Jewish activist has warned that “many” Jews will leave Britain if faith schools agree to teach children about gay and transgender relationships and same-sex families.
The initial proposals state that students must be made aware of the Equality Act’s protected characteristics which include “sexual orientation” and “gender reassignment” in an “age-appropriate way.”
Britain’s 70,000-strong ultra-religious Charedi community “would rather choose to leave the United Kingdom for a more hospitable jurisdiction, rather than comply with such an obligation to mention homosexuality, same-sex relationships or gender reassignment in a positive context at school,” wrote the Lawyers to the Department of Education on behalf of Shraga Stern.
Stern’s lawyers in a letter to Education Minister Damian Hinds and Minister of State Nick Gibb told that their client, whose children attend an independent faith school in London, was “alarmed” by draft guidance published in March 2018.
The lawyers have argued that it would be “deeply unfair” to the Jewish Orthodox tradition to “require the schools to teach in a manner that is contrary to the faith and belief of the community and is something which they do not wish to teach and have called the draft guidance “disproportionate, morally unacceptable to our client and unlawful.”
While responding to Jewish Orthodox, Amanda Spielman, who oversees Ofsted in her role as Chief Inspector of Education, said that faith schools could not opt out of teaching children about LGBT people, as it was required by the Equality Act.
Spielman said in a statement quoted in The Sunday Times that “We know a gay child might be born into any town, any family, any time, You can’t say in these communities there won’t be any gay children.”