LIMA, Peru — Under the theme “Don’t Mess With My Children,” more than 1.5 million Peruvians demonstrated on Saturday against gender ideology in the nation’s schools.
Organizers said that total attendance surpassed 1.5 million, at demonstrations throughout the country.
Among those present were Congress members Julio Rosas, Carlos Tubino, Nelly Cuadros, Juan Carlos Gonzales, Marco Miyashiro, Roberto Vieira, Federico Pariona and Edwin Donayre.
Los organizadores de #conmishijosnotemetas anuncian que más de 1.5 millones marcharon en todo el Perú #4M ????@Calderon_Martha / @acamasca pic.twitter.com/351NDByffr — ACI Prensa (@aciprensa) March 4, 2017
“Don’t Mess With My Children” is a campaign against recent attempts to promote a national curriculum of gender ideology, which teaches that one’s gender is chosen and has no connection with one’s biological sex.
In January of this year, the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference told the government that it “urges the removal from the new national curriculum those notions coming from gender ideology.”
At 2pm on March 4, massive crowds gathered to march toward San Martín Plaza in the center of Lima.
The demonstrators, bearing various signs and slogans, marched down the main districts of the Peruvian capital.
Other cities throughout the country, including Arequipa, Trujillo, Iquitos and Cusco, also saw heavily attended demonstrations.
Father Luis Gaspar, episcopal vicar of the Family and Life Commission for the Archdiocese of Lima, stressed that “education, as the first right of parents concerning their children, is not negotiable.”
Father Gaspar also invited the demonstrators to participate in the “March for Life,” which will be held March 25 in Lima.
“We are in a war over morals, a spiritual war,” Father Gaspar said, “and the battlefield is the minds of their children, and we are going to defend it till the day we die.”