By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist

A growing trend in U.S. and European public schools to mandate graphic sex ed programs that promote promiscuity and “alternative” lifestyles has reached historic proportions in Germany where teh 10th Christian parent has just been tossed in jail for refusing to allow her children to attend the classes. Attorneys on the case are warning that this trend may soon reach American shores.

MercatorNet.com is reporting that Heinrich and Irene Wiens objected to a mandatory school program that consisted of a stage play and four school days of so-called “sexual education” classes. The parents, who are devout Baptists, believed the programs violated their religious beliefs and kept their children home.  As a result, the couple was each fined 2,340 Euros ($3,250 U.S.) dollars, which they refused to pay on legal and moral grounds. The couple was then sentenced to more than six weeks in prison for refusing to pay.

Mr. Wiens served his 43 day sentence, and Mrs. Wiens has now been incarcerated to serve a six week sentence.

The Alliance Defense Fund, a U.S. based Christian legal alliance, filed an emergency appeal last week with the European Court of Human Rights, calling for Mrs. Weins immediate release.

“Parents, not the government, are the ones ultimately responsible for making educational choices for their children, and jailing them for standing on this universal right is simply unconscionable,” said ADF Legal Counsel Roger Kiska. “Irene Wiens was well within her rights under the European Convention of Human Rights to opt to teach her children a view of sexuality that is in accord with her own religious beliefs, instead of sending them to four days of classes and an interactive play that she found to be objectionable. These types of cases are crucial battles in the effort to keep bad decisions concerning parental rights overseas from being adopted by American courts.”

This scenario may be playing out in American courts sooner than we think. A woman commenting on the MercatorNet site told the story of what she went through to prevent her children from having to attend mandatory sex ed classes in California.

Being a Catholic, the woman, identified only as Michelle, said she at first transferred her children to the class of a Mormon teacher who kept the most graphic parts of the presentation out of the class.

“She taught the sex ed class by saying ‘I have a book up here that shows pictures that will teach you about sex, if you want to learn about this feel free to come up to my desk and look.’ No kid ever took her up on it. She also presented abstinence as what was best. I then had my teenagers stay home on the day that the outside person was coming in to present the contraception talk. I didn’t call attention to what I was doing.”

But this teacher was gone by the time her next child was facing the same classes and she again tried to get him exempted, but to no avail.

“I went to the Superintendent of schools and was told that he had to take the health class but he could leave and go to the library each day that the sex education part of the class was in session but that he had to show up each day and get dismissed by the teacher. A bit embarrassing for the teenager but my son was a game sort of guy and told me that he would make a short speech each day in class as he left, inviting the other teenagers to come to the library with him.”

The teen only delivered one speech, which must have been effective, because the school caved a day later and allowed him to skip the class.

Attorneys for the Wiens are warning that what’s going on in Europe could happen here at any time. In fact, just last week, a spokeswoman for the National Education Association, the largest teacher’s union in the U.S., gave an address at the United Nations in which she decried sex ed courses that allow children to opt out.  

Thus far, Mrs. Wiens is the 10th Christian parent to be jailed in Germany for refusing to allow a child to attend a mandatory sex ed program.

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