‘LGBTQ+’ History Month: Key messages for parents

As we enter ‘LGBTQ+’ History Month, many schools will be celebrating people who identify as ‘LGBTQ+’. Schools will confuse good treatment of all people with acceptance and celebration of lifestyles we deem morally unacceptable.

What is wrong with the way schools talk about ‘LGBTQ+’ during History Month?

Many teachers believe that there is nothing morally wrong with ‘LGBTQ+’ beliefs and lifestyles. It is their prerogative to believe what they do. This does not mean that they should impose their personal moral positions on Muslim children.

A teacher can hold a personal view that ‘LGBTQ+’ relationships are good, yet this should be acknowledged as a value position. It is not a universally acknowledged truth that must be forced upon others. They should not impose contested views on children who hold different moral positions.

Muslims, as well as many people from faith backgrounds, believe that any relationship outside of a marital relationship between a man and a woman is morally unacceptable.

A school can say that a man can legally marry another man. That is a legal reality.
But when a school asks Muslim children to accept such relationships, or to celebrate them, this is clearly overstepping their duty according to the Equality Act 2010.

When Muslim children are expected to wear ‘LGBTQ+’ insignia, wave pride flags, or take part in mock pride marches, a school has veered away from education and entered the realm of indoctrination.

When Muslim children are disciplined for expressing a contrary view, this is unacceptable. Muslim parents must challenge this.

It is a given that we teach our children to treat others with civility. But to expect acceptance of behaviours that contravene our faith perspective is unacceptable.

What should Muslim parents do?

Parents must:

• Write to schools and ask that your children not be forced to take part in any activity that compromises their faith position on same-sex relationships or promotes the view that a person is born in the wrong body.
• Ensure that your children must be allowed to hold and express contrary views about ‘LGBTQ+’ beliefs and lifestyles.
• Outside of the school context, have simple discussions with your children about the ‘LGBTQ+’ narratives that have all too often gone unchallenged and respond to them with the normative Islamic position on same-sex relationships and ‘gender identity’, such as:
  
  • ‘LGBTQ+’ identity labels such as ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’ and ‘bisexual’ are rooted in ‘who someone is’. We believe every behaviour is changeable and all desires are controllable.
  • A child who feels some attraction or closeness to a friend of the same sex is made to feel that this desire equates to sexual longing. This is bound to happen in a society where the dominant culture sexualises everything. Yet desires and feelings are not permanent states; rather, they are temporary, and any single desire or feeling should not define a person.
  • The labels we often hear about (‘gay’, ‘lesbian’, ‘bisexual’, ‘homosexual’, ‘heterosexual’, etc.) are rooted in a 19^th century, liberal, Eurocentric view of human behaviour that is untethered from objective truth. They are founded upon a belief that there is some kind of sexual attraction force – innate and unchanging – that defines people according to these 19^th century labels.
  • The idea that people are born in the wrong body encourages children to make devastating, life-changing, and irreversible decisions based on a feeling that passes. If only they were given the space to explore what trauma underpins their drastic decision. Instead, the ‘adults in the room’ affirm these fleeting feelings and concretise them. As a society, we must question, not entertain, why so many young girls and boys, dissatisfied with aspects of their lives thus far, are socialised into making such a drastic change. They need love, help, and support – not hormones and surgery.
  • Just because people choose to live a particular way does not speak to the truth of an idea or behaviour. The majority position does not equate to truth; it simply means that lots of people hold that view.

Our truths are built upon a recognition that:

• We were created by Allah for a higher purpose than the fulfilment of temporary desires.
• He guided mankind to a lofty purpose connected with meaning, shunning the hedonistic lifestyle that propels the worship of one’s desires.
• He created man and woman with profound differences, even down to the cellular level. He did not make any mistakes when He fashioned the differences that we know exist between men and women.
• A woman can change her outward features, and remove parts of her body, but she remains a woman.
• A man can opt to surgically remove parts of his body and take female hormones, but he will forever remain a man.
• Masculinity and femininity have a universal reality that transcends cultural positions such as ‘boys like blue’ and ‘girls like pink’, or ‘boys like football’ and ‘girls like dolls’.

We need to teach our children that there are differences, these differences don’t make one sex superior to the other. We must discuss these issues outside of the battle of the sexes that has coloured this discussion.

Also read

• Parental Guidance Series
• My Same-Sex Attraction: Understanding & Healing
• Stop “proselytising” LGBT ideology to pupils, demand parents
• Joint statement of Muslim Scholars & Imams on LGBT row in schools
• Yes, they ARE encouraging children to “be gay” in Schools. Or bisexual, pansexual, asexual, transsexual, hetero-flexible, heterosexual…

Source: Islam21c