Parents and lawmakers expressed outrage Wednesday over a proposed piece of legislation that seeks to implement “sexual education spaces” across all public and private schools in Colombia.
Detractors of the proposed legislation have accused it of wanting to introduce a “gender ideology” program in the nation’s educational institutions targeting Colombian children and teenagers.
The project, known as bill 229/2021, was introduced to the Colombian Congress in 2021. It presents its intentions to:
Promote and strengthen comprehensive sexuality education, through training, knowledge and the exercise of Sexual and Reproductive Rights, through its transversal inclusion in all public and private educational establishments in the country and through its promotion in training of future teachers in the Faculties of Education.
A group of “progressive” lawmakers — prominently Susana Boreal of the Historic Pact, a coalition of leftist parties that backed far-left Gustavo Petro’s successful presidential campaign — revived the legislation this year.
“We will present the project of Law No. 229/21 that seeks to provide children and teenagers with knowledge to enjoy their health, well-being and dignity, that is the ‘Comprehensive Education in Sexuality,’ to protect rights throughout life,” Congresswoman Boreal wrote in a Twitter message on Wednesday.
Discussion of the bill, previously scheduled for Wednesday evening, had to be postponed due to a lack of consensus among pro-government lawmakers. Members of the Historic Pact coalition then decided to leave the premises of the Colombian Congress, breaking the required quorum to carry out any type of decision over the proposal. The move also prevented the project from being archived on that day, as the group of lawmakers that opposed the project had enough votes to send it back to the Congressional archives but could not vote on it.
Following the postponement of the project’s discussion, Luis Miguel López Aristizábal, a Congressman from Colombia’s Conservative Party, denounced through his Twitter account that “some congressmen decided to break the plenary quorum of Colombia’s House of Representatives to avoid filing the [Law Project] on Sex Education.”
“When there are no arguments, delaying maneuvers are used to postpone discussions. We won the battle, but we continue in the fight,” López concluded.
Colombian parents who oppose the bill rallied under the banner of the hashtag #ConMisHijosNoTeMetas (“Don’t Mess With My Kids”), a social movement that first originated in Peru in 2016 against the implementation of gender ideology content in that nation’s education system.
Since then, the movement has spread across other Hispanic nations such as Argentina, Spain, Bolivia, and Paraguay.
“Today a bill is being debated to impose sexual education with gender ideology on our children. The children are NOT from the State, they belong to their parents. We will defend the innocence of our children at all costs,” wrote Sebastián Arboleda, a Colombian conservative activist and parent, on his Twitter account on November 9.
The movement also had support from Colombian conservative lawmakers such as Mauricio Giraldo, who used his Twitter account to express support.
“Let’s protect our children from the ideologies that they try to impose on them. Let’s protect our freedom of education as parents and educators. Let’s protect the innocence of our children,” Giraldo wrote on Wednesday.
“Today from the House of Representatives we say NO to PL 229 of 2021 that intends to impose mandatory ideologized sexual education in all public and private schools in Colombia and violate the freedom of education of parents,” Congressman Jose Jaime Uscátegui said in a post to Twitter.
Current senator and former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez — for decades the spiritual leader of the Colombian right — also weighed in on the proposed law.
“The child should be guided by the family, not the State, much less the tendencies of gender ideology. The role of the teacher should be the dialogue with fathers and mothers of the family, not replace them in the orientation of the child,” Uribe Vélez he wrote on Wednesday.
“May gender ideology not destroy childhood,” Uribe Vélez had previously expressed through his Twitter account.
“Gender ideology does not build freedom, but it does destroy values and tries to invade the family jurisdiction to guide the child,” the image attached to the tweet read. “To anticipate the sexuality of children for ideological reasons is to promote rape and destroy the essence of childhood.”
The Democratic Center, Uribe Vélez’s political party, is among those fiercely against the proposed law.
“They seek to direct the sexual identity of our children of all ages. Respect children, it is the family that is in charge of focusing the education of their children,” Senator María Fernanda Cabal expressed through her Twitter account on Wednesday.
Prior to the failed discussion of the sexual education law, Colombian President Gustavo Petro received Spain’s Equality Minister Irene Montero Gila on Sunday to discuss the importance of establishing a feminist agenda with gender policies in their governments.
Montero is the main proponent of Spain’s “Trans Law” — a legislation that, if passed, would allow minors from the age of 16 on to legally change their gender through an easy request. On two different occasions, Montero expressed her opinion that “children can have sex with whoever they want.”
While spawned from a separate movement, the phrase “Don’t mess with my kids” was the same rallying cry that successfully united Venezuelan parents in 2001 against Hugo Chavez’s infamous “Decree 1011.” The decree was the socialist regime’s first attempt at hijacking the country’s educational system and imposing Marxist ideological content for political purposes.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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