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Young Conservatives for Christ are challenging Victoria’s Respectful Relationships curriculum, warning that compulsory consent education and mature-minor policies undermine parental authority.

Young Conservatives for Christ (YCFC) are calling out the sexualisation of children in the Victorian curriculum.

A Labor initiative, the curriculum is known as Respectful Relationships (RR), and sits alongside the Mature Minors policy, which, among other things, leans towards pro-abortion and transgender ideologies.

Although the official government narrative is that they don’t, it opens the door.

The policy also encourages involving parents, yet gives authorities a yardstick for determining whether or not a child under the age of 18 can make decisions without parental consent.

For example, Victorian Legal Aid states, “if you are under 18 you may be able to get an abortion without a parent or guardian agreeing, if a doctor thinks” the minor “understands what getting an abortion means.”

Now revamped, the Respectful Relationships program is mandated for Kindergarten through Year 12 and runs parallel to the controversial pro-LGBTQ+ “Safe Schools” support system.

Consent Education Under Scrutiny

As Jasmine Yuen, Victoria’s Australian Christian Lobby Director, told YCFC, Labor is now teaching kindergarten-aged kids “everything, including gender identity, identity politics and toxic masculinity.”

This, Yuen explained, brings with it “explicit sex education, because consent education is included in the new RR program.”

The curriculum, she added, “is more than teaching respect.”

Yuen isn’t wrong.

RR goes beyond family violence to include sex education repackaged as Consent Education, and it’s compulsory from K-12.

According to the guidance,

“Students will learn that consent must be given for all types of intimate contact, including kissing, hugging, and touching of more private areas of the body, as well as sexual activity.”

It’s up to teachers to “determine” whether the material they use is age-appropriate and “suitable for the needs of the students they teach.”

Some of it is reasonable, Yuen explained, such as “teaching children to say no to certain sexual relationships and protect themselves against pedophiles.”

Victoria’s policy and programming seem to make sense, she told YCFC. For instance, they “don’t want kids to learn about sex through pornography.”

“It sounds good,” Yuen said, “but the thing is, when they try to teach children consent with explicit sex education,” it promotes sexual activity.

Kids “will just go and look for more on the internet. It could lead to young children experimenting with sexual behaviour as well.”

The knock-on effect of these explicit sex education mandates is the awkward demand it places on teachers.

Some educators are really struggling with it, she explained, telling ACL they’ve contemplated resigning.

Yuen said she encourages those teachers to stay on, because under the Consent Education policy’s teacher discretion clause, they currently “have the flexibility or the freedom to pick and choose what to teach and what not to teach.”

Parents’ Rights at Risk

Notably, an ACL poll of 1,500 Victorians carried out in March this year showed that 56.87% strongly opposed gender ideology (preferred pronouns, etc.) being taught to primary-aged kids.

For high school, that number was 53.47% “somewhat strongly opposed to it.”

Bureaucrats and the media need to listen to this, the Victorian ACL director asserted.

“Parents are saying no, because they’re seeing the damage done to kids. People are starting to wake up.”

“We are thankful for the global pushback as well.”

Talking about protections for parental rights, Yuen said, it’s time to “abolish the mature minor policy.”

“From a parent’s perspective, it’s really concerning.  Children under our care, even when they are older than 18, there is so much decision-making that they are not confident with.”

“Parents would still need to step in.”

Regarding the Mature Minors’ policy and the government’s official denials, parents have told Yuen, “children are being referred to gender clinics without their knowledge or consent.”

When parents say no, she said, what happens? “There will be conflict, and the children are taking or considering parents as enemies.”

“So, what is the state trying to do? Not only removing parental rights, but also removing children from families and from the trust of the parents.”

The state is heading in this direction, Yuen explained.

Christians Called to Speak Up

Churches play a role here, too. “Christians,” she added, “as a people of God, we have the responsibility to hold the government accountable.”

What this means is that “if they’re drifting away from the truth, from the righteousness and the goodness or the responsibility that God put them in [power to] fulfil, we have a responsibility to draw them back.”

A responsibility, “to call out the wrong that they are doing.”

To this, Yuen argued that this entire issue doesn’t just erode parental rights; it suppresses religious freedom.

Commenting further on the Respectful Relationships curriculum, Young Conservatives for Christ leader John Martin told The Daily Declaration,

“It’s concerning that the government has taken away the role of teaching the kids from the parents.”

“To the extent,” he said, “that most parents aren’t aware that the Respectful Relationships curriculum is used across schools, and not only as a singular class, but taught as a whole school approach.”

“This is not just something that can be ignored for an hour.”

It’s “an ideology ground into the children throughout the day, from kindergarten.”

Martin further stated, “I spoke with one of the youth from my church, who said that puberty is discussed weekly as part of their personal development class, in a Christian school.”

“At his age, we had it taught once a year, and my parents had the opportunity to remove me from that [class], to teach it to me themselves.”

Outlining YCFC’s position, John declared,

“We believe that the Respectful Relationships Curriculum and Mature Minors Policy should be scrapped altogether.”

We also believe “that education regarding sexual activities should be between parents and children.”

“While we agree that teaching children about boundaries and appropriate behaviour is important, it must be done at an age-appropriate level.”

More importantly, “at the direction of the parents.”

Referring to the upcoming Victorian election, Martin concluded, “parents will have the opportunity to tell the government to remove this from the curriculum or be removed from office” once and for all.