Scottish Council rejects official sex ed in favour of Catholic teaching materials

A local Scottish council has voted by a margin of 23 to 4 to endorse a Catholic manual on teaching sex education and relationships in schools.

The vote came after Church of Scotland ministers on the Western Isles said parents and teachers were unhappy about Scottish government-backed material on relationships, sexual health and parenthood (RSHP), teaching children about the human body, different gender identities and sexual relationships, pornography and safe sex.

Rev Hugh Stewart, a minister in Lewis presbytery, said the official materials suggested children as young as three be taught about human genitalia, while the Catholic material said 10 was the earliest age for that.

Due to be translated into Gaelic, the official materials would also put children from Christian homes under pressure to “embrace” views about gender and relationships which conflicted with their morals, and were not appropriate to their age and stage of development, he said.

“It is one thing for a child or young person to be educated and objectively informed, it is another to require them to ‘embrace’, which infers a tacit support for, a view that contradicts their own morality or faith position,” he said