Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
La Plata (Agenzia Fides) – Archbishop Hector Aguer of La Plata, President of the Bishops' Commission for Catholic Education, criticizes the official guidelines for teachers on giving sexual education, in a message entitled: “Official Guidelines on Sexual Education,” in reference to an official document entitled: “Teaching Material for Training Teachers of Sexual Education and HIV/AIDS Prevention.” The material has been issued by the Departments of Education and Health in the nation, under the banner of “Proyecto Conjunto Pais.”
“From the beginning of this incomplete and muddled publication, sexuality is presented as an historical and social-cultural construct. It is characteristic of gender ideology, which says that what is masculine or feminine, the man and the woman, does not arise from any biological differences, and certainly is not identified with them. Instead, it claims, it proceeds from the evolution of the culture and is, therefore, subject to change,” the text says.
The Prelate comments that the official document is “a collection of incomplete texts, brought together for clearly ideological purposes, and they do not reflect the variety of positions that can be maintained in such an important matter and one that has been object of debate en various sectors, especially in the commission created by the Department for Education to determine the curricular guidelines for Sexual Education.” He also mentions that “it seems like another totalitarian imposition of the State, especially taking into account the delicacy of the matter, as none of these proposals considers freedom of conscience, neither of the students nor of their parents, which is guaranteed by the Constitution and the very National Education Law.”
He also affirms that in the presentation of sexuality in the document, the word love is never mentioned. “Sex, as it appears, has nothing to do with love.”
He also denounced the “threat to freedom of teaching and learning truth, when there is mention of the possible application of national and international laws that declare and protect the rights of children and adolescents. Let's speak clearly: unjust laws, presumed rights.” He states that the gender perspective tries to change sexual roles, “to alter the constitution of the family and society, with unthinkable consequences for the future of mankind,” and mentions that the document is “potentially destructive to the family order.”
As for “the focus on rights” that “claims that for children and adolescents, the right to sex is a human right, and concretely: to decide to have or not to have sexual relations, free from any kind of coercion and violence and not suffer any unwanted consequences of these relations, the Archbishop comments: “Neither love, nor responsibility, nor marriage, nor the family are mentioned as life plans. It is explicitly noted that sexual education does not include formation in virtues, appreciation and repsect for essential values that constitute the person in his authentic perfection.”
Lastly, he explains that “the orientation of this 'educational' program based on the affirmation of rights for children and adolescents leads to an exclusion of the authority of parents and the rights and duties that pertain to parental authority” and calls this fact a “true subversion of juridical order,” as “it reveals a dangerous totalitarian threat to freedom of conscience (possible objection is never mentioned in the text) and the freedom of teaching and learning, not only for teachers and students in private schools, who can be forced to accept contents that are incompatible with the ideals of the institution, but also for those who teach and learn in public schools, who should not be unjustly imposed on with an idea of man that is contrary to their convictions.” (RG) (Agenzia Fides 30/7/2009)
