Roman Catholic Church asks UK schools to sign petition against same-sex marriage
The Roman Catholic church has written to all its secondary school pupils asking them to sign a petition against gay marriage.
Peter Lloyd
Saturday, 28 April 2012
Almost 400 secondary schools across England and Wales were contacted by the Catholic Education Service in a correspondence which claimed that that Catholics have a "duty to to ensure that the true meaning of marriage is not lost for future generations".
As part of the move, the CES also asked students to consider signing the Coalition for Marriage petition, which wants to maintain marriage as opposite-sex.
Almost 500,000 have already pledged their support to the petition.
Speaking to The Guardian in justification of the request, a CES spokeswoman said: "We said that schools might liketo consider using this [letter] in assemblies or in class teaching. We said people might want to consider asking pupils and parents if they might want to sign the petition. It's really important that no school discriminates against any member of the school community.
"Schools with a religious character are allowed to teach sex and relationships –and conduct assemblies – in accordance with the religious views of the school. The Catholic view of marriage is not a political view; it's a religious view."
But the actions of the CES have angered atheists and equality activists.
Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, also told The Guardian: "This is a clear breach of the authority and privilege that the Catholic Education Service has been given in schools.
"Surely it is no part of its remit to promote a specific political campaign from this purely sectarian viewpoint. It is disgraceful that children are being encouraged into bigotry when they are attending a state school paid for by taxpayers."
No comments:
Post a Comment