Gender equality curriculum guidelines should be revised to avoid encouraging sexual exploration and homosexuality, student protesters said yesterday at a protest outside the Ministry of Education.
A handful of demonstrators affiliated with the Student Alliance for the Protection of Families shouted slogans calling for “inappropriate” gender equality education classes to be stopped.
“We are not opposed to gender equality education, but we are opposed to education that amounts to the exploration of a variety of lusts and the encouragement of homosexual tendencies,” said alliance convener Shih Chun-yu (施俊宇), a Fujen Catholic University student.
Shih cited the “gender spectrum” module as one component that should be removed from the four hours of gender equality education students receive per semester.
“Elementary-school students are still maturing and to tell them they can choose a gender identity different from their biological one just confuses them,” he said.
Alliance members plan to demonstrate in Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung over the next several days to raise awareness of the issue, he said.
Alliance executive director Hsieh Yu-chan (謝育展), a Soochow University student, said students planned to give public speeches, conduct flash protests on school campuses and hand out flyers at temples.
Two students from the Taiwan Youth Sexual Equality Association staged a simultaneous counter-protest.
“We approve of these kinds of curriculum materials and we hope that they can expanded to include more people on the gender spectrum,” said association spokesman Brian Sung (宋運川), a National Taipei University of Education student.
Many students who do not conform to gender stereotypes continue to face bullying, he said.
Ministry of Education Special Education Director Hsieh Chang-yun (謝昌運) said that a Curriculum Guidelines Gender Equity Committee was established after the Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法) was revised in 2004, adding that the ministry would take into account the views of the public in implementing further revisions.
Additional reporting by Rachel Lin
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