Esther Tyson, Contributor

The Gleaner on Wednesday, October 31, carried as its front-page headline, "Same-sex lessons". The article informed the public that a textbook, CSEC Home Economics and Beyond (Management), by Rita Dyer and Norma Maynard, is a recommended text on the CXC-CSEC syllabus for the subject, home management. The article carried an excerpt from the text which discusses the matter of family structures. The controversial clause states:

"Today, there is much discussion about what constitutes a family. There seems to be a broadening of the traditional definitions of a family structure.

"When two women or two men live together in relationship as lesbians or gays, they may be considered as a family. They may adopt children or have them through artificial insemination."

Although Ardenne High School does not teach home management, I feel that as a school based on Christian principles and founded by the Church of God in Jamaica, I have a responsibility to respond to this view of families, which is being pushed in the official curriculum supplied by CXC. The views that I express reflect the thinking of the Church of God in Jamaica and the chairman of the board of management of the school.

Promoting the homosexual agenda

We are aware that the homosexual agenda is being promoted throughout the Western nations of the world by homosexual activists. We are aware that it is now the norm that on television programmes originating out of the United States of America, and made accessible in Jamaica through the cable network system, movies are now projecting the homosexual way of life as a acceptable lifestyle. We are aware that the agenda being pushed is that to be heterosexual and to object to the homosexual lifestyle is backward, politically incorrect and narrow-minded. We are aware that the homosexual lobby groups try to punish those who oppose their agenda through various means.

In spite of all of this, we must maintain, that as a nation whose world view is based on Judeo-Christian principles, that homosexual unions are not acceptable.

As a nation, we have upheld heterosexual unions to be the correct sexual union. Are we then going to hold up as a to our students, unions which are not accepted as correct in our nation? Further, the homosexual lifestyle is immoral based on the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. Yet, these unions exist and, therefore, we need to discuss them with our students, but in the context that these are aberrations of nature in the same way that bestiality is an aberration of nature. Where else in nature does same sex cohabit with one another?

The discussion in which I was involved on RJR's Beyond the Headlines on Wednesday, October 31, brought forth the view from a listener that because of globalisation, we should be viewing homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle because other nations are doing this. Has this now become the basis of our morality - because other nations are doing it?

Let us think back throughout history at the times when persons accepted a world view because it had become so pervasive that thinking outside of the box appeared wrong. Later, when the world view changed, many persons realised that they should have stood up and challenged the thinking of the day.

Because the whole world is going one way is no indication of the rightness or the wrongness of a moral point of view. We, as a people, must think for ourselves. We must examine our belief system in light of the influences, whether religious or philosophical, which govern our lives.

The Gleaner of Thursday, October 25, reported that Singapore's parliament decided to keep a ban on sex between men, with the prime minister saying the city state should keep its conservative values and not allow special rights for homosexuals. Globalisation did not cloud their thinking and neither should we have it cloud ours.

The cover of 'objectivity'

Another view would have us believe that if we look at the matter objectively and not be hampered by our outmoded religious beliefs, then we would be able to accept the homosexual lifestyle as a lifestyle. The cover of 'objectivity' is spurious, to say the least.

Every view that becomes an official position in a nation or in the world originates out of a person or persons' minds. Every mind is influenced by various inputs or stimuli which help to shape their thought patterns, personalities and world view. Is there really any true objectivity?

Even researchers can present their findings in ways which reflect a bias in their thinking. This is certainly true in matters of morality. The issue, therefore, is: Whose agenda will we accept? Whose thinking are we going to adopt, and what are our reasons for adopting these views?

I believe that in schools, students must be made aware of what is around them in the world; we cannot leave them ignorant. I also believe that as schools in a country with a Christian world view, we need to hold up what is the ideal and what is considered to be normal according to the teachings of the Bible. Genesis 2:23-24 (NIV) tells us:

"The man said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called 'woman', for she was taken out of man. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.'"

That is heterosexuality and that is what the Bible teaches; nothing else is acceptable or normal.

Esther Tyson is principal of Ardenne High School, St. Andrew.