Religion and Sexualities by Sarah-Jane Page Heather Shipley

Author:Sarah-Jane Page, Heather Shipley [Sarah-Jane Page, Heather Shipley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138504288
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

School

Children’s bodies have been societal markers for the morality of society (Weeks, 2014), bound up with notions of their innocence, vulnerability, and need for protection – especially protection from sexual influence (Jackson and Scott, 2013). But this is a relatively recent understanding of childhood, cemented through Locke and Rousseau’s philosophy, who understood children as blank slates, thereby overriding the prevailing notion that children were inherently sinful and demonically influenced (Forna, 1998). Children were increasingly understood in de-sexualised and sexually unblemished terms, demonstrated in Britain with the raising of the age of consensual sex for girls to 16 in 1882 (Jackson and Scott, 2013; Weeks, 2014). As the sentimental idea of the bourgeois and innocent childhood gained strength, their participation in paid work was questioned; instead, schools became the context within which children were to be cultivated and harnessed into productive and good citizens (Jackson and Scott, 2013). Religions have been crucial to this endeavour, with their longstanding role in providing education and other care services.

Education is therefore a critical space to consider, where ideologies are performed and enforced and where sexual and gender identities are implicitly and explicitly taught. Education about religion, gender, and sexuality are hotly contested across multiple nation states and, at present, are not taught either consistently or systematically. In a number of Western countries, as more rights are accorded to sexual minorities, sexual diversity education within schools often becomes a controversial issue (Heyes, 2019; Rasmussen and Leahy, 2018; Shipley, 2019). Homosexuality has been constructed as a risk to children, with homosexuals often understood as being predatory and likely to corrupt children’s innocence (Barton, 2012; Klesse, 2007). In Canada, the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, sought to overturn the updated sex education curriculum of 2015 in the province because it contained “controversial” content – such as teaching about gender identity, sexual diversity, and consent. This backlash comprised of removing curricula, opening an online portal for concerns, and suggested the creation of a “snitch line” for any teacher caught teaching this curriculum. The Ontario Human Rights Commission and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association both filed lawsuits against the provincial government alleging discrimination and violation of Charter rights. This controversy is tied to numerous related controversies in the province regarding religion, gender, and sexuality in high schools (see Shipley, 2019). Meanwhile, the Australia Safe Schools programme, aimed at cultivating inclusive schools for queer youth, has been accused of being a recruiting tool for the lesbian and gay movement, with teaching materials aimed at assisting queer youth in working out their identities sensationalised in the press (Rasmussen and Leahy, 2018). In Birmingham, UK, an inclusive curriculum has invoked protests outside a small number of Muslim-majority primary schools. The protests quickly escalated beyond the school community to involve agitators with broader conservative agendas, and a court order placed an exclusion zone around one of the schools (Parveen, 2019).

In 1988, in England, Wales, and Scotland, the government imposed legislation called Section 28. It barred local authorities, and the schools within their jurisdiction,

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