The recent gay pride parade in Valletta was a true celebration of diversity that reflected the progress this country has made in matters related to civil rights. The presence of both the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader served to show that the main political parties are generally on the same wavelength on gay issues, with the Civil Liberties Minister Helena Dalli saying she is working for the day when it would no longer be necessary to celebrate Gay Pride.
To achieve this objective, Dr Dalli underlined the need for a mentality change and mentioned, among other measures, more LGBTIQ initiatives in schools to promote tolerance and acceptance. The government’s LGBTIQ Consultative Council chairperson Gabi Calleja has suggested that education on such issues could be introduced as early as pre-school through age-appropriate ways.
She said children should be exposed to diverse family forms through story-telling and inclusive text books. The consultative council is advocating the incorporation of LGBTIQ issues across the curriculum to combat prejudice. A major way of doing this is by incorporating LGBTIQ issues in the ethics curriculum the government is introducing in schools. There may be problems ahead.
Church schools are against the ethics progamme because they feel the subject of ethics is sufficiently covered by the religious instruction they provide.
In April, several government ministries got together at a government school in Victoria to mark the first anniversary of the Civil Unions Act. After the speeches, the schoolchildren were led across a rainbow-coloured ‘zebra crossing’, a symbolic act which led one moral theologian to describe it as a LGBTIQ pride parade.
In a strongly-worded opinion piece in this paper, Fr Richard-Nazzareno Farrugia asked if such parading of children had the parents’ consent and rejected the idea of using the young to sustain an ethically debatable stand on the nature of marriage. He raised a number of points.
When the Civil Unions Act was approved last year, there was a general consensus in favor of civil unions but much less acceptance of gay adoption, which is tacit recognition of new family models that depart from the traditional marriage of man and woman.
Parents who did not object to civil unions then, would not object to including it in school syllabi now, but they might also have the same reservations today on certain alternative family models as they did last year. That is where the promoters of LGBTIQ issues must tread carefully to avoid giving the impression that, in their zeal to spread tolerance and diversity, they do not come across as imposing their ideas.
The 2012 National Curriculum Framework acknowledged multi-cultural and multi-faith societies and provided Church school heads sufficient leeway to implement syllabi according to their school ethos.
Church schools feel the Catholic religion is the best way to teach ethics and would likely object to initiatives inside their schools such as that in Victoria. Archbishop Charles Scicluna, when asked what he would do if the contentious aspects of the LGBTIQ agenda were imposed on Church schools, candidly replied that he would rather close them.
To avoid any possible conflict or controversy, Church schools need to update their religion syllabus to make it more age appropriate and relevant to life today. Teachers also say that the method of assessment should be changed.
A revised religion syllabus based on Christian values will see Church schools promote the same form of tolerance and acceptance as that sought by the LGBTIQ lobby, except that theirs would be set in a Christian context.