Israel Folau is right to condemn gender fluidity and the push to get children and adolescents to transition.  Folau also needs to be thanked and congratulated for standing up for his religious beliefs at a time when to be a dedicated Christian is to be open to vitriolic abuse and attacks.

For far too long radical Marxist inspired programs like Safe Schools have been pushed on schools and children taught to believe that boys can be girls and girls can be boys – or any of the over 40 LGBTIQ categories in between.

And Folau’s recent intervention in the gender wars is timely given last week’s release of the Catholic Church’s Male and Female He Created Them.

The Church document warns about a ‘crisis in education’ where children are mistakenly taught gender is limitless and they can self-identify as whatever gender they desire. In opposition to radical gender theory the Church argues it is wrong to deny ‘the biological differences between male and female’. Gender is not a social construct as 99 per cent of babies are born with XX or XY chromosomes and this determines whether they are female or male. And it’s not just Folau and the Church in Rome arguing it is wrong to deny the binary nature of gender and sexuality. The conservatively minded American College of Pediatricians also argues ‘human sexuality is an objective biological trait’ that ‘is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species’.

Folau is right to question the rationale employed to justify programs like Safe Schools. As admitted by one of its designers, Roz Ward, instead of being an anti-bullying program it’s real purpose is to impose radical LGBTIQ theory on schools. Ward states the intention of the program is to ‘create a world where human sexuality, gender and how we relate to our bodies can blossom in extraordinary new and amazing ways that we can only try to imagine today’.

One of the resources associated with Safe Schools argues ‘sexuality can’t really be defined’ and that ‘sexuality is fluid and changes over time’. Students are also told ‘What you label yourself is up to you’.

In kindergarten another resource introduces children to the Gender Fairy who argues there is nothing unnatural or unusual about having a mum and a mum. According to gender theory those who see marriage as involving a woman and a man are guilty of being heteronormative, transphobic and homophobic.

The Church document, in opposition to schools being told to indoctrinate students with radical gender ideology, stresses the ‘primary rights and duties of parents with regard to the education of their children’.

The Church’s argument that parental responsibilities ‘cannot be delegated or usurped by others’ is supported by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that states governments must respect the liberty of parents ‘to ensure the religious and moral education of their children (is) in conformity with their own convictions’.

Many parents are choosing faith-based schools because of their fears that government secular schools are being forced by governments to implement gender theory along with identity politics and a politically correct curriculum favouring indigenous studies instead of Western civilisation and Judeo-Christianity. At a time when religious freedom is threatened and where the Commonwealth government is yet to decide its full response to the Ruddock Religious Freedom Review the Vatican document also signals that Catholic schools need to remain true to their religious teachings and beliefs. In relation to gender programs like Safe Schools the Vatican argues governments should respect the ‘legitimate aspirations of Catholic Schools to maintain their own vision of human sexuality’.

Such a warning is especially important given the experience of Christian and other faith-based schools in England penalised for failing to implement a secular, state-mandated view of gender that contradicts their teachings.

As a result of not following the government’s dictates inspectors associated with the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills has downgraded such schools for failing to normalise LGBTIQ theory. In America schools are being pressured to allow boys who self-identify as girls to use the female changing rooms and showers and to participate in girls’ sports.

By questioning radical gender theory the Church’s document also serves as a timely warning about the impact of teaching students there is nothing wrong with seeking to change their gender.

One of the outcomes of radical programs like Safe Schools has been the dramatic increase in children undergoing hormonal treatment and reassignment. In Sydney and Melbourne, for example, over the last 10 years there has been a dramatic increase in new patients seeking gender reassignment at major public hospitals.

The dangers associated with gender reassignment include the high rates of depression and self-harm experienced when adolescent children enter adulthood and realise too late that what they initially had been taught to believe was untrue.

Such are the dangers associated with gender transition/dysphoria that the American College of Pedetricians recommends ‘health professionals, educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex as normal and healthful’. And counter to those arguing opposition to transgenderism only comes from conservatives it’s significant that the American feminist Camille Paglia also argues gender is binary and that transitioning is child abuse. In her book Free Women Free Men Paglia argues ‘except in very rare conditions of true hermaphroditism the DNA of every cell of the human body is inflexibly coded as male or female from birth to death’. Paglia also argues ‘without knowledge of biology, gender studies slides into propaganda’ and warns against what she describes as ‘Extravaganzas of gender experimentation’.

There’s no doubt that radical gender theory is impacting on what is taught in schools and society more broadly, even in sport where men who have transitioned now unfairly compete against women. At the same time the Catholic Church’s document and Folau’s opposition offer much- needed counter arguments that need to be heard.