A large number of parents from Trieste, Northern Italy, are organizing a demonstration on Saturday called "Defend Our Children" to protest against gender ideology that is currently being introduced in schools. The parents have set their sights especially on Italian educational programs that aim to blur children's sexual identities.
Among the programs that received the most flak was an elementary school program that includes dressing little boys girls' clothes, and vice versa. The schools state that the exercise is aimed at overcoming gender stereotypes, according to Breitbart.
The schools further state that the exercise adopts numerous guidelines from the European standards on sex education, which is attributed to the World Health Organization.
One activity, called "the game of respect," involves a box containing several cards, which presents figures of different working roles represented by both male and female illustrations - male and female housekeepers, plumbers, and firefighters are featured. The activity is aimed at showing that males and females are completely interchangeable, Breitbart reported.
Another activity, called "if he were she and she were he," involves boys and girls exchanging the clothes that they are wearing. The children are then asked to discuss how they feel in their new "role."
Prof. Massimo Gandolfini, who heads the protest, said that the goal of the demonstration will be "to protect our children from the propaganda of gender theories that are appearing surreptitiously and in an ever more worrying way in schools."
Pope Francis has also spoken against the gender ideology that is currently being emphasized in schools in a statement published in La Santa Sede this past Sunday.
"(Children today) are beginning to hear strange ideas, a sort of ideological colonization that poisons the soul and the family: we must act against this," he said.
"This ideological colonization does great harm and can even destroy a society, a country or a family."
