are intrinsic to humanity.”
In the preface of “Gender, the Controversy,” Mgsr Anatrella calls gender theory a “totalitarian ideology” that is “more oppressive and pernicious than Marxist ideology.”
In June, Bishop Bernard Ginoux of Montauban warned that the theory “lays the foundations of a society which, by rejecting nature and thus creation, considers man to be his own creator, one who chooses his sexuality and organizes his lifestyle based on personal choice”.
The Church has also brought together a working group to study the sexual and emotional education of young people in France. The group, composed of theologists, scientists and teachers is expected to issue a set of recommendations in the coming weeks.
“We came to realise that many teachers were at a loss about this issue,” says Bishop Ornellas, a specialist in bioethics. “This is all about this part of the curriculum being respectful of people’s dignity, particularly of teenagers who try to find themselves and who, as a consequence, are vulnerable.”
“Creating a course on gender studies at (university) for students older than 20 is totally different than coming up with a program for teenagers who are not as humanly and psychologically mature,” says Jean Matos, who heads the working group.
UMP legislator Jean-Marc Nesmes has referred the textbooks to the French Inter-Ministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combating Cultic Deviances.
According to Mr Nesmes, the decision to include gender theory in France’s high school biology curriculum is “cult-like,” since “its mental influence could disturb young people and teenagers, and eventually alter their development”.