by Nicola Lund, TCW
A LANDMARK legal case against the Welsh Government in 2022 challenged the introduction of mandatory Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) in Welsh schools. The claimants, Public Child Protection Wales (PCP), argued that mandatory RSE violated their rights under Article 2 Protocol 1 (A2P1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to education in accordance with parents’ religious/philosophical convictions) and Article 9 (freedom of thought and belief).
Although the High Court rejected the claim that Welsh Government’s statutory guidance and educational code had violated the law, PCP’s campaign continues unabated.
This year, their annual conference had an international focus, with guests from as far afield as New Zealand and the United States, largely due to Jana Lunden, the founder of the Natural Women’s Council, who had approached Kim Isherwood, founder of PCP Wales, to join forces. Like PCP, the Natural Women’s Council, a grassroots non-profit organisation in Ireland, is dedicated to protecting the well-being of children, women and families.
Jana Lunden was part of an international project in which PCP were invited to take part towards the end of last year. The project was to reinstate the Bill known as HR4279, introduced in the US in December 1995 asking Congress to determine if sexologist Alfred Kinsey’s reports are the result of any fraud or criminal wrongdoing. A significant amount of legislation and social policy across the world is based upon his work. Kinsey is a highly controversial figure not least because of his ‘Table 34’ in the Sexual Behavior in the Human Male report which documents data on sexual experiences involving children, including cases of sexual contact between adults and minors.
An information pack, put together by Rhonda Miller from Purple for Parents United and Audrey Werner from the Matthew XVIII Group, together with the Bill, was handed to Congress staff and it is now a waiting game for the coalition to see if anything will be done this time round.