Imagine your 15-year-old daughter arrives home from school, clutching a brochure she was supposed to study for health class.
Imagine glancing at the pages your child has been told to study, then seeing the words “wicked fornicators” and “death and hell” jump out at you.
Imagine your distress at complaining to the school — only to have them defend the material.
That’s what’s just happened to families in Christchurch, New Zealand, after Papanui High School handed out a religious pamphlet to year 11 health studies students, the New Zealand Herald reports.
The ‘Safe Sex‘ pamphlet, which was disseminated to students at the co-ed school last week, referred to women in de facto relationships as “cheap prostitutes”.
It also branded de facto male partners “cowards” for not proposing marriage, dismissed those having pre-marital sex as “wicked fornicators,” and branded gay students sinners who would end up in hell.
“A couple who lives together without marriage is a couple who has become habitual and irresponsible fornicators. She thinks he’s a wonderful man, yet he’s such a coward he can’t even ask her to be his wife,” the pamplet reads. “He thinks she’s a fine lady, yet she’s nothing more than a cheap prostitute who allows herself to be used for his sexual gratification in exchange for what seems to be a stable and secure home life.”
In a complaint letter posted on the Secular Education Network Facebook page and sent to the school principal, school mother Linda Clark cast doubt over the appropriateness of the material.
“While my daughter has married parents at home, she is not heterosexual and having to read, as part of school work, ‘God’s word is very clear and simple. The ONLY sexual activity which God accepts is that between a MAN AND HIS WIFE. Anything else is known as fornication, adultery, sodomy or bestiality, all of which are sins in the sight of God’ is potentially damaging to her self-esteem,” Clark said, according to GayNZ.com.
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“It was used because the sex ed teacher
found it underneath her car window wiper at the local mall car park, and
as it was something obviously being pushed in the school’s community
she wanted to show it to the children as an extreme view of religious
opinion,” she says in a Facebook post clarifying the situation.
I saw so much outrage about this on my facebook feed yesterday but did anyone see beyond the headline? I forget what newspaper it was from the headline was so misleading. It implied that the New Zealand school was agreeing with the pamphlet which as you can see from the clarification above, it was the exact opposite. Gah, this too-much-nformation age does my head in sometimes..people are just way too ready to be outraged and judge before knowing the full story!
Oh my god, all you can do is laugh.