Each year, John Murray, a parishioner of St. Mary of Sorrows Church in Fairfax, reads every Family Life Education (FLE) lesson taught to Fairfax County Public School students. Then he rates each lesson on a red, yellow, or green scale depending on whether the information is helpful and accurate, or whether it promotes a view of sexuality contrary to the Catholic faith. The results are posted on parentandchild.org, a website created by Murray and other parents whose children attended or are attending Fairfax County public schools.
Some of the FLE lessons are useful, said Murray. But overall, students aren’t presented with a vision of family life that shows the ideal as two people falling in love, getting married and starting a family together, he said. “I’ve done a word search on this multiple times — the words bride and groom do not appear in the entire curriculum,” he said. “The word wedding makes one appearance, under the heading ‘Stressful events.’ ”
Students are taught about contraception, sexually transmitted diseases and transgenderism. “I have a degree in biology and I’m trained in crisis pregnancy counseling,” said Murray. “Reading the FLE lessons, they’re encouraging the behaviors that send women to pregnancy resources centers. (The view they’re presenting is) basically sex with a shrug.”
Especially concerning is a lesson designed for children with special needs, said Murray. “One slide shows a boy in a sweater and pants changing into a dress,” he said. “Autistic kids and others (are) particularly vulnerable to suggestions that they’re born in the wrong body.” One recent study from Nature Communications shows that people who identify as transgender or nonbinary are three to six times as likely to be autistic. “For the county to throw that slide in there and risk giving a push in that direction to vulnerable special needs students is unconscionable,” he said.
Parents are able to opt their child out of any particular FLE lesson. Murray hopes they will use the yearly review to see which lessons are right for their child. “None of this is my call,” he said. “We’re just trying to encourage the parents to dig into this curriculum and see what they think.”
