Coalition Withdraws CDU Candidate for Constitutional Court Due to Criticism of Sex Ed
Just days before the parliamentary vote on the election of a judge to the state constitutional court, the CDU, Greens, FDP and SSW withdrew their nomination of Hamburg lawyer and law professor Christian Winterhoff due to his conservative views on the sexual education of children.
In 2016, Professor Winterhoff wrote a legal opinion for the Echte Toleranz (Real Tolerance) association in which he argued that a sexual education curriculum with the aim of educating students to accept any kind of sexual behavior was unconstitutional indoctrination. He made the same argument at a 2017 symposium on sexual education sponsored by the group "Demo für All".
He wrote, "It is incompatible with the State's duty of neutrality and restraint and violates the prohibition of indoctrination, if school children are taught to accept diverse sexual behaviors, particularly when heterosexuality and other sexual orientations are presented as equivalent manifestations of human sexuality." ("Es ist mit der dem Staat obliegenden Neutralitäts- und Zurückhaltungspflicht unvereinbar und verstößt gegen das Indoktrinationsverbot, wenn Schulkindern die Akzeptanz vielfältiger sexueller Verhaltensweisen vermittelt und insbesondere Heterosexualität und andere sexuelle Orientierungen als gleichwertige Erscheinungsformen menschlicher Sexualität dargestellt werden.")
According to Lübecker Nachrichten, the Green MP Rasmus Andresen declared that Winterhoff was no longer, "under any circumstances" eligible to be a constitutional court judge because a person in that position should not have been "the mouthpiece of enemies of the people and rights." In other words, if a person doesn't agree with the Greens' version of diversity, he must be called a misanthrope and blocked.
Professor Winterhoff is the latest casualty in a series of similar cases where people who express traditional views on life, marriage, and family have been professionally punished or blocked.
Sources: Lübecker Nachrichten, Idea.de, Institut für Ehe und Familie
Photo: Demo für Alle, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, via Flickr