Parents Protest Sex Ed Program Overseen by Convicted Child Pornographer

Church Militant – by Christine Miles

ONTARIO, Canada, May 5, 2015 (ChurchMilitant.com) – Parents all across Ontario Canada kept their children home from school Monday in protest against the province’s controversial new sex education program.

Kathleen Wynne, the lesbian premier of Ontario, unveiled the new curriculum earlier this year, and the public outcry was immediate. The revised curriculum includes even more explicit language than the previous sex ed curriculum, including discussion of homosexuality, sodomy, masturbation, and other graphic sex acts that will be introduced to children. It also promotes condoms and birth control pills. A new element in the program includes “gender expression,” along with a greater emphasis on sex being a purely recreational activity. The words “love” and “marriage” are not mentioned once in the entire sex ed curriculum.  

The curriculum will be imposed on all schools — including Catholic schools — this fall.

The program is also controversial for another reason: it was written under the direction of convicted child pornographer Benjamin Levin, who served as Deputy Minister of Education at the time Wynne was Education Minister. Levin was arrested and charged in 2013 with seven counts related to child pornography, and pleaded guilty to three in March. During his sentencing hearing last month, a forensic psychiatrist testified that Levin had sadomasochistic fantasies of abusing children, including his own. Levin also pleaded guilty to one count of counseling sex abuse of a child, when he encouraged a mother to commit incest and sexually assault her own daughter for Levin’s pleasure.

Wynne denies Levin had any role in forming the curriculum, but it remains the case that he ran the department overseeing the curriculum and offered his input.

A sizeable number of children were kept home Monday in protest. Thorncliffe Park Public School saw only 10 percent of its students show up for class: about 130 out of 1,350. Gateway Public School saw only half of its students present (400 out of 800). And only 590 students out of 950 showed up at Valley Park Middle School. The total of absent students in Toronto numbered 35,000. Instead, many of these students accompanied their parents to demonstrate in a rally outside Wynne’s office.

Current Education Minister Liz Sandals claims, however, that in spite of protests, the sex ed curriculum is here to stay.