Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Political correctness is running amok in Europe these days as a new report by the European Parliament is calling for the banning of all children’s books that depict the traditional family, alleging that these materials encourage gender discrimination.
According to LifeSiteNews.com, the new report, entitled “on eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU,” school materials that depict men and women in traditional roles of mothers and fathers should be banned because these depictions are “encouraging more gender discrimination in different areas of society and all age groups.”
The report said, “Children are confronted with gender stereotypes at a very young age through television series, television advertisements, study materials and educational programmes, influencing their perception of how male and female characters should behave. Special educational programmes and study materials should therefore be introduced in which men and women are no longer used in examples in their ‘traditional roles’, with the male as the breadwinner of the family and the female as the one who takes care of the children.”
Should the recommendations become law, classic works of English literature such as Paddington Bear and Peter Pan would be banned from the same schools that fill their shelves with tales of same-sex families and Harry Potter books.
“Once again the women’s rights committee is wasting the parliament’s time and taxpayers’ money with left-wing, politically correct nonsense,” said Conservative MEP Marina Yannakoudakis who serves as Spokesman on Women’s Rights in the European Parliament.
“Children’s books or television programs which portray a man as a breadwinner and a woman as a homemaker are not harming children, and the European Union has no business suggesting that they do. The proposals will now go the full parliament in the coming months and I hope that my fellow MEPs will see sense and join me in voting down these preposterous plans.”
Joseph Salerno, editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, called the report’s proposals an example of left-wing totalitarianism.
“These people are not just announcing their intentions to attack the family unit, but to ban by force any mention of it. It’s a little bit like trying to legislate away gravity,” Salerno said.
While the report’s recommendations are not expected to be turned into law any time soon, he said, it does “amply illustrate the darkness at the center of the EU experiment, snuffing out human decency the way a black hole supposedly sucks heat out of the galaxy”.
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