Moronic twits and clap-trap

Daily Telegraph columnist Anita Quigley is shrill in her Saturday column about a Sydney pre-school which has introduced a curriculum which is friendly to non-traditional homosexual and transgender families. She's "a strong advocate for a factual and concise sex curriculum for students" but (we knew there was going to be a but, didn't we?):

There is a time and a place for sex education but pre-school isn't it. That's when your child should be colouring-in; learning the alphabet, to count and write his or her name.

A preschool for six-month-olds to six-year-olds is not the forum to explain sex. Not heterosexual sex nor lesbian, nor gay nor bisexual and certainly not transgender.

She refers to the early-childhood staff at a Marrickville Council pre-school as "twits", calls the Mayor "moronic", and the whole idea of a non-discriminatory family education programme as "clap-trap".

Homophobia is a persistent and ugly prejudice which maturing social values are gradually tackling on their own. It is also something a child under the age of six need not worry about. Why? Because they are in the fortunate position of being children. When all you need to know in life is that you love Bill and Ben, without questioning why two men shared a potting shed.

Anita, just possibly that pre-school already has children there who have two mummies, or two daddies, or a mummy or daddy who looks different somehow from the other mummies and daddies. Do you really think pre-schoolers don't notice these things?

And does she honestly think that pre-school education about non-traditional parenting pairs is going to go into graphic detail about the mechanics of how they get the beast with two backs on? Rather than just have a few books like "Heather has two mummies" on the shelf? And carers that have been trained to be sympathetic about such families, some of whom probably are or will be their clients?

Next these so called "educators" at Tillman Park will want to take these pure innocent tots to Crazy Horse to watch a bit of girl-on-girl action so they don't grow up to discriminate against strippers.

Sack the lot of them.

Well, yes, I guess she does think that. Grow up, Anita.

Hat-tip: ABC National Radio story

UPDATE: in today's editorial, the Tele goes even shriller about Marrickville Mayor Mr Byrne.

He wouldn't shut up about his success in "challenging children's perceptions of what is normal gender and sexual identity".

As we stated on Saturday -- what perverted rot. Children do not have a perception of sexual identity, and anyone who sets out to create one is, put simply, a creep.

Lovely. Anyone who's done even the smallest amount of reading in the psychology of gender and sexual identity knows that children as young as 18 months have very strong perceptions regarding same even though they don't know what sex is, but oh no: the Tele tells us they simply do not, and that's that. No need to think about it at all. And certainly no reason to distract us from how hopelessly irresponsible Mayor Byrne is.

Yesterday, in the wake of the wholly foreseeable public outcry about Marrickville Council's childcare agenda, Mr Byrne was nowhere to be found. The Daily Telegraph telephoned him five times and even want to his home to ask him to explain himself. Not a peep.

Fancy. On a Sunday, the Mayor spent the day out doing things instead of sitting at home so that the Tele journos could doorstop him. What a shock.

And Sue Dunlevy gets Mal Brough's tuppence worth:

As ratepayers expressed anger, Family and Community Services Minister Mal Brough branded the curriculum "ridiculous". "At that age children should be fingerpainting and having fun, not learning about social behaviour which many parents regard as way beyond their years," he said.

And have any of these people actually read the curriculum, I wonder? Parenting is not social behaviour that is "way beyond their years" for small children - they are parented every day, they understand that other kids have parents too. Look honestly at the toddlers you know - does anyone really think it would be totally mind-warping to mention once in a while that sometimes parents are two men or two women?

What's really going on with this beat-up?

Sam Byrne's campaign in Marrickville won support from [Green] Senators Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle and state MPs Lee Rhiannon and Ian Cohen. As with the party's liberal drug policies -- which they did little to promote at the 2004 federal election -- this outrage shows anyone considering a protest vote should read the fine print.

Now, isn't it interesting that I heard former Marrickville Mayor Barry Cotter (who is still a councillor) on the radio the other day, for the first time in ages. Is someone in Marrickville council trying to run the numbers on the mayoralty I wonder? And why's the Tele so keen on smoothing the ground for such a run?

FURTHER UPDATE: There's a rather more balanced story in today's Age.