At the time of writing the UK news media has been closely following the story of protests by Muslim and Christian parents concerned by the teaching of an LGBT rights programme in a Birmingham primary school. This controversy and the storm of commentary it has provoked should remind us that sexuality education has a deep historical entanglement with the political influence and public claims of the religious. Given the imminent implementation of statutory guidance for the teaching of Relationships and Sex Education in all English schools, this is clearly an important time for sociology of religion to attend to sexuality education.
So what sort of questions might sociologists of religion want to ask regarding sexuality education? In the flurry of commentary much attention has been given to the rights/bigotry/homophobia of the protesting parents and little to the young people who lie at the centre of this issue. As such, one important inquiry concerns the way in which social constructs of youth are drawn on in public debates and the presence/absence of the religious in these constructs.
Broadly, research on religion, youth and sexuality supports a prevailing narrative of liberalisation and individualisation. Sarah-Jane Page and Andrew Yip’s research (2013) shows that religious young people are increasingly more likely to hold permissive attitudes to pre-marital sex and same-sex sexual relationships and less likely to value and adhere to adult religious authorities. This construct of religious youth might support arguments that school curricula should no longer be responsive to ossified traditions enshrined in scripture and interpretative traditions, but to this ‘real religious landscape’ of belief as practiced (Dinham & Francis 2016).
In the case of sexuality education, it follows that if religious young people are liberalising and individualising, the case for schools teaching ‘in line with their religious tradition’ (e.g. encouraging sexuality within marriage only) is eroded. However, Page and Yip’s work also highlights religious youth whose experiences do not conform to this assumed trend of liberalisation; those who continue to hold to traditional sexual ethics, and those who continue to value traditional sources of authority. These are frequently lost in the majoritarian thrust of policy debates.
Research with queer religious youth provides another example of this tendency to lose nuance in policy translations of sociological knowledge. The growing body of work on queer religious youth frequently focuses on the experience of conflict between their religious and sexual identity, with an ideal of ‘reconciliation’ between identities established in some policy discourse (Stonewall 2015). Under this model of ‘struggling to reconcile’, it becomes clear that heteronormative sexuality education can reify and intensify queer religious youth’s marginalisation (Formby 2011). This provides further support to the argument against religious school’s rights to teach in accordance with their religious tradition, which may preclude same-sex sexual relationships.
Sociologists of religion might put pressure on this construct of queer religious youth experience as primarily one of ‘identity conflict’. Recent research has found that for many queer religious youth their religious communities are not experienced as marginalising but rather as a source of support (Taylor 2016). Further, sociological research has yet to explore the experience of queer religious youth who intend celibacy given their adherence to a ‘traditional’ sexual ethic. Nuance can be lost, but arguments conveniently buttressed, by the construct of queer religious youth as ‘internally conflicted’. On the other hand, we might also observe a reversal of this in which the ongoing resilience of traditional religious sexuality amongst a minority of young people is marshalled as part of a counter-narrative by traditionalists.
The point I am making here separates to some extent the validity and forcefulness of ethical arguments around the teaching of RSE in line with religious traditions from the question of what social constructs are drawn on for the support or rejection of these arguments; specifically, whether they actually have the argumentative force that is claimed for them. There may be very good reasons for legislating against religious schools’ right to shape the RSE they provide, or for contesting heteronormative curricula. However, in these crucial times of shaping the statutory guidance sociologists of religion should also be asking whether the constructs of religious youth being drawn upon are adequate and whether sociological expertise is being accurately translated into policy contexts (McGimpsey, Bradbury & Santori 2017).
Joshus Heyes is a PhD student at the University of Birmingham School of Education. He has degrees in theology, philosophy and social research and is currently studying the relationship between sexuality education and religion in England. Drawing on his experience as youth worker, his doctoral project uses narrative methodology to explore Christian young men’s stories of romantic relationships and sexuality in relation to current debates about the teaching of sexuality in schools. He has recently published articles in Sex Education and Journal of Moral Education.
Bibliography
Dinham, A., & Francis, M. (2015). “Religious literacy: contesting an idea and practice”. In A. Dinham & M. Francis (Eds.), Religious Literacy in Policy and Practice(pp. 3–26). Bristol: Policy Press.
Formby, E. (2011). “Sex and relationships education, sexual health, and lesbian, gay and bisexual sexual cultures: views from young people”. Sex Education, 11(3), 255–266.
McGimpsey, I., Bradbury, A., & Santori, D. (2017). “Revisions to rationality: the translation of ‘new knowledges’ into policy under the Coalition Government”. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(6), 908–925.
Stonewall (2016) “Christian Role Models for LGBT Equality”. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/christian-role-models-for-lgbt-equality[Accessed 01/04/2019].
Taylor, Y. (2016). Making Space for Queer-Identifying Religious Youth. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Yip, A. K., & Page, S.-J. (2013). Religious and Sexual Identities: A Multi-Faith Exploration of Young Adults. Farnham: AshGate Publishing.
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