More on the shameful spectacle of the Ontario sex Ed program

I am currently attending the Western Canadian Conference on Sexual Health where I got to hear directly from members of the Canadian Teacher's Federation who were involved with the development of the Ontario sex Ed curriculum. Imagine my surprise to hear from them that, before the program became public, it was reviewed AND APPROVED by the Ontario Catholic Bishops! Did we hear that in the media? No, certainly not. What we've heard is them loudly and publicly proclaiming that they do not support the implementation of the full program in Catholic Schools. Whether or not they actually approved of the full program including the grade three section regarding differences and homosexuality is unclear to me. But what is clear to me is that they seemed to do their best to make sure that there participation in and approval of the program was not public and that their objections to it, whatever they are, are not. All of the details and subtleties of this issue are being lost and all we are really hearing is that there is massive outrage about this program. In actual fact, this is not true. It was set for implementation in the Catholic school system with their blessing and the blessing of the bishops. What we are also not being told is that the program was developed in order to bring Ontario into line with other provinces and the recently developed Canadian guidelines on school-based sexual health programs. The international declaration on sexual and reproductive rights guarantees the right to accurate sexual health education and it specifically identifies the things that are taught in this new program. And guess what? Canada signed this declaration. Canadian children are promised access to this information by international declaration. The Catholic bishops clearly know that. It's time for them to tell the whole truth and publicly stand up for a program they supported in private.