A bill to remove gender “ideology” from public policies governing children and adolescents is providing a distraction this week from the continuing corruption scandals in the judiciary and the Congress itself.
The bill, presented by lawmaker Tamar Arimborgo and uploaded to the Congress website, is the newest effort by conservatives in the Congress to exclude what they consider is “gender ideology” from the Ministry of Education’s school syllabus in the belief that the school guidelines for tolerance, non-discrimination and equal opportunities for boys and girls are based on an ideology that will confuse children’s gender identity and encourage homosexuality. It calls for the removal within 30 days of all school materials, texts and manuals that cover gender issues.
This follows earlier efforts to oust at least two Education ministers since 2016, and protests from the more conservative branches of the Roman Catholic church and of the Protestant evangelical churches which have led several marches under the banner of “Con mis hijos no te metas” (Don’t mess with my kids).
But this time, the bill is the brunt of ridicule as much as criticism, and even the Fuerza Popular spokesman, Carlos Tubino, has now removed his signature and asked that the bill be reworded.
Arimborgo, a member of Keiko Fujimori’s Fuerza Popular party, questions in the bill the “imposition of foreign cultural concepts or ideas that have no scientific evidence,” adding that the results of “gender ideology” include dysphoria over sexual identity, unwanted biological sex changes, “and other negative effects such as AIDS and cancer.”
Arimborgo cites the American College of Pediatricians, a 500-member conservative group, in their statement on Gender Ideology Harms Children. The college is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “fringe” group “pushing anti-LGBT junk science.”
Of her critics, Arimborgo said on RPP Noticias, “Here they’ve tried to lean towards a little word or phrase that I’ve taken from the American College of Pediatricians and put in my arguments for the project. They’ve gone off on a tangent, they’ve tried to undermine the project.”
The Ministry of Education emphasizes it has a gender focus, not an ideology. The guidelines —published in the syllabus for primary and secondary education on their website, as well as list of FAQ — are to discourage bullying, raise awareness of equal rights for boys and girls, and so increase tolerance of differences and reduce violence, especially violence against women — seven women have been killed by their partners in the first two weeks of this new year, and 149 were killed in 2018, among the highest figures in Latin America.
The United Nations, in a letter to President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski early in 2017, congratulated the government for its school syllabus and its efforts to encourage understanding, peace and respect in human rights, and to prevent discrimination of sexual orientation and gender identity.
But conservative groups fear the guidelines are permissive and, according to Arimborgo, “hypersexualize” children.
According to Salomon Lerner, former rector of the Catholic University of Peru, in a column in La Republica titled “Gender is not an Ideology“, the current of opinion has been created by fear and because they have not, in fact, read the Ministry’s guidelines and the law.
“These people fear that this project predicates a permissive attitude towards sexuality and confuses the assumption of “sexual roles” assigned historically to what is masculine and femenine,” Lerner said.
Peru must always be on the alert for European and North American nonsensical gender idology. These countries are so sexualized that almost anything goes! In the UK a man can claim he’s a woman when being put in prison. And the government gives this man who claims to be a woman the right to join the women in prison-and the result? This man who has the organs of a man goes in and impregnates at least three women, can you believe that? What stupidity! Peru must stand tall and not allow the gay/lesbian community from abroad to affect the culture there. It’s the same with abortion. Kill any baby at any time before birth and even at birth. That’s murder. Please, Peru, do not allow that to happen in your lovely country.
As regards the article above on gender focus, I totally agree that if the focus is trying to remove the distinction between born male or born female, like gender parity or gender fluidity where there’s no gender at birth, and that a gender designation as male or female is deferred until the child can chose its preferred gender in later life then the government must and owe to the people to scrap that falsehood immediately. For thousands of years all living forms had a gender at birth; now some deluded people want to confuse others and install wickedness and stupidity. Granted that there are cases where in development of the baby the genes went haywire as happens many times, but we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We should recognize the developmental anormality and seek to rectify it. Never once should we reverse the order that God has instituted. That would lead to total caos, confusion, violence, and suffering. Let’s be sure the government is on the same page as we. If however gender sensitivity in schools is to protect girls from male dominance or vice versa where it happens, then we can concur. However, please do not ever seek to follow the European, Canadian, and N. American perversion where it is promoted in the US. Never in Peru! May God help Peru to remain sane and resolute.