Religious groups ‘spending billions to counter gender-equality education’
Well-known conservative organisations aim to restrict girls’ access to education, change what is on the curriculum, and influence educational laws and policies, according to Whose Hands on our Education, a report by the global affairs thinktank ODI
Tactics include removing sex education from schools, banning girls from learning, reinforcing patriarchal gender stereotypes in textbooks and rejecting gender-inclusive language in schools.
In Africa, more than $54m was spent by US-based Christian groups between 2007 and 2020 to campaign against LGBTQ+ rights and sex education.
Funding, from sources that include Russian oligarchs and political parties, has led to the creation of new organisations and encouraged existing ones to campaign against sexuality education and LGBTQ+ rights, the report found.
For example, donors from Britain, the US, Germany and Italy spent more than $5m from 2016 to 2020 on projects run by or benefiting Ghanaian religious organisations whose leaders have campaigned against LGBTQ+ rights.
Organised efforts have also blocked sex education initiatives in South Africa, Brazil and the Philippines, removing material on homosexuality and replacing it with content that promotes sexual abstinence and “traditional family values”.
In Chile, Catholic schools have used educational material that portrays men as heads of households with messages on the importance of wives being submissive, as well as stereotypes of men as being more intelligent and capable than women.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-devel...ual-rights
Well-known conservative organisations aim to restrict girls’ access to education, change what is on the curriculum, and influence educational laws and policies, according to Whose Hands on our Education, a report by the global affairs thinktank ODI
Tactics include removing sex education from schools, banning girls from learning, reinforcing patriarchal gender stereotypes in textbooks and rejecting gender-inclusive language in schools.
In Africa, more than $54m was spent by US-based Christian groups between 2007 and 2020 to campaign against LGBTQ+ rights and sex education.
Funding, from sources that include Russian oligarchs and political parties, has led to the creation of new organisations and encouraged existing ones to campaign against sexuality education and LGBTQ+ rights, the report found.
For example, donors from Britain, the US, Germany and Italy spent more than $5m from 2016 to 2020 on projects run by or benefiting Ghanaian religious organisations whose leaders have campaigned against LGBTQ+ rights.
Organised efforts have also blocked sex education initiatives in South Africa, Brazil and the Philippines, removing material on homosexuality and replacing it with content that promotes sexual abstinence and “traditional family values”.
In Chile, Catholic schools have used educational material that portrays men as heads of households with messages on the importance of wives being submissive, as well as stereotypes of men as being more intelligent and capable than women.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-devel...ual-rights
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
