Newton Emerson: Sex Education becomes latest battleground in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is itching to have an argument about sex education.

Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Secretary, has updated the curriculum by Westminster regulation, in Stormont’s absence. Pupils aged 11-16 must now be taught about access to contraception and abortion, although whether schools deign to do so is another matter.

Not everyone is in the mood for a debate. Bishop Donal McKeown, chair of the Catholic Council for Maintained Schools, said anyone who needed information on abortion could Google it.

But the DUP has thrown itself into the spirit of the occasion, accusing Heaton-Harris of seeking to “promote abortion to children and young people based on his interpretation of ‘scientifically accurate’ education”.

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That reference to science is a quote from a Northern Ireland Office press release. In a DUP press release it recalls other debates about the teaching of evolution, as was perhaps the intention.

Separately, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission published a report on Monday criticising schools for “idealisation and promotion of abstinence, marriage, and monogamy”, thereby causing “shame and stigma”.

The report had a lot more to say but the media was particularly interested in abstinence. This is almost certainly due to awareness of debate in the United States, where abstinence-only sex education has been a controversial topic for decades.

For those of us who were teenagers in the 1980s, this has been a star-spangled trip down memory lane. The first stirrings of the modern American culture war were influential in the Northern Ireland of my youth. The rise of the religious right in US politics had been noted in Britain, and universally derided, but evangelical congregations in the North were intrigued and inspired. Members who were parents, students, school governors and (less often it seemed) teachers sought to bring US arguments into the classroom, where everyone else argued back.

Opposition to abortion was seen as uniting unionism and nationalism, right up until the Republic’s 2018 referendum, when nationalism redefined how it saw itself on socially progressive terms

There was still no escape from Northern Ireland politics: these were Protestant churches, de facto Protestant schools and any councillors or MPs involved were invariably unionists. The parallel between US evangelists and the Rev Ian Paisley was lost on nobody, Paisley included.

It was a partial escape, however, a shiny imported novelty we were adept at making our own. Creationism seemed to stir up more passion than sex education, bizarrely; the hunt for blasphemous English texts and library books was genuinely aggravating. Yet there was a sense it was all recreational, a good argument but with little really at stake.

It may have felt different to our teachers. Many were from a 1960s generation of liberals, competing with churches to set the agenda in schools. The churches went on to win this battle – never assume you are on the right side of history.

Although culture war has become a pejorative term, those who sought to transpose it on to 1980s Northern Ireland are not entirely deserving of shame and stigma.

The hope of the great and the good, then as now, was for the emergence of “normal” left-right politics. Why should this have been about economics, as always presumed, especially in a region with few economic powers? Religious right versus liberal left was an equally valid experiment with some cross-community potential. Opposition to abortion was seen as uniting unionism and nationalism, until the Republic’s 2018 referendum, when nationalism redefined how it saw itself on socially progressive terms.

Politics has since moved on. The new sex education row is specifically about Northern Ireland politics: Heaton-Harris is using it to embarrass the DUP over collapsing Stormont; while the DUP is complaining without irony that his Westminster regulation has breached devolution.

Sinn Féin is so keen to own the progressive side of the argument that its communities minister consulted on a mandatory sex education policy before Stormont collapsed last year, despite having no remit over schools.

The escalating nastiness of US politics has been noticed in Northern Ireland, and is increasingly setting the agenda. Parents have become suspicious and schools nervous. A DUP education minister was caught up in a row two years ago when 60 parents objected to sex education being introduced by a board of governors, which she chaired. There will be others in politics wondering how common such disputes could become and what the opportunities are to exploit them. The DUP would very much like to find an issue where it can claim to speak for the “moral majority”.

In the back of everyone’s mind is the transgender question. Although this is not directly addressed in Heaton-Harris’s regulation it is raised in the Human Rights Commission report and is clearly what is putting many parents on edge.

“Scientifically accurate education” is a phrase that could end up haunting everyone. Unlike with evolution, the science is not settled.

There seems little chance of Northern Ireland’s classroom culture war recapturing its earlier innocence.