Over the next month Cardinal Keith O’Brien will deliver a series of attacks on the planned programme, which will offer sex education to nursery school pupils and contraceptives to teenagers without their parents’ knowledge.
He is planning to enlist the support of high-profile public figures to campaign against the policy. He also aims to commission a Scotland-wide opinion poll which, he believes, will highlight widespread opposition among parents to what he sees as the executive’s liberal approach to underage sex.
The campaign will be similar in scale to that mounted against the repeal of section 28, which banned the promotion of homosexuality in schools in 2000. Donald Dewar, the former first minister, was forced into a series of embarrassing retreats following a sustained attack on the policy by the late Cardinal Thomas Winning and the Keep the Clause campaign bankrolled by Brian Souter, the millionaire owner of Stagecoach.
Writing in today’s Sunday Times, O’Brien accuses the executive of courting similar opposition by pouring “limitless” resources into “sinister” sexual health projects.
“The section 28 debate could be a mere flicker compared to the protests of parents determined to preserve their children’s innocence and protect their childhood,” he said.
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“Parents are rightly appalled at the idea of prepubescent, far less pre-school children, being provided with graphic and intimate sexual instruction. Should such material be used, it would amount to the state sponsored sexual abuse of minors.”
A consultation on the sex education plans, entitled Enhancing Sexual Wellbeing in Scotland, ends next month. Malcolm Chisholm, the health minister, will then publish a new sexual health strategy which is expected to recommend more detailed sex education for primary and nursery pupils and wider access to contraception and tests for sexually transmitted diseases.
Girls as young as 12 will be able to get the morning-after pill from special sex clinics where they will be sent by school nurses.
Schemes similar to those already operating in Fife and the Lothians will be expanded and the executive is investing £1.5m in sexual health clinics, offering girls as young as 13 abortions without their parents’ knowledge.
The Catholic church is already in discussion with other religious groups to present a united front against the proposals. O’Brien intends to mobilise Catholic headteachers to oppose the measures and he wants the public to write to MSPs voicing their concern.
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Abdul Dean, vice-chairman of the Multi-Faith Coalition which represents Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs, said: “I think this could become another section 28 because it is about the sexualisation of our children. Parents aren’t being given a say over their own children’s start in life.”
Jack McConnell, the first minister, has already clashed with the Catholic church over shared-campus schools and family law reforms, which will allow quicker divorces.