A grocery-story chain has apologized for promoting an “LGBT education pack” that parents said “normalized pedophilia.”
A grocery-story chain has apologized for promoting an “LGBT education pack” that parents said “normalized pedophilia.”
The packs that were emailed to primary- and secondary-aged schoolchildren by Asda, the British chain, which obtained them from the pro-LGBT organization Diversity Role Models.
The company’s CEO, Roger Burnley, said, “I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for this situation.”
Burnley, who is demanding a review, said he was “completely aghast that we have allowed ourselves to be associated in this way.”
The U.K.’s Christian Instituted said one exercise in the primary pack “told children to watch a video and to consider what would make a good slogan, giving ‘Love has no age limit’ as an example.'”
The suggested reading material in the secondary pack also featured a book called “Beyond Magenta,” the institute said, which included a 6-year-old boy engaging in sexual activities with other children.
Baroness Nicholson, among others, had registered concern.
Some of the material in the packs comes from the LGBT activist group Educate and Celebratel and a program called All About Me in the Warwickshire County Council’s schools.
School officials dropped the program when the Christian Institute threatened legal action.
The concerns about Asda’s promotions were raised by the institute, the Safe School Alliance and other child-oriented organizations in the United Kingdom.
One parent told the institute, “Suggesting love has no age limit is a very, very bad idea.”
Another said: “The love has no age could be an unfortunate mistake on its own I suppose. But that Magenta book is totally inappropriate.”
One passage, the institute said, reads: “From six up, I used to kiss other guys in my neighborhood, make out with them, and perform oral sex on them. I liked it. I used to love oral.”
The Safe School Alliance asked, “Do they understand child safeguarding?”
A Mumsnet user added: “That book is hugely inappropriate and disgusting, trying to normalize overly sexualized behavior to the reader, so wrong and I would be absolutely shocked and disgusted to find my child of pretty much any age reading those words and taking them on board, what on earth is this?!”
The Safe Schools Alliance said the primary school pack includes the slogan “love has no age limits” and “love is love.”
“Some of our members are old enough to remember organizations such as PIE (Pedophile Information Exchange) and NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) piggy-backing on civil liberties movements in the seventies and eighties and the damage it caused,” the alliance told the chief officer for the chain. “We are horrified that a supermarket has chosen to promote materials that has caused the public to conflate the LGBT community with pedophiles once again.”
Besides the offensive slogan, the stores’ promotions include the book “Red: A Crayon’s Story,” which “suggests that if someone ‘isn’t very good’ at behaving in the way people expect them to, that they are in the wrong body.”
Then there are the links to the “Beyond Magenta” book and the Pink News website.
“The Pink News website contains adult themes, many of a sexual nature,” the alliance charged. “The book ‘Beyond Magenta’ contains a first-person description of a six-year-old performing oral sex, told as if this is a normal and un-concerning act instead of child abuse.”
Source: ‘What on earth is this?!’ Store chain apologizes for promoting child porn
