The teachers took us to the hall, saying they were under instructions not to tell us what we were going there for. Once there, we weren’t allowed to leave – teachers were posted at the doors.” The lecturer was Barbara McGuigan, an American evangelist and founder of the Catholic charity Voice of Virtue International. “She told us that if we had an abortion we’d go to hell for ever, and she showed pictures of foetuses aborted after 12 and 20 weeks. Some of the girls were in tears, but no one was allowed to leave,” says Michael.
McGuigan also told them that homosexuality was a “disorder”, that a person who was homosexual must adopt a life of chastity, and that no unmarried couple could have a successful relationship.
This is at a Kent, Catholic (of course) school. One recently taken over in the merger of three, successful institutions to form this one, unsuccessful one. (Story in the Education Guardian.)
And the treatment of the pupils sounds very like false imprisonment to me – as does attempts to force pupils over the age of 16 to attend Mass.
Still, the positive side is that at least we can be sure most of the pupils will be put off religion, hopefully for life.
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I do remember about 15 years ago at school having a lesson entitled ‘Personal and social Education’. One week we had a seemingly harmless spokesperson from Life come and speak to us. Except she didn’t sell herself directly as anti-abortion or even pro-life she just showed us lots of models and pictures of fully formed but very cute and tiny foetuses at 12 weeks and told us that they could feel pain.
At the end of the lesson she gave out leaflets which went along pretty much the same line and told us that if we were to ever find ourselves ‘in trouble’ we should phone their helpline where we would be given ‘impartial’ advice about how to cope with our pregnancy. She then gave out free badges with the Life logo and phone number and told us to spread the word.
The way it was presented most people ended up thinking that Life was just like Childline but for pregnancy and for weeks people were walking around with these sickening badges on their school bags.
All this from a supposedly non-religious school.
That same year a 15 year old girl in my class gave birth to disabled twins. I can’t help connecting the two events in my mind.
My RE teacher was a fundamentalist christian and although the course forced him to talk about other religions he’d always say how wrong and evil they were.
Burned into my memory was the day that one lad was brave enough (the teacher was pretty scary) to say he didn’t believe in god to which the guy went into a rant about if you didn’t believe in god you couldn’t possibly have any morals – which was so patently false that he created a class full of atheists…
It’s a good lesson though for anyone who would like to persuade people of an idea – behave like a human being, don’t preach and *listen* to what the other person has to say with respect so you can address their concerns, or maybe even change your own mind on the sdunject.
Yes, put off religion, but only after they develop irresponsible attitudes towards sex (since they’re not supposed to be having it) and are scarred for life if they have ever had romantic thoughts about a member of the same sex (since they’ll be burning in hell).
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