Our children are being sexualised - and sex education is part of the problem

 (Photo: Unsplash)

Christians have been warning for years about the sexualisation of school children.

The fact is, the sex education industry needs to take its share of the blame because it is obsessed with explicitness and hostile to the Christian sexual ethic.

They send very mixed messages to school children, encouraging sexual experimentation and normalising pornography at the same time as trying to tackle sexual harassment.

If kids are being told in school that using pornography is normal and healthy, as many sex education professionals say, how can we be surprised when they use it and then try to act it out?

As sex education gets ever more explicit and more opposed to any boundaries around sexual 'self-expression', it can help to normalise the very abuses it claims to prevent.

It's time the Government made space in sex education for a diversity of opinions instead of the monolithic socially liberal agenda that currently dominates.

Christians should be allowed opportunities to explain the benefits of self-control and the joys of marriage.

The law already directs schools to teach "the nature of marriage and civil partnership and their importance for family life and the bringing up of children" and to provide relationships and sex education which "is appropriate having regard to the age and the religious background of the pupils".

Ofsted needs to ensure this happens. This would at least allow children to hear a range of views and make up their own minds.

Simon Calvert is Deputy Director for Public Affairs at The Christian Institute.

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