Some years back, a survey of boys sent when very young to British boarding schools reported a quarter of them emerged as homosexual. Little wonder, when desperately lonely children, separated from loving families and starved for affection, turned to one another or were targeted by older boys, inevitably becoming accustomed to homosexual activity.

Those fans of the British explorer, adventurer and writer, Ranulph Fiennes, may recall that in his autobiography, Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, he described his time at boarding school, including the common practice of hopping in and out of beds, later abandoned by the majority, but not all. Similarly, many can recall that perfectly natural time when adolescents tend to get crushes on others, with boys perhaps hero-worshipping a school’s outstanding footballer; girls similarly finding themselves attracted to a schoolmate. Strong male friendships, too, have always been part of the camaraderie helping soldiers endure the hardships of war. But given the Gay Pride agenda saturating the West – but strongly opposed by many African and Middle East countries – it must now be hard on so many men – liking or forming strong friendships with others – being driven to wonder if they are closet homosexuals.

Although here in New Zealand our abysmally performing, Marxist-invaded Ministry of Education recently launched ‘Schools Pride Week Aotearoa’, NZ parents are not yet so widely protesting against the propagandising and attempted recruitment of our children happening elsewhere. Many are quietly removing their children to home-school them, taking advantage of well-planned curricula academically streets ahead of what is offering in our dumbed-down schools. Others planned to remove their children during June’s ‘Pride Week Aotearoa’.

The reluctance of many to speak out against the attack on the traditional beliefs and values of the majority is because radical activists, very much supported by Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government – now spearheaded by her long-term buddy, Chris Hipkins – are brandishing their accusations of ‘homophobia’, beavering away to impose even more draconian ‘hate speech’ penalties, aiming to intimidate those seriously concerned not only at the attack on free speech, but at the growing promotion of LGBT+ communities, with their demands for transgender support and grammatically absurd, ‘preferred’ pronouns forced on the public at large, basically quasi-blackmailed into subservience.

For example, a maths teacher refusing to call a secondary student embarked on gender transition by a new chosen name is not allowed to teach again. The New Zealand Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal decision ruled him unfit to be a teacher. Ordered to pay costs to the tribunal and to the Complaints Assessment Committee, he said if he had called the student by a boy’s name he would ‘not be acting in her best interest or the best interest of society’.

California is hardly a conservative stronghold, but apparently not all Californian parents are happy with elementary schools’ Pride months. One father tells of removing his 8-year-old daughter from school, saying school officials repeatedly ignored parents’ concerns about a Pride event. In Canada, the fightback has well and truly begun. A national petition in Ontario to school board trustees asking that they fly only the Canadian, not the LGBT ‘Pride’ flag, has already gathered 20,000 signatures. Reportedly, ‘This significant milestone coincides with a nationwide uprising of parents from diverse ethnic and faith backgrounds who are demanding that LGBT activists leave their school-age children alone and cease indoctrinating them with sexual and gender ideologies.’ In Calgary, Christian and Muslim parents came together, saying they were fed up with homosexual and transgender propaganda. Politicians, companies, and schools got a surprise this June when encountering an unprecedented backlash in reaction to Pride celebrations.

Canadians and Americans standing up to the LGBT ideology have made this June’s Pride month the least celebratory in recent years. Apparently the loudest voices in a rebellion across Canada seem to be those of children and teens sick of the LGBT agenda pushed on them at school, a trend that may have begun when one Ontario student, Josh Alexander, was unforgivably expelled from his school for supporting the right of girls to private spaces. His rebellion has since spread. In England, the parents of a 13-year-old girl branded ‘despicable’ by her teacher – after she rejected a classmate’s claim to identify as a cat – have told of their fury and how proud they are of their daughter.

On this side of the Tasman, we have been afflicted not only with Schools Pride Week Aotearoa (the attempt to force this widely rejected name on our country basically says it all) but also with Auckland Pride Month in February; Transgender Visibility Day on 31 March; International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia on 17 May; Pink Shirt Day in May; International Pride Month in June; Out on the Shelves (LGBT library books in schools/community) in June; Celebrate Bisexuality on 23 September; National Coming Out Day on 11 October; and Transgender Day of Remembrance on 20 November – with some regions also having their own Pride weeks and a ‘Day of Silence’ to call attention to so-called homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying, name-calling and harassment in schools.

The majority of New Zealanders may well now feel that the lack of tolerance for their own values and concerns amounts to harassment and bullying, with the virtual glorifying of sexual activities which undermine family values reaching crisis point. The sheer vulgarity of the dress and flamboyant behaviour of many in our formerly annual Hero Parade also raised questions about what was particularly ‘heroic’ about much of the blatant exhibitionism.

Few would dispute that behaviour between consenting adults is entirely their own business, and that the punitive, cruel and inhumane way in which homosexual adults were treated in the past was, and should be, totally unacceptable. Many of us will also have friends who for one reason or another became homosexual, but deplore the self-aggrandisement of those demanding that Pride flags be flown; that rainbow crossings be painted on city streets; that drag queens are inappropriately invited into public libraries to sexually puzzle, confuse, or even repel young children.

Where, it has been well asked, is the pride in emotionally attacking and sexualising our children? And what is particularly heroic about attempting to intimidate those brave enough to publicly question what is happening to our society?