Italian Parents Push Back Against "Gender Deconstruction" Project in Schools

Hilary White : Apr 8, 2014
LifeSiteNews.com

While a project to make "diversity education" standard throughout Italy's schools has been successfully blocked in Parliament, the same work is proceeding at the municipal level. The Archbishop of Turin recently called the local efforts an attempt to turn schools into "re-education camps."

(Italy)—This week, a group of parents told the city administration in the small Tuscan town of Pontassieve that they would not go along with the introduction of the homosexualist "gender" ideology in their schools.

The parents addressed the proposed "ECOS - Deconstructing to build" a program that aims to "help eliminate the stereotypes associated with gender." Parents quoted the Italian Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights that say in the area of public education, the state "must respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions." The school, they said, "must not invade the field of education within the family."

The parents said, "The appropriate and necessary fight against bullying and all forms of discrimination cannot be manipulated by anyone or used to spread messages of other kinds, such as the affirmation of gender identity."

They have launched a petition to stop the ECOS Project, citing the Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Gabriele Toccafondi, who has said that schools cannot be "an ideological battleground" and has blocked a plan to send "gender theory" materials to schools at the national level.

"We oppose this activity," they said, "with the means at our disposal and in each location... because we want a school without ideologies."

According to the Province of Florence website, the Circolo Didattico di Pontassieve (Learning Circle) has secured €7500 of regional funds "to make a representation of elastic gender roles" of "males and females in terms of desirability, responsibility, emotions and behaviors." The project is to "promote critical distancing from gender stereotypes that block or hinder the development of lifestyle choices, study, work; promoting the use of personal preferences also with respect to the rejection of pre-established patterns of gender."